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IE8, Safari, iPhone All Fall At Pwn2Own Contest

SpuriousLogic writes "The annual Pwn2Own contest at CanSecWest is underway, and on the first day Web browsers fell to attack. Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6.2 on 64-bit Windows 7 and Safari on OS X all were forced to run exploit code. To add insult to injury, an iPhone was cracked and the SMS database lifted from it." Updated 22:40 GMT by timothy: CWmike adds this interesting bit: "The only researcher to three-peat at the Pwn2Own hacking contest said on Thursday that security is such a 'broken record' that he won't hand over 20 vulnerabilities he's found in Apple's, Adobe's and Microsoft's software. Instead Charlie Miller will show the vendors how to find the bugs themselves."

223 comments

  1. Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Title misleading maybe... just a bit? Firefox got owned as well.

    1. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mod parent up. We all love firefox and all, but seriously, it deserves as much shame as all the other failed browsers. Submitter biased much?

    2. Re:Title misleading? by dogmatixpsych · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually I don't love Firefox. I use it as my main browser at home but I prefer Safari or Chrome. Firefox crashes frequently - at least a couple times a week - but I've never had problems with Safari or Chrome.

    3. Re:Title misleading? by pete_norm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you have that much trouble with Firefox, why do you keep using it?

    4. Re:Title misleading? by sortius_nod · · Score: 1

      That was going to be my question. Pretty much I use Chrome for most of my browsing. If a page doesn't work, just IE tab it. Not even game to use Firefox these days due to sluggish performance and continual crashes.

      I was, at one stage, a HUGE fan of Firefox. Before Mozilla fucked it up like they did with the original Mozilla/Netscape browsers.

    5. Re:Title misleading? by CannonballHead · · Score: 1

      I use it as my main browser at home but I prefer Safari or Chrome

      This sentence is strange.

    6. Re:Title misleading? by Red+Flayer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Firefox crashes frequently - at least a couple times a week - but I've never had problems with Safari or Chrome.

      Wimp. Firefox is open source. Why didn't you fork the project, fix the crashing problem, and then offer the patch code upstream while distributing Firefox under your own branding?

      That's how open source is supposed to work, you ninny. Why don't you actually participate in it once in a while, instead of just being an end user?

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    7. Re:Title misleading? by dogmatixpsych · · Score: 1

      I accidentally left off "at work". That's what I get for not really thinking through what I write.

    8. Re:Title misleading? by dogmatixpsych · · Score: 1

      I use it because of the Add-ons. I've found replacements for most of my add-ons (most of them are stand-alone programs) but there are a few I still use. Also, I have a bunch of saved logins and passwords in Firefox that I haven't completely transferred to Safari. I'm transitioning away form Firefox but haven't made the leap yet (the newest update to Firefox has been considerably more stable though).

    9. Re:Title misleading? by pnewhook · · Score: 1

      Same here. Got tired of IE slowness and switched to Firefox. But incompatibilities, slowness and the plugin nonsense got me to try Chrome and I love it. So much faster. Never looked back.

      --
      Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
    10. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This attitude doesn't help much. If a GP complains, and you ask him to patch, you better at least ask yourself a few questions before forcing him to fork:

      Is firefox written in a language that is simple to know?

      Does firefox assume knowledge of a framework that is beyond that language? (think XUL and how likely it is that even a learned /. user is automatically competent in it by just using the program)
      Is the problem obvious? It likely will involve plenty of debugging.

      That last one debunks the "fork it" myth.
      1- There are bugs that are open for years on ubuntu boards, firefox boards, IE bug lists, and aren't solved by the large group
      2- "Forking" involves a team of likeminded smart and determined users not affected by the issues I presented above. It also means that they are expected to maintain the project beyond just the main reason to fork. That is just how it rolls, in practice.
      3 - You are actually suggesting he does PATCHING.

      Patching involves a lone-wolf approach to fix ONE problem and upload to the main codebase, which is what your comment is asking him to do. Lone-wolfing is hard because of the points I have already stated.

    11. Re:Title misleading? by Alphathon · · Score: 0, Troll

      Lack of skill, knowledge and expertise perhaps? Just because someone is on slashdot does not mean that they are a programmer, or if they are a programmer are familiar enough with the code to do anything about it in a timely manner. I myself would love to be able to contribute to Firefox, but my meager knowledge of Java, Haskel and PHP don't really qualify me to, and I'm not about to learn C++ just to fix a crashing bug or bugs which will likely be fixed before I'm even passed learning the basics, and I highly doubt the parent is either. BTW, I fully intend to learn C++ at some point, but that point isn't now, that's all. Also, I don't seem to have any crashing problems with Firefox...maybe I'm just lucky.

    12. Re:Title misleading? by Truth+is+life · · Score: 1

      I'm almost certain (grand)parent is supposed to be sarcastic--otherwise, it's extremely over the top in terms of the amount of abuse offered. He's probably making the point that people who seriously advocate that for various things are somewhat deranged.

      As for Firefox, I've never really had a crashing problem. Chrome hasn't (in my experience) been all that much faster, as the main limit on my surfing speed has been the utterly crappy net in my dorm, which routinely throws 503s for no reason whatsoever, it's from Google so I don't trust it, and overall I'm more familiar and comfortable with Firefox. That doesn't mean I'm perfectly happy with it; to take one minor problem, the location of the "Preferences" dialog, which is obviously extremely important, is inconsistent between Windows and Linux versions. Considering the heterogeneity of Linux distributions, it cannot be that there are some HIGs proscribing putting it under Tools (with, by the way, all the other configuration dialogs), so it seems like a bizarre design choice to penalize those switching either way, especially if they do it often, and especially if they have to configure that a lot.

    13. Re:Title misleading? by LordArgon · · Score: 5, Funny

      I propose a new moderator option:

      -1 Woosh

    14. Re:Title misleading? by quadelirus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The parent, my friends, is an example of the literal.net. The grandparent to this post was clearly being sarcastic, but that was lost of the anonymous coward above.

    15. Re:Title misleading? by poetmatt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What are you doing exactly that firefox crashes? Other than jinitiator problems, there's almost nothing that can do so.

      Your lack of information makes me skeptical of vying for firefox instability. In fact, it sounds downright misleading. This is like saying "My car stalls sometimes". The answer is, sure, it does, but what are you doing to cause it? Firefox doesn't just "Crash on it's own" and neither does any browser.

      Likewise, the same basically applies to safari, IE8, etc. As much as all browsers have security risks, their instabilities mostly don't exist.

    16. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since you're in turn *not* being sarcastic, I'll admit to having taken it seriously --the fork post I criticized wasn't marked "5, Funny" at the time. What's +1 Funny to you may be +1 Serious Business to another, and it is a perfect chance to put up little-seen rhetoric on a behavior we see in completely serious posts around here, a bit too much.

      Please remember /. is filled with self-identifying Asperger sufferers who fail at "catching" facial expressions and hints of mirth IRL that their normal peers shun them for missing.

      Thanks

    17. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But Opera didn't.

    18. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      -1 Socialism for the win

    19. Re:Title misleading? by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      But Opera didn't.

      Maybe because it wasn't even running?

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    20. Re:Title misleading? by Cederic · · Score: 2, Informative

      Clearly you never visit sites that use Flash or other plugins.

      Firefox the browser may not crash often. Firefox the platform does. And when it does, it takes down all my open websites.

      I still use it anyway of course - no switching until AdblockPlus (or equivalent) is available for a worthy competitor.

    21. Re:Title misleading? by Xest · · Score: 2, Informative

      I too have experienced crashes with Firefox since 3.6, and awful slow downs, in fact, I left it running overnight and locked my computer then came down the next morning to find my computer running slow. I checked task manager and found that Firefox was sat using 1.8gb of RAM, so certainly there seemed to be something screwy with memory management there.

      I _think_ the problem is down to handling of some Javascript, when it's crashed it's been loading certain pages, but I can't say for sure. I've always had quite a few tabs open so as to which one might have been the cause I've no idea. I have AdBlock Plus and Firebug installed, as well as the usual Java, Flash and Silverlight plugins, but I've never had any sites using these technologies open when it's happened. I run it on Windows 7 64 bit, which is a fairly clean install, as I've not really installed much since moving to Windows 7, which in itself was a clean install.

      Since 3.5 Firefox has become much more sluggish, and since 3.6, much more unstable. It's not a user fault, the software has simply just got worse. Firefox absolutely does have instability issues nowadays, and even when it hasn't crashed I suspect it's not closed properly when I've exited it, because when I've loaded it back up I've seen the "Oops, well this is embarassing" page where it asks if I want to restore my previously opened tabs or start afresh- that's again, not something that can be blamed on the user.

      Why are you so sure it's a user problem? Why is his post misleading? I can attest to the fact Firefox absolutely does crash through no real fault of the user, it seems more misleading of you to suggest that Firefox has no instability issues. For what it's worth, the issues don't seem to affect my work laptop which runs Windows XP, but they do affect my secondary home PC which runs XP, so certainly it's not unstable in general- I'm more than happy with it on my work laptop, but it's at the point where it's become such a slow unstable browser back home I'm tempted to just go back to IE or to switch to Chrome. I've not had as many issues with a web browser in terms of performance and stability as I have recent releases of Firefox since older versions of IE like IE5 or the earlier releases of IE6.

      Of course browsers don't just "crash on their own", but if they crash in response to a valid user interaction, which Firefox does indeed do, then how is that in any way the user's fault? The GP's got a fairly low UID which suggests he's been using the internet for a fair amount of time, I doubt he's a naive web user, I'm sure when he says his browser crashes it's through no fault of his own, and certainly in my case I know it's through no fault of my own either. I do agree the unstable browser thing is largely a thing of the past, which is why I'm quite suprised that Firefox does have instabilities again, it seems to be a large step backwards- I always figured we were well past that point now.

      I love Firefox and support it's goals entirely, in recent years I've always pushed for the rollout of Firefox as the primary browser at companies I've worked at (I've always had that influence as I've been in lead developer roles for bespoke web apps), however I'd not do that right now, I do not currently believe the Firefox platform is reliable enough to put my reputation on pushing for migration to it over anymore, and as things actually seem to be getting worse over the last few releases, rather than better, it's going to take a few versions where things clearly improve before I can honestly go back to having that position. It's not that I don't want to, but I think the Firefox team has lost their way somewhat and needs to take a step back and look at what went wrong.

