Date: Fri Jul  1 12:08:30 2005
From: socrates at newsguy.com (Socrates)
Subject: RE: Publishing exploit code - what is it good for

I for one am glad to see PoC code. Too often vendors are very vague with 
their patchsets (Oracle basically says to install a huge tarball to fix 
'critical' vulnerabilities without listing exactly what it fixes and the 
recent Backup Exec vulnerability had a later patch version available for 
a different unrelated problem than the published advisory for the agent 
password overflow - you had to read three different advisories to find 
out if the later patchset had the fix - it did, even then it was a crap 
shoot). Given the lack of disclosure from the vendors, I like to have 
PoC code available to test if the patch really was applied correctly 
(and was the correct one). Don't forget the instances when either a 
patch silently fails, or if you are a security admin, don't trust that 
the admins really patched all of their machines. I would forgo most PoC 
codes if vendors would *exactly* explain what was in their patchsets 
(and provided a way to test for the existence of easily) and what they 
addressed without these matrix's of different versions of their product 
cross-referenced to a simple 'critical' reference. Even as vague as MS 
announcements are, they are still one of the better disclosing vendors 
when it comes to their announcements.

Then again, I like to learn from the PoC code to further my knowledge as 
how the inner workings of programs work and how much of a poor job 
someone did while coding it.

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