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Patch Out For 'Ridiculous' Trend Micro Command Execution Vulnerability (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the why-do-we-fall,-mr-wayne? dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register: A bug in its software meant that Trend Micro accidentally left a remote debugging server running on customer machines. The flaw, discovered by Google's Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy, opened the door to command execution of vulnerable systems (running either Trend Micro Maximum Security, Trend Micro Premium Security or Trend Micro Password Manager). Ormandy -- who previously discovered a somewhat similar flaw in Trend Micro's technology -- described the latest flaw as 'ridiculous'. Trend Micro issued a patch for the flaw, a little over a week after Ormandy reported the bug to it on 22 March. The patch is not complete but does address the most critical issues at hand, according to the security firm.

14 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Guys, it's ok! by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fortunately, Trend Micro won an award, they're the best at stopping zero day threats! So it's not a problem, keep using your anti-virus.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:Guys, it's ok! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I let my subscription lapse. I figure I am better off just using Windows Defender.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    2. Re:Guys, it's ok! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The last AV I used was on MS DOS, Invirsible, and it used a heuristic approach: It set out a trap for viruses, so that when they infected the file it knew how the files were infected and could (usually) reverse the process.

      Shortly after that I began using Linux (back when you had to arrange for its boot image to be written to the MBR manually). I haven't had any need for AV since. This is because an AV is only as good as the software updates are bad. Linux has good software updates, which means that the exploit vectors are patched at the same rate that an AV would release updates. AVs are only needed where the software isn't patched fast enough. Linux is patched fast enough, windows and OSX aren't.

      Captcha: Imperil.

    3. Re:Guys, it's ok! by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Linux has good software updates, which means that the exploit vectors are patched at the same rate that an AV would release updates

      That's a good point, I'd never thought of it like that before.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  2. Who still uses Anti-Virus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm pretty sure Trend Micro causes autism.

  3. Glass house by sinij · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Welcome to realization that this is normal. Not even new normal, as it always been this way.

    Pretty much any vendor out there that produces software or IT hardware doesn't effectively test it. IT vendors that take QA seriously are very very rare, most just don't take testing seriously. This is further complicated by the fact that QA is seen as a dead-end IT career. Universally lower pay matches this outlook. Consequently, hiring and retaining good QA is very challenging as anyone competent constantly attempting to move away from it.

    1. Re:Glass house by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IT vendors that take QA seriously are very very rare, most just don't take testing seriously.

      Security vulnerabilities aren't something you can expect QA to find, it's not what they do. If you want secure code, you need to be thinking about security starting in the design phase, and keep thinking about it until release (and beyond). You can't just test for security at the end of the process, that strategy guarantees failure.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re: Glass house by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, clearly no one at trend micro was thinking about security at any part of the development process, because if they did they wouldn't have left a remote debugging server built into a commercial anti virus program that typically runs with admin rights. So in this case, if some QA guy did a quick port check and just so happened to find the debugging server, I think testing for it would have helped.

      Security is an in depth business. QA is just as much a part of that business as any other part of the process. In fact QA is especially important as it's their job to try and catch what the automatic tests and the devs failed to catch before the product ships and becomes someone else's vulnerability. Unfortunately, because anything QA finds is considered someone else's problem, and fixing it would make the product miss it's shipping date (set by marketing), and cost more money outside the development budget (set by the corporate bean counters), QA's importance to having a healthy industry is downplayed to boost profits. So we get shit like having a damn remote debugging server in a security product. This is the reason I support requiring fines close to bankruptcy for companies that do this shit. Only once the cost of not hardening your damn product far outweighs the cost of doing so, will these companies change.

    3. Re:Glass house by sinij · · Score: 1

      I disagree. Remote debugging was left on. This is something I do expect QA to catch.

    4. Re:Glass house by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      That's a build engineer's job.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Glass house by Cili · · Score: 1

      QA should be able to catch build bugs too.

  4. Re:Accidental remote command execution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Whoops!" --NSA

    Accidental, my arse. Yet another company who can't be trusted.

    The Slashdot inline summary for your post was awesome: NSAAccidental, my arse.

    I think this should be coined as a new term: NSAccidental pronounced N-S-Accidental

  5. Hosts = better antivirus than antivirus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://www.bing.com/search?q=%...

    * Less power/cpu/ram+ IO use vs. local DNS servers + addons w/ less security issues vs. DNS + routers. Less complex vs firewalls (needing layered filtering drivers - hosts don't + firewalls block less used IP addresses, hosts block more used host-domain names) complimenting 'em. Antivirus = reactive. Hosts = proactive, blocking infection BEFORE you get it. Gets its data from 10 reputable security community sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Hosts get you more speed (hardcodes + adblocks) & faster vs. addons, security (vs. bad sites/dns security issues), reliability (vs. downed/poisoned dns), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) vs. other "so-called -solutions'" w/ what you natively have. Unlike Adblock/UBlock/Ghostery, hosts != blockable by ClarityRay/BlockIQ... apk

    1. Re:Hosts = better antivirus than antivirus by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Hosts = better antivirus than antivirus

      In this case, I guess it's probably true. As long as you include keeping your patches up to date.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."