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Windows 98, Me, NT4, 2000 and XP SSL Flawed
JoeSmack writes "In amazingly unexpected news, ComputerWorld is running an article that says the
SSL security hole found in Internet Explorer is not a flaw in the browser, but in the operating system itself." The article mentions
that Konqueror was patched against the same bug in 90 minutes.
Uh-oh. IANA Windows Developer....does anyone know how many apps use this API that microsoft might potentially break? (Fixing bugs: good, breaking stuff: bad....)
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
There's a difference? I thought they were the same thing...
is that for most consumers, this doesn't even matter. I mean, they will be effected by the security hole, but if their computer gets hacked or something, they'll end up just blaming their own lack of computer knowledge. They'll eventually install the patch from windows update (if they know how to access windows update), and then blindly keep surfing the net and playing "who wants to be a millionaire".
This "makes sense" up until the point where you have to patch your kernel instead of upgrading a library. When OpenSSL had a bug, they fixed it and you could upgrade OpenSSL. When Konqueror had this specific bug, it could be uprgraded easily enough. Now Windows users have to patch their entire OS to fix this (or just use another browser that doesn't use the crypto-in-the-kernel routines).
This is the result of "integrating" IE into the OS. Now when there is a "browser" sesecurity problem, it's really an OS problem.
Sorry MS - kill by integration, be killed by integration. It's a circle of life kinda thing...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The article says: "SSL flaw doesn't affect any other application outside Internet Explorer and that it's a client-side issue only" But if it only affects IE, and not programs such as netscape (which also of course runs on windows), then technically it IS a problem with IE!
"And yet another proof that all critical applications should be peer reviewed by everyone who wants."
As if 'everyone' were qualified to do so.
Can we stop with the "Foo blah blah DMCA foo!" jokes already? The first 600 or so were funny (ok maybe not), but it's getting old. Especially when the subject matter has nothing to do with copy control circumvention or the ??AA businesses
In order to make sure we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, I suppose it would be fair to ask the question of when the Konqueror fix will be available to the normal and possibly rather non-sophisticated public consumer crowd?
I mean, when the fix becomes ready from MS (weeks or months, but it will) it will be applicable to most users of Windows, but the current fix for Konqueror after 90min weren't immediatly ready for the masses.
So, when will it?
I am so shocked to hear Microsoft didn't follow the standards when implementing SSL.
Neither did Konqueror. Blame where blame belongs, please. It's trendy to just blame everything on the Big Evil Empire, but let's not forget they aren't the only ones who have bugs.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
You know what? I bet the 'soft could do this too. I mean have a guy, or team of guys available 24/7 to patch bugs. And you know what else? They'd still get flack for it, as Microsoft don't release patches straight away - for better or for worse, they do actually test them first (usually), make sure they don't kill wierd and exotic installs etc. I know they've released dodgy patches, but my point is that Microsoft isn't an overnight operation.
And more to the point, how does this patch get to people? Via autoupdate of course. The patch may have been written in 40 minutes, but it's still not available on SuSE auto update (as far as I can tell) despite the fact that Waldo works for SuSE! We really need to stop patting ourselves on the back simply because we can see the progress of the patch and Microsofters can't, otherwise this bullheaded arrogance WILL bite us on the ass.
Note that this doesn't mean the bug was only there for 90 minutes, it was there for [months, years, I don't know]. Why didn't Konqueror take the initiative to fix this before instead of waiting until it was published? Sounds like they had the fix all along and were just waiting for the announcement so they could look good by fixing it so quickly.
Monopolistic is the key in your reply. It is easy to blame the big guy when they are screwing you.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Microsoft officials said it makes sense for the operating system to provide cryptographic services to any application that needs it, instead of each application having to include its own cryptographic technology
Yes, indeed, it does make sense for the OS to provide such a service to any program that wants to use it, so long as that's a GOOD service.
In general, it makes sense to provide everything from outside the program, and just have the program call on outside services. However, that means you need to make the outside services good, and it means that those writing programs don't just string together a bunch of requests (i.e., draw this, check that calls) but also work on looking for fixes to the common outside service, which would be shared by many programs.
In other words, this approach only makes sense when the outside services are OSS / FS / public domain, which means that developers of programs can check their integrity and submit improvements. Otherwise, its just a big black hole for developers: should I trust this cryptographic routine, or shouldn't I? One never knows with proprietary routines. One can check, and improve such routines provided OSS / FS.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If IE is a consumer of a service provided by the OS then IE is not part of the OS.
