Re: Scanners and unpublished vulnerabilities - Full Disclosure

["Jon Bull" <jon.bull () knowledgelinks com>]

Hello,

First time posting to the list, be gentle.

I wish to make three points, one suggestion, and small side note:

1)  Unless the consultants liscence is very carefully distributed, unethical
people will purchase Typhoon II can be furnished with near-zero-day
exploits.  These are exploits that the public will be unable to guard
against until a patch is released.  I believe that eventually Typhoon II
will be used by unethical people to this end, and that it is impossible to
guard against this eventuality as long as the consultants liscense exists.
(This point may be invalid if the consultant must go through NGSS who would
verify permission with the site to be tested.  I doubt this is the case, but
it would speak well of NGSS if this is the manner in which the consultants
lisence is handled.)

2) Once an exploit is added to the list of checks on Typhoon II and an
administrator or consultant determines his system to be vulnerable, he must
still wait for a patch.

3) The recent JRun advisory, I feel, gives up too much information.  I'm
sure as I type this someone is working to figure the length of the host
header field needed to achieve the overflow.

Suggestion - Instead of making a scanner to test for a vulnerability that a
Typhoon user may not be able to prevent, why not create IDS software to
detect the exploit?  To me this seems a more defensive,  responsible, and
effective role.

Side Note/Opinion - I would suggest anyone afflicted by this who will be
charged for the upgrade heckle their sales rep.  Security updates for a
product should not come at a price, or do you pay extra for a Quality
Assured version?


Thanks for your time and attention,

Jon

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Litchfield" <david () ngssoftware com>
To: "batz" <batsy () vapour net>; "Alfred Huger" <ah () securityfocus com>
Cc: <pen-test () securityfocus com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: Scanners and unpublished vulnerabilities - Full Disclosure


> > The statement could have been written more clearly. Comma's help
> > to delineate dependencies in a statement. Here's what I got out
> > of it:
> >
> > - NGSSoftware does vulnerability research.
> > - Vendors have been slow to patch vulnerabilities.
> > - To make patch process more prompt, vendors will be given 1 week heads
up
> >   when vulnerabilities are discovered.
> > - After 1 week, the public will be alerted by NGSS.
> > - NGSS will provide a workaround to the public, unless that
> >   workaround will provide exploitation details.
> > - NGSS will add a check for the vulnerability to vuln assessment
software,
> >   regardless of whether the check would disclose exploitation details.
> > - This process is consistent with ietf Christey-Wysopal draft.
> > - This process will make the patch process more visible by
> >   providing a way for the public to see how long it took to write the
> >   patch.
>
> A fairly good summation, however....
>
> > This process will keep some exploitation details away from the public,
and
> > particularly, a minority of malicious members of the public.
> >
> > Though obvious, it is worth noting that this process will only keep
> > exploitation details of vulnerabilities disovered by NGSS from the
public,
> > and the underground will continue to write exploits for private
> distribution
> > until they are old enough to be hired as consultants.
>
> This comment (and some which follow) indicate you've missed on of the key
> points. When the vendor does release a patch NGSSoftware will follow up
with
> full details as normal. The VNA is not intended to replace our normally
full
> advisory - it simply exists as an interim solution to 'help' ensure
vendors
> release patches in a timely fsahion.
>
>
> > Alfreds comments about how this will affect the pen-testing profession
> seem
> > to be based on the possibility that, advisories published by NGSS will
> cause
> > customers to want to be sure their pen-testers are checking for these
> > vulnerabilities. Without detailed information about these
vulnerabilities,
> > pen-testers may not be able to check for them, which could lead to
> incomplete
> > assessments, and potentially, an further erosion of the credibility of
the
> > profession.
>
> Again this is counteracted by the follow up advisory - see above. The
> pentest community will still get the full information so they can provide
> their customers with details of these vulnerabilities. It is not and never
> has been the intent of NGSSoftware or the guys that make up the company to
> 'horde' our research and keep it to ourselves.
>
>
>
> > NGSS's process is a way to make vulnerability R&D finally pay for
itself,
> > because they know that being simply being elite doesn't mean much to
> > the managers and CFO's making purchasing decisions. The only value add
> > that there is in a competetive market like security software/services
> > is proprietary technology, and a means to protect that advantage.
Spending
> > their expensive R&D resources to get props on bugtraq or at blackhat
won't
> > keep them fed, despite the community value of doing so.
>
> By putting these checks in Typhon, which we've always done, we buy a week
or
> two advantage over something like Nessus.
>
>
> Hope this clears things up.
> Thanks,
> David Litchfield
> http://www.ngssoftware.com/
>
>
>
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