full-disclosure - Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation framework is back

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Message-ID: <172085.1288535790@localhost>
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 10:36:30 -0400
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
To: Mario Vilas <mvilas@...il.com>
Cc: full-disclosure <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Evilgrade 2.0 - the update explotation
	framework is back

On Sun, 31 Oct 2010 13:09:27 BST, Mario Vilas said:

> Just signing the update packages prevents this attack, so it's not that hard
> to fix.

Except if a signing key gets compromised, as happened to one Linux vendor
recently, causing a lot of kerfluffle...  Setting up a proper signing system
involves a certain amount of actual cost and effort.  And every organization
that produces code, be it for-profit proprietary code or free open-source code,
has to make resource tradeoffs.

Is there any actual *evidence* that hijacking "authorized" updates is a big
enough problem to be worth it?  If each year, 5 of their customers get pwned
by the sort of attack that Evilgrade does, but 50,000 get pwned by "click here"
popups that code signing won't do squat to prevent, is it really worth their
time and effort?  Sure, sucks to be one of the 5, but if they instead spend the
resources to do something *else* to make their customer's lives better that would
benefit thousands rather than the 5....

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