Microsofts ascertion to the contrary is hereby refuted.
Make products buggy as hell, then get people to upgrade and pay them for it by releasing new versions which have fixed the old bugs, but introduced new bugs. Repeat ad infinetum.
In parallel, also make sure to develop file formats and "standards" which aren't backwards compatable and don't work with any other OS', so as to lock people into MS products and force costly upgrades.
Bwuhahahaha.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
This is a pretty important point. Just because the KDE people fixed it doesn't mean everyone will have it. Instead of asking, "How long did it take for it to get fixed", we should be asking, "How long until it is widely enough deployed such that exploit writing becomes unprofitable?" It seems to me that even if Microsoft is a little slower getting a bug fixed, the universal "Windows Update" probably gets the patch on a greater percentage of machines more quickly.
;-)
Of course, the number of Windows desktops dwarfs the number of KDE desktops so if even a small percentage of Windows installations don't get patched, it would probably be about the same as if KDE never got patched at all.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
"Anybody else not see the lack of logic here? MS has two crypto implementations? One for the OS, one for the API?"
Um, maybe one crypto service is for SSL, while the other is for, oh, maybe encrypting files?
There are so many good reasons to bash MS, why invent a bad one?
"Then can you explain why Microsoft releases bugfixes that uhhm break stuff?"
Despite your glaring lack of maturity in the above sentence, I figured I would respond.
Microsoft software (Windows/Office/Internet Explorer or any combination of the above) runs on approximately 95 out of every 100 client computers on the Internet. Now, on those computers, you have every piece of weird x86 hardware ever invented, from crappy $5 ISA modems to $5,000 SCSI RAID arrays. You also have Microsoft software that runs on Macintosh, Solaris, HP-UX and FreeBSD computers.
Now, figure that Linux runs on approximately 1 out of every 100 client computers on the Internet. (This is a high guess -- I'm giving Linux the benefit of the doubt here.) Now assume that KDE runs on 100% of those computers (also an extremely high guess.) So for every 1 person who receives the KDE fix, there will be about 92 (I'm taking out the non-Windows, non-Linux users) people who receive the Microsoft fix.
Considering that there are hundreds of millions of people on the Internet, and hundreds of BILLIONS of different hardware configurations, the chance that a Microsoft fix will break something is much higher than the chance that a KDE fix will break something.
"Ever heard of Debian's apt-get, Mandrake's urpmi, RedHat's up2date, etc.? It's up to each vendor to make the fix available to the users."
Oh, I love these arguments. It's funny how most people who run Linux don't trust their vendor enough to release patches in a timely manner, and actually whine about fixes being easy to get. "But I run Linux so I can do everything myself!"
I run about 12 Linux servers. I trust my vendors (Red Hat and Sun Cobalt in this instance) to provide me with timely updates. But the funny thing is that whenever I recommend that people trust their vendor for services like Apache or PHP and use up2date, I get laughed at. In fact, when I say that I use Red Hat and Sun Cobalt, I get laughed at. "Why not just compile everything yourself? Why not just use Debian?" Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen -- I run a profitable business off of my servers and I don't have time to sit on SecurityFocus all day and make sure I'm not affected by the myriad set of would-be bugs on my servers. I trust my vendor to test the updates on their set of supported hardware and release them to me in a timely manner. I will then run the vendor-supported update tool and download them.
The people I see who are the most rabid advocates of open source are also the most rabid advocates of doing everything themselves -- the epitome of the "trust no one" saying. These are the SAME people, much like yourself, who also say that it's up to the vendor to release patches. I have news for you. You either need to trust your vendor to provide patches, or you need to realize that in the real world, not everyone has time to make a test bed and test that every CVS patch works the way it is claimed to. You can't bash Microsoft for taking time to release tested updates and then claim that Linux is better because you can install a fix that is untested instead of "waiting for the vendor to catch up".
Yeah, it was for a problem in the Network Manager. Of course, since this was the big 'sploit of the week, you and 2short seem to have mistaken the patch for something that it's not. This morning's patch description
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Yeah, that's why they found the bug in closed source IE before they found it in the open source Konquerer..
Your comment is informative, but what good are auto-update scripts when there are no updates?