Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Microsoft to give holes info to Uncle Sam first
From: Feher Tamas <etomcat () freemail hu>
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:29:54 +0100 (CET)
Hello, I already got an e-mail asking why I am a tinfoil-hat conspiracist and what is the problem with Microsoft giving fixes to US gov't in advance? If Microsoft gives fixes info to Uncle Sam first, it gives USA the exploits first. I mean you just unpack the hotfix installer first to see what files got changed and then you compare the new and old files' code to see what routines were changed. With diligent effort you can find out why code had to be modified and then reverse engineer or brute force an exploit. Virus writers do this almost always. Considering the vast resources available to US federal govt, they would have a working exploit in a day, even if MS only gave them the hotfixes in binary format. They could use the more serious exploits to illegally access people's computers in America and abroad (muslims, environmentalists, german and french people, etc.) and blame it on ordinary underground hackers if discovered. If you find a bug and tell MS about it and agree to keep your mouth shut until the security fixes become public, then now you essentially give DoD and DoHS 29 days to do whatever they want and no judge will know if John Doe's PC ever gets tapped. Maybe it's not even punishable if a commercial entiry (M$) gave voluntarily them the fixes, which became the source of exploit. I think IT people should write "security () microsoft com" en masse and thell Redmond this is an unacceptable practice. Elsewhere in the news: as for the Windows rootkit finders I wrote about yesterday, they do seem to work. At least one new (yet unknown) rootkit has been found using them. The problem is these tools are heuristic in nature and user often thinks: whoaa that many alerts, must be a false alarm! Well it was not, it was a cracked game distributor mechanism. If there is an alarm, do sumbit the files to your AV vendor's sample e-mail to find out exactly what's wrong. Regards: Tamas Feher _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://www.secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Re: Microsoft to give holes info to Uncle Sam first Feher Tamas (Mar 12)