    22. Re:Title misleading? by Krneki · · Score: 1

      Firefox will crush when one of the plugins stops to respond. Be it Java, Adobe, PDF, ....

      Not a Firefox fault, but today we need to prevent this plugins from crushing the browser.

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
    23. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My bet is the answer is... Flash.

    24. Re:Title misleading? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      It works fine here, and on nearly everybody’s system. So:

      yourFault=$(diff $myState $yourState) # ;)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    25. Re:Title misleading? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Why don't you actually participate in it once in a while, instead of just being a detestable leech?

      There, fixed that for ya. ;)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    26. Re:Title misleading? by poetmatt · · Score: 1

      do I need to repeat myself? every platform does crash, there's no denying that. It's a misleading argument to imply that firefox is magically the only browser to have plugin problems, or the cause and/or solution of said problems.

      Ever tried flash or java on any browser? I can guarantee it's crashed the platform.

      Again, my browser doesn't just spontaneously get up and crash from idling. Memory leak? absolutely in firefox. That however, is moot. You seem to disregard that.

    27. Re:Title misleading? by poetmatt · · Score: 1

      Firefox has had massive memory leaks from day one. Some are due to how firefox is programmed, others are actually due to plugins. I've noticed a few specific plugins that have items on every page cause slow memory leaks.

      I've seen the 1.5GB+ firefox that lags and crashes after leaving it open while I come to work, only to come home to an unresponsive browser.

      His post is misleading because he doesn't tell us what the hell he did to crash it. It's stating a result but not what was done to cause it. Sometimes people think the problem is X, when the problem is actually caused by Y. Given that this is slashdot and you are knowledegable about computers, I can guarantee you've seen such situations come up a million times.

    28. Re:Title misleading? by Cederic · · Score: 1

      You challenged someone's credibility when they named Firefox as crashing a couple of times a week. In response I highlighted a major cause of instability to the platform.

      So no, you don't need to repeat yourself.

      If it helps, you can also avoid mentioning spontaneous crashes, memory leaks or the stability of other platforms; none of these things have been mentioned as an issue with Firefox (which is what we were trying to discuss).

    29. Re:Title misleading? by BlackBloq · · Score: 1

      Funny enough the only time Firefox crashes for me is when I allow all scripts to run on Slashdot...it just hangs forever!

    30. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you doing exactly that firefox crashes? Other than jinitiator problems, there's almost nothing that can do so.

      My Firefox freezes at least weekly (it is reported as sleeping in the system monitor), so that "almost nothing" happens to me very frequently. If you minimize the frozen Firefox windows and bring them back again, they are empty. Bringing up Firefox into the same session will usually freeze it again, unless I manually delete all cashes and cookies. It does this even more often with NoScript, AdBlock and other plugins turned off, so it has nothing to do with any plugin. It seem to happen more when Flash and/or JavaScript is enabled, but it is not necessery. It has plenty of memory and diskspace left, so it doesn't have anything to do with lack of memory. It is also happening more frequently when I start or end other processes on the computer.

      Sometimes Firefox will freeze for about an hour, but is not being reported as sleeping, and then a window pops up telling me that some script is not responding and ask me to stop the script. You can spend half an hour clicking that button before Firefox actually responds and stop the script from running. Not actually crashing, but annoying as hell, especially since you can't bring back that session if you kill Firefox when this is happening.

      My theory is that all these problems steemes from me running Linux (Ubuntu and Xandros) and that Firefox is made for Windows and then shoehorned into Linux. Firefox is the only application that I have ever used that behave better running on Windows than on Linux. But on the rare occasions Firefox crashes on Windows, it usually crashes Windows too.

      Oh, and on Linux, Firefox is easy to crash with malformed fonts (even web-fonts). But you can make a lot of other "funny" things with most Linux applications if you feed them malformed fonts (really, really "fun" if you embed those fonts into a document, those documents will behave normal on Windows).

    31. Re:Title misleading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wimp. Your car is open source. Why didn't you fork the project, fix the crashing problem, and then offer the patch upstream while distributing your car under your own branding?

      That's how your car are supposed to work, you ninny. Why don't you actually participate in it once in a while, instead of just being an end user?

    32. Re:Title misleading? by countertrolling · · Score: 1

      ...Firefox was sat using 1.8gb of RAM...

      Don't run Farmville..

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    33. Re:Title misleading? by Xest · · Score: 1

      I don't use any Facebook apps at all, besides, afaik Farmville is a Flash game, and I pointed out I had no Flash, Java or Silverlight stuff running, it was only the core browser, and yes, it managed to rack up that usage all by itself.

    34. Re:Title misleading? by poetmatt · · Score: 1

      I challenged someone's credibility because they failed to provide anything for people to understand or research or fix or complain or whatever.

      This was just

      Firefox crashes frequently - at least a couple times a week

      So the general question is since most people's firefox copies don't crash a ton a week, what exactly did X person do that magically safari and chrome didn't crash?

      Yes, all the things you mention can cause the problem, but the person still didn't tell us what the heck they did to cause it. It's left as FUD, essentially.

    35. Re:Title misleading? by chenjeru · · Score: 1

      I second this proposition

      --
      Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
  2. Poor browsers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    all were forced to run exploit code.

    I wonder if they can sue for rape or at least some form of sexual harrassment.

  3. Google Chrome by drcosquared · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apparently none of them wanted to take on Google Chrome..I believe no one was able to crack it last year.

    --
    It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
    1. Re:Google Chrome by Kitkoan · · Score: 0

      Apparently none of them wanted to take on Google Chrome..I believe no one was able to crack it last year.

      Its possible that they didn't take Chrome on because it's still listed as a Beta on both Linux and OSX, and I'm pretty sure its still a Beta on Windows. I don't recall it being used last year (but I could be wrong).

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    2. Re:Google Chrome by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      You wish. It’s only that nobody actually cared. Because nobody’s using it anyway. ;)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  4. Well ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... these guys (and gals?) all know what they are going to try before they ever get to this contest. It's not like they discover all these vulnerabilities during some epiphany once they arrive.

    On the other hand, these security holes are real and need to be addressed by anyone and everyone that was shamed (this means MS, Apple, Mozilla, everyone) pronto!

    1. Re:Well ... by andrea.sartori · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the very fact that these people know what to do beforehand is proof that app security is generally terrible.

      --
      Mostly harmless.
    2. Re:Well ... by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the very fact that these people know what to do beforehand is proof that app security is generally terrible

      App security may be generally terrible, but I believe that the fact really proves that the contestants can keep a secret until the contest.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    3. Re:Well ... by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 1

      I didn't see Opera get mentioned...

    4. Re:Well ... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because it wasn't part of the contest due to its extremely small market share.

    5. Re:Well ... by cthellis · · Score: 1

      Nor Arachne. Grr!

    6. Re:Well ... by Skrimm · · Score: 1

      Opera only has a marginally smaller desktop market share than Safari though.

    7. Re:Well ... by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      and need to be addressed by anyone and everyone that was shamed (this means MS, Apple, Mozilla, everyone) pronto!

      Actually... if you aren’t paying anything for it, you don’t get to demand such things. ^^
      Of course if I were the developer, I’d fix it anyway, because of pride. But if I’d get enough annoying dicks thinking they are entitled to something, I might just decide to wait a bit longer, before releasing it to the general public. ;)
      (Same think as complaining too much about the cook, when he’s the one making the food that you will eat then. *evil grin*)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  5. firefox on osx? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    is the firefox exploit windows x64 only? or is it an exploit in the common firefox code?
     
    why does cracking the iphone add insult to injury? seems like you're throwing about cliches for the hell of it
     
    capture: wetness... it's what slashdot makes me feel in my pants

    1. Re:firefox on osx? by mjwx · · Score: 1

      why does cracking the iphone add insult to injury? seems like you're throwing about cliches for the hell of it

      It's an insult because Apple fanboys tout the superiority of Apple's security. It's an injury because Apple touts the superiority of Apple's security.

      It sounds like your an AC with nothing worth whining about.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    2. Re:firefox on osx? by commodoresloat · · Score: 0

      But the flaws aren't unique to Apple, the story isn't about Apple, and it's not about "Apple fanboys." It's about security flaws found in every major browser. So the AC is right, the cliches have nothing to do with the story here.

    3. Re:firefox on osx? by mjwx · · Score: 1

      But the flaws aren't unique to Apple,

      But denying that flaws exist is unique to Apple and they peruse that denial with such gusto. Apple itself actively denies any security flaw and touts supposed superior security over other platforms.

      The AC asked why the cliché was appropriate and that is why. I'm sorry if this does not jive with your fanboyism but this is both an insult and an injury to Apple's delusion of security.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    4. Re:firefox on osx? by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      Fair's fair. The Iphone gets an obligitary mention even when it's irrelevant ("You can also view this website on an Iphone!") So it's fair to do so when it's negative publicity also - they can't have it both ways.

  6. Publishing methods. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I find it interesting that the IE exploit was published for the world to see, but the Mac and Firefox hacks have been held back.

    1. Re:Publishing methods. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The exploit isn't, he says he's not allowed to disclose the exploit itself, but he kinda half explains the technical part.

      I don't know enough to say that the exploit couldn't be reroduced by someone with the skills easily from his release, but it looked like he was describing how to get around DEP and ASLR in a really generic, non-IE specific way and posted nothing about IE itself, except strongly implying it was a bug in the javascript engine allowing him to buffer overflow.

  7. Cue the Fanbois in three...two...one by sxedog · · Score: 0, Troll

    I feel for the Apple Fanboi's who won't be getting any sleep tonight...coming up with a defense for why their flagship product got pwned. Newsflash: nothing is secure.

    --
    If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.
    1. Re:Cue the Fanbois in three...two...one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It took more than 15 minutes.

    2. Re:Cue the Fanbois in three...two...one by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      It's not the first time Apple products fail at pwn2own.

    3. Re:Cue the Fanbois in three...two...one by mjwx · · Score: 1

      It's not the first time Apple products fail at pwn2own.

      But Three makes a pattern, they can no longer claim the first two were a fluke. It shall certainly be a restless night for the Jobites.

