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