Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back
From: Tim <tim-security () sentinelchicken org>
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 16:13:51 -0700
Valdis, I've read all of your postings on this thread and I just don't buy what you're saying.
Except if a signing key gets compromised, as happened to one Linux vendor recently, causing a lot of kerfluffle... Setting up a proper signing system involves a certain amount of actual cost and effort. And every organization that produces code, be it for-profit proprietary code or free open-source code, has to make resource tradeoffs.
Having a signing key that is poorly protected at the vendor's offices is still better than not signing any updates.
Is there any actual *evidence* that hijacking "authorized" updates is a big enough problem to be worth it? If each year, 5 of their customers get pwned by the sort of attack that Evilgrade does, but 50,000 get pwned by "click here" popups that code signing won't do squat to prevent, is it really worth their time and effort? Sure, sucks to be one of the 5, but if they instead spend the resources to do something *else* to make their customer's lives better that would benefit thousands rather than the 5....
It *really* doesn't take that much effort to enforce SSL/TLS certificate verification in the automated update process. You don't need to do anything special with "code signing". Just check for updates via HTTPS URLs and require that verification checks out. tim _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back, (continued)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Jacky Jack (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 30)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Dan Kaminsky (Oct 30)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Mario Vilas (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Christian Sciberras (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back [lesh] Ivan Nikolic (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Christian Sciberras (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 31)
- Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back Tim (Oct 31)