On 06/10/2010 09:26 AM, Susan Bradley wrote: > You commented that Microsoft needs to address a communication > problem. It's irrelevant to the full disclosure issue in my mind. > > I'd honestly like to know if there is a break down in communication at > the MSRC that needs to be addressed. It appears there is one? >
No. He didn't. What he said was: "Those of you with large support contracts are encouraged to tell your support representatives that you would like to see Microsoft invest in developing processes for faster responses to external security reports." That sounds like he is suggesting that companies put pressure on Microsoft to invest more resources in external security reports to me. Microsoft has historically been exceedingly slow to address any reported vulnerabilities *except when people light a fire under them by publishing exploits*. Anything less typically takes months to years to fix. Even publicly shaming Microsoft isn't always enough. There are known, serious, published vulnerabilities that Microsoft didn't fix for *years*. I personally found and publicized one of them in 1998 - which *8 years later* was still not fixed <URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_cooking> It isn't about *communication*, it's about Microsoft treating external reports seriously and *taking action in a timely way - even if they don't have an 'exploit in hand'*. Tavis indicated he suspects that the 'black hats' already know about this particular exploit (IOW he thinks it is a '0-day' exploit already loose in the wild). So who, exactly, would be protected by his *NOT* publishing it? End users? They are probably already being exploited by it. -- Benjamin Franz _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/