      But the fanboi is a resilient beast, the fear shall be wiped from their minds and be filled with the love of Jobs, with this love they will troll the intertubes with twice the gusto, conveniently forgetting that pointless P2O competition

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  8. So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by dingen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It was already known and acknowledged by Microsoft that their ASLR implementation on 32-bit Windows was rather weak, but apparently the 64-bit version of it can be bypassed as well, as all of the hacks of pwn2own on Windows 7 made use of return-to-libc attacks, which should be impossible on systems with address space layout randomization.

    --
    Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
    1. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      So ASLR and DEP are both red herrings and don't fix the real problems with PC security!?

      GASP! Where's my fainting couch?

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    2. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by aristotle-dude · · Score: 3, Informative

      It was already known and acknowledged by Microsoft that their ASLR implementation on 32-bit Windows was rather weak, but apparently the 64-bit version of it can be bypassed as well, as all of the hacks of pwn2own on Windows 7 made use of return-to-libc attacks, which should be impossible on systems with address space layout randomization.

      You can corrupt memory on 64-bit windows by just running MSFT's own development tools like VS.NET with resharper plug-in. VS.NET begins to corrupt the address space rather quickly. To run VS.NET with any amount of stability on 64bit windows, you have to run it through a third party wrapper application which patches VS in memory to make it large address space aware and stop the memory fragmentation.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    3. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Were browsers used in the contest 32 or 64 bit versions? I wonder whether a 32 bit process can be given the same protections on Win 64 than a fully native 64 bit process may have.

    4. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by gparent · · Score: 1

      VS has never done this for me. Which version of Visual Studio are you talking about? Really VS.NET? Because that's 7 years old AFAIK.

    5. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by geekboy642 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wait, wait, don't tell me: Running an 8 year old development platform written by amateurs with an unsupported 3rd-party plugin in a 32-to-64-bit emulation layer on a modern operating system is unstable? Oh my fuck, it's Armageddon!

      --
      Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
    6. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by Xenoflargactian · · Score: 1

      The attacker used a memory corruption bug to overwrite the null terminator of a string. He then read that string, which kept going until it hit another null terminator (two consecutive 0 bytes). He read memory he wasn't supposed to have access to, which included pointers to a C++ object's member functions (vftable). With these pointers in hand, he has defeated ASLR, because he has information about the address space that he's not supposed to have.

      This MS's fault for a memory corruption bug, but their ASLR implementation isn't broken (at least not by this attack).

      Details if you're curious: http://vreugdenhilresearch.nl/Pwn2Own-2010-Windows7-InternetExplorer8.pdf

    7. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 1

      That any program can do that is the real issue...

      --
      "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
    8. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by jpmorgan · · Score: 1

      ???

      I don't see memory fragmentation being a problem with 64-bit address spaces for a very, very long time. Unless a contiguous range of 2^40 addresses is just not enough.

    9. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by turbidostato · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Wait, wait, don't tell me: Running an 8 year old development platform written by amateurs with an unsupported 3rd-party plugin in a 32-to-64-bit emulation layer on a modern operating system is unstable? Oh my fuck, it's Armageddon!"

      You don't get it, do you?

      That the application were unstable would be no news. That your 8 year old amateurish application can corrupt the memory space of a modern 64-bit OS *is* Armaggedon for the OS architect... or it should be, at the very least.

    10. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GASP! Where's my fainting couch?

      Your sister is using it. I think she fainted under some guy.

    11. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by aristotle-dude · · Score: 4, Interesting

      VS has never done this for me. Which version of Visual Studio are you talking about? Really VS.NET? Because that's 7 years old AFAIK.

      VS 2008 is a 32bit application and it is not even large address space aware so when it is running inside of WOW (windows on windows) in 64bit Server 2008 R2, you will get memory fragmentation fairly quickly because of memory allocation bugs within the Wow subsystem of the 64bit version of any MSFT OS. As Sir_Lewk points out, any 32bit application can cause this problem. The less memory you have, they faster you will notice it.

      See this page for information on the problem:

      http://stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2008/04/29/hacking-visual-studio-to-use-more-than-2gigabytes-of-memory.aspx

      Here is a fix for the problem:

      http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/ReSharper/OutOfMemoryException+Fix

      Other OSes like OS X and linux do not seem to have these sort of problems. I am able to run 64bit apps in Snow Leopard while running in 32bit kernel mode for driver compatibility. Not only does windows not run 32bit apps properly in 64bit mode but it cannot run 64bit apps in 32bit mode and the 64bit version is a completely separate build of the OS.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    12. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      Wait, wait, don't tell me: Running an 8 year old development platform written by amateurs with an unsupported 3rd-party plugin in a 32-to-64-bit emulation layer on a modern operating system is unstable? Oh my fuck, it's Armageddon!

      No, I am running VS 2008 and as I pointed out in another post, OS X can run 64bit apps in 32bit mode or visa versa no problem.

      Here is a link to the more on the problems I was having and someone in the responses posted a link to a wrapper in memory patch to the fragmentation problem.

      http://stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2008/04/29/hacking-visual-studio-to-use-more-than-2gigabytes-of-memory.aspx

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    13. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      GP was talking about the process' own address memory. Of course any process can "corrupt" its address memory (that is, heap structures and stack frames), and that is true on any modern OS. OS only guaranteed that one process won't be able to corrupt (or, generally, access) the address space of another.

    14. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      That the application were unstable would be no news. That your 8 year old amateurish application can corrupt the memory space of a modern 64-bit OS *is* Armaggedon for the OS architect...

      It cannot. An NT process cannot "corrupt" (whatever that means in this context) the memory space of another process. If it is really what the original post meant, it's both outlandish and false. But I think that you rather read it wrong, and the actual claim is memory corruption within VS process, which is obviously possible by malicious or badly written code.

    15. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      ???

      I don't see memory fragmentation being a problem with 64-bit address spaces for a very, very long time. Unless a contiguous range of 2^40 addresses is just not enough.

      My development VM only has 2GB allocated to it. The instability is exacerbated if I do a full build of the entire tree via command line as the build will call a bunch of 32bit commands. Most of our developers are still on 32bit machines which are quite stable but I was developing software to target a 64bit server farm so someone thought it a good idea for me to develop on a 64bit VM.

      Opening up SQL Server 2008 management studio at the same time as even a patched VS 2008 instance can be problematic. Allocating 3GB to the VM would make things last a bit longer but it would still happen.

      Here is a blog posting on the issue. VS 2008 is 32bit and even 2010 will be 32bit. It is also not large address space aware and the WOW subsystem has some memory allocation bugs in it.
      http://stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2008/04/29/hacking-visual-studio-to-use-more-than-2gigabytes-of-memory.aspx

      The 64bit address space is irrelevant to programs that are running under WOW since they are 32bit apps and even if they are made large address space aware, you will still have the fragmentation problem because of bugs in the the WOW subsystem.

      BTW. If I were to do the same actions on a 32bit machine (physical or virtual), I would have no instability issues so it is definitely caused by the Windows on windows component of 64bit windows.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    16. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by ericfitz · · Score: 1

      No, YOU don't get it, do you? Any application can corrupt its own memory space. There is no evidence in the post that anything outside the application process was affected.

    17. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      What exactly do you mean by "completely separate build? It's a compiler switch, and few bits of inline assembly swapped out for a few other bits. I could install a 32-bit kernel and userspace side-by-side with my 64-bit one, and boot into either on demand, and the source code for them would be the same, but they would be different binaries. It's possible that the "fat binary" system that OS X uses allows you to put 32-bit and 64-bit code into the same executable (to a limited degree, this is actually possible with PE binaries as well) but I grantee that the build process is still much the same - parse the same source code, build the same AST (even same pointer sizes, since kernel code uses 64-bit pointers for PAE compatibility), then emit either x86 assembly instructions or x64 assembly instructions. The assembler and/or linker might combine those into a single binary file, or they might not, but it's the same source yet different CPU instructions in either case.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    18. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by gparent · · Score: 1

      Ah, interesting. I'm glad I'm not affected though.

    19. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I did follow your links.

      For users experiencing excessive OutOfMemory exceptions we provide a tool which overrides Visual Studio's memory allocation policy to ensure more continuous address space for Common Language Runtime.

      Note that the problem is Visual Studio's memory allocation policy, not WOW or any other part of the operating system.

      Memory fragmentation is a well known problem for C++ applications (or any other non-garbage-collected apps) and it affects all platforms equally.

      Maybe that's why you were modded troll.

    20. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...kind of funny or sad that you had to clarify WOW as being "Windows on Windows".

    21. Re:So 64-bit ASLR on Windows is flawed as well... by aristotle-dude · · Score: 2

      I did follow your links.

      For users experiencing excessive OutOfMemory exceptions we provide a tool which overrides Visual Studio's memory allocation policy to ensure more continuous address space for Common Language Runtime.

      Note that the problem is Visual Studio's memory allocation policy, not WOW or any other part of the operating system.

      Memory fragmentation is a well known problem for C++ applications (or any other non-garbage-collected apps) and it affects all platforms equally.

      Maybe that's why you were modded troll.

      Builds via the command line begin to fail on the 64bit machine after a few runs without my having to load either VS 2008 or the Management studio (which also loads the runtime). So in this situation both resharper and VS 2008 are removed as factors. The issue has to be with the way the WOW system allocates memory because you can perform the same operations until you are blue in the face on a 2GB 32bit machine without an crashes. So mr. anonymous apologist for MSFT, what is broken? Is every tool that works fine in 32bit windows to blame or is it the OS? I blame the OS.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  9. Misleading; no credibility by carlhaagen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The exploits were of course not found in the 5, 10 or 15 minutes advertised. They were all worked on for weeks, and even months, and were well-tested and prepared before being executed at the contest like a rehearsed stage play. Also worth to note is that the reason behind "Chrome only browser that withstood security breach" was that NO ONE TESTED CHROME AT ALL. I give this particular "Pwn2Own" show no credibility what so ever because of these details.

  10. Did they try to crack Opera? by citizenr · · Score: 1

    Article is so poor in detail :(

    --
    Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
    1. Re:Did they try to crack Opera? by dingen · · Score: 2, Informative

      Opera was not one of the targeted browsers. Check out this page for info and updates on pwn2own.

      --
      Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
    2. Re:Did they try to crack Opera? by drcosquared · · Score: 0
      --
      It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
    3. Re:Did they try to crack Opera? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Isn't that a good thing?

