Re: counter to claim made on Tenable podcast about upgrading

[Josh More <jmore () starmind org>]

Since we're speaking generally, in smaller businesses, I advocate rapid
patching with minimal testing on the belief that the attackers understand
the old bugs better than the organizations understand how to protect
against their exploitation. If you stay current, both the attack and
defense side are equally lost and even if attackers learn faster than
defenders do, the periodic learning level resets are valuable.

Sure, it can cause problems, but the problems they cause are directly
attributable to the patch / new version and can be tested then. The
problems resulting from exploitation take a lot longer to trace and figure
out.  If updating a particular application causes repeated problems, that's
in indication that the organization should look towards replacing it.

In large organizations with dedicated and competent defenders focused on
the application space, the analysis ends up differently, of course.

-Josh More



On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Frank McClain <frank.mc.42 () gmail com>wrote:

> Well, we've all seen times when a new release creates vulnerabilities that
> did not previously exist; in some of these cases, the new ones were worse
> than the old ones (never mind issues of performance, stability, etc).
>  Rushing to adopt a new version without thoroughly testing first can create
> problems.
>
> Patches, I tend to view as less of an issue for adoption, especially if
> they're for security reasons.  If a vulnerability has been discovered, and
> the vendor is actually going to patch it, then it's probably important to
> at least seriously look at it in light of your environment.  You do have to
> make sure that it's not going to break some other functionality, while
> still ensuring that you're covered from the vulnerability standpoint.  If
> you're in a regulated industry, your options may be limited when external
> auditors discover vulnerabilities that they say you should have patched.
>
> On the other hand, if you feel it's important not to immediately push out
> new versions or patches, I wouldn't stay too far behind.  Reason is, you
> risk the vendor no longer supporting prior versions.  I've seen some cases
> where it seemed that the vendor dropped an older version rather quickly,
> because the newer one had more bells and whistles.  Obviously, one revision
> behind probably isn't too far out of line.
>
> Regards,
>
> Frank
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robin Wood" <robin () digininja org>
> To: "PaulDotCom Mailing List" <pauldotcom () mail pauldotcom com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 10:46:50 AM
> Subject: [Pauldotcom] counter to claim made on Tenable podcast about
>  upgrading
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi
> I'm listening to the latest Tenable podcast and Paul was talking about
> making sure you upgrade to the latest version of apps just in case someone
> has an exploit for an old version which has either been deliberately, or
> accidentally, fixed in the latest version.
>
> I'd counter that with older versions of apps have been around longer so
> have had more time to probed by the good guys and so vulnerabilities found
> and then announced. The latest apps haven't yet been probed so may have new
> issues which have been introduced in the new version.
>
> The idea suggested of being one version behind, as mentioned, may
> therefore be best from this point of view as the app has had time to be
> looked over but isn't too far out of date.
>
> I'd agree that you should stay up-to-date but don't think this argument is
> the best to use.
>
> Robin
>
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