Month of Apple Bugs Debuts in January

An anonymous reader writes "A pair of security researchers has picked January 2007 as the Month of Apple Bugs, a project in which each passing day will feature a previously undocumented security hole in Apple's OS X operating system or in Apple applications that run on top of it. According to a post over at The Washington Post's Security Fix blog, the project is being put together by researchers Kevin Finisterre and the guy who ran November's Month of Kernel Bugs project." From the post: "It should be interesting to see whether Apple does anything to try and scuttle this pending project. In November, a researcher who focuses most of his attention on bugs in database giant Oracle's software announced his intention to launch a "Week of Oracle Database Bugs" project during the first week of December. The researcher abruptly canceled the project shortly after the initial announcement, without offering any explanation."

Comments

Some thoughts and considerations

[daveschroeder]

Brian Krebs seems to have some kind of fascination with "proving" that Mac OS X is "insecure" while simultaneously accusing Apple of using strong-arm tactics to try to silence critics. (Note: going after people for leaking confidential information is not the same as a situation in which people are making security issues known.)

Every reasonable person on the planet already knows, and has known, that every OS has bugs, vulnerabilities, and security issues, and Mac OS X is no exception. The simple, undeniable truth is that for a variety of reasons, including marketshare and the security architecture of the OS, Mac OS X is a far more secure general purpose desktop operating system for most users than any viable alternative. There is almost zero malware of any kind "in the wild", no malware with vectors for mass propagation, and little with ANY kind of propagation capability whatsoever. And contrary to popular opinion among some, Apple does indeed respond to, and fix, security vulnerabilities, including crediting the discoverer(s) when said person or entity provides Apple with enough information to verify the issue. It has continuously and consistently improved on this front, mostly as a result of working with people in the enterprise and academic communities (e.g., Apple University Executive Forum and MacEnterprise.org). There is always room for improvement, but we have seen Apple make marked progress in disclosing, accurately describing, and fixing vulnerabilities in Mac OS X. As with most commercial vendors, Apple does not comment on security issues before they are fixed. So don't expect Apple to make public statements and explanations of any kind until after a particular vulnerability is addressed.

What should be "interesting" to see isn't whether or not Apple "does anything" to "scuttle" the project; it will be whether Apple has previously had any chance to respond to any of the issues that will be disclosed. If not, this little project doesn't prove anything at all, other than that every operating system, Mac OS X included, has bugs. (Duh?) What's important is the general security architecture, practical security state-of-affairs on the platform, and how the vendor responds to issues. I'll be far more interested to see how and when Apple responds to the issues raised, and if it properly "triages" the issues and handles them accordingly (on this note, predict that people will complain Apple is taking "too long" to fix some of the issues, when in reality it is devoting programming and testing and QA resources to the issues in the order of importance and impact).

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Incongruity]

(I'm not a mac fanboy, but I play one on slashdot)

I also think the quality of the bugs will be interesting. If all 30 bugs are show stoppers, then there are some serious underlying issues that should be addressed.
And I totally agree. If there are bugs, better to have them out there and then fixed than it is to have them be obscure pieces of knowledge that a motivated few will use for their gain.

In the end, a month of OS X bugspotting can only be a good thing, IMHO.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[daveschroeder]

This has nothing to do with whether or not holes will be maliciously exploited by some; of course they will be.

What matters most is how Apple responds to issues once it knows about them, whether it discovers them internally, is privately informed, or finds out via a project like this.

You can't fix a bug you don't know about, and saying Apple should somehow magically know about them all itself is disingenuous. All software will have bugs, and people other than the vendor will always discover some of them. Some of these bugs will be able to be used as avenues for exploit.

The only question is whether, as a responsible security researcher, you give the vendor a chance to respond before disclosing, or not. This has zero to with what other malicious people will do.

I understand you're probably one of those people who doesn't think there is any value at all in informing the vendor and giving them an opportunity to fix an issue before widely disclosing it, so this discussion isn't likely to get anywhere.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Trillan]

I don't oppose making the bugs public at all. But I do think this needs to be done in a fair manner.

Specifically:

1. Bugs should be in Mac OS X 10.4 (or possibly 10.3).
   Pre-release software is not a fair target. It's under NDA, and is bound to have a bunch of issues. Apple has a system in place for dealing with 10.5 issues.
2. All bugs should be reported to Apple via Radar.
   Posting without giving Apple advance notice is fine, but forcing Apple to deal with potentially thousands of reports from readers isn't.
3. The web and Radar report should both include steps to reproduce.
   This really falls under the category of "duh." A bug report that can't be reproduced is simply not worth much (although it isn't entirely worthless).