      "The problem Microsoft has is they have a big market share, said Vreugdenhil, the hacker who attacked IE. "I use Opera, but that's basically because it has a tiny market share and as far as I know, nobody is really interested in creating a drive-by download for opera. The web at the moment is pretty scary, actually."

      So the guy that hacked IE uses Opera because he thinks its market share is too low to make it worth hacking.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    4. Re:Did they try to crack Opera? by citizenr · · Score: 1

      Thank you. It looks like they excluded anything that had a chance of not being pwned (opera. linux).

      --
      Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
  11. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're trolling, but...
    Pwn2Own's crowd of whitehats is a drop in the bucket. Trying to eliminate all attackers by killing a single roomful of the good guys would be a pretty useless move.

  12. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about you go rewrite WebKit/Gecko with HTML5 support and see how easy it is.

  13. BS without details by Princeofcups · · Score: 0, Troll

    Is this another benign Safari hack that has no real world application, or another one where you need physical access to the box, or another that is already patched in the newer releases? What does "were forced to run exploit code" mean? It says "hacked into a MacBook." Is this another vulnerability in a 3rd party wireless driver? I'm not saying that it's not legit, but "Safari on OS X" without versions and details doesn't tell me a whole lot. Sounds like BS to me.

    --
    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
    1. Re:BS without details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Aww, another knee-jerk Apple fanboy.

      *pats you on the head* There there, little man, Mr. Jobs will make it all shinier so you don't have to think about it.

    2. Re:BS without details by TimHunter · · Score: 1

      Aww, another knee-jerk Apple fanboi.

      FTFY. If you're going to reflexively slam Mac users, get your in-jokes right.

    3. Re:BS without details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      All of these hacks are real-world drive-by attacks against fully patched machines with default OS mitigations in place (ASLR, DEP, sandboxing).

      You get pwn3d if you go to a malicious page, go to a legit page with a malicious banner ad/embedded iframe, get redirected (via malicious WiFi AP) to a malicious page, etc.

      This is the third year in a row that Miller did this. He has street cred, so think before you call BS.

    4. Re:BS without details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every OS and app in this test was fully patched with no publicly known security exploits.

      Turns out Apple programmers aren't demi-gods.

      Really got to ask yourself why you spend your time defending a company when they fuck up.

      They're interested in nothing other than profit, why the fuck do you people seem to take things on a personal level.

    5. Re:BS without details by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      The post would make just as much sense if you substituted the terms "Linux" for "OS X" and "Firefox" for "Safari," so I'd say it's not really very apologetical. And to be fair, they're valid questions because this kind of article does seem to come up a lot around here, a la "OMG they found an exploit for Linux! Oh wait, you have to be logged in as root, manually set it to executable, and ignore the security warning when you run it."

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    6. Re:BS without details by jo_ham · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is not about just Safari and OS X - all the details about browser exploits, including for Firefox and Windows are just too scant in detail.

    7. Re:BS without details by tyrione · · Score: 1

      All of these hacks are real-world drive-by attacks against fully patched machines with default OS mitigations in place (ASLR, DEP, sandboxing). You get pwn3d if you go to a malicious page, go to a legit page with a malicious banner ad/embedded iframe, get redirected (via malicious WiFi AP) to a malicious page, etc. This is the third year in a row that Miller did this. He has street cred, so think before you call BS.

      From your explanation the issue is then with WebKit and not OS X.

    8. Re:BS without details by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2, Interesting

      From your explanation the issue is then with WebKit and not OS X.

      WebKit ships in the box that says "OS X" on it.

      (by the same token, IE exploits are counted as Windows security issues - and rightly so)

    9. Re:BS without details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow. Apple fanbois work in tandem!

    10. Re:BS without details by GaryPatterson · · Score: 1

      WebKit ships in the box that says "OS X" on it.

      True, but I thought the point being made was that WebKit affects more than just Safari. Isn't it the core of Firefox these days? And others?

    11. Re:BS without details by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2, Informative

      True, but I thought the point being made was that WebKit affects more than just Safari.

      It does. Since WebKit is a library, it will affect everything that uses it. Since it's a standard OS library, any OS X application that might want to render some HTML will probably use it.

      Isn't it the core of Firefox these days?

      Er... no. Firefox is still Gecko, and they don't plan to change.

      And others?

      Chrome uses WebKit, but I'm not sure if it actually uses OS-wide WebKit library on OS X, or its own version. I suspect the latter, since, supposedly, they did tweak it quite a bit.

  14. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Nerdfest · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, especially in BASIC.

  15. Kudos to Peter Vreugdenhil by vikingpower · · Score: 1

    for his paper written on the plane ( and for his exploit ). Gawd knows how hard it is to write anything decent while travelling on a fucking plane.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    1. Re:Kudos to Peter Vreugdenhil by __aasqbs9791 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I've had it with these motherfucking bugs on these motherfucking browsers!

  16. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 1

    There's an old saying about not killing the messenger...

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  17. Holy Shit by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Instead Charlie Miller will show the vendors how to find the bugs themselves.

    Well, there's an idea. Is it something that really can be taught?

    1. Re:Holy Shit by Kitkoan · · Score: 1

      Instead Charlie Miller will show the vendors how to find the bugs themselves.

      Well, there's an idea. Is it something that really can be taught?

      The bugs he found can be taught on how to fix, but will it help them find different bugs is more the question.

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    2. Re:Holy Shit by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, really, guys, is it something that can be taught? Or is it more like having the knack for programming in the first place? Like having the cleverness to come up with certain algorithms? If you can describe it well enough that you end up with something ... that ... can ... I bet ... you end up with a program? Um, Purify? Valgrind? I'm not a programmer, but I think those only go so far, right? So we don't have the knowledge in question codified, I bet, so I suppose there may also be some challenge in trying to train others in it.

      Ah, I'm a dumbass and should just RTFA. Sorry.

      Okay.

      Dumb fuzzing? Is that what I think it is? And, so the vendors are dumb fuzzing but not as successfully as he? Hm. Maybe it's just a matter of giving some pointers. I imagine withholding the bugs will get the vendors' attentions. I love how this is a David -> Goliath spanking.

      Look, I found a virtual Wikipedia article on dumb fuzzing, but it wasn't at Wikipedia. It was at one of those homegrown security outfits. ("Fuzzing for Fun and Profit", Jeremy Brown (rush).)

    3. Re:Holy Shit by Securityemo · · Score: 1

      No. See, computer cracking, unlike most all other technical vocational skills save perhaps demolitions and practical forensics, runs on Narrativium. You either have it or you don't, and thinking that a megacorp outfit could beat a street deck^^H^H^Hhacker is foolish at best.

      Seriously though, yes, it can be taught. As in, if you are a good programmer already you could probably get up to speed in a couple of weeks, unless you have some weird mental blocks on the bit twiddling aspects. A "security researcher" additionally needs to be able to grok an arbitrary system just like a good non-security hacker but (importantly) is focused on grokking it just enough to exploit/secure it, which i guess could slow some people down. The core problem is that the information is spread out and unorganized due to the organic growth that led up to the modern "security scene", and making sense of this is what occupied most of my initial time when I tried to get my head around the subject. There are a few good introductory books on the subject (The Art of Exploitation, etc...) and if you're a programmer already they should make you able to sift through the chaos. "The security mindset", effectively instinctive (aggressive) paranoia, helps a bit; but if you have at least a little sense you shouldn't need it. Sorry if I'm rambling, but I woke late today and the concerta (ritalin) hasn't really hit yet. Also, not affiliated with krakowlabs.com, just a freak coincidence.

      --
      Emotions! In your brain!
    4. Re:Holy Shit by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      You cannot tell someone what the bugs in the system are, you have to see it for yourself.

  18. On the other hand... by Tetsujin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the very fact that these people know what to do beforehand is proof that app security is generally terrible.

    Well, I think you have a very good point there - but on the other hand, the developers do have to prioritize the work they do. Finding and fixing a serious, but hard-to-discover security flaw before this flaw has become widely disseminated may not be worth the effort. In principle "security through obscurity" isn't a good policy but in practice it's often good enough. If the software has a serious flaw but nobody knows about it, that's good enough, at least temporarily.

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
    1. Re:On the other hand... by Tetsujin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nice, you've just contradicted every security researcher over the last however many years. Congratulations on coming across as a fool.

      Dude, we disagree. It happens. You don't need to be a douche about it.

      Software Engineering is an engineering discipline. That means the principles according to which the product should work are always tempered by the reality of how the work must be conducted. What good is it, for instance, if you have the most secure browser of them all, if nobody uses it? That's an extreme case, of course, in which security concerns are so heavily emphasized that they would compromise some other essential concern (for instance, it could fuck up the release schedule, interfere with work being done to make the software run quickly, or take development resources away from the challenge of trying to make the browser more appealing to its audience...) Obviously there are other intermediate outcomes possible. But generally speaking one can't aim for perfection. If you set out to make something perfect, it never gets done, because it's never perfect. Obviously the bugs should be fixed... But finding and fixing a security flaw before an exploit has made its way into the wild is not necessarily the best use of development resources. It depends on the situation, really.

      --
      Bow-ties are cool.
    2. Re:On the other hand... by ClosedSource · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "There is no such thing as "security through obscurity", it's a myth created by lazy programmers."

      Right, that's why I give out my passwords to everyone I can.

    3. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GG on the stupid analogy.

      Waiting until after a flaw is being used to infect people's computers before fixing it is the best form of security, and no security researcher should ever try to help get a flaw fixed beforehand, because the alternative is the EXACT SAME as giving our passwords to everyone we can.

    4. Re:On the other hand... by dougisfunny · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I usually aim for perfection, though I don't wait until then to release. Aiming for perfection is fine. Waiting for it is not, as attaining perfection isn't possible.

      --
      This is not the funny you're looking for.
    5. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      my password on my bank site is 1234!ab.
      my bank account pin is 2389.
      my mother's maiden name is O'Conner.
      I have $37,890.12 in savings, and about $2,200 in checking (it varies)

      I'm also a gun owner in a castle doctrine state.

      Security through obscurity is a myth?
      COME GET SOME.

    6. Re:On the other hand... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Yes, now that I know you have a gun, I'm going to pack Kevlar.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    7. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Teflon coated AP rounds > kevlar.

      next?

