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Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosureFirefox buffer overflow and full disclosurePosted Sep 15, 2005 16:38 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465)Parent article: Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure
I like Daniel Bernstein's attitude - publish the bug to punish the lazy
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Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 15, 2005 17:24 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] An unclaimed $500 bounty is no security guarantee.http://www-dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 15, 2005 23:47 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] The page you linked points out a memory exhaustion condition and aso-called "bounce flood". The memory exhaustion attack is addressed here: http://cr.yp.to/qmail/venema.html As for the bounce flood, I don't see how you can consider this a security problem because the size of the input is 1:1 the size of the output... ie, send a 5 mb message, get 5 mb back. Qmail is a huge target because of DJB's attitude and security guarantee, plus its reputation. So far the only "security problems" anyone can point out are total grabbing-at-the-straws attempts where you don't set ulimits (the procedure is described all over his site, and all the other Qmail sites as well), etc. I'd say that Qmail is the most secure daemon that there ever was, period. It's in huge and widespread use and despite an entire community of hackers that hate Dan, no one has actually managed to execute arbitrary code - or certainly, obtain root privileges. That's beside the point anyway. My point is that buffer overflows and other "escalated privileges" bugs are not at all a fact of life... they're a result of lazy programming and/or cluelessness. Sure, we all make mistakes... but I think Dan's qmail demonstrates that good design and careful programming can produce software that doesn't break. Firefox is certainly way on the other end of the spectrum, second to only Internet Explorer in its number of exploits.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 16, 2005 11:48 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] > Firefox is certainly way on the other end of the spectrum, second to only> Internet Explorer in its number of exploits.
Ok, most of your comments were reasonable, but this is just a horrible
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 16, 2005 15:06 UTC (Fri) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] Look... I don't dislike Firefox, and I hate Internet Explorer. I'drecommend Firefox over Internet Explorer to anyone and everyone. (Personally, I use Konqueror, because I have that option available on my platform). But there has been a large number of exploitable bugs that have been reported on Firefox since it became popular. When the floodgates first opened, I was like a lot of other Firefox users - I patched and said to myself, "well, it's still more secure than Internet Explorer". Then there was another volley, and another volley. Is Firefox more secure than Internet Explorer? Almost certainly. I'm just objecting to many people's practice of pretending that it's a really secure browser. Better than the competition? Yes. Really secure? The track record makes me question that.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 16, 2005 16:49 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] > Better than the competition? Yes. Really secure? The track record makes me> question that.
Ok, that's a perfectly reasonable stance... But, that's a far cry from
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 16, 2005 22:44 UTC (Fri) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] Actually, there is a vast ocean of difference. And I was wrong. This ison /. today: 'From March 2005 to September 2005 10 vulnerabilities were published for Microsoft Internet Explorer, 40 for Mozilla Firefox. In April-September timespan there were 6 exploits for MSIE, 11 for Firefox. From March 2005 to September 2005 10 vulnerabilities were published for Microsoft Internet Explorer, 40 for Mozilla Firefox. In April-September timespan there were 6 exploits for MSIE, 11 for Firefox. ' I rest my case.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 17, 2005 15:47 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] Oh, please... I do hope you're joking, and aren't actually buying intothat ZDNet FUD... Comparing raw numbers of adviseries is never a good tactic, to start with... Product X may have a higher number of discovered bugs than product Y, but that says absolutely nothing about the relative security of the two... If all of product X's bugs are trivial and cause no serious problems, while all of product Y's are extremely serious and lead to easy exploitation and take-over of the system, then which would you rather be running?? If all of product X's bugs were fixed within a couple days, while all of product Y's remain unfixed to this day, which would you rather be running??
