RE: New therad: sasser, costs, support etc alltogether

["Bill Royds" <full-disclosure () royds net>]

You are making the assumption that Microsoft knew of the bugs that caused
Sasser before they released the software. If any manufacturers of any goods
had to be sure that there were no possible defects before they started
selling it, you would never have anything on sale. 
 There is no such thing as bug free software. So MS was not at fault for
releasing it. It even did the correct thing and replaced the version with a
bug with an update for free and made it widely available. So MS did not try
to hide the fact that there was software that needed to be replaced.
  There are two guilty parties in the spread of the Sasser worm.
   1. the person who first spread it into the Internet.
   2. People who did not patch their systems when the patch was made
available, or else didn't their systems from they Internet if they could not
patch.

An analogy:
   An automobile manufacturer is told that a particular model has a gas tank
that will leak gasoline all over the road if gasoline with a particular
additive is put into the tank and it is liable to set on fire nearby
vehicles if it does leak. They advertise widely that they will replace the
gas tank and do so for many of their customers. Oil companies stop using
that additive.
   But someone decides to figure out a way to add that corrosive additive to
all gasoline being piped though New Jersey. Hundreds of cars blow up and
lots of people are killed.
   Who is to blame? The car manufacturer, the car drivers who didn't get
their cars repaired, or the criminal who attacked the oil pipeline? 
  Fault is not absolute. The fault of the criminal who spread the
destruction is not diminished because there were other mistakes made.

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com
[mailto:full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com] On Behalf Of Radule Soskic
Sent: May 14, 2004 11:28 AM
To: full-disclosure () lists netsys com
Subject: [Full-disclosure] New therad: sasser, costs, support etc
alltogether

I can't post this to all the threads that I would like to, so I'm
opening a new one. 

Follow this:

1. MS is wrongdoing by releasing (and charging for use of) software that
has bugs in it. Users of such software have losses in time/money by
trying to keep up with applying pathches, or just by trying to keep the
uptime high.

2. Admins are wrongdoing by not applying patches to the systems they
maintain. There are losses tied to such misspractice, too.

3. Worm authors are wrongdoing by writing software that propagate
through the networks by exploiting all of the above. Again, the losses
occur in time/money spent to remove the worms from the systems affected.

It is obvious that almost every legal system in the world treats #3 as
crime, while #2 and #1 are broadly tolerated. Noone here is against the
book of law, but it just seems to be in contrast to the natural and
intuitive feeling of justice that majority of people might have
regarding the issues like these. See - only one of the three wrongdoers
is being punished. 

Is it right? Or - is it wrong? 

BTW, I have a funny feeling that damages/losses caused by #3 might very
often be far less than the ones caused by #2 and #1. 

Am I alone?

cikasole



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Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html