Re: Fwd: Information on MS99-022

[deraison () CVS NESSUS ORG (Renaud Deraison)]

On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Vanja Hrustic wrote:

> I haven't seen this on the Bugtraq, but it's very interesting...

[snip]

> So, if I have my custom-developed IDS running, I won't be able to implement
> a pattern for this, because I am not a member of 'Intrusion Detection
> Consortium'?

And I'm writing a free security auditing tool, and I won't be able to
implement a security check for this, because I'm not a "vendor" ?
(apparently only software vendors are welcomed to the ICSA's IDC --
 they did not reply to my request of being admitted in this consortium
 [so that I could get information about this flaw])

> Note the words...
>
> "This will allow security vendors to have access to the information..." -
> why only security vendors? What better they are than Bugtraq folks?
>
> "Security through obscurity" comes to mind...

It's worst than that indeed. Because once this check will be in ISS or any
other commercial security auditing tool, it won't be a big deal to find
out how to check remotely for the vulnerability.
What comes to my mind, is that the Microsoft is giving the scoop of the
test of the vulnerability to the ISCA's IDC members.

What does this mean ? You have to _sell_ your security products to have
security informations from the vendors, or else they won't even consider
you are writing security tools ?
Why those vendors are not implementing backdoors that they could sell to
security software makers ? We could see fun advertisements like :
        
        " XXX Security Scanner version 7.0 features not less than
          20 tests for yet unknown security holes ! "

This attitude shows the lack of ethic of several companies which claim
they are interested in security. Because no matter how knowledgeable you
are, you will have to pay to determine if you are vulnerable or not.

                                -- Renaud

--
Renaud Deraison <deraison () cvs nessus org>
The Nessus Project -- http://www.nessus.org