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 17, 2005 19:34 UTC (Sat) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] Ok, then, how exactly do you quantify the difference in security betweenInternet Explorer and Firefox? So far all you've said is that Firefox is much more secure than Internet Explorer. Do you have any way at all to back up this claim? I got tired of being a Firefox apologist... perhaps you should too.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 17, 2005 20:11 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] How about number of machines/users infected/exploited because of each? Or, how about the idea proposed in the link from the first comment on this story: number of safe/unsafe days? Or, if you want to go with simple counts, how about separating the actual critical/important bugs from the minor/trivial ones, and compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, at least? Or, how about you actually follow the links in that ZDNet story to Secunia, and read what THEY actually have to say on the matter, rather than some ZDNet mouthpiece with an axe to grind? ("Mozilla Firefox 1.x ... 22 total advisories ... 0% extremely critical, 23% highly critical, 36% moderately critical, 32% less critical, 9% not critical ... leads to system access: 18% ... remains unpatched: 14%" versus "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x ... 85 total advisories ... 14% extremely critical, 29% highly critical, 20% moderately critical, 14% less critical, 22% not critical ... leads to system access: 31% ... remains unpatched: 28%"... Does Firefox look great? No, certainly not... But, it's not even on the same universe of insecurity as IE is...)
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 17, 2005 20:18 UTC (Sat) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] I see no point in continuing to push this debate along - neither one ofus is going to have an impact in either the number of Firefox/IE users or the number of Firefox/IE vulnerabilities. You're probably right on all regards about establishing the security difference (who knows, I don't feel like arguing about it). The bottom line? I guess your definition of universe differs from mine. Firefox looks incredibly insecure to me. So does Internet Explorer. If you could define some magic security number and rank all of the Internet Browsers, Internet Explorer would probably be the worst, followed by Firefox, followed by the rest of the browsers. I made this basic claim a number of posts back, and you felt determined to point out this universe of difference between the two. Frankly, the gap doesn't seem *that* wide to me. At the end of the day, though, what have we won? I've wasted a cumulative half an hour arguing over it, and so have you.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 17, 2005 21:29 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] Arguing online never accomplishes much... But, it's sometimes fun... ;-)
As for other browsers besides IE and FF, I don't know... But, so few people
Now, maybe you could argue that other browsers are more deserving of the
But, anyway... Like you say, I think we've pretty much said as much as we
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 16, 2005 14:55 UTC (Fri) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] > Firefox is certainly way on the other end of the spectrum, second to only> Internet Explorer in its number of exploits.
From what I know, the Linux kernel has about as many security flaws getting reported than the whole Mozilla source repository (of which Firefox is only a part, even though it uses a vast majority of it, as the Core code is used by all of Mozilla suite, SeaMonkey, Firefox, Thunderbird etc.) or maybe the kernel has even more.
That doesn't mean the kernel is very insecure, nor does it mean that for the Mozilla codebase. It's just that both a really huge piles of code doing an incredibly large amount of stuff - and yes, even rendering web pages as well as Gecko does is a very large and complex task to do.
It's much easier to create a project that does a fairly simple (even if important) job, such as an SMTP server or, say, a shell, without known security flaws than a system kernel or a sophisticated, modern web browser. Why? Just look at the amount of code involved and the dirty tricks you sometimes need to go thorugh to e.g. work with hardware and userspace (in the case of the kernel) or plugins and scripting (in the browser case).
That said, it's good that there are tools out there that have no really known security issues (yet), believing they'll never have is more dangerous than knowing you have to apply some patches now and then.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 16, 2005 15:08 UTC (Fri) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] You're right about the number of vulns in the kernel. It's upsetting.Thankfully, though, the kernel vulnerabilities tend to apply only in a very specific situation, and very rarely allow someone without an account to do anything dangerous. So perhaps comparing the kernel (an operating system) to Firefox (an Internet browser) is unfair. But I didn't bring up apples to oranges - the comparison was Firefox and Internet Explorer, and both have had a very embarrasing security history lately.
$500 bounty Posted Sep 15, 2005 19:43 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] To expand a bit... $500 is cheap for someone with the required knowledgeto spend the required time to audit qmail. Generally those people make that amount in a morning, which is much much less than it would take to audit the program.
Firefox buffer overflow and full disclosure Posted Sep 15, 2005 22:51 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] But, it's really NOT "punishment" of any sort... That's the point I wastrying to make above... It's HELPING the programmer (and, the users), whether they actually REALIZE that at the time, or not...
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