    8. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

    9. Re:On the other hand... by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "the developers do have to prioritize the work they do."

      Of course they have to, since they are a scarce resource.

      "Finding and fixing a serious, but hard-to-discover security flaw before this flaw has become widely disseminated may not be worth the effort."

      You are rigth... provided that was the case which, for the most part, it isn't.

      We are no more on the glory days of Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing. We know (as a collective) what must be done. The case is that, for the most part, all those bugs are not "serious, but hard-to-discover" security flaws but the result of faulty practices from unknowledgeable and/or lazy programers. Maybe those bugs are hard to discover once in the source, but they usually are reasonabily if not even easy not to be there to start with -or else you can bet they wouldn't be discovered and published with such an ease even on closed-source software.

      Security through obscurity is *never* a suitable engineering principle except on the mind of unkowledgeable engineers.

    10. Re:On the other hand... by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      Software Engineering is an engineering discipline. That means the principles according to which the product should work are always tempered by the reality of how the work must be conducted. What good is it, for instance, if you have the most secure browser of them all, if nobody uses it?

      The safest bridge is one that prevents people from getting on it.

    11. Re:On the other hand... by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Software Engineering is an engineering discipline. That means the principles according to which the product should work are always tempered by the reality of how the work must be conducted.

      Wow. Just wow. You realize that in any engineering discipline other than software "engineering", that attitude could quite literally leave you facing charges of criminal negligence in court? You follow best practices, you use the established procedures to avoid failure, you *do the work that has to be done* or you are legally liable when it fails.

    12. Re:On the other hand... by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 2, Funny

      The safest bridge is one that prevents people from getting on it.

      But woe to those who go under it.

      --
      This ain't rocket surgery.
    13. Re:On the other hand... by willy_me · · Score: 1

      Engineering - the art of compromise.....

    14. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you don't understand what "Security through obscurity" means. Congratulations, you are not alone.

      Security through obscurity is when the algorithms and protocols are kept secret because it is believed to make it harder to attack it (some even say "impossible", which shows that they are morons).

      Keeping keys secret is essential in both good and bad cryptography. In good cryptography, it's all that's necessary.

      Having a shared secret is part of what makes single key encryption work. If you need to keep the algorithm secret too, you have turned the algorithm into part of the key - while distributing code that implements it.

    15. Re:On the other hand... by Lars+T. · · Score: 3, Insightful

      my password on my bank site is 1234!ab. my bank account pin is 2389. my mother's maiden name is O'Conner. I have $37,890.12 in savings, and about $2,200 in checking (it varies)

      I'm also a gun owner in a castle doctrine state.

      Security through obscurity is a myth? COME GET SOME.

      Well, thanks for the information, Mr. Anonymous Coward.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    16. Re:On the other hand... by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Security through obscurity is *never* a suitable engineering principle

      Nonsense. It's an excellent principle.

      It just isn't a replacement for other security principles.

    17. Re:On the other hand... by ClosedSource · · Score: 1

      "So you don't understand what "Security through obscurity" means."

      According to the GP, "Security through obscurity" is a myth. So we'd be arguing about the meaning of a non-existent thing.

      Now, if you want to have a conversation without that assumption that's a different matter.

    18. Re:On the other hand... by nomel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, he absolutely right. The safest one lane bridge will be one made with 10 bazillion cubic feet of cement and steel...with a few holes to let the water through of course. But, this is the real world, you can't do that. It would be ugly, environmentally harmful, and cost too much money; it wouldn't get built on real earth.

      There's ALWAYS compromise for functionality. This is why things such as "margin of safety" exists. You don't build something that will not fail, you build something that a failure is, statistically, pretty slim.

      If you read your quote, he says it's always tempered by the real world. This is true. So, I challenge you: name *one* device that functions as it should, 100% of the time, without compromise.
      If I were given this impossible challenge, the first thing that would come to my mind is medical devices. Look up how fruitful medical device production is these days. It's not, because for anything beyond something simple like a screw, you nearly *can't* make them reliable enough and still turn a profit over their lifetimes (lawsuits for failing devices are expensive for some odd reason).

    19. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Security through obscurity is a myth?

      You're not using security through obscurity. Just read the first paragraph. Hint, not telling people your password or user name is not security through obscurity.

    20. Re:On the other hand... by MokuMokuRyoushi · · Score: 0

      Microwave laser 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
      Better?

      --
      Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
    21. Re:On the other hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the very fact that these people know what to do beforehand is proof that app security is generally terrible.

      Well, I think you have a very good point there - but on the other hand, the developers do have to prioritize the work they do. Finding and fixing a serious, but hard-to-discover security flaw before this flaw has become widely disseminated may not be worth the effort. In principle "security through obscurity" isn't a good policy but in practice it's often good enough. If the software has a serious flaw but nobody knows about it, that's good enough, at least temporarily.

      Yet the contest winner flat out states in the article (yes, I KNOW you couldn't be bothered to take 30 seconds to READ it)

      Miller's fuzzer quickly uncovered 20 vulnerabilities across a range of applications as well vulnerabilities in Apple's Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, and its Safari browser.
      [...]
      What really disappointed Miller was how easy it was to find these bugs. "Maybe some will say I'm bragging about finding the bugs, that I can kick ass, but I wasn't that smart. I did the trivial work and I still found bugs."

      The point is that these flaws are not obscure and hard to discover. They are easy to find quickly and exploit with only moderate technical skill. He then goes on to say

      And it also made him ask why vendors like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe, which have teams of security engineers and scores of machines running fuzzers looking for flaws, hadn't found these bugs long ago.

      One researcher with three computers shouldn't be able to do beat the efforts of entire teams, Miller argued. "It doesn't mean that they don't do [fuzzing], but that they don't do it very well."

  19. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by halowolf · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately for the messenger, sometimes they are the only ones at hand for some violence.

  20. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by garaged · · Score: 1

    back to what? 10 and 20 years ago was way more easy to exploit computers, we are better, not good enough but better

    --
    I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
  21. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So if you're such a badass programmer please link to your assembly-coded web browser that contains zero exploits. Oh, you don't have one and you're just a posturing tard? Yeah, that's what I thought.

  22. Security is dead by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I'm all for tight code where every byte is important, one could just as well argue that languages used aren't high-level enough.

    Operating systems and apps are often coded in languages like C or C++, that allow a lot of things, which turn into vulnerabilities down the road. Assembly is king of this: it allows a progammer to do anything, including things that aren't safe, smart or correct. No matter how good the code you produce or how comprehensive your testing procedures are, the sheer size of software systems guarantees a number of bugs to be lurking.

    Personally I think that security is dead as long as these languages are the tools, testing code is the norm (vs. some sort of formal verification), and coders are looking for bugs rather than proving they're not there. Fixing this will take a combination of new methods for building software, new design principles to manage system complexity, and safe(r) languages to write the code in. There's a lot of research around (see seL4 microkernel or Coyotos for example), but results rarely finds its way into mainstream products. There's a long way to go still... or users just don't care enough.

    1. Re:Security is dead by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      There's a lot of research around (see seL4 microkernel or Coyotos for example), but results rarely finds its way into mainstream products.

      Because it takes 10 times as long to write code that is totally formally verified?

    2. Re:Security is dead by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 1

      Because it takes 10 times as long to write code that is totally formally verified?

      Good point. Except:

      • This may be important for proof-of-concept apps, where some party can profit from a first-mover advantage. For most everyday apps: not so much. For OS code: irrelevant. For most users, an OS should just work (and IMHO, be boring).
      • Much of the work is maintaining software after release. If you can slash the need for updates significantly, spending more time on the initial code may just be worth it. Fewer bugs also means: lower support costs.
      • Regardless of how big an effort, getting code right the 1st time is a one-time effort. Updating code after release OTOH, is an effort that is multiplied by the number of users (even if individual updates are easy & painless).
    3. Re:Security is dead by icebraining · · Score: 1

      You talk like they're doing it wrong.

      Security is always a tradeoff. Yes, you can have a verified browser - and maybe you can reach Lynx features in six years. And remember, you'll also need a verified subsystem (L4 is a microkernel, it doesn't include much of the stuff you get from e.g. Linux), libraries, etc.

      It's no different than physical security. Why don't we all have a bodyguard and bullet-proof cars? It's simply not cost-effective.

    4. Re:Security is dead by Fareq · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Vista, the pile of problems that it is, took thousands of people about 6 years to create.

      It would have been simply infeasible to increase the work by 10x (since 10x as many people couldn't do 10x the work -- overhead and all -- we're talking probably at least 15x - 20x increase in cost to develop, and probably more elapsed time regardless of the number of engineers).

      Even if it costs a trillion dollars, spread over 10 years, to fix things that could have been prevented with the 10x effort up front, it simply wouldn't have been possible.

      Ultimately, we would all have to settle for slower innovation and simpler products.

      So far, the market has decided that a somewhat-buggy, vulnerable, but cheap, advanced, and rapidly developed product is more valuable than an expensive, simple, but bulletproof application for most people's needs.

      For some things, it is probably worthwhile to scale back expectations of complexity and innovation to increase invulnerability and guarantee correctness. Software running on the space shuttle or a nuclear sub strikes me as belonging to this category.

      But, for right now... I wouldn't pay $2500-$5000 per seat for an operating system that was as advanced and capable as Windows 7, but which had zero crash bugs and zero security vulnerabilities. (and similar outsized pricing on other software that I use)

      Nor would I be willing to pay today's prices for secure versions of 10+-years-ago software when the same prices could get me modern software.

      Until we can find a way to decrease the comparative cost of building provably-secure systems (versus what is available with rapid development and "best efforts"), it isn't going to happen for most software.

    5. Re:Security is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So far, the market has decided that a somewhat-buggy, vulnerable, but cheap, advanced, and rapidly developed product is more valuable than an expensive, simple, but bulletproof application for most people's needs.

      The market is WRONG.

      Just kidding. The market has has been completely distorted over the last few decades so has fuck all to do with it. The industry produces new shiny not because it is what "the market" wants, but because it is cheaper to make and easier to push then solid, stable software.

    6. Re:Security is dead by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

      I agree with you.

      There are whole classes of bugs that could right out be eliminated by writing software in safe languages, and using safe APIs. Many of such bugs (buffer overruns, integer overflows, stack smashing, memory leaks, dangling pointers, format string vulnerabilities, SQL injections, predictable filename attacks, ...) end up being featured over and over and over again in vulnerability reports and exploits.

