Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Admits to Hiding Flaw Details
Spongeform writes "eWeek has an interview with a Microsoft security official admitting to hiding details on software vulnerabilities that are discovered internally. The reason? Microsoft believes that full disclosure of every security-related product change only serves to aid attackers. However, companies using host-based IPS that rely on flaw information to build signatures are basically left at risk because of Microsoft's silent fixes."
Well, here's another reason why that report was flawed - it turns out that Microsoft are fixing multiple vulns in one advisory - from the article:Of course, Microsoft is going to argue that they fix vulns silently to prevent the 'bad guys' from using the patch info to create attacks, but this is refuted by the same researcher:
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I seem to remember being told in my software engineering class of a type of protection that provides a false sense of security. I think that Microsoft may be becoming more and more guilty of it.
Perhaps it's time they should change their "Who would ever think to put those bytes there anyways?" mantra.
My work here is dung.
FTA: "We want to make sure we don't give attackers any [additional] information that could be used against our customers.
But, if they are your customers, they can get the patches no problem right? So really this policy only helps out the pirates. Right?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
If you had read the article rather than rushing to get first post, you would know that they're talking about releasing information about flaws after the patch is released.
If you still don't understand why they should release information, consider the following from the article:
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Perhaps I should be clearer. My quote included The attackers are already reverse-engineering the patches.
All the attacker needs is the patch - they can look at that to see whats changed and where & deduce from that where to start looking for attack vectors. It's not particularly a big help for them to hear "Function blah in program blah has changed"
System Administrators on the other hand do not have time to reverse engineer the patch, but can read the summary and say "we don't use function blah in program blah, lets apply the patch as it won't affect our operations" or "Holy shit, we have program blah exposed to a hostile network, lets quickly test our stuff & rush the patch out"
So what Microsoft is actively hampering administrators and not hindering attackers.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
RFPolicy is a solid policy for allowing a vendor to be notified in a timely manner (5 days), let them work with the reporter to get a plan of action together (such as a quick way to notify customers and let them get the fix rolled out) and help the vendor reproduce the bug/verify the fix, before notification of the general populace.
If, at any point, the vendor suddenly decides to play not-nice, the RFPolicy is quite clear -- go ahead and post it to bugtraq or whatever you like. It also states that the vendor should acknowledge the original disclosure. That is, if I found a vulnerability in slashcode, but delayed publication because I was trying to get it fixed in good faith, the Slashcode developers would acknowledge my efforts in their advisory -- even if someone else comes along and posts an advisory after I report it to the team, but before the team has posted an announcement.
Nowhere in the RFPolicy v2.0 does it say anything along the lines of, "Hey, you should silently slip-stream fixes without ever notifying anyone ever " -- which is what this article is about Microsoft doing.
The shit that gets modded up. I swear, we need a "-1 WRONG" tag we can apply to posts. Some kind of clue stick for the mods that don't bother to look up RFPolicy would also be good.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
What you have to understand, what the American people have to understand, is that we're at war. The fact that we're talking about these vulnerabilities simply emboldens the enemy.
The purpose of "anti-malware" tools is *not* to protect against software flaws, it's to protect against user mistakes. A rather large proportion of people on Slashdot seem to have a great deal of difficult understanding this.
No amount of OS "security" can stop the end user from shooting themselves in the foot. The purpose of "anti-malware" software is to give them a chance to dodge the bullet.
If I were a system administrator, I'd be applying every patch they handed me, on the off chance it's patching an obscure vulnerability I'd never catch in a million years.
If you apply a Microsoft patch for something that is never likely to affect you, you're taking a bigger risk by applying the patch!
Most people here should be aware that applying a Microsoft patch is likely to screw something up -- something Microsoft has become renowned for.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
A) Who in the tech world didn't aleady know this?
The news is that microsoft are admitting it. The security community have 'stronly suspected' this for years.
B) Do you realize even *nix vendors do this, including Linux distributions?
Could you please provide an example of this (for linux vendors)?
Of course - even if you do find an example (I doubt it), it doesn't change the fact that its just the distribution - the upstream developers will have released patch information, etc. There is no parallel for this sort of openess in the windows world.
C) Do you also realize that Apple patches more items in a single Patch on average compared to MS by a factor of 10 or more?
I do realise Apple patches multiple vulns in one go. Fortunately however, anything remotely important that is distributed by Apple is written by third parties with more responsible discolure policies (ie openbsd, the apache foundation).
You make a good point about granularity of "bug counting" lists. There's a lot of room for improvement.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Please reread my post.
You write:Most Windows system administrators are not programmers, and of those that are fewer still are technically skilled enough to reverse engineer a binary patch.
Which is exactly what I quoted:The guy that feels the pain is the system administrator who is in the dark and who can't do his own reverse-engineering,"
It's the attacker doing the reverse engineering, not the sysadmins.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Anyone remember the (deeply flawed) Cert statistics where Microsoft had 812 vulnerabilities compared to Unix + Linux's 2328?
Indeed.
What makes it worse is that Microsoft knows full well that this data is false, and still uses this in its FUD attacks against Linux/Open Source.
Even if Microsoft persuades people that it has a good reason for not disclosing vulnerabilities, Microsoft has no good reason to use false statistics, created by its hiding of information, in order to help persuade people that its software is more secure.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
If I have two binaries, I can compare them. I have tools that can walk the function entries and traverse code. If I find a function binary difference, I can scrutinize it to try to determine what has been "fixed".
Now, I *am* an experienced developer. When I do initial probes on "black box" binaries, I actually prefer to NOT have source available (as I am interested in what it is doing, not the comments or source that the original programmer put down indicating what it was intended to do).
Administrators? Generally can't do it. If I WERE a "black-hat", I would be all over the actual patches. I don't care about the paper reports.
The paper reports are critical to the administrators. They are not looking for a crack -- they have to trust that the changes have been checked and the work done carefully to avoid additional problems. But the only way the administrator has to determine if a patch should be applied, and what the risk is, is by full vendor disclosure. The "black-hats" don't really care that much. Of course, full disclosure can be a public relations nightmare.
The advantage that "open source" has here is that the laundry is already out in the open. Reputation can be (perhaps) slightly reduced by exploits, but it (again generally) doesn't destroy the product.
As an example, many people (including me) use sendmail and bind.
However, a closed source provider typically stakes a marketing created reputation. Exploits can really hurt. Take Windows 9x as an example. About the only thing Microsoft can do is state that future Windows are more secure. (even though Windows 98 as a core is reasonably hardened, as long as trojans are not executed, which it is VERY vulnerable to).
Oh, and "good guys" don't "counterattack". Just because someone attacks sshd on my box doesn't mean I turn around and attack. Generally, I ignore it. A "counterattack" stops at reporting the attempts to an upstream provider if they are very persistent (or successful).
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061