[toast0]

The user is vulnerable while the problem is unfixed. Google publishing a vulnerability doesn't change the existence of the vulnerability. If Google can find it, so can others.

Making the vulnerability public makes it easy to find to exploit, but it also makes it easy to find to fix.

[tremon]

If it is so easy to fix, then why doesn't Google fix it? So far they've spent more effort in spreading knowledge about the vulnerability than fixing it, so I don't agree with your assessment that Google is not actively making the world worse here.

[toast0]

I didn't say it was easy to fix. I said a publication made it easy to find it, if someone wanted to fix something.

If you want to fix up old codecs in ffmpeg for fun, would you rather have a list of known broken codecs and what they're doing wrong; or would you rather have to find a broken codec first.

[BobaFloutist]

>If Google can find it, so can others.

What a strange sentence. Google can do a lot of things that nobody can do. The list of things that only Google, a handful of nation states, and a handful of Google-peers can do is probably even longer.

[toast0]

Sure, but running a fuzzer on ancient codecs isn't that special. I can't do it, but if I wanted to learn how, codecs would be a great place to start. (in fact, Google did some of their early fuzzing work in 2012-2014 on ffmpeg [1]) Media decoders have been the vector for how many zero interaction, high profile attacks lately? Media decoders were how many of the Macromedia Flash vulnerabilities? Codecs that haven't gotten any new media in decades but are enabled in default builds are a very good place to go looking for issues.

Google does have immense scale that makes some things easier. They can test and develop congestion control algorithms with world wide (ex-China) coverage. Only a handful of companies can do that; nation states probably can't. Google isn't all powerful either, they can't make Android updates really work even though it might be useful for them.

[1] https://security.googleblog.com/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-thousand-...

[om2]

Nation-states are a very relevant part of the threat model.

[nmz]

> If Google can find it, so can others.

While true, Only Google has google infrastructure, this presupposes that 100% of all published exploits would be findable.

[chii]

you'd assume that a bad actor would have found the exploit and kept it hidden for their own use. To assume otherwise is fundamentally flawed security practice.

[betaby]

> If Google can find it, so can others.

Not really. It requires time, ergo money.

[chii]

which bad actors would have more of, as they'd have a financial incentive to make use of the found vulnerabilities. White hats don't get anything in return (financially) - it's essentially charity work.