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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.
There's a difference? I thought they were the same thing...
Glad it's only a client side issue then.
So I guess it's safe.
It's a good thing I didn't upgrade.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
We only wrote bad code that made it through QA for 5 different versions of the OS dating back to the mid 90s. Of course, with Palladium, our new secure platform, things like this will never happen. Good thing we got that patch out quick!
(Oh wait, that was the Konqueror people!)
We'll I'm sure with our new secure computing focus it will be out any time now. Please don't stop doing ecommerce, just because all your personal data can be hacked, just use Passport.
(Oh wait, that happens with Passport too!)
Ummmm...
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
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?"
- The bug is in the OS crypto services
- It's NOT MS's crypto api
- Only IE is affected.
Time for rhetorical questions:Anybody else not see the lack of logic here? MS has two crypto implementations? One for the OS, one for the API? Why the redundancy? Why cant the OS use the API? Or conversely, why is the API necessary when there's the services are in the OS?
How in the world is IE the only app affected? It seems more to logical to assume that any app using this crypto services are also vulnerable.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
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.
90 minutes????? What are the KDE boys doing, sleeping???
This is just unacceptable. I cannot believe and refuse to accept that it could take 90 minutes to get a major security fix out for a browser. This is completely unacceptable. It's no wonder everyone uses IE.
I guess the Microsofties were right after all. Support for open source software is nearly impossible to find.
-- Before you post, are you sure you got it?
Sweet time? Indeed, saying that the Konquerer team fixed it in 90 minutes makes them sound very irresponsible, not proactive : Every change like that can have hundreds of ramifications, and I assure you that there is a programmer at Microsoft who could point to a particular segment of code and say "There, we just need to change that line right there". But after several high profile incidents where someone did a change and it broke a dozen large applications, they seem to be a lot more weary about that nowadays. Working in software development, I've seen many situations in large systems where someone wanted to rush out an incompletely thought out feature or fix and the net result was disaster.
Here's a question - who do I sue if that bug in Konqueror causes me to lose money? Nobody!
Here's another question. Who do you sue if that bug in IE causes you to lose money? Nobody! Read the EULA!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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
The BugTraq post describes the nature of a MOTM exploit using this vulnerability.
A BugTraq reader was able to successfully demonstrate this using dsniff and OpenSSL as his tool kit. Screenshots on his site illustrate this, with his own bank account!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How many people out there are REAL Windows Admins? Seriously? I bet not that many are true windows admins. Using windows does not qualify you as an admin. I'll admit I'm very weak on my nix admin but that's because I don't bother learning about it. In my mind Windows 2k can be just as good an OS. I bet many of you don't know that Microsoft's knowledge base acutally keeps track of all it's bugs and patches for them before they stick it on Windows Update for the rest of the masses. I bet many of you don't know that microsoft has a tool called hfnetchk ... what does it do?.. It'll download the LATEST patches that microsoft has available for you to use. It'll check your system to see what patches are installed and what aren't and give you a report telling you which article # in MS knowledge base you can find the patch for you problem. More tools you want?... How about Qchain... (which i know many of you don't know about either) that lets the user install multiple patches WITHOUT rebooting your system multiple times. For IIS Windows has IISlockd .. which many wanna-be admins didn't bother finding out during the time when nimda worms were going crazy. And the list goes on I can easily list pages worth of other tools that windows has that most people don't know about because they're ignorant. If anything I'd say windows has done a wonderful job by making people lazy.
But let's take a step back. I bet many of you are saying pfft the Nix machines have this and that tool. Think about that for a moment.. why would a multibillion dollar corporation, who have a million times more resources then the average linux programmer, not bother to make a similar tool for windows if it's so useful? Kinda defies logic doesn't it especially since nowadays with IBM's backing of linux MS needs to compete performance and feature wise even more (or are you going to tell me that MS has a stranglehold on IBM?).
So before anyone else goes on with the typical. . "wat you expect form MS"
read up about what MS really has and acutally maintain an intellectual conversation
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.
I implicity trust Redhat, Mandrake, and all the major Linux vendors for that matter; _implicitly_. Based on nothing more than the fact that they have a proven track record of being trustworthy, and not eavesdropping/abusing/fscking the consumer. Microsoft on the other hand has a notorious reputation for abusing customers, vendors, programmers and competitors. I won't provide any references because I'm quite certain that google will provide more than I care to count. Do the homework yourself if you don't already agree.
If for no other reason than that, I will trust Redhat to provide "vendor" patches because I have no reason not to. For the record, I'm not one of those "paranoid"/"I'll fix the code myself" people you spoke of. I'm just joe-average-sysadmin with my company's best interests in mind.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.