      Considering that we have languages and APIs that are safe, efficient, and expressive, all exploits that fall into one of these classes could and should have been avoided. You really need some unsafe constructs to write the kernel of your operating system, but they really have no business being anywhere else. Least of all in applications that can receive arbitrary input from over the network!

      Ditch C for application development, and you will be more productive and safer as a result.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    7. Re:Security is dead by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      C++ can be as safe/secure as any other language, it's just up to the programmer to do the right things and use the right constructs.

      Many don't because they still think it's "just C with extras".

      --
      No sig today...
    8. Re:Security is dead by gmack · · Score: 1

      If only that were true. Ditching C only moves you to a different set of attack vectors. If there is a language that actually prevents most exploits I haven't seen it yet.

    9. Re:Security is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't pay $2500-$5000 per seat for an operating system that was as advanced and capable as Windows 7, but which had zero crash bugs and zero security vulnerabilities. (and similar outsized pricing on other software that I use)

      That would be some product! I'd bet some customers would happily pay 25k to 50k for it, or even much more.

      So far, the market has decided that a somewhat-buggy, vulnerable, but cheap, advanced, and rapidly developed product is more valuable than an expensive, simple, but bulletproof application for most people's needs.

      If you apply the Unix philosophy and stay in the realm of open source software, you could say that the bulletproof, simple and inexpensive interacting applications and services would have a change in the market eventually..

  23. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't your point about Chrome invalidated by your point about the time taken?

    Did no one attack Chrome because none of these researchers had an exploit that would work against it?

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  24. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chome is still a minority product. IE, FF and Safari are the main players these days. Where are you going to draw the line, Lynx? That fact is, the biggest browsers still have pathetic securit. Particularly Safari, which is beaten within seconds every year, and the usual winner stating there are tons of holes in it waiting for later competitions.

  25. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chrome is more used than Safari.

  26. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I give this particular "Pwn2Own" show no credibility what so ever because of these details.

    I believe what you really meant to say was that we shouldn't fall into the trap of believing that Chrome is actually safer due to the fact that no one really targeted it in this contest.

    I've done my share of "Digital Combat Exercises" and you are correct that we should only view the contest as a verification that flaws exist, and not as a certification that a particular platform is safe.

    For my first competition, my team concentrated on all the windows machine on the network because we had a list of known exploits and figured that we could exploit them the quickest and therefore accumulate the highest score possible within the time limits. All teams used the same strategy, and the Linux machines weren't even targeted. This wasn't because Linux was safer, it was because we all knew Windows was a softer target. This made for a some very close final scores.

    For the following year's contest (which I couldn't participate due to a schedule conflict), my old team paid attention to the known exploits for Linux and started targeting them to guarantee a larger lead going into the final minutes of the contest.

    I think you'll see this pattern in all "hacker" contests. Each year more platforms will fall as each team strategize on what will give them the edge during the time alloted. You'll probably see Chrome fall next year. Look at Safari in Pwn2Own, it wasn't until 2 years ago before people started to seriously attack it for the points.

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  27. Re:Misleading; no credibility by CannonballHead · · Score: 1

    Chrome is in the list of targeted browsers, but apparently nobody tried it...

  28. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's analogous to suggesting that getting rid of all the drug-sniffing dogs will cut down on drug smuggling. What kind of world do you live in where the argument "If I don't know about it, then it must not exist!" is considered logical?

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  29. Huh? "Pwn2Own" Has No Credibility? by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 1

    Why would you ever imagine something called "Pwn2Own" might ever have credibility in the first place?

  30. Sandboxing news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "However, neither the Firefox nor the IE 8 exploit could overcome the sandboxing features in Windows 7 Protected Mode."

    big, good, relevant, no, yes?

    1. Re:Sandboxing news! by El+Lobo · · Score: 1

      Good and relevant, but definitely not on slashdot. We prefer to ignore those bits of information.

      --
      It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
  31. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by Red+Flayer · · Score: 1

    There's an old saying about not killing the messenger...

    You make it seem like there's more to the saying that we're supposed to recall. Like, we lean back and think for a second, and then our eyes light up as we have an epiphany about how that multi-part proverb that relates to not killing the messenger is the perfect metaphor for the OP's lack of analytical thought.

    When, in reality, the entire proverb is:

    Don't kill the messenger .

    So I vote we come up with some new clauses to add to that proverb. Like:

    Don't kill the messenger, lest he rise from the dead with a hunger for brains.

    Or:

    Don't kill the messenger, because he might not have given you the whole message yet, in which case you have less information and so you might make an uninformed decision.

    --
    "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  32. iPhone hacked using a malicious website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In a related story, AT&T spins a lack of network coverage as a security feature!

  33. I'd like to see crackers write their own browsers by Rogerborg · · Score: 1

    As secure and hardened as they can make them, 100% standards compliant. And then cry and whine like little bitches as everybody sneers and calls them pathetic lamer noobs because their browsers totally suck at delivering content.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  34. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Khyber · · Score: 1

    Assembler, by a rule, is just harder. Most 'programmers' couldn't understand the machine's native language if their life depended upon it. They are relying upon someone else's code to translate down to that, and if those methods are flawed they're screwed.

    All security begins with the basics, and for computing devices, that basic is their native machine language. If you ignore the basics, you're going to be fucked later on.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  35. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Khyber · · Score: 0, Troll

    I work silicon, not software. I don't get exploited, nimrod, because I leave nothing for anyone to exploit.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  36. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This wasn't because Linux was safer, it was because we all knew Windows was a softer target.

    Uh?

  37. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This wasn't because Linux was safer, it was because we all knew Windows was a softer target.

    Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Just stop right there, Bill. I'm going to have to teach you a thing or to about what you're allowed to write here on Slashdot. Now give me a second to get on my high-horse.

    Reasoning is not welcome here.

    That's right Bill. We don't need your reasoning here. We know we are right. This is Slashdot! We are the tech community. We know our OSes. We know our software. Just because of some contest with some rules and some teams that want to win the contest by the rules doesn't automatically invalidate our knowledge and wisdom as Slashdot.

    Linux is more secure because it is open source and licensed under the GPL. It doesn't matter if it is still unsafe by your standards.

    You see, Bill, we on Slashdot do not need to review the source code of Linux because we have declared it safe. Why is it safe? Because it is GPL. And everyone knows the GPL is safe. Therefore Linux is safe, Bill.

    IE8 is mentioned first because it is owned by Microsoft, and Microsoft is evil due to historical technology atrocities against other for-profit software corporations. Therefore IE8 is the worst piece of software ever to exist.

    So the reason why IE8 falls faster is not because you and your team thought the Microsoft product was "softer". It was because it was the spawn of the devil! Even wackos know the spawn of the devil should be hacked first. Don't you agree?

    Firefox is not listed in the title because we need to get a head start on bashing proprietary software rather than reading the summary.

    As a real Slashdotter, I pride myself in not reading the article let alone the summary. The title effectively summarizes the direction of all comments in the thread. And that direction is to bash proprietary software, starting with Microsoft first.

    Here's a tip, Bill. The headline on Slashdot should give you a hint at what kind of comment you should post on Slashdot. If you are not capable of discerning that from the title, only then may you read the summary. Reading the article is only reserved for picking out additional points to backup your original claim, not to invalidate Slashdot's wisdom. And that would never happen because Slashdot's wisdom is never wrong in the first place.

    Apple and Google are bad... but did you know that OSX is really UNIX and Webkit and Chrome are open source?

    See, once again open source products are good for you. You should use open source products!

    I hope that clears things up, Bill. Please refrain from posting useless comments in the future.

    Thanks,

    /.

  38. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you just trying to further prove my statement that you're a posturing tard? Because you aren't doing anything to invalidate that. Until you can pump out a browser that can support all web standards and all the plugins that these browsers in all the assembly languages that these browsers support you're just a blowhard.

  39. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by xero314 · · Score: 1

    "If I don't know about it, then it must not exist!"

    I gather that is a paraphrasing of "what you can not see can not hurt you", which is more accurately "what you can not perceive can not effect you" which oddly enough is an actual fact.

    Now I'm not saying this is how we should handle security, just say it is actually a valid statement.

    It's also not what the GP was saying. They were saying that if we kill all the people that are smart enough to exploit the security holes then we would need not be concerned with anyone exploiting those security holes. Which also happens to be a fact, but seems like a lot of wasted intelligence.

  40. M$ vs Mozilla - the security difference... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  41. The sheer nature of HTML/JavaScript by Vamman · · Score: 1

    Putting all the server/database exploits aside. The whole client process of pushing a value in and seeing if it breaks will never go away. Web browsers are one of the worst possible tools to secure. The nature of their job seems to predict failure. As soon as some creative web monkey pushes the envelope another exploit is found. The Gecko and Trident engines can be pushed to break over and over. Chrome and Safari are not any different. You can follow the standards as much as you like. At the end of day these tools are reading XML and Script and rendering/compiling. If you consider a browser for what it is, most of them have come a long way. I remember when a harsh sneeze would cause catastrophic failure and crashing =)

    1. Re:The sheer nature of HTML/JavaScript by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

      It seems to me you are saying that the entire model of HTML and Javascript makes browsers hard to secure, but I don't really see that. Don't HTML and Javascript execute in a pretty well defined sandbox that specifies, basically, you can do this and this and this, and nothing else?

      I don't see what about HTML and Javascript makes them especially hard to secure. Compare to, say, Java applets (yes, blast from the past), where you must somehow guard against writing, deleting, or executing arbitrary local files, even though applets have access to APIs for doing that. Or worse, programs containing native code, which have even more tricks up their sleeves and are harder to analyze, too.

      On the scale of things, I would say HTML and Javascript aren't anywhere near the top of being hard to secure.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  42. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 1

    LMFAO. If I could, I would mod you funny.

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  43. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by russotto · · Score: 1

    Most 'programmers' couldn't understand the machine's native language if their life depended upon it.

    It's not that I can't understand it, it's that I can't read it. Alas, I simply cannot tell the difference between 2.8V and 0V.

  44. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't perceive hydrogen sulfide gas, but it can sure as hell affect me.

