Archive for the ‘Tech Trends’ Category

Insecurity by Non-Obscurity

I was a bit shocked and disheartened tonight to discover that my WordPress version was being broadcast to the world without me knowing it. It’s something that I hadn’t ever really given much thought to, mostly because I always assumed that a piece of information like that wasn’t being given out. What was even more disheartening to me was what I discovered as the method for disabling this broadcasting of my version number. The easiest way, by far, was to just install the Secure WordPress extension (or I could dive into a bit of their PHP code and have to make the change with each upgrade, not so much fun). Not so long ago, there was a huge ordeal about a vulnerability in WordPress 2.8.3 that allowed an attacker to reset an admin password very easily. No wonder they urged us to upgrade so quickly – your vulnerability was being broadcast.

The sad part is, broadcasting this version number isn’t something that can be disabled using the built-in settings. I don’t know what the rationale is, but one either has to edit the functions.php file in WordPress directly, or install the plugin mentioned above.

Anyway, this got me thinking about plenty of other open source softwares that I’ve disguised over the years.. For instance, perform a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 with the LAMP stack and you’ll see the version listed in the headers as detailed as this:

Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.9 with Suhosin-Patch Server

Yup, there it is, script kiddies. Bust out Metasploit and eat your hearts out. In this case, if one leaves the defaults enabled, the server major version, minor version, PHP version, OS, and WordPress version all are exposed. That leaves a pretty nice little attack vector.

Of course, hiding these things doesn’t mean that anything is secure. On the contrary, one must go far deeper than that. I am just disappointed in so many open source projects that cut down the time needed for any script kiddies to start playing with my public services.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Jan 18th, 2010

The Business of Full Disclosure

I’ve been enjoying reading an interesting conversation at krebsonsecurity.com surrounding news that a security firm in Russia that is disclosing a number of vulnerabilities to a number of web and database server applications. They are releasing details over this week and the next two.

For as long as I’ve cared, I’ve always considered myself more of a “responsible disclosure” kind of a person. That is, until I heard an interesting argument that I’ve never seen very clearly articulated before. As a sysadmin, when a vulnerability in a web server (for instance) is disclosed, one can monitor for someone trying to exploit that vulnerability and stop it (or at least log what happens). Without that disclosure, one has no idea what software is vulnerable and known only to some black market somewhere. It’s odd, but humans are comforted in that way. It’s kinda like knowing that a $500 repair is coming for one’s car. It’s a lot easier pill to swallow when one knows about it, say a month or so in advance rather than being surprised by it.

However, there’s still a piece of the rationale behind Intevydis’s stance on immediate full disclosure that I still don’t quite grasp. Quoting from their blog:

You – ABCD company, making N millions per year selling your buggy XYZ product all over the world, why are you asking to give the results of the hard work during many years for free? Instead of wasting your and our time would not it be better to allocate resources to enforce good coding practices for all your amateur software developers?

Okay, so the main argument here is that they don’t want to give away their research for nothing. That is absolutely a fair thing to ask for. Knowledge and research isn’t cheap, so it’s not something that many people want to give away for free. I get it. However, I have to ask: How is full disclosure better than “responsible disclosure” (I’m using the quotes because I’m not sure how responsible so-called “responsible disclosure” is anymore) in that respect? Seriously, you don’t get paid for posting a blog entry about the latest exploit in [insert your favorite CMS here] that allows others to break into those CMSs quite easily every time one is found on the web.

And another thing, exactly who’s time are we wasting here? The developers of the software are obviously not wasting their time since they’re drawing in ‘N millions’ of dollars for the software they created. Yet, the research group is the one disclosing that they’ve found a vulnerability in the software, but they won’t tell anyone what exactly the flaw or bug is. Wait. Who’s time have we wasted now? My time for reading the report and yours for researching, finding, and sort of disclosing the vulnerability? Yes, that’s exactly who’s time was wasted. Of course, if one gets to this point in the game and are wanting money, they’re likely going to be written off as a blackmailer, but let’s be real. Either do work for pay or don’t complain about someone wasting your time for wanting you to backup claims with proof.

I really can’t grasp why full, immediate disclosure of vulnerabilities helps the problem of a revenue stream for this security company over “responsible disclosure”. There are a few indirect ways that these kinds of things can help their revenue such as consulting jobs due to exposure for finding a vulnerability. Of the ways that I can think of, though, there’s still room for a bit more of a “responsible disclosure” strategy than they are acknowledging. Not only that, but they’ve essentially burned a bridge with any software company that might hire them to do a penetration test on their network when they piss off said company.

There a ton more angles to this discussion that I simply don’t have time, nor do I suspect anyone would read much of it. However, I would like to hear from anyone who disagrees or has more to add to the discussion in the comments below.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jan 12th, 2010

Where Do Tablet PCs Fit in the Market?

