Security Basics mailing list archives
Re: Patching
From: Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers <bugtraq () planetcobalt net>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:57:32 +0200
On 2003-10-21 Alessandro Bottonelli wrote:
On Tuesday 21 October 2003 10:33, Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers wrote:On 2003-10-20 Alessandro Bottonelli wrote:Hmmmm. I am not convinced yet that all this makes sense from a "wider" security perspective. Must a vulnerability / hole be known to be a risk?Yes.The more I think about it, the more I do not agree. Security is availability, confidentiality and integrity, isn't it? An unknown hole / vulnerability can still hit you hard (data loss, data integrity, system availability to name a few instances). Humans may not know about such vulnerability but systems run that code, and if the code is flawed, systems do not need humans to fail or to behave incorrectly from a security perspective.
Availability, confidentiality and integrity are separate issues that have to be addressed in different ways. When talking about security (at least on this list) the majority is referring to confidentiality and partly integrity (to the extent that data isn't manipulated by unauthorized persons). At least that's my perception. Please correct me if I'm wrong. You are right that might affect availability and/or integrity and that those issues need to be taken into consideration, but AFAIK they are usually not considered _security_ risks. [...]
Was the price of closing a known hole that maybe someone one day might have exploited (and maybe I might have had another option for proctecting my systems) worth a failed Disaster Recovery?
Deal with that problem when you run into it. That's what you test patches for. There is no point in avoiding a patch just because it *might* break something. If it breaks something you will have to make a decision whether to apply it (and forfeit on some functionality) or not (and face the risk of getting 0wnzed). That decision can only be made for each individual incident. If anyone happens to have a golden rule here, I'd like to know too ;)
I am not saying patching is evil, but is dawning on me the idea that is not "necessarily" good, or in other words its worthness is not axiomatic.
It may rise other problems, but it gets you rid of a security breach that is known to the world. That's the only point I was referring to.
The list suggested a testbed system should be used for testing patches before going onto production systems. This would be a good step forward in making patches less dangerous, yet many organizations (or at least most of those I deal with) cannot (or do not want to) afford such luxury which requires a duplicate system, time and human resources (and even then I wonder how thorough and reliable a test would be on a non-production system, probably not fully interconnected with the whole infrastructure).
There has been a discussion on this a while ago, and there were some valuable suggestions (e.g. using VMware). You might want to take a look into the list's archive. Regards Ansgar Wiechers --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visual & Easy-to-use are not words that you think of when talking about network analyzers. Are you sick of the three window text decodes? Download ClearSight Network's Analyzer and see a new network analysis tool that makes the complex - easy http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/ClearSightNetworks_security-basics_031021 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- Patching Alessandro Bottonelli (Oct 20)
- RE: Patching Raoul Armfield (Oct 20)
- Re: Patching Florian Streck (Oct 20)
- Re: Patching Meritt James (Oct 20)
- RE: Patching Alexander Suhovey (Oct 21)
- Re: Patching Meritt James (Oct 21)
- Re: Patching Meritt James (Oct 20)
- Re: Patching Alessandro Bottonelli (Oct 20)
- Re: Patching Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers (Oct 21)
- Re: Patching Alessandro Bottonelli (Oct 21)
- Re: Patching Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers (Oct 22)
- RE: Patching Graydon McKee (Oct 22)
- Re: Patching Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers (Oct 21)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Patching David Lanagan (Oct 21)
- RE: Patching Erik R. Myers (Oct 21)
- RE: Patching Gunnoe, Jason (Oct 22)
- RE: Patching Tran, John (Oct 22)
- RE: Patching wbradd (Oct 22)
- audit (was: Re: Patching Meritt James (Oct 27)
- RE: Patching wbradd (Oct 22)