Anyone buy this?

[full-disclosure () lists netsys com (Timothy J.Miller)]

On Wednesday, August 14, 2002, at 06:54 PM, Fenris The Wolf wrote:

> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/
> news/IARWSV.asp

I will say I'm not surprised.  What else should be expected?

> The identity of the attacker could easily be determined.  To exploit the
> vulnerability, the attacker would require a valid SSL digital 
> certificate,
> issued by a trusted Certificate Authority. However, most commercial
> Certificate Authorities require substantial proof of identity before 
> issuing
> such a certificate,

Yeah, just like Verisign confirmed the spoofer who got new signing certs 
issued to him in Microsoft's name.

> The user would always have the ability to determine the truth.

While this is certainly technically true, it's not *practically* true.  
The average user knows fsck-all about X.509 and certificate chaining, 
much less how to use Microsoft's certificate display dialog.

>        Clearly, it would have been best if a balanced assessment of the
> issue and its risk had been available from the start.

Never mind that FAILING TO VERIFY BASIC CONSTRAINTS is SUCH A FREAKING 
STUPID ERROR that it SHOULD NEVER HAVE EVER FSCKING HAPPENED IN THE 
FIRST GODDAMN PLACE... *ahem*  Excuse me, sometimes I just get riled.

Obviously "balanced assessment" has a meaning I wasn't aware of.  From 
the context it apparently means "brought to light in a way that didn't 
make us look like morons."

Trusted Computing at work.

-- Cerebus