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Bill Gates Should Buy Your Buffer Overruns
Really, what is a good argument against companies paying for security exploits? It's virtually certain that if a company like Microsoft offered $1,000 for a new IE exploit, someone would find at least one and report it to them. So the question facing Microsoft when they choose whether to make that offer, is: Would they rather have the $1,000, or the exploit? What responsible company could possibly choose "the $1,000"? Especially considering that if they don't offer the prize, and as a result that particular exploit doesn't get found by a white-hat researcher, someone else will probably find it and sell it on the black market instead? (Throughout this discussion, I'm using Microsoft as a metaphor for all companies which have products in widespread use, and which do not currently pay for security exploits even though they could obviously afford to.)
Perhaps you say that you would be willing to report bugs to Microsoft for free, and I respect people who do that out of selflessness, but that's not the point. Even if you and some other people would do "white-hat testing" for free, there are more people who would do it if there were prizes. The amount of people willing to do security testing for free, has not been enough to keep exploits from being found and sold on the black market -- but if Microsoft offered enough money, it would be. Obviously if Microsoft offered more than the black-market prices, everyone would just sell their exploits to them. But probably Microsoft could offer much less than the black-market prices and still put the black market out of business, because there are lots of researchers who wouldn't sell exploits on the black market even for tens of thousands of dollars, but would be willing to participate in a legal Microsoft "white hat" program for much less money.
Microsoft would undoubtedly say that they do their own in-house testing, and indeed the offer of a prize should not be used as a substitute for good security testing within a company. But at the same time, the fact that a company does their own testing isn't a good reason for not offering a prize. If a company says that they already do their own in-house security audits to catch as many bugs as they can, that still doesn't answer the question: given that a cash offer would probably result in an outsider finding a new exploit that they missed, why wouldn't they want to take it? Even if there are already outsiders who willingly find new exploits and turn them over to Microsoft for free, there's almost certainly at least one more exploit out there that would be found if they offered a cash prize. (And if the cash prize doesn't turn up any new exploits, then the company doesn't pay out and has lost nothing.)
I've done security consulting for companies like Google and Macromedia who paid me "by the bug", so you might think I'm biased in favor of more such "bounty" programs because I think I could make money off of them. Actually, I think that if Microsoft and most other large software companies offered security hole bounties to everyone in the world, almost all exploits would be picked clean by other people, and my chances of getting anything out of it would go way down, and there would be one less buffer protecting me from having to get a real job. But most people's computers would be safer.
Microsoft does in fact "pay" for security exploits in their own way, by crediting people in their security bulletins. To some people, who report exploits in hopes of being recognized, this is apparently enough. And there are third-party companies like iDefense who will buy your security exploits and then use them to gain reputation-credits for themselves, by handing them over for free to the software developer and warning their own clients about the potential risks. But there are a lot of people including me who have found exploits in the past, but don't consider the benefits of being mentioned in a Microsoft security bulletin to be worth the effort of finding a new one. And even the benefits that iDefense gets from reporting security holes, are evidently not sufficient for them to offer enough money for exploits to compete with the black-market prices (if iDefense got that much benefit out of it, then they'd be able to offer so much money that nobody would sell exploits on the black market). So using recognition as payment is evidently not enough; as Lord Beckett says, "Loyalty is no longer the currency of the realm; I'm afraid currency is the currency of the realm."
A cash prize program might mean that some people get mad when they are turned away for offering "exploits" that don't really qualify, but so what? What are they going to do for revenge, release their "exploit" into the wild? If it's not a real exploit, then it won't do any harm, and if it is a real exploit, then Microsoft should have paid them after all! Some people might threaten to sue if they aren't awarded prizes, even if the rules of the program state clearly that Microsoft is the final arbiter of what counts as an exploit. Maybe in some rare cases they would even win. But all of this could be considered a cost of running the program, just like the cost of giving out the prizes themselves -- and all insignificant compared to the cost of an exploit that gets released into the wild and allows a malicious site to do "drive-by installs" of spyware onto people's machines.
Probably the real reason Microsoft doesn't pay for security exploits is that they don't pay the full price for those drive-by installs and other problems when a new exploit is discovered. I've heard hard-core open-source advocates say that either (a) Microsoft should be held liable for the cost of exploits committed using flaws in their software, or that (b) users of Microsoft software should be held liable for exploits committed through their machines (which would drive up the cost of using Windows and IE to the point where nobody would use it). If that happened, Microsoft probably would pay for security exploits to forestall disaster. But let's make the reasonable assumption that neither of those liability rules is going to come to pass. The real price that Microsoft currently pays for security exploits is in terms of reputation, and the price they're paying right now is too low, because people don't realize that Microsoft could find and fix a lot more bugs by spending only a tiny amount of money -- but chooses not to. Despite all the snickering when "Microsoft" and "security" are used in the same sentence, most people seem to believe that Microsoft is doing everything they can to prevent users from being exploited. But as long as Microsoft doesn't pay for security holes, they're emphatically not doing "everything they can".
It's not that I think security bosses at Microsoft are trying to screw anyone over. They probably just have an aversion to the idea of paying for security holes, and what I'm arguing is that such an aversion is irrational. The people they would be paying money to are not criminals or bad people, they're legitimate researchers who just can't afford to do work for Microsoft for free when they could be doing something else for money. Offering cash will bring in new exploits, and every exploit that is reported and fixed is one that can't be sold on the black market later.
There are some interesting details that would have to be worked out about how such a program would be implemented. For example, what happens if Bob reports an exploit, and then Alice later reports the same exploit, before Microsoft has gotten a chance to push the patch out? Microsoft wouldn't want to pay $1,000 to both of them, because then whenever Bob found an exploit, he could collude with Alice so that they both "independently" reported the same bug and got paid twice. Microsoft could pay only Bob, but Alice could get so disillusioned at getting paid nothing that she might stop helping entirely. My own suggestion would be to split the money between all researchers who report the same bug in the time window before the fix is pushed out. If 10 researchers happened to report the same bug and each only got a paltry $100, some of them would quit in disgust, but if researchers start to leave because the average payout-per-person has fallen too low, then that will drive the average payout back up, so the number of active researchers stays in equilibrium.
Another issue: What happens if a researcher reports an exploit confidentially, and then the next day, the exploit appears in the wild? If Microsoft's policy was that they would pay for the exploit anyway, then a researcher would have no incentive not to sell the exploit twice, once to Microsoft and again on the black market (whereupon it might start being used in the wild). On the other hand, if Microsoft refused to pay for exploits that were released in the wild before they issued a patch, then that might leave many researchers feeling cheated if they turned in a genuine exploit and got nothing just because someone else sold it on the black market before the patch came out. My suggestion would be to simply pay for exploits even if they did subsequently get released on the black market -- on the theory that of the white hat researchers who turn in bugs to Microsoft, most of them would be ethically opposed to selling exploits to black marketeers, so they shouldn't be punished if the exploit ends up on the black market since they probably weren't the ones who put it there. Another would be to make the payout so large that even if researchers got no payment when the exploit got leaked into the wild before a patch was issued, the payout from the times that they did get paid, would more than make up for it.
But whatever rules are decided upon, there should be some sort of monetary rewards for people who confidentially report security flaws to big software companies. Whatever you can say about the merits of rewarding people through "recognition", or through social pressures to practice "responsible disclosure", the one obvious fact is that it hasn't been enough -- exploits still get sold on the black market, and every exploit that gets sold on the black market, would have been reported to Microsoft if they'd offered enough money. The talent is out there that could find these bugs and get them fixed. Most of them just can't afford to donate the work for free -- but the amount of money Microsoft would have to pay them, is far less than the benefits that would accrue to people all over the world in terms of fewer drive-by spyware installs, fewer viruses, and fewer security breaches. And if these benefits were reflected back at Microsoft in terms of greater user confidence and fewer snide jokes about "Microsoft security", then everybody would win all around. There are no barriers to making this happen, except for a mindset that it's "bad" to pay for security research. But if you prevent millions of Internet Explorer users from being infected with spyware, you deserve to at least get paid what Bill Gates earns in the time it took you to read this sentence.
Why couldn't I sell my exploit to the black market, THEN sell it to Microsoft a day or two later?
-1, Duh
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What's to stop someone getting paid big bucks by microsoft for vulnerabilities, and then reselling the same exploits to the next highest bidder as well? I'd imagine that the people in the business of selling exploits to the highest bidder aren't the most ethical types to begin with.
If MS offers 10,000 dollars per exploit then thats going to be the minimum bid in the market. Someone will then offer 10,500 and the enterprising hacker will go for the extra cash. I dont see how MS's involvment can help this.
What might be more interesting is to dock 10,000k from the salaries of the security team everytime someone finds a serious exploit. Sometimes punishments are far more effective than rewards.
Almost sounds like an argument to outsource testing to the general public and pay them for it. Not sure why MS would do this when they've been outsourcing testing to the general public for years and charging licensing fees for it!
Cynicism aside, do you think that it really makes business sense for MS to pay for vulnerabilities? Has their revenue really been hurt that badly from their current security practices?
Makes much more sense than actually writing secure software in the first place, doesn't it?
This is a silly idea. It assumes that if Microsoft pays someone to keep quiet about a security vulnerability, no one, ever, will independently discover this SAME vulnerability. Human nature dictates that when you hand out money, you will quickly have people waiting in line.
