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Re: [Full-Disclosure] Gates: 'You don't need perfect code' for good security



Beaty, Bryan wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but...

I believe every worm listed below could have been prevented had everyone
patched their systems.
the blaster worm preceded the patch so this argument is DOA

I would like the security community to take more responsibility for
their own (in)actions. If you were hit by Blaster then you failed to
enforce a good patch management policy. Who's fault is that? Patch
management is boring and so we often ignore it. Hackers and worms simply
take advantage of our laziness. I guess blaster could be a form of
social engineering. "I know admins don't patch so I can write a worm and
kill the world."
note above

There is no such thing as perfect code. If you want a completely secure
system you can buy them but they are unbelievably expensive. If you have
a business justification for something that secure then buy it.
Otherwise you have to live with what you can get from Linux, UNIX, or
even Microsoft.

Microsoft has at least come out with some very good patch management
systems lately (SUS) and they are free. Red Hat charges me a yearly fee
for their RHN.
you do not have to pay for RHN to get redhat patches. I rh9 for a bit on this notebook(had vid issues with all distros here) and was able to get all updates without subbing to RHN. MS has no choice but to come out with free patching tools because of the huge amount of patches for all MS products. I run Astaro Security Linux here at the house..blaster and its ilk got killed at my then cable modem and never made it in. I have netbios blocked incoming and outgoing and all e-mail is scanned at the firewall with all executable attachments being blocked. However it is funny MS wants to make automated patch downloading mandatory when on every machine here the automatic windows update did not catch wind of new patches available on WU for sometimes after 7 days of the release on WU. MS has a long way to go on their patching..both in terms of quality of software and patches and delivery. 

I believe the #1 security threat today is poor patch management. Is that
Microsoft's fault?

--> I am off of my soap box now.
the number one security threat today is exploits that target a weak security model to a degree that exploits can be so easily 0-day released without anyone knowing. Also even with all patches right now IE(and therefore windows) is still subject to remote download and installation of programs without user notification(this is widely known just google for it).

Bryan Beaty

-----Original Message-----
From: Exibar [mailto:exibar@thelair.com] Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 1:40 PM
To: Jeremiah Cornelius; full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com
Subject: Re: [Full-Disclosure] Gates: 'You don't need perfect code' for
good security


What an idiot....

   Take the loveletter worm, when it was first released even if you had
a 100% up to date AntiVirus software program, you would still get hit
within
the first 8 hours.... slammer, blaster, etc all the same thing.    The
took
advantage of holes in the OPERATING SYSTEM!!!!

   Yes we have ways of updating our VirusSoftware that works very very
well, McAfee has E-Policy Orchstrator, which I swear by.

  I'm not going to go on, but if Windows was as secure as Bill Gates and
company says it is, why was blaster, slammer, codered etc even an issue?

Exibar


----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeremiah Cornelius" <jeremiah@nur.net>
To: <full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com>
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 1:32 PM
Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Gates: 'You don't need perfect code' for good
security



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FLAME ON!

http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&sid=53897

"But there are two other techniques: one is called firewalling and the

other

is called keeping the software up to date. None of these problems (viruses and worms) happened to people who did either one of those things. If you

had

your firewall set up the right way - and when I say firewall I include


scanning e-mail and scanning file transfer -- you wouldn't have had a problem. But did we have the tools that made that easy and automatic and

that

you could really audit that you had done it? No. Microsoft in particular

and

the industry in general didn't have it."

"The second is just the updating thing. Anybody who kept their software up

to

date didn't run into any of those problems, because the fixes preceded


the exploit. Now the times between when the vulnerability was published and

when

somebody has exploited it, those have been going down, but in every case

at

this stage we've had the fix out before the exploit. So next is making


it easy to do the updating, not for general features but just for the very

few

critical security things, and then reducing the size of those patches,


and reducing the frequency of the patches, which gets you back to the code quality issues. We have to bring these things to bear, and the very

dramatic

things that we can do in the short term have to do with the firewalls and

the

updating infrastructure. "
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_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html

_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html


--
May God Bless you and everything you touch.

My "foundation" verse:
Isaiah 54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.


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Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html