BIND Flaws Reignite Security Debate

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,708890,00.asp

By Dennis Fisher
November 15, 2002 

An apparent delay in the availability of patches for the
vulnerabilities in BIND that were disclosed earlier this week is once
again highlighting the seemingly endless debate over when and to whom
vulnerability data should be released.

Internet Security Systems Inc.'s X-Force research team on Tuesday
released an advisory warning of three newly discovered vulnerabilities
in BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) versions 4 and 8. One of the
flaws allows a remote attacker to take over a vulnerable server and
run any code of choice.

ISS officials said that they did not believe that the vulnerabilities
were known in the computer underground or were being actively
exploited by crackers. The advisory also said that patches for the
problems were ready and provided an e-mail address at the Internet
Software Consortium where users could request the patches.

However, according to messages from BIND users posted on a security
mailing list, the patches at the time of the advisory apparently were
only available to organizations that had paid the ISC a fee to receive
early warning of problems with BIND. The ISC, which maintains BIND,
established a limited distribution, early-notification mailing list
last year when word of another batch of vulnerabilities leaked before
patches were available.

BIND runs on the vast majority of the Internet's DNS servers, a key
part of the global network's infrastructure.

The list was meant to give vendors some lead time to fix their
software before an announcement went out to the general public.  
However, in this case, the advisory hit the Internet at least 24 hours
before the patches were available to most BIND users.

That window of time when a vulnerability is publicly disclosed and the
patch is released is at the heart of the full-disclosure debate about
how much information to release and who should have access to it.

Michael Brennen, president of FishNet Inc., a Plano, Texas, domain
registrar, wrote in a message to BugTraq that he emailed the ISC and
asked to be sent the patches. He received a response about eight hours
later saying that he had been added to the patch announcement list.  
Brennen also asked why the patches had not been made available at the
time of the advisory.

The ISC told him that they wanted to make sure that the right audience
had the patches first.

"My response to [the ISC] was that the right audience should change in
relation to the announcement. As of the moment of the announcement,
the right audience should be expanded to include all those placed at
risk because they use the software," Brennen wrote. "Failure to make
the patches available suddenly puts many systems at rapidly increasing
risk."

ISS security officials said they coordinated their release with the
ISC.

"Our understanding was that the patches were available to everyone"  
when the advisory was published, said Dan Ingevaldson, team lead for
ISS' X-Force, based in Atlanta. "We notified them of the
vulnerabilities on Oct. 25. They knew when we were releasing it."

ISC officials said the patches were posted to the organization's site
at about 7 p.m. EST Wednesday.

"Prior to this, as early as Monday the patches were available for the
asking to anyone who wasn't obviously going to reverse engineer them
for malicious purposes or distribute them without our permission,"  
said Lynda McGinley, program driector of the ISC. "Unfortunately, we
weren't able to keep the patches from leaking out. Members of the BIND
Forum's early security notification announcements received the patches
over the weekend."

One post to the BugTraq mailing list said the patches were posted to
the ISC FTP server late Wednesday night. However, the time stamp on
the patches indicates they were produced on Oct. 30, leaving open the
question of why they weren't available when the advisory went out Nov.  
12.

In an e-mail interview, Brennen said he chose not to pay the fee to
join the early announcement list and is now preparing to remove BIND
from his environment.

"Ultimately each of us has to take the final responsibility for the
software we choose to use. There is a price to pay for all such
choices, whether in money, or time, or development," Brennen said. "No
doubt some will choose to pay the ISC fees for early notification. I
choose not to be held hostage. I will do what it takes to replace BIND
in my systems."

(Editor's Note: This story has been updated since its original posting
to include comments from the ISC's Lynda McGinley.)



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