Date: Tue Mar 29 15:13:45 2005
From: jericho at attrition.org (security curmudgeon)
Subject: windows linux final study


: Here we go again, so called intelligent people talking utter rot!

[..]

: Come on people grow up, put your prejudices aside and look at the 
: information provided, draw conclusions based on that, and be prepared to 
: change that opinion when the information to hand dictates.

Did you read the report yourself? You sound like a Microsoft cheerleader.

>From the report:

  Additionally, when examining the days of risk  time between when a 
  vulnerability is publicly disclosed to when a patch is released by the 
  vendor for that vulnerability  we found an average of 31.3 days of risk 
  per vulnerability for the Windows solution, 69.6 days of risk per 
  vulnerability for the minimal Linux solution and 71.4 days of risk for 
  the default Linux solution.

This is from page 2 of the study. Can we agree that if you find a serious 
flaw/error in the paper by page 2 (out of 37) that one might have reason 
to be skeptical?

Does anyone in the security industry *really* think Windows ever has a 
31.3 day of risk for vulnerabilities? If you are naive enough to believe 
this, dare to visit eEye's page on their advisories where they not only 
disclose wonderful vulnerabilities in the Windows platform, but also track 
how long it took Microsoft to patch them.

>From a soon to be published article:

  Claims of Microsoft only having a 31 day risk window seem very suspect, 
  especially given their current 30 day patch cycle compared to some 
  vulnerabilities that were disclosed as many as 208 days [1] before the 
  patch. Before you dismiss this as a freak occurance, eEye Digital 
  Security has recorded other time frames such as 71 days [2], 188 days 
  [3], and 190 days [4]. These figures are right in line with several 
  other security companies that have disclosed issues to Microsoft.</p>

If you think eEye is not the norm for dealing with Microsoft, think back 
to Thor Larholm's excellent (but discontinued) page of unpatched Microsoft 
IE vulnerabilities. Looking at an archived copy of that [5], we see the 
following:

  11 September 2003: There are currently 31 unpatched vulnerabilities.

  [..]

  IE https certificate attack
  Description: Undetected SSL man-in-the-middle attacks, decrypting 
  SSL-encrypted traffic in realtime
  Published: June 6 2000 ( ACROS )

So there we have MSIE vulnerabilites left unpatched for *3 years* and may 
still be unpatched for all we know. If you read several sources of 
vulnerability information, you will consistantly see Microsoft is not that 
quick on patching vulnerabilities.. certainly not 31.3 days quick. If 
these examples aren't enough to make you question the report, ask others 
who have found major vulnerabilities in Windows. I'd love for Marc 
Maiffret or Chris Wysopal or the countless others who have discovered 
Windows vulnerabilities to reply to this with their first hand experience 
in getting a fast turnaround on patches.

Look beyond that and think out loud about the second part of the original 
paragraph quoted:

  per vulnerability for the Windows solution, 69.6 days of risk per 
  vulnerability for the minimal Linux solution and 71.4 days of risk for 
  the default Linux solution.

So now there is a difference in patch cycle between "minimal linux" and 
"default linux"? Can anyone cite a source for any linux vendor that makes 
this distinction between install types AND releases patches on a different 
cycle for them? How far do you have to take word mincing to make this 
statement true?


jericho


[1] http://www.eeye.com/html/research/advisories/AD20041012.html
[2] http://www.eeye.com/html/research/advisories/AD20041012A.html
[3] http://www.eeye.com/html/research/advisories/AD20040413C.html
[4] http://www.eeye.com/html/research/advisories/AD20050208.html
[5] http://attrition.org/security/rant/z/thor_larholm-unpatched_ie.html

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