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Any 0-day found by an NSA employee can and will be found by someone else, and then sold or used.

by burkaman 2y ago

tptacek 2y ago
The VEP is literally based on that premise.
- burkaman 2y ago
  Right, I think we agree?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Well, I'm just saying: the preceding comment believed themselves to be a contrarian for thinking it was OK for NSA to have these vulns, and it looked like you were rebutting them. But your rebuttal, if that's what it is, restates a premise NSA shares.
    - burkaman 2y ago
      The meaning I took from that comment is that the NSA should always keep any 0-day it finds indefinitely until it uses them. That's what I think "hoard" and "disclose only after they burn" means. It's a mindset of keeping everything you find secret because you might want to use it someday. My understanding of VEP is that the default is supposed to be to disclose immediately unless an agency has a really good reason not to, presumably because they want to use it soon. Don't hoard, only keep things that you're actually going to use.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        For clarity: the word "hoard" to me signals the idea that NSA keeps dozens of duplicative exploit chains around. The public policy rationale for them doing that is to me clear, but my understanding is that the practical incentives for them to do that aren't clear at all. When I say "burn", I mean that something has happened to increase the likelihood that an exploit chain is detectable. That could be them being done with it, it could be independent discovery, it could be changes in runtime protections. It's not "we use it a couple times and then deliberately burn it", though. We should stop talking about "NSA", because this is basically a universal LE/IC practice (throughout Europe as well).
throwaway2037 2y ago
In theory, I agree. In practice, how do you explain how NSO Group kept the secret for the 0-day exploit for WhatsApp remote execute for its Pegasus product? Or do I misunderstand Pegasus? Maybe it isn't a one trick pony, but a platform to continuously deliver 0-day exploits.

Any 0-day found by an NSA employee can and will be found by someone else, and then sold or used.

tptacek 2y ago

The VEP is literally based on that premise.

burkaman 2y ago
Right, I think we agree?
- tptacek 2y ago
  Well, I'm just saying: the preceding comment believed themselves to be a contrarian for thinking it was OK for NSA to have these vulns, and it looked like you were rebutting them. But your rebuttal, if that's what it is, restates a premise NSA shares.
  - burkaman 2y ago
    The meaning I took from that comment is that the NSA should always keep any 0-day it finds indefinitely until it uses them. That's what I think "hoard" and "disclose only after they burn" means. It's a mindset of keeping everything you find secret because you might want to use it someday. My understanding of VEP is that the default is supposed to be to disclose immediately unless an agency has a really good reason not to, presumably because they want to use it soon. Don't hoard, only keep things that you're actually going to use.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      For clarity: the word "hoard" to me signals the idea that NSA keeps dozens of duplicative exploit chains around. The public policy rationale for them doing that is to me clear, but my understanding is that the practical incentives for them to do that aren't clear at all. When I say "burn", I mean that something has happened to increase the likelihood that an exploit chain is detectable. That could be them being done with it, it could be independent discovery, it could be changes in runtime protections. It's not "we use it a couple times and then deliberately burn it", though. We should stop talking about "NSA", because this is basically a universal LE/IC practice (throughout Europe as well).

throwaway2037 2y ago

In theory, I agree. In practice, how do you explain how NSO Group kept the secret for the 0-day exploit for WhatsApp remote execute for its Pegasus product? Or do I misunderstand Pegasus? Maybe it isn't a one trick pony, but a platform to continuously deliver 0-day exploits.