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[TheRaven64]

It would be, if ever Apple actually fixed bugs. The oldest bugs I have in their bug tracking system marked as 'open' are from 2004. The latest one relates to the implementation of NSMutableArray's -sortUsingSelector: method. This is given the name of a compare method and sorts the objects in the array by calling it on pairs of objects. I took some code that used this and worked on PowerPC and compiled it for Intel. After calling this method, the results were incorrectly sorted. Calling it again, they were in a different, still unsorted, order.

I thought it must be my code, so I added a load of debugging output to my -compare: method. I found that the it was giving the correct result, and enough comparisons were performed to be able to create a sorted array. The final results, however, did not reflect this; if the comparisons said a is before b, and b is before c, the resulting array would often contain a c b.

I was going to just copy the GNUstep implementation of this method into a category and use this in my application, but when I looked at it I noticed that theirs called -sortUsingFunction:context: where the context was a the selector and the function was one that just invoked the method. I wondered if Cocoa did this too, so I tried using -sortUsingFunction:context: with a function that just called my -compare: method. And then it worked. It seems that someone wrote some 'clever' optimisations for Intel in the -sortUsingSelector: method, and broke it completely.

Re:Some thoughts and considerations

[Trillan]

The three points I addressed were pre-release, radar, and repro steps.

Now I consider bugs from private betas covered by NDAs to be forbidden fruit, and that's true of Microsoft as well. However, public betas are fair game. So it depends on the nature of the release, both for Microsoft and Apple..

Although it's possible there's another system somewhere, the only system I'm aware of for reporting bugs to Microsoft requires me to pay them. They may, at their discretion, return the money. I'm not risking my money to help Microsoft, so I don't expect anyone else to. And since Microsoft doesn't have a public and free bug reporting system, the repro steps would have to be public only at first. I don't like public only. Ideally, vendors should be notified first; simultaneously is the minimum. But by plugging their ears and requiring a credit card number, they're digging their own grave here.

I should say, by the way, that I don't especially like bugs being publicly disclosed quickly. It wouldn't be the way I'd handle it. But I don't think people who do it should be tarred and feathered. Maybe that wasn't clear.

Irresponsible

[Phroggy]

I'm all in favor of taking Apple to task for failing to fix a bunch of bugs, but releasing detailed information to the public without notifying the vendor first is simply irresponsible. The only reason it's being done this way is shameless self-promotion: if Apple fixed all the bugs in advance, then they'd have nothing left to show for their month of Apple bugs, so people wouldn't freak out about it.

In short, their goal isn't really to get these bugs fixed ASAP; their goal is to spread fear and panic. If the bugs get fixed eventually, that's just icing on the cake. The problem with this is that it could cause some real problems for Mac network admins out there, many of whom don't have a lot of extra time to deal with unpatched security holes. If it was just a matter of "sticking it to Apple", that would be one thing, but this will affect a lot of innocent victims.

Yes, I'm a Mac user. No, that isn't why I feel this way; Microsoft should get advance notice too.

Also by this author...

[XxtraLarGe]

Month of Homeland Security Vulnerabilities!
The places where terrorists could to the absolute most damage if they were to strike within the next few hours!

Re:Hint to Apple PR: you can make hay from this

[Mr. Underbridge]

Memo to Apple PR: Work with this guy. Simply ensure that each bug identified is fixed ASAP, and issue a press release about it. This lets you capture and keep the high ground by showing that you care more about security and quality than the competition does. Up for it?

Memo to toby: We don't negotiate with terrorists.

--Steve

Re:Hint to Apple PR: you can make hay from this

[tonywong]

That just escalates this guy's standing and position in the 'newsy' community. Why would you want to build his fame and fortune for him? You pander to his fancies of being a security guru and he will hold you hostage with a 'security review' every time he needs a PR boost.

Ignore this guy and keep doing things the way they've been done. It has been responsive and working.

I disapprove

[Sloppy]

I have to admit I sometimes waffle on my opinion regarding disclosing to vendors first, versus disclosing to the whole world simultaneously. Both approaches have some advantage.

This approach does not.

If the goal of disclosing to the whole world is to give users a chance to defend themselves (since it is assume that black hats may already know about these holes, and may already be expoiting them) then why delay until January?! And why dole out the information one bug, one day, at a time?

By delaying, you gain the disadvantage of vendor-only disclosure: today's users aren't getting the information to at least try to protect themselves from exploits that are possible right now.

Best-case, you also may get the advantage of vendor-only disclosure. Maybe Apple has been told about these bugs and has had an opportunity to address them. But the article doesn't say that. We just don't know. So that's a best case, and the worst case is that we'll get the disadvantage of simultaneous public disclosure: the script kiddies get to start exploiting the bugs right away, while the users have to wait for a fix from a big clumsy vendor. And that's not counting the intentional delay, where people might be exploiting the bug between now and the disclosure.

This is a bad idea, no matter which camp you're in (exception: black hats).