On Tue, 28 May 2002, Alfred Huger wrote: :http://www.nextgenss.com/news/vna.html The statement could have been written more clearly. Comma's help to delineate dependencies in a statement. Here's what I got out of it: - NGSSoftware does vulnerability research. - Vendors have been slow to patch vulnerabilities. - To make patch process more prompt, vendors will be given 1 week heads up when vulnerabilities are discovered. - After 1 week, the public will be alerted by NGSS. - NGSS will provide a workaround to the public, unless that workaround will provide exploitation details. - NGSS will add a check for the vulnerability to vuln assessment software, regardless of whether the check would disclose exploitation details. - This process is consistent with ietf Christey-Wysopal draft. - This process will make the patch process more visible by providing a way for the public to see how long it took to write the patch. This process will keep some exploitation details away from the public, and particularly, a minority of malicious members of the public. Though obvious, it is worth noting that this process will only keep exploitation details of vulnerabilities disovered by NGSS from the public, and the underground will continue to write exploits for private distribution until they are old enough to be hired as consultants. Alfreds comments about how this will affect the pen-testing profession seem to be based on the possibility that, advisories published by NGSS will cause customers to want to be sure their pen-testers are checking for these vulnerabilities. Without detailed information about these vulnerabilities, pen-testers may not be able to check for them, which could lead to incomplete assessments, and potentially, an further erosion of the credibility of the profession. NGSS has a solution to this problem, and that is their Typhon product, which is made superior to all others through its exclusive access to vulnerabilities, which have been discovered by the NGSS team. So, pen-testers now are in the position where if they don't use Typhon, they run the risk of overlooking serious vulnerabilities, and customers who are made aware of NGSS VNA's will know that the only way to find these vulnerabilities are through Typhon (or via the eventual vendor patch release). While I respect the skills of the crew over at NGSS, creating a cartel of superior clue will not harm the pen-testing profession. Here's why: ISS tried this and (I suspect) found that their vulnerability R&D investment wasn't the reason people were buying their product. They have the most mature product on the market, despite the arguably more complete scanning tools available for free. Even ISS has moved twards a managed service business model where their vulnerability scanner is only a complement to their core IDS business. 0-day x-f0rce scanner checks haven't damaged the credibility of good pen-testers, or even provided convincing enough value-add to undermine Nessus as the choice of some very credible managed security firms. NGSS's process is a way to make vulnerability R&D finally pay for itself, because they know that being simply being elite doesn't mean much to the managers and CFO's making purchasing decisions. The only value add that there is in a competetive market like security software/services is proprietary technology, and a means to protect that advantage. Spending their expensive R&D resources to get props on bugtraq or at blackhat won't keep them fed, despite the community value of doing so. NGSS does not have a monopoly on clue. While they have some really smart people, they assert that other people will and do discover vulnerabilities in paralell. This has been, and will continue to be, true of widely deployed applications like Bind, JRun, Oracle, SSH, and others. And finally (this is getting long) the main reason this will not undermine the rest of the pen-testing profession, is that the value to the customer of a pen test is not the arsenal of exploits available to prove the vulnerabilities exist, it is the credibility of the consulntant who tells them what they need to do to fix them. The credibility of a consultant is seldom related to their toolkit. That most of their tools are already publicly available is evidence of this. Also, NGSS (if they are smart) will focus their vulnerability research on the most widely deployed applications with the highest risk, to provide the most value to their customers. If you are a consultant actively engaged in doing vulnerability research, I would advise you give up on that elite Plan 9 emmulator exploit, and do the same if you are concerned about making the Internet more secure. Otherwise, I wholeheartedly encourage the rest of you to get some liquor, some amphetamines, and start hacking, because NGSS's annoucement means that pen-testers will no longer be freely benefitting from the exploit code from the 10 or so people they have writing it. It will be interesting to see if anyone notices. Cheers, -- batz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided by the SecurityFocus Security Intelligence Alert (SIA) Service. For more information on SecurityFocus' SIA service which automatically alerts you to the latest security vulnerabilities please see: https://alerts.securityfocus.com/
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