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$10k Bounty for Critical Windows Flaws
An anonymous reader writes "iDefense, a Verisign company, is offering $10,000 to any researchers who find and report to it information on a previously unknown Windows flaw for which Microsoft later issues a "critical" advisory, according to a story over at Washingtonpost.com. Not really surprising, considering that Russian hacking groups are now paying thousands of dollars for exploits that attack unpatched holes in Windows. From the article: "Details of the flaw must be submitted exclusively to iDefense by March 31. There is no limit on the number of prizes that can be paid: if five researchers find and report five different Windows flaws for which Microsoft later issues critical advisories, all five will get paid...iDefense will change the focus of the challenge with each quarter -- the next challenge may focus on another vendor, or it may just center on particular class of vulnerabilities.""
That isn't a lot when you could sell the exploit on the internet like the WMF exploit was a snip at $5000 each, think how many people bought that in the malicous website, porn internet, fake-anti spyware companies like Win Hound. Some how I don't think this will last long.
Or, iDefense may never pay any of the $10K prizes, citing independent discovery, not-really-critical status or just the fact that Verisign knows how to say "fuck you" better than almost anyone. Instead, they'll just get shitloads of free press for their cheesy security contest and a couple of marks will sign up for and/or buy whatever it is that Verisign/iDefense is hawking today.
There's no inherent security architecture protecting Firefox, Linux, OSX that doesn't also exist in Windows.
That's total bollocks. Granted, the fact that windows is more popular than linux is *one* factor that discourages malware for linux, but it's far from the only one.
Linux systems are designed to be run by users, and administered as root. Windows systems, by and large, are impossible to run as anything but root - many programs require root access to work properly, and Windows (up until recently) never had the equivelant of a linux sudo to get around that requirement. Windows developers have been encouraged for years to write programs dependant on root access. Execute permissions prevent accidental execution of malware on Linux, as does not having a stupid system of extensions which are so easily spoofed (especially when default windows behaviour is to hide recognized extensions!). The move over to NTFS was good, but it only really hit the public with XP. I still know many people using FAT-based systems. How long has Linux been running a permissions-based filesystem? There's a few architectural security advantages Linux has over windows. On the more abstract level, being open source gives Linux the potential to be more secure - it's hard to hide critical vulnerabilities in Linux, whereas MS has a history of doing so for windows.
Firefox is another issue entirely; it's an application, not an OS. But comparing it to MS's Internet Explorer, it's far and away more secure. It doesn't install things behind the user's back, as MS IE does so very often. It doesn't allow the incredibly-insecure ActiveX components. I've never had a spyware infection or browser hijack simply by browsing in firefox. On my new laptop, however, I was browsing around using IE while I waited for firefox to download, and in between the time it took to start the download, and the time it had finished, IE had managed to install a little bugger called Aurora for me . Thanks IE!
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face