The web is abuzz with all kinds of bloggers and other writers talking of how 2010 will be ‘the year of the tablet pc‘. I have to admit, these devices look really cool, but where do they fit in? I’m getting a bit confused about what these tablets are supposed to replace and what exact function they would serve in my life.

A conversation by the BBC with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said it all for me. During the interview, Ballmer was talking about why the tablet would take off this year after years of trying. Ballmer did raise some good points about technology evolving, however, he raised a big question for me. During the interview he stated that, “These things are not replacement [devices] in every sense.” Meaning, one won’t replace their laptop or smartphone with a tablet. My problem is, where does that leave the tablet, then?

For me personally, I’m sick of having more gadgets. I’ve got a BlackBerry, an iPod, a MacBook, a Wii, a DVR, and a desktop computer. I’ve like the idea of having a Kindle and maybe a GPS device, but I’ve been turned off about the idea of having yet another device to throw into my backpack or pocket. If a tablet PC can’t replace one of my gadgets (hopefully a gadget that’s larger than the tablet), then it definitely has no place in my home. In addition to that, I’m not sure what economy these people are living in that we can afford all these devices plus purchase another one that doesn’t let us not purchase either a phone or a laptop.

The closest thing that I’ve heard of a tablet replacing is a netbook. That may be the case, only time will tell. The problem with that logic in my mind, however, is that the tablet PCs will likely be significantly higher-priced than netbooks have been so far which might make them cost-prohibitive as replacements for netbooks.

Of course, only time will tell, but I’m not yet convinced that these tablet PCs will see nearly the market share that we’re being led to believe. If Ballmer is right (I believe he is here) and these devices are just add-ons and not replacements for traditional laptops or smartphones, the tablet is doomed to be a niche product forever.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jan 11th, 2010

When Did Thunderbird’s Account Setup Become a Pile of Poo?

It really is a sad day. I used to think of the main Mozilla projects, Firefox and Thunderbird, the pinnacle of open source. I’ve always recommended Thunderbird as a mail client to those who prefer not to use the web client available from their provider. I was extremely disappointed today when I had to help someone setup an email account on a server that didn’t use their domain name as part of the hostname of the mail server. I see what they are trying to do (and indeed, it made setting up my email account using mail.whatan00b.com as the server incredibly simple), but if one has to not use fairly predictable settings, said one is hosed.

The below screenshot is of the server info as detected by Thunderbird when I put my email address in:

Note that the outgoing mail server is a drop-down.. populated from.. where, exactly? Now, I realize that you can just go ahead and create the account and go back, but one can’t create the account without “re-testing” (validating) the config. So.. it has to be correct before creating it, but yet it won’t let me correct it. Yup, it’s that awesome.

Next, changing the protocol in the drop-down didn’t change the port number. When Thunderbird didn’t find the correct mail server (which is going to be the case almost every time when one’s email is hosted in a shared, hosted environment), Thunderbird automatically populated the protocol with POP. Not a horrible thing, but changing the port when changing the protocol seems like a pretty obvious thing to do in order to avoid frustration with users (and indeed would have helped with some frustration for us tonight).

The last frustration that we ran into was that when selecting the “Manual Setup” option, things weren’t quite so.. er.. manual. It was more like some automatic settings that couldn’t be overridden after clicking the manual frustration button. Since it defaulted to POP when it couldn’t figure out the server settings, simply hitting the manual setup button created a POP account.. Not so bad if you could easily switch the protocol. Of course, not so. To get that corrected, one has to remove the account, create a new account, type in your name and login info, let it try to figure out the settings for you, manually edit the settings to change the protocol, and create the account by hitting the “manual setup” button (intuitive, eh?). Then, you can finally edit the server name to put in the correct info. Ugh.

At the end of it all, I would still recommend Thunderbird to others from a usability perspective, but now with the disclaimer that it’s nasty to setup the first time if you don’t use a mail.domain.com or similar server. I just really wish that we didn’t have to sacrifice power and easy customizations for alleged ease of use.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Dec 29th, 2009

Upgrade to Windows 7 Because.. It Sucks Less?

Well, after a busy couple of months I’m finally back. I did miss the release of Windows 7 on my blog, but I definitely enjoyed watching the fireworks between Apple and Microsoft through their commercials on tv. Microsoft has definitely come out with a product that the public seems to like (which ultimately is all that matters). One of the commercials, however, caught me a bit off guard.

In the commercial, ‘Angela’ says: “I don’t want to worry about my computer freezing or crashing … and suddenly, Windows 7″. Uh, what? Did we just hear an admission from Microsoft that Vista had problems? I hate to add to my anti-Microsoft list of blog posts, but seriously, what are they thinking with this ad? They should’ve just said: “Upgrade to Windows 7, it sucks less than previous versions”. Definitely not the positive spin on Windows that I was expecting.. With a product out the door that the company can definitely be proud of, I expected them to tout some cool new features, but that’s not the stance we’ve seen from previous versions.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (4) : Nov 4th, 2009

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