[fastball]

Increasing the chance of a bad actor actually doing something with a vulnerability seems bad, actually. You're effectively shifting responsibility to consumers, who are probably not going to see a CVE for one of the dozens of softwares they use every day.

[ang_cire]

> You're effectively shifting responsibility to consumers, who are probably not going to see a CVE for one of the dozens of softwares they use every day.

Which is again, a problem created by the companies themselves. The way this should work is that the researcher discloses to the company, and the company reaches out to and informs their customers immediately. Then they fix it.

But instead companies refuse to tell their customers when they're at risk, and make it out to be the researchers that are endangering people, when those researchers don't wait on an arbitrary, open-ended future date.

> Increasing the chance of a bad actor actually doing something with a vulnerability seems bad, actually.

Unless you know who knows what already, this is unprovable supposition (it could already be being exploited in the wild), and the arguments about whether POC code is good or bad is well tread, and covers this question.

You are just making the argument that obscurity is security, and it's not.

[layer8]

> The way this should work is that the researcher discloses to the company, and the company reaches out to and informs their customers immediately. Then they fix it.

If that was common practice, bad actors would make sure to be a registered customer of all interesting targets, so that they get informed early about vulnerabilities before there is a fix. And it would create a black market for that information.

When someone gets the information “Asus BIOS has an RCE vulnerability related to driver installation”, they’ll be able to figure out the details quickly with high probability, like OP did.

[fastball]

You are shopping at a store along with some other customers. When entering the store, you notice that an employee of the store has left a large knife outside, under a trashcan. A shady character is wandering around the store, looking for someone to steal from, but hasn't figured out the right angle of attack yet. At some point, you (ever the responsible citizen) stand up on a table in the store and yell "Hey! Just wanted to let everyone know that there is a large, scary looking knife under the trash can outside. You have been warned." You then climb down from the table and leave the store. Knives are dangerous, after all. Immediately after your announcement the shady character goes and grabs the knife, which they then use to stab a customer on their way out of the store and steal their stuff. Unfortunately the customer didn't hear your announcement about the impending danger because they were in the toilet at the time.

Whew, thank god for public disclosure with no prior warning to the people who would've been best equipped to retrieve their knife.

---

This was clearly not the best way to handle the situation.

Sure, you didn't know that the thief was unaware of the knife before your announcement, but he sure as shit was aware afterwards. You not knowing what they know is not a good reason to indiscriminately yell to no one in particular.

I did not make the argument that obscurity is security. The knife being under a trashcan is a risk and should be addressed by management. But that doesn't mean non-obscurity automatically improves security.

[walls]

Instead we get this version:

You are shopping at a store along with some other customers. When entering the store, you notice a gun laying on the ground by the door. You keep coming back every week, pointing it out, asking if that's intended or not.

They continue to ignore you, or explain how it's intended; a good thing even!

Eventually someone with malicious intent also sees the gun, picks it up, shoots a fellow customer, puts it back where it was, and walks off.

By the next day, miraculously, management will have found the time and resources to remove the gun.

[fastball]

Agreed, that is what often happens. But after seeing this pattern before, that does not mean the solution going forward is to yell "hey everyone there is a gun" and hope management gets to it before the person with malicious intent.

Sure, maybe management will ignore you if you tell them about the gun privately. At that point, feel free to disclose publicly. But they are guaranteed to not do anything if they don't know about it and you don't tell them (before telling everyone else including bad actors).

[ang_cire]

A better analogy would be if you see a bunch of people walking around in faulty stab vests, and you tell them that the vests are faulty before they are recalled and replaced by the company. In which case, telling everyone those vests are actually not going to stop a knife, is a very good thing to do.

> I did not make the argument that obscurity is security... But that doesn't mean non-obscurity automatically improves security.

... egad. Yes, having information doesn't mean people will do the right thing with it, but you're not everyone's mommy/god/guardian. People should have the choice themselves about what actions they want to take, and what's in their own best interests.

And obscuring the information that they need to make that choice, in the name of not making them less secure, is, ipso facto, asserting that the obscuring is keeping them more secure than they otherwise might be.

So yes, you absolutely are arguing for obscurity as security.

[fastball]

Sure, we can run with your analogy. So you make everyone aware that the stab vests are faulty. One of the people you make aware of this fact is a thief with a knife, who previously wasn't gonna take the risk on robbing anyone, since he only had a knife (not a gun) and everyone was wearing stab proof vests. But now he knows, so he goes for it and stabs someone. You are partially responsible for this outcome in this hypothetical scenario, as the thief didn't know beforehand about the defect and the only reason he ended up stabbing someone was due to this knowledge. Again, you not knowing whether or not the thief already knows does not excuse you if he did not and now does through your actions.

I'm arguing that unveiling the obscurity can lead to attacks that wouldn't have happened otherwise, and you are partially to blame for those if they happen (which is true). I am not saying it was "more secure" before the disclosure. Just that, in the world afterwards, you must take responsibility for everyone knowing, including people who did not know before and abuse that knowledge.

[ang_cire]

> But now he knows, so he goes for it and stabs someone.

Except his old knife he already had with him isn't made for exploiting the flaw in the vest, so it doesn't work. He needs to go home and build a new one, and the people in the mall can go home before he comes back, now that they know their vests are flawed. Otherwise, someone who comes in and is aware of the flaw when the users are not, can stab everyone, and they'd have no clue they were vulnerable.

In real-world terms, the kind of mass-exploitation that people use to fear monger about disclosure already happens everyday, and most people don't notice. The script kid installing a monero miner on your server should not be driving the conversation, it should be the IC spook recording a journalist/ dissident/ etc.

> Just that, in the world afterwards, you must take responsibility for everyone knowing, including people who did not know before and abuse that knowledge.

This is just a generalized argument for censorship of knowledge. Yes, humans can use knowledge to do bad things. No, that does not justify hiding information. No, that does not make librarians/ researchers/ teachers responsible for the actions of those that learn from them.

[haswell]

> Except his old knife he already had with him isn't made for exploiting the flaw in the vest, so it doesn't work.

This seems like an unnecessary constraint to bolster your point instead of actually addressing what the other person is saying.

In this analogy, why can’t the old knife exploit the flaw? If the problem with the vest allows a sharp implement through the material when inserted at the correct angle or in the correct place, any sharp object should do.

To bring this back to the real world, this is all unfolding in virtual/digital spaces. The attacker doesn’t need to physically go anywhere, nor can potential victims easily leave the store in many cases. And the attacker often needs very little time to start causing harm thanks to the landscape of tools available today.

[strken]

Why should it work that way? Disclosing the vuln before fixing it seems like a surefire way for my mum to lose her life's savings. Why do you hate my mum so much?

[pixl97]

Why not turn this around?

Why do the companies that make the software hate your mom so much they push out release after release of shit? We're all fine with these developers crapping on the floor as long as we give them 30 days to clean up their steaming pile.

If instead every release was capable of instantly ruining someone's life, maybe we'd be more capable of releasing secure software and judging what software is secure.