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Cramming Software With Thousands of Fake Bugs Could Make It More Secure, Researchers Say (vice.com)
It sounds like a joke, but the idea actually makes sense: More bugs, not less, could theoretically make a system safer. From a report: Carefully scatter non-exploitable decoy bugs in software, and attackers will waste time and resources on trying to exploit them. The hope is that attackers will get bored, overwhelmed, or run out of time and patience before finding an actual vulnerability. Computer science researchers at NYU suggested this strategy in a study published August 2, and call these fake-vulnerabilities "chaff bugs." Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, assistant professor at NYU Tandon and one of the researcher on this study, told me in an email that they've been working on techniques to automatically put bugs into programs for the past few years as a way to test and evaluate different bug-finding systems. Once they had a way to fill a program with bugs, they started to wonder what else they could do with it. "I also have a lot of friends who write exploits for a living, so I know how much work there is in between finding a bug and coming up with a reliable exploit -- and it occurred to me that this was something we might be able to take advantage of," he said. "People who can write exploits are rare, and their time is expensive, so if you can figure out how to waste it you can potentially have a great deterrent effect." Brendan has previously suggested that adding bugs to experimental software code could help with ultimately winding up with programs that have fewer vulnerabilities.
We can't manage to build the smallest bit of software without bugs, and now we're supposed to introduce large numbers of fake bugs that are, in fact, provably not exploitable.
Sure...that'll work.
Right up until the 'fake' bugs turn out to actually be exploitable (because, you know, we were wrong about them), and the bad guys win again.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
This guy is an idiot. An increase in complexity - which this most certainly would entail - will always lead to an increase in genuine bugs. And, as was said by someone further up... when programmers already can’t write bug-free code, how the heck are they going to make up 100% guaranteed non-exploitable false bugs which - at the same time - are indistinguishable from the real thing to a skilled hacker?
#DeleteChrome
Once a critical nuber if bugs is introduced the software becomes unusable hence making it unattractive for hacz0rz to exploit.
The bugs are not at the UI level. The "bugs" are exploitable code that is never actually executed. Black hats would find them when scanning the code, and try to exploit them, but the exploits wouldn't work because the code never executes.
The "bugs" would add a trivial amount of bloat, but will otherwise not affect performance or behavior.
int // ... // Buffer overflow target // SQL injection target // ... // ...
main(void) {
if (somethingThatWillNeverHappen()) {
char buffer[20];
gets(buffer);
mysql_query(buffer);
}
}
Disclaimer: I think this is a dumb idea. I am just explaining it, not endorsing it.