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Ah, what a great time of the year! We used to take a week at Core, every
year, so everyone in the company (yes, EVERYONE), got in teams to find
vulnerabilities. Many stupid and great advisories came out of it. I remember
one in MySQL authentication that required solving some geometry problem for
exploitation.
== BUGDOOR
A hide and seