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Pwn2Own 2009 Winner Charlie Miller Interviewed
crazipper writes "Tom's Hardware interviewed Charlie Miller, winner of this year's Pwn2Own contest and formerly with the NSA. He discusses the effort it took before the contest to be able to take down a MacBook within seconds, sandboxing, and the effectiveness of the NX bit and ASLR. His outlook on end-users protecting themselves against attacks? 'Users are at the mercy of the products they buy.'"
The first rule
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Why can't you sue a software company if you suffer a loss due to poor security in their product?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Tom's Hardware
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since last year.
A quote from another interview:
"Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away."
Who know what other goodies they have in store. But the browsers and the phones were hardly touched. The contestants are holding out for something better.
What?
Linux is NOT perfect. Anyone who thinks so is either an idiot or lying. For a lot of people, it is the best and of much better quality and calibre than the alternatives (windows, macOS), but definitely not perfect.
Disclaimer: Proud Ubuntu user since 7.10 and have never even considered moving back to windows.
Uh, I think you're quite wrong there. I know more than a few Grandmas running Linux. The thing is, they're the ones that usually need the least amount of software. A browser, maybe e-mail if they don't do it in a browser, that's about it. Linux is perfect.
You can't be serious.
Of those "more than a few" Grandmas you know running Linux, how many bought and set up their own computer? How many Grandmas do you know that enjoy compiling drivers?
I'm not a Mac user myself, but for what it's worth, my own Grandma was able to buy herself a Mac and get it plugged in and running on her own. It's similarly easy with a Windows machine as soon as you figure out where all the plugs go, Windows setup is a breeze.
Sure, they need help figuring out what to do once the thing is running, but that's OS-independent.
ASLR is just more defense in depth. Real security, physical or virtual, comes from having multiple layers. While it is a nice theory to say "Well just make sure X is secure and nothing will ever get past it," that doesn't work in reality. Shit happens, your border security can fail. Thus real security comes in multiple levels. Not all of them are as critical or as effective as others, but they all help.
ASLR is just another level. If you find a flaw in some software connected to the network, you now have an additional problem in terms of getting code to execute. Is it insurmountable? No, but it is just more shit to get around.
The more levels of security you have, the less likely someone is to break through all of it, especially before you notice they are trying. Have a border firewall, and host based firewalls. Run a virus scanner on every computer. Enable execute disable on systems. Operate as a deprivileged user whenever possible and so on. The more you do, the more things there are to trip up an attacker. Don't say "Well we don't need this because we have this other thing."
I see that most common with firewalls. People will have a network firewall and thus assume that host based firewalls aren't worth the trouble. Well, they are. What if something gets by the network firewall? Just because it isn't supposed to doesn't mean it won't happen. Maybe someone brings in an owned laptop, maybe there's a flaw in the firewall, maybe yo just set it up wrong. Whatever, point is have multiple security layers. Make it so that just because you got by the network firewall, doesn't mean you are in.
So while I certainly wouldn't want to see a company rely on ASLR, as in say "No we don't need to fix that app bug, they can't exploit it since we randomize addresses," I do like it as another layer of defense. Not a magic bullet, but just that much harder to get in.
I think the OP's comment about perfect was within the context of the most basic users. And I'd agree. For the vast majority of "simple" tasks (a very ambiguous statement), the setup/use of Linux (esp. Ubuntu) is exceptionally easy (also subjective).
Within the spheres of some Windows power users, who understand the ins and outs of Windows perfectly, Linux is foreign and useless. But the same could be said about Linux power users and Windows. So that is more of a statement about the difficulty users who are strongly versed in one OS have in switching to another. And that proves nothing in the Linux vs. Windows debate.
As far as security is concerned, I'd probably argue that Linux is more secure, but not completely secure. It's possible to get a Linux box completely screwed up (someone was talking about that here, where they accidentally exposed a Linux box with a very old version of OpenSSL to the web and got it compromised), but the question of which is easier to get more secure, or which will have fewer issues. No software is perfect (please no BSD comments), it's all a game of lesser of two evils.
Between Mac and PC, I'd say that Macs are less secure for the reasons we've discussed here (lack of anti-exploitation technologies) but are more safe because there simply isn't much malware out there.
That pretty much been my take on the situation as well. Vista SP1 really is one of the most secure OSes I've used.
They glossed over Linux on this question, but I suspect Vista SP1 is probably more secure than linux too 'out of the box'... but again less safe in actual practice. Again simply due to the sheer relative volume of malware and the relative high value of windows exploits to linux ones.
(Although Linux at least does have 'SE Linux', AppArmor, Exec Shield, support for ASLR, etc, etc so its more a case that its just not on by default yet. (Ironically a complaint usually levelled at Windows).
And while improvements are added with each kernel release, too Linux admins refuse to install them because would reset their belowed uptime scores which they feel the need to post to /. on a regular basis...
I kid... I kid...
Every time you quote this, somewhere in the world a mac zealot's head explodes. I just did my part :P
... 24/M/Australia/Jedi?
( Redundancy is ) ^ n
But if you want something with guaranteed security or uptime or the like, you aren't going to be allowed to mess with it. That means whatever software/features it comes with, you are stuck with. No installing 3rd party tools and such. The design needs to be verified, which means testing all the components against each other and making sure there are no unexpected problems.
So not only would your computer be more expensive, and use older technology (since it'd take longer to develop and test) but it'd be an appliance type device. It would do only what it was originally designed to do. You'd not be allowed to install things on it, or change the hardware.
If you want computers as they are today, where it's the "wild west" situation of being able to do whatever you want with them, well then you have to take some security problems with that. Just life. Me? I'll deal with having to have some security issues for the ability to run whatever I want, and to get systems cheaply.
Um... how many grandmas do you know who set up their own windows machine? Plugging it in doesn't count, they have to actually install windows.
0?
thought so. Windows is just as much of a PitA as Linux, and the same people who need help setting up one need help setting up the other.
Where Linux fails is the power users, who have learned how to do things beyond email (that someone else set up) in windows, and who have to re learn a sometimes less intuitive way in Linux. (that and peripheral hardware)
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
I agree. One time when I was cleaning malware off of a neighbors computer (wasn't my idea, I got volunteered by someone else in my household), the NX bit kept one of those annoying fake antivirus ones from reinstalling itself when I had Procmon kill its process. At least I think it was Procmon.
Anyway, Windows came up with a nice dialog box telling me that execution was blocked, and it didn't appear to be running after a reboot.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
"PC" means an Intel architecture computer capable of running Windows.
Well, current Macs are Intel architecture computers and they are capable of running Windows.
If grandma needs to use Linux, she just seduces a 20 something... and gets any task done correctly and for free.
Thats where grandma's decades of real life experience is more useful than a 20 something's decade in moms basement.
Grandma can seduce her way onto any OS or system or network.
Or just have the best looking forum, blog, webpage or social networking page ever.
The best part is she passed the same skills onto her daughter too.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yes, layers of security are indeed the key. Any one layer isn't totally impenetrable but, like layering nets over nets over nets, if you have enough layers then eventually you end up with something that's damn-near watertight.
People always laugh at me because they can't get on my wireless at home easily when they visit. This is because it has:
- WPA2 with secure passphrase and MAC filtering (so this defeats 99% of my visitor's casual attempts to log on) /stealing the key (or WPA2 is cracked, etc.), there's nothing interesting to look at with nmap or sniff.
- Onto a locked-down network with only one visible IP and on that IP, only one visible port (all clients have their own firewalls so that they regard the wireless as "untrusted" and don't transmit information over it) and that port is only open to known IP's. So even if they do get onto the network by sniffing / guessing
- On that port, an instance of OpenVPN which is secured by its own key infrastructure with passphrases.
- On that VPN, you have to set IP's, DNS and proxy correctly (and manually, no DHCP!) or nothing goes out.
Yet, on the "authentic" client side, all you have to do is copy some keys from a USB key and run one little tiny script and everything just runs... I even play Counterstrike over the wireless/VPN and don't even notice any extra latency. But when WPA2 is cracked, or OpenVPN has a bug discovered in it, or MAC filtering is rendered useless (already is, I know), or they guess my internal network numbering etc. then I have still bought myself an incredible amount of time and security to fix the problem before anybody can get onto the network - and anyone trying will be tripping over so many wires that I will notice them trying and just switch it off until I'm sure it's secure. And, from the outside, it just looks like an ordinary wireless connection. You could go overboard - I could run SSH over the VPN, I could hide the wireless broadcasts, I even have a port-knocking setup that I can use to authenticate the opening of ports, without affecting my use of the system.
Security is a question of probability... it's not that your security guard couldn't be overcome, or the safe cracked, or the cameras disabled, or the alarm cut, but that the chances of that ALL happening without anyone noticing are incredibly slim.
Boredom.
You know what? Fuck Mozilla in the ear for putting that shit in all capital letters. There is no reason to do so, unless you actively want people to not read and understand it.
Actually it's a legal requirement: under the Uniform Commercial Code, some items in a contract/license, like warranties or disclaimers, must be conspicuous. CAPITALS MAKE THEM SO.
The NX bit should have always been there, and the fact that it wasn't is incomprehensibly stupid.
x86 was originally designed with a segmented memory model. You'd have one segment for code, one for data, one for stack. It was (and is) indeed possible to set data and stack segments non-executable. Actually, I believe this is achieved by the simple expedient of all jump instructions automatically using the CS (code segment) register, with no option to use any others -- thus you can't jump to or call the data or stack segments unless they overlap with the code segment.
The problem is, in practice people just set all three segments equal today, so that all of them fill the entire virtual address space. If you do that, everything is in the code segment, and so everything is executable. The addition of a per-page NX bit is a (very belated) acknowledgement of the fact that the old way of doing things just isn't used anymore. (But I think Google uses it for NaCl.)
Actually, Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems, 3e has an interesting remark about this (p. 237, emphasis added):
Of course, he's wrong in a sense: the NX bit is most definitely being used. (And the book is copyright 2008, too, so you'd think he'd know it.) It's an interesting remark anyway, though, and may explain why a per-page NX bit wasn't there in x86 to start with.
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