Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF
From: "Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP]" <sbradcpa () pacbell net>
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 16:07:17 -0800
Don't release a beta patch ....1. it would get patches into reverse engineering faster [hello look what happened to the leaked patch]
and 2.Don't ask for an untested patch if you are not willing to be there in the newsgroups, communities and listserves helping the dead bodies after a bad patch sir.
Do you do/handle change management in your firm? Even in my small firm I could not handle the 'any time/any day' that patches used to come out before.
Be careful of what you ask for sir...because if you get what you want.... ensure your firm has the resources to test/deploy/change management on a 24 hours a day 7 days a week schedule because exploits can be built in less than 20 minutes.
If the security issue has been responsible disclosed, there is a process that is needed to build a patch and test the patch. Some issues take more than 'days' sir. And testing takes time as well, sir.
For my community I want tested patches sir, and I will argue until doomsday on that point. Don't hurt my community with a bad patch or a beta patch, sir.
Susan SBS community member Gadi Evron wrote:
What we really learn from this all WMF "thingie", is that when Microsoft wants to, it can.Microsoft released the WMF patch ahead of schedule ( http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/181 ) Yep, THEY released the PATCH ahead of schedule. What does that teach us? There are a few options: 1. When Microsoft wants to, it can.There was obviously pressure with this 0day, still — most damage out there from vulnerabilities is done AFTER Microsoft releases the patch and the vulnerability becomes public.2. Microsoft decided to jump through a few QA tests this time, and release a patch.Why should they be releasing BETA patches?If they do, maybe they should release BETA patches more often, let those who want to - use them. It can probably also shorten the testing period considerably. If this patch is not BETA, but things did just /happen/ to progress more swiftly.. than maybe we should re-visit option #1 above....Maybe it’s just that we are used to sluggishness. Perhaps it is time we, as users and clients, started DEMANDING of Microsoft to push things up a notch....Put in the necessary resources, and release patches within days of first discovery. I’m willing to live with weeks and months in comparison to the year+ that we have seen sometimes. Naturally some problems take longer to fix, but you get my drift.It’s just like with false positives… as an industry we are now used to them. We don’t treat them as bugs, we treat them as an “acceptable level of”, as I heard Aviram mention a few times.... The rest is in my blog entry on the subject: http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/182 Gadi.
--Letting your vendors set your risk analysis these days? http://www.threatcode.com
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Current thread:
- what we REALLY learned from WMF Gadi Evron (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF James Lay (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Niek (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Nick FitzGerald (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Niek (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP] (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Gadi Evron (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP] (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Gadi Evron (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP] (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Gadi Evron (Jan 05)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF James Lay (Jan 05)
- Re: Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Devdas Bhagat (Jan 06)
- Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Dave Korn (Jan 06)
- Re: Re: what we REALLY learned from WMF Michael Holstein (Jan 06)