4 ms·
I'm not arguing about compensation, I'm arguing about public safety. People and organizations selling exploits are effectively complicit in the damage resulting
by ihsw 13y ago
I'm not arguing about compensation, I'm arguing about public safety. People and organizations selling exploits are effectively complicit in the damage resulting from their sales.
- tptacek 13y agoThese are people selling vulnerability research to the only company in the world that is capable of effectively fixing those vulnerabilities.
- ihsw 13y agoThat's exactly my point, which is why it's dangerous. If the exploits were made public as soon as possible (full disclosure) then MS will have incentive to release bugfixes as soon as possible to the general public.
- tptacek 13y agoIf you want to release your vulnerabilities publicly, Microsoft isn't stopping you.
- dvmmh 13y agoBy taking the cash, I am sure you are bound by secrecy enforced by jail time. I see these increased payments as hush money to keep researchers quiet while they feed them to the NSA for zero day exploits.
- tptacek 13y agoMicrosoft can't jail anybody.
- lawnchair_larry 13y agoYou're either a bad troll or you would make a bad co-conspirator. Just commit a security bug to your own product and save the 100k, duh.
- sliverstorm 13y agoWhy would Microsoft sell the NSA exploits some black hat came up with against their own operating system? They can just install a backdoor.
- davorak 13y agoThey do not have to pay a programmer to put in a back door who may one day talk about it. Fewer people need to know about the program in general. By default a naturally occurring exploit probably upon inspection looks less intentional then one put there on purpose.
- danielweber 13y agoFewer people need to know about the program in general . . . except for the outsider who mailed them about it and got paid a chunk of money as a result.
- sliverstorm 13y agoNot to mention, the outsider is a complete unknown. Are they an upstanding white hat? Or are they the darkest of greys? You have no idea. At least an internal employee is on your payroll, and has been screened with a background check. You don't get to screen which people get to discover vulnerabilities.
- davorak 13y agoThis person would just be reporting a exploit and and getting paid for it. They would not know about the program which takes that exploit and then gives it to the NSA.
- sliverstorm 13y agoAnd why would a programmer know it was for the NSA? Just tell your underling, "We need a backdoor for <Plausible reason>"
- ConceptJunkie 13y agoJail time? I don't think so, but I could see MS making you sign an NDA to get the money. There may be other criteria they use in order to pay out. Nevertheless, I don't see how this is a bad thing.
- jacalata 13y agoSo put your money where your mouth is and build a consortium that will pay researchers to release them publicly.
- Flenser 13y agoWhile that might decrease the total number of days in a year when there are unpatched exploits that MS knows about, it would increase the total number of days in a year when there are exploits known to hackers. I don't think that would make us safer.
- danielweber 13y agoWhat is the damage to public safety if I find a way to exploit Windows and tell Microsoft about it?
- ihsw 13y agoMicrosoft releases this exploit information to governments as a matter of policy, and the governments accordingly conduct clandestine operations and cyber-attacks using this exploit information. MS is in the unique position of being the only ones able to fix the exploit so they are a single-point-of-failure, which diminishes the security of everybody using Windows operating systems.
- tptacek 13y agoNo, Microsoft releases vulnerability information to the government along with private companies in the antivirus and intrusion prevention space. They do this because they have a coordinated patch schedule that creates windows of known vulnerability. Microsoft does not have the in-house expertise to feed exploits to anyone.
- lawnchair_larry 13y ago> Microsoft does not have the in-house expertise to feed exploits to anyone. I agree with you everywhere else in this thread, but you are clearly not up to speed on who works there if you believe that to be accurate. Some of the best exploit writers, who have pioneered new classes of techniques, work at Microsoft (because Microsoft went on a recruiting spree to target them).
- tptacek 13y agoI know who works there and believe my statement to be accurate; remember, we're talking about the total volume of all vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft products.
- 13y ago