Reminds me of the romans paying the barbarians NOT to invade them. Sure, give your enemy an income and make him rich. Makes a LOT of sense...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Who cares how many times they sell it? The point is that Microsoft can buy it and then fix it, thus elliminating the market value of the exploit. If someone can sell it to other people then good for them. Its still in Microsoft's best interest to buy it as early as possible and fix it as early as possible.
I'm running Windows! What more proof do you need?!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Click that magical little read more link below to continue the thought.
No no no no. That's sooo web 1.0. Now we say after the jump! You're so out of touch with the current trends of the blogosphere!
Using an exploit maliciously is, but finding the exploit is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a good thing. Hence, it should be rewarded.
Ben Hocking
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I think this is a good idea, but it's unlikely to happen - by buying such a thing, Microsoft sets themselves up in a position of liability - something that software vendors have so far largely managed to avoid.
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Say they buy one exploit, but not another, and some company gets caught by the other. Microsoft have put themselves in a pretty nasty legal liability position there.
Additionally, it'll look a lot like endorsement of black-hat practices, something MS will want to avoid...
Score:-1, Funny
There are a lot of intelligent people who would be willing to do it legally for far cheaper prices than the black market will pay to do it illegally. Not everyone is immoral. Personally, I'd like to believe that most people are basically good people.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It makes far more sense to be a legal, well rewarded security researcher with a useful CV than a criminal. Nothing gives a person ethics like being well paid for it.
Pining for the fjords
So, will we get massive Clone armies for hunting down rebel security holes? Boba Fett to the rescue!
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I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I wonder if this strategy could be used as a means to averting terrorism?
That is, don't just offer large amounts of money for the most important terrorists (like bin Laden), but also offer varying amounts of money for reports that stop terrorism.
OK, give us your info, and we'll pay you if we consider it's genuine.
(2 days later) Guess what, it's not a true exploit. Sorry, no pay.
(1 week later, at Windows update) We've fixed a patch for a recently discovered vulnerability!
Rewarding unethical behavior?
What could *possibly* go wrong?
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In my experience, MS aren't interested in reports of security holes anyway.
I found a security hole in an MS product about 6 months ago so I sent a full description with working test code to secure@microsoft.com.
I got an automated response (so far so good) but then I heard nothing more. After a month, I sent them another email to ask if they were doing something. Silence. Another month later I rang Microsoft support and asked them to give me an update. They told me that the case number doesn't exist and that they don't have a department called the "Microsoft Security Response Center".
Eventually I found an engineer who does support for the product with the security hole. He said he'd heard a _rumour_ about the MSRC and offered to track them down. Eventually, I got an email update from them saying "we might get round to fixing it in a few months."
In short, if they're not interested in free security reports, why would they pay for them?
To er is human.
This idea may seem great on paper, but in order to buy an exploit, a person would have to provide payment, which is the fatal flaw. Now, lets say the feds want to get a quick list of people that may be using exploits for unlawful computer access. subpoena the DB of the exploit auctioneer, and wa-la, a giant list of exploit users. Like shooting fish in a barrel. something tells me this exploit auction system may work ok if companies purchase it, but i dont think underground exploit buyers are going to surface to harvest exploits from this website..
Look, there are lots of good explanations here, and personally, I'm a fan of the "bounty system". When I first saw "bounties" for Ubuntu I was overjoyed! Feeding IT people is really important for IT growth.
However, in this case, the logical flaw is actually the market, do a cost/benefit analysis. Microsoft, as a monopoly, does not make or lose any significant amount of money on OS security flaws. Companies with a budget capable of supporting security flaw bounties, don't actually need them short-term.
These big companies are publicly held and security flaw bounties do not help quarterly profits, or even annual profits (why these are important is a different issue). If I have SAP running my 10,000 employee business I can't just leave b/c SAP has too many security holes, moving is very expensive. It's probably cheaper to eat a small customer lawsuit than to switch systems. Now, if I'm really smart/motivated/scared I may move off on the next upgrade cycle, but these cycles only happen every 5-10 years. So SAP won't set up public security bounties b/c it is not beneficial to their shareholders in any way they can fathom. MS has the same deal, sure they can make the OS/DB/IIS more secure, but it must already be secure enough as nobody's leaving, right?
You have the right idea, but the impetus for broad security testing is simply not there. The only people who would "benefit" from such bounties are actually the unestablished new-comers or the competitors to monopolies (like Linux providers). With an open bounties system, these companies can use the security feature as leverage for marketing their product. But these are still very long-term deals and such a company would need to convince investors that the long-term benefits of such an action outweigh the short-term costs.
In the case of say, Linux and LAMP and PostGreSQL, we're probably there. These guys are great candidates for such open bounties. And these long-term activities are likely to pay off. Mac OS X may benefit from the same interest as they try and poach desktop/home users. But MS and SAP and other dominant players can't deliver better profits to their investors with such a system, so they won't do anything until investors get scared and start demanding one. We're not there yet.