  45. They had no choice, Slashdot headlines are short. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just FYI, you don't get that many characters to work with in Slashdot headlines. They actually couldn't have listed all of them, so they appear to have listed as many of the shorter names as they could in the headline.

    Try submitting a story sometime and you'll see what I mean...

  46. Re:They had no choice, Slashdot headlines are shor by quadelirus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about:

    IE8, Safari, FF, iPhone All Fall At Pwn2Own

    It has fewer characters.

    Or, focus on one area: IE8, Safari, Firefox all Fall At Pwn2Own

    And they didn't bother to mention Firefox in the description either, which clearly had enough space to include the word "Firefox."

  47. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Kitkoan · · Score: 1

    So if you're such a badass programmer please link to your assembly-coded web browser that contains zero exploits. Oh, you don't have one and you're just a posturing tard? Yeah, that's what I thought.

    You don't have to be a master of the subject to be able to point out it's flaws. Pointing them out helps to see the problems so they can be fixed. I can tell when a cars engine is not working, doesn't mean that I shouldn't keep quiet about it if I can't build a better one.

    --
    Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
  48. Not for 15 months by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    Chrome (on Windows) came out of beta back in 2008.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    1. Re:Not for 15 months by Kitkoan · · Score: 1

      Chrome (on Windows) came out of beta back in 2008.

      Gmail (again by Google) took over 5 years to leave Beta, so I could see it.

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
  49. Re:I'd like to see crackers write their own browse by baka_toroi · · Score: 1

    "But that's not a W3C standard! We shouldn't parse that, that would be immoral!"

  50. "software engineering" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Software Engineering is an engineering discipline.

    Only when it applies "technical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or invention."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering

    Most coders don't do engineering, and that's part of the problem. In most other disciplines there are also standards:

    I really hate to point this out but ... there are two reasons that, in other
    engineering and technological fields, we *do* manage to avoid repeating at
    least the reasonably common mistakes:

    1. We develop standards and practices that have the force of law.
    Electrical circuitry in houses is subject to a variety of such standards.
    So is plumbing. [...]

    2. We require training and passing of exams *on those standards and
    practices*. We enforce this requirement by requiring licenses to work in
    many fields - and those licenses depend on passing the exams. [...]

    We in the software industry have been leading charmed lives for many years.
    We've managed to avoid liability, avoid serious training in good practices,
    avoid any kind of standards - all by arguing that this would cramp our style
    and keep us from continuing to innovate. Maybe that's true - but we've been
    building up a massive debt side by side with all that innovation.
    Eventually, that debt's going to come due. If we don't clean up our own
    mess, the greater society will come along and do it for us - and the results
    won't be pleasant.

  51. Re:I'd like to see crackers write their own browse by francium+de+neobie · · Score: 1

    Actually, I bet their browsers are gonna suck at security too. It's much easier to find one exploit from 1 million lines of code than to make sure your 1 million lines of code have absolutely no security holes.

  52. Re:Misleading; no credibility by tyrione · · Score: 1

    Isn't your point about Chrome invalidated by your point about the time taken?

    Did no one attack Chrome because none of these researchers had an exploit that would work against it?

    VANCOUVER, BC -- For the third year in a row, Charlie Miller has hacked into a MacBook by exploiting a critical Safari browser vulnerability. At the CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacker contest here, Miller performed a clean drive-by download against Safari to get a full command shell on the MacBook. In the attack, Miller set up a special Web page with the exploit. Using Safari, a conference organizer surfed to the Web page and watched and Miller took control of the machine.

    I'd like to see whether the exploit was specific to WebKit or the Cocoa layer.

  53. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by prockcore · · Score: 1

    Yeah... with that attitude I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you're the one responsible for the f00f bug.

  54. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by xero314 · · Score: 1

    Bad example since hydrogen sulfide has a very distinctive smell and a direct affect on the nervous system, the system responsible for perception. But excusing that obvious slip, how would you know that something had an effect on you if you could not perceive it?

  55. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by prockcore · · Score: 1

    If you believe wikipedia on its origins, the whole thing might actually be "don't kill the messenger because he's not lying" (In Henry IV, they threaten to kill the messenger because they don't believe his message) .-* The More You Know.

  56. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by jellyfrog · · Score: 1

    Sure, you can shut your eyes and refuse to perceive the 2-tonne grizzly bear coming to disembowel you, and in that manner it can't effect you. Yet. Until it reaches you and you realise that the feeling of being ripped to shreds as well as your subsequent death is not something you can refuse to perceive. Oh, you wanted a car analogy?

  57. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by flynnieous · · Score: 1

    Or, even more accurately, "what you cannot perceive cannot affect you."

  58. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

    Middle management.

  59. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by dakameleon · · Score: 1

    It's not that I can't understand it, it's that I can't read it. Alas, I simply cannot tell the difference between 2.8V and 0V.

    That's actually easier to tell than you think.

    --
    Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
  60. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >Most 'programmers' couldn't understand the machine's native language if their life depended upon it.

    If only that was the criteria for being a programmer, then we wouldn't have to worry about job security.

  61. I'm not a troll, read the links. by aristotle-dude · · Score: 3, Informative

    Whoever modded me a troll obviously did not read the links that I posted. It is a real issue and affected my development environment at work. My 32bit workstation is quite stable but a project that I am working on requires access to copies of production data so we have to do our development on VMs in a separate dev domain and the VM I was given is 64bit to match our target servers. I have useable stability on my VM several hours at a time as long as I run VS 2008 only through that wrapper program and don't kick off the full build script. Eventually, memory corruption problems will bring down either SQL 2008 management studio (has 32bit components) or my wrapped VS 2008 instance. Once the memory is corrupt, I have to reboot the VM.

    --
    Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  62. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by TapeCutter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "They are relying upon someone else's code to translate down to that, and if those methods are flawed they're screwed....If you ignore the basics, you're going to be fucked later on."

    And the machine code depends on logic circits which in turn depend on complex software tools that design those circits, which depend in turn on, blah, blah, blah,.... Sooner or later you have to face the fact that if you can't trust anyone to do thier job properly then you're fucked before you even start.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  63. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/25/pwn2own-2010-google-chrome-is-the-last-man-standing/

    Quote by Miller:
    "There are bugs in Chrome but they're very hard to exploit. I have a Chrome vulnerability right now but I don't know how to exploit it. It's really hard. They've got that sandbox model that's hard to get out of. With Chrome, it's a combination of things - you can't execute on the heap, the OS protections in Windows and the Sandbox."

  64. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 1

    I don't get exploited, nimrod

    I don't think Nimrod means what you think it means.

    --
    This ain't rocket surgery.
  65. Is anyone really surprised by this? by FlyingGuy · · Score: 1

    As another poster vamman put it the very nature of what a browser tries to do is a time bomb.

    The very nature of a web server is the same thing.

    Until the web gets itself under control and the people who write browsers and the people who write web servers tell the wc3 to shove their wildly horrible specs straight up their ass ( yes a lot of it will be recursive ) we will continue to see this sort of thing.

    Computers were never designed to be infinitely flexible which is to say dealing with things like xml and html that are not well formed, defined and encapsulated in a rigid structure. both xml and html are completely open ended structures with no real boundaries to bump up against, so the machine simply has to keep allocating and allocating until it finds something the closes a section. If their was ever a recipe for a buffer overrun or a stack overflow this is certainly it.

    Web servers still seem to have trouble caging the requests, again part of the indefinitely flexible nature of what has been built. Why of course you will accept a request that is 90kb long, uhmmm oops wait I just exploded.

    There are parts of the web mechanism that must be tightly controlled, they must be highly defined and yes they must be highly restrictive. They must be designed with security as the over riding priority and to hell with convenience . Buffer overflows must simply cease to exist. ANY portion of the code that deals with requests coming in must have hard limits built into it as this the only way to get a handle on this.

    The same thing with browsers. There must be hard limits, the rules have to be made and maintained. No more slipping in some code to be able to say, "Hey look at this cool thing I just did!"

    --
    Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
  66. Re:I'd like to see crackers write their own browse by FlyingGuy · · Score: 1

    The WC3 is the problem. Constantly changing specs, incomplete specs, open ended structures, nothing particularly well defined. The whole "We want it to be able to anything, no matter how hideously deigned it is." attitude has to be defeated at all costs. Hmmmm havent seen the tag yet? Don't worry it will come along any minute now as memory gets consumed at insane rates and the stack overflows or a buffer does.

    Failure to do so will simply keep the cycle going.

    --
    Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
  67. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by GaryPatterson · · Score: 1

    Not at 3GHz.

    Real developers have electrodes attached to their head so that they can read the native machine code directly.

  68. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by korean.ian · · Score: 1

    surely a real programmer would lovingly handcraft each bit onto the microprocessor?
    failing that I would be interested in seeing this represented through LOGO.

  69. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by GaryPatterson · · Score: 1

    Do you believe that security would be better if applications were coded in assembly, rather than higher-level languages?

    I can't see why assembly language makes any difference to coding standards and practices. You can screw up in assembly just as easily as C++, and generally assembly is harder to debug.

  70. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Khyber · · Score: 1

    Hardware exploits are typically much harder to accomplish versus software, generally because of the straightforward layout of the circuits versus the convoluted nature of software programming.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  71. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by Khyber · · Score: 1

    If you understand the native language for your target machine, you're better off. If the iPhone kept to the same hardware and only updated hardware revisions every once in a while unlike the current every six months or a year nonsense, it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to write bulletproof code and apps.

    Yes, since in order to understand assembler you need to understand both the hardware itself and it's actual physical limitations, and you need to know the language.

    I've got a recompiled MenuetOS install on my desktop, built by a friend of mine that knows a fair bit more about AMD64 than I. I've purposely left it wide-open direct-connect to the cable modem and invited people to hack it when I feel like testing a new module he's made. I still do. It's been bulletproof. I'm waiting for his router module/frontend with much anticipation, as I'm getting sick of my Linksys with DD-WRT and it's being written for Atheros.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  72. Re:Misleading; no credibility by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

    It should be noted that they didn't get out of the sandbox of IE8, either. They managed to run arbitrary code within the sandbox, dodging OS protections against that (ASLR & DEP), but it still runs with permission of sandbox identity, which are severely limited - not the user who's running the browser.

  73. Re:They had no choice, Slashdot headlines are shor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or, focus on one area: IE8, Safari, Firefox all Fall At Pwn2Own

    They did focus on one area, the commercial one.

