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Does Microsoft Need Bug Bounties?
Gunkerty Jeb writes "The threats and attacks may have changed in the last decade, but one thing has remained constant: software giant Microsoft doesn't pay for vulnerabilities. Never has. Never will. Even as rivals like Mozilla and Google have introduced bug bounty program, the Redmond giant has stuck doggedly with a position it articulated almost a decade ago, refusing to offer monetary rewards for information on software holes. But security experts say that position may have to change."
Even as rivals like Mozilla and Google have introduced bug bounty program, the Redmond Washington giant has stuck doggedly with a position it articulated almost a decade ago, refusing to offer monetary rewards for information on software holes. But security experts say that position may have to change.
Here is the source for Mozilla projects. Here is the source for Google Chrome. And where do I find Internet Explorer's source code? Oh, right. Well, I'm sure if they truly wanted my help making their browser better and more secure, they'd be okay with letting me take a peek at the source code. How can they start a bug bounty program when they won't even trust the community with seeing their code?
To put it another way: when you practice security through obscurity, offering monetary incentives for bug discovery is not a financially sound decision.
Furthermore, there have been times when a bug submitted to Google was deemed not a bug and a discussion ensued why that was with the source code referenced. I believe Microsoft could just say, "Oh, sorry, we don't owe you anything for discovering that feature but since you can't see the source code you'll have to take our word for it."
Microsoft doesn't need bug bounties. They need to achieve the prerequisite of code inspection before they can even consider putting their money where their mouth is.
My work here is dung.
Are you kidding? If Microsoft paid for every bug in Windows, they'd be bankrupt in a week!
Microsoft Bug Submission Form
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's also a philosophical question. Microsoft as an organization believes that the best possible way of producing software is to hire the smartest programmers you can get your hands on, give them a carefully honed specification designed by the best marketing and UI people you can get their hands on, directed by the best management you can get their hands on, and have them go to work. And if you're Bill Gates, this really does seem like the right way to do business.
The trouble is:
1. You can't get your hands on all the smart people in the world.
2. Even if you could, enough people hammering at software in every way imaginable has a way of uncovering problems that the smart guys hadn't even thought of. I'm talking about stuff like "I didn't know that they were going to try to use some sort of wildly different equal sign Unicode code point from Cyrillic instead of a UTF-8 '='". That makes the population of users a much better source of uncovering obscure bugs than the best QA team could ever manage.
3. Linus's Law suggests that when somebody uncovers these sorts of obscure bugs, there's somebody in the world who could figure it out pretty easily. Using my earlier example, chances are that in the whole of Russia, there's somebody who really is interested in Unicode in a way that no sane person ever would be, and because of that developer's familiarity with Unicode and Cyrillic is going to have a good idea how to fix the bug in the best way possible. It may not be perfect right off the bat, but it will be started in the correct way because the person in question has the exact specialized knowledge needed to solve the problem. So the population of programmers not working for Microsoft is going to outperform Microsoft's programmers by sheer numbers if nothing else.
4. ESR pointed out that the guy in Russia interested in Unicode is far more motivated to fix a hypothetical Cyrillic Unicode bug than a programmer working in the bowels of Microsoft's headquarters, because it's a bug that affects them directly in a field they care about.
In other words, Microsoft can't win these kinds of fights, but they can't give up the belief that they can win these kinds of fights. Hence they won't change, no matter how much they should.
I am officially gone from