Microsoft wins a Pwnie for failure

Microsoft wins a Pwnie for failure
Microsoft has earned the dubious distinction of having the Most Epic FAIL of the last year in computer security with a browser cross-site scripting (XSS) filter that actually exacerbated the problem.

The company was given the award at the conclusion of the annual Blackhat 2010 security conference Wednesday in Las Vegas. I wasn’t there so I don’t know if anyone from Microsoft MCTS Training stepped up to accept the award, head perhaps covered by a paper bag.

According to a white paper produced by researchers Eduardo Vela Nava and David Lindsay, Internet Explorer 8 implemented an anti-XSS mechanism to detect such attacks. Here’s the funny part: “This feature can be abused by attackers in order to enable XSS on web sites and web pages that would otherwise be immune to XSS,” the researchers noted.

I’m not sure if he was specifically referencing the IE 8 XSS fail, but Kevin Turner, chief operating officer for Microsoft, said this during an analyst conference this morning in Redmond: “Yes, we had a little headwinds. We had several things we had to do with IE 8 this past year,” Turner said, right after describing the product as “the safest, most secure browser in the marketplace.”

Maybe now it is.

Microsoft beat out McAfee and IBM in the Most Epic FAIL category: McAfee for issuing an anti-virus update in April that rendered hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide inoperable; and IBM for handing out free USB drives at a conference loaded with malware.

The only other Microsoft mention was a Pwnie for Best Privilege Escalation Bug and this award went to Tavis Ormandy, the researcher who discovered it in multiple operating systems from Windows NT 3.1 to Windows 7. In awarding the Pwnie to Ormandy, Blackhat stated: “This privilege escalation bug required more than a few tricks to exploit. Its discovery shows a rare understanding of some of the more obscure aspects of the Intel architecture.”

Microsoft MCITP Certification was nominated, but failed to win — or should I say failed to lose — in the categories of Best Server-Side Bug and Best Client-Side Bug. Again, in these categories, the Pwnies went to the people who discovered the bugs, not the companies that created them.

Adobe joins Microsoft patch-reporting program

Adobe joins Microsoft’s patch-reporting program
Adobe and Microsoft are now working together to give security companies a direct line into their bug-fixing efforts.

By year’s end, Adobe will start using the Microsoft MCTS Training Active Protections Program (MAPP) to share details on its latest patches, according to Brad Arkin, Adobe’s director of product security and privacy. “The MAPP program is the gold standard for how the software vendors should be sharing information about product vulnerabilities prior to shipping security updates,” he said.
Intel Solution Brief: Vyatta + Intel Quad Core = 20 Gbps Routing: Download now

Adobe initially wanted to reproduce MAPP, but soon realized that it would take a lot of work to build a program similar to Microsoft’s, which was piloted two years ago. Arkin’s team began discussions with Microsoft, at first in hopes of picking up some tips. “Eventually, together, we came to the conclusion that it would be a lot more fun to work together on this rather than Microsoft helping us to reinvent the wheel,” he said.

Typically, whenever a major patch is released, hackers quickly begin to analyze the patch to see what flaws were fixed. They then rush to work out attacks that would exploit the vulnerability on unpatched products.

Adobe has been hit hard in the past two years by hackers who have found bug after bug in the company’s products. This often means hard work for security companies, who must scramble to add detection for these attacks.

It’s become so bad that one security company, SourceFire, is holding an exclusive Adobe Hater’s Ball on Wednesday here at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The Ball is really a tongue-in-cheek joke, modelled on comedian Dave Chappelle’s Playa Hater’s Ball.

“My guys have a love-hate relationship with the guys over at Adobe,” said SourceFire Director Matt Watchinski. “Every time a vulnerability comes out of their stuff, we have to jump.”

Arkin said he and other Adobe researchers will be at the event.

With Adobe jointing the MAPP program, however, security companies like SourceFire should do less scrambling.

MAPP gives them early notice on upcoming patches — typically about 48 hours — so they have more time to build attack detection into their security systems. About 65 security companies participate in MAPP. All of them will soon start getting the Adobe data.

This is the first time that Microsoft MCITP Certification has extended the MAPP program to cover another company’s products, said Dave Forstrom, a director with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group.

However, it may not be the last. Forstrom didn’t rule out the possibility that other software vendors could also jump on board.