  74. They "forgot" Linux. by miffo.swe · · Score: 1

    It was very sad that Linux wouldnt be allowed in this year as opposed to last time when nobody could crack it. Regardless of how you measure market penetration its nice to have it there as a reference point. Anything you pay for should be much better than something you can get for free.

    Chrome has an excellent sandbox, especially compared to IE8 and Safari which makes exploiting stuff very hard even if you know of an open exploit. That nobody even bothered is a testament to that it really works. Nobody hacks at pwn2own, its done long before the competition starts in reality.

    Google Chrome OS is something really interesting and everything up until now points to it becoming one of the most secure OS in a long time. While MacOS X and Windows 7 is a pile of ugly hacks Chrome OS seems to be built on excellent foundation from a security viewpoint. I really like it how they take the user out of the equation, just in line with Microsofts security researchers (that Microsoft never seems to listen to).

    http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=3275&tag=nl.e036

    --
    HTTP/1.1 400
  75. Re:Misleading; no credibility by aCC · · Score: 1

    I normally don't write these comments, but this time I make an exception: that was hilarious! Thanks for that!

    You made one mistake though. This is wrong:

    This is Slashdot!

    It needs to be:

    THIS! IS! /.!

  76. Please elaborate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can you say that Windows is a "softer" target than Linux, but Linux is not "safer"? Surely having more exploits that are easily available to any cracker is less safe.

    But do correct me if I misunderstand.

    1. Re:Please elaborate by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How can you say that Windows is a "softer" target than Linux, but Linux is not "safer"?

      Sorry about that. I've really made a confusing comment.

      What I meant was that Linux wasn't necessarily safe, it was just a much harder target than Windows. Why? Because there were plenty of working exploits in the wild for Windows, yet all we had were a list of exploits for Linux that needed to be coded.

      So Windows proved to be the "softer" target just because of time saved. Linux wasn't necessarily "safer" because we had the RedHat bulletins in hand and could have taken advantage of them but didn't because it would have required more time per point scored when compared to Windows. Why work hard to gain fewer points? The scoring didn't factor difficulty in that first year. I don't even know if they do now.

      Unlike Pwn2Own, Digital Combat Exercise (love it when the Army gets involved) did not disclose the network layout. So we had to map it, and exploit it in 2 hours. This made it more of a race than to demonstrate security hardness of an OS. If anything, it more of a demonstration on the importance of a qualified IT staff.

      Anyway, the only thing that prevented Linux from being exploited that first year was laziness (and lack of time) on our part. We assumed Linux was hard to exploit, so we didn't bother. The following year the team didn't have that assumption and took advantage of some machines that didn't have up-to-date patches.

      Hope that clears up the confusion a little.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  77. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by xero314 · · Score: 1

    Isn't that what I just said, or where you just trying to supply an illustrative example for those that couldn't understand the simplified form?

  78. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

    Whooooosh

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  79. Re:I'd like to see crackers write their own browse by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

    Indeed. Writing a web browser is bloody nasty work. Even the standards are hellish to have to implement, and then there is all that non-standard crap floating around the web that you're supposed to be able to handle. To make things worse, to make your browser usable you must also write pretty performant code. And you have to be able to stand up to the flak you will get if you don't beat the competition on JavaScript benchmarks and Acidn tests, don't have someone's favorite Firefox extension available, or don't run on someone's favorite platform. And even if you work with a team of demi-gods and somehow accomplish all that, your browser will still be susceptible to vulnerabilities in plugins and in libraries that it uses.

    Really, I have immense respect for the developers of today's leading web browsers. It's a herculean task, and I know it. Keep it up, fellows!

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  80. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny enough your UID is much higher than his.

  81. Re:So many exploits, so few hydrogen bombs by jellyfrog · · Score: 1

    Oh, maybe that was what you said. I assumed you meant "what you can not perceive [now] can not effect you [in the future]". Hence the example, which was just pointing out that things can force you to perceive them (which is I guess a sort of effect on you), even if you can't yet perceive them.

    Anyway...

  82. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by amliebsch · · Score: 1

    I don't even see the code any more, just blonde, brunette, redhead...

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
  83. Well, sort of (& why) from the mouth of a crac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Per my subject-line above? Here is why (& it's the same general reason Linux isn't hit as much as Windows is really - "security-by-obscurity"):

    PERTINENT QUOTE EXCERPT (RIGHT FROM THE GENT WHO WAS IN THIS COMPETITION & DID WELL @ IT):

    ----

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/25/pwn2own_2010_day_one/ [theregister.co.uk]

    "The problem Microsoft has is they have a big market share, said Vreugdenhil, the hacker who attacked IE. "I use Opera, but that's basically because it has a tiny market share and as far as I know, nobody is really interested in creating a drive-by download for opera. The web at the moment is pretty scary, actually."

    ----

    And, there you are: The actual "hacker/cracker" (security-researcher, whatever you wish to call he in this case) shows you EXACTLY why he uses Opera himself (less targetted, period, because less used).

    APK

    P.S.=> You guys have to try to understand the mindset of these online malware distributors/botnet masters/exploiters of webbrowsers & such: They are JUST LIKE PICKPOCKETS!

    E.G. #1 of 2 (by analogy) -> Pickpockets don't go for "1 on 1" situations, for 2 reasons - probably not as much of a "take"/booty possible, from 1 wallet, vs. an ENTIRE ROOM OF WALLETS (like a subway station or any public thoroughfare, more "target surface area present" is why)... they're criminals online, just like pickpockets are in the streets, & they use the SAME LINE OF REASONING TOO + GENERAL MODUS OPERANDI/MECHANICS, which is "go where the largest crowds gather, because therein lies the MOST OPPORTUNITY"... & if my word's not enough? See the quote above

    E.G. #2 of 2 (by analogy) -> So, by the same token & logic above (which criminals all seem to use really) - hacker/cracker types find code that exploits this stuff (scripting problems, fuzzing, SQL Injection etc. et al) & they target the browsers that get used, THE MOST - again, & IF my words ARE NOT ENOUGH? See the same reasons, from the ones doing the hacking/cracking, above & verbatim... apk

  84. Re:Misleading; no credibility by sabt-pestnu · · Score: 1

    I did not know the rules of the Pwn2Own contest, so came up with some things that sounded reasonable:
    - first hack counts for more than later hacks.
    - new exploits count for more than old ones.
    - teams succeeding on a given target (be it OS, service, whatever) split a pool of points; the more teams that target a system, the lower the value overall would be.

    Looking at Tipping Point's Pwn2Own 2010 page, I find that they took on most of that:
    - (it looks like) first hack on a platform gets all the marbles; no counter-weighting appears to have been done for multiple successes against the same target.
    - platforms are weighted, presumably (but not necessarily) in difficulty.

    As to "Linux vs Windows", I suppose you might count OS X in that category, as well as Android. I don't personally know if any of the other phones are Linux based. But the only general purpose computer + browser platforms in the browser category were windows and mac.

  85. Geekboy's a script kiddie wannabe... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "You don't get it, do you?" - by turbidostato (878842) on Thursday March 25, @09:17PM (#31620558)

    No, he doesn't... want ANOTHER example of it, turbidostato, just for laughs? Ok, take a read in the URL from this site, just before he posted his b.s. here too now which you responded to! It ought to be worth a laugh to you, because it was to me & others in that exchange:

    I posted this:

    http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1592276&cid=31583826

    See that URL above turbidostato, & the mistakes + name-calling & more that geekboy resorts to when he is caught making mistakes, and spouting absolute b.s. on topics of which he has no clue!

    It's amazing.

    That URL above's also where this bigmouth "script kiddie" who calls himself "geekboy" here was torn apart, point by point he made, not only by myself but also 2-3 others also...

    Yet "somehow"? Geekboy got himself "modded up" to +4 informative... yea, "big-trick", that: He obviously keeps more than 1 account & trolls others, and then logs on from his other account and mods himself up.

    I mean, lol, for instance - when myself and 2-3 others shot down points, & a couple on which he made mistakes on, admittedly on his part no less... he ends up with a "mod up" for being INCORRECT?? Please...

    APK

    P.S.=> Give us a break, geekboy - you're not fooling anyone here... apk

  86. Depends on process type (Ring 0 vs. Ring 3)... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Depends on the TYPE of process though man... to be specific about it:

    "It cannot. An NT process cannot "corrupt" (whatever that means in this context) the memory space of another process." - by shutdown -p now (807394) on Thursday March 25, @10:39PM (#31621230)

    A device driver can... just so you know.

    I.E.-> A device driver can reach into ANY usermode/Ring3/RPL 3 level running process & its memory space, & drivers have access to ALL SYSTEM MEMORY (like kernel mode/Ring 0/RPL 0 running programs (drivers & kernel) do))... &, iirc, even KERNELMODE/Ring 0/RPL 0 privelege/ring level process too (like the OS kernel & its subsystems).

    APK

    P.S.=> This is why MS made the DDK have "proven basic templates" for drivers - for proven working with BASIC functionality to a particular driver type, so board/card makers @ least have a working shot @ a working driver w/ basic functionality working, like VGA mode for instance, for vidcards (then, OEM's with more "enhanced boards" work on providing interfaces (.h files & such usually) to the more advanced/enhanced/exotic functions their boards (if it is a board that actually POLLS a card's interface that is, because there's also filtering drivers too))... apk

  87. Re:Depends on process type (Ring 0 vs. Ring 3)... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

    Oh, of course. Since we're talking about browsers, though, userspace is definitely assumed here.

  88. Cool, we're on the "same wavelength" then... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Oh, of course. Since we're talking about browsers, though, userspace is definitely assumed here." - by shutdown -p now (807394) on Friday March 26, @02:40PM (#31630300)

    Cool, then "we're on the same wavelength here"... & it NEVER HURTS to be "specific" (lol - especially around HERE! Nitpickers abound, & worse ones than myself!)

    APK

  89. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Your.Master · · Score: 1

    Chrome for Windows might be more used than Safari for Windows, but Safari is far more used than Chrome.

  90. Re:As I said elsewhere on the net: by MokuMokuRyoushi · · Score: 0

    An easier way to say this is "One man's shitty work leads to another's."

    --
    Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
  91. Re:Misleading; no credibility by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 1

    That won't matter unless they can get out of Chrome's sandbox.

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.