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When Is It Right To Go Public With Security Flaws?

nk497 writes "When it comes to security flaws, who should be warned first: users or software vendors? The debate has flared up again, after Google researcher Tavis Ormandy published a flaw in Windows Support. As previously noted on Slashdot, Google has since promised to back researchers that give vendors at least 60-days to sort out a solution to reported flaws, while Microsoft has responded by renaming responsible disclosure as 'coordinated vulnerability disclosure.' Microsoft is set to announce something related to community-based defense at Black Hat, but it's not likely to be a bug bounty, as the firm has again said it won't pay for vulnerabilities. So what other methods for managing disclosures could the security industry develop, that balance vendors need for time to develop a solution and researchers' needs to work together and publish?"

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  1. Re:When the company will not listen by ImprovOmega · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I don't see that as being a very easy attack vector to exploit. If the attacker is to the point where he can install a guest OS on your VMWare server, you were already completely owned. If it's a disgruntled sysadmin then the solution is "fire him/her and change the passwords". So...yeah, unsupported OS.

    Now, if you find a way to exploit that from a *guest* OS that was support and got owned (like from within Windows Server 2008 or something) and you can run something that blows up ESX, then that may be a legit concern. As worded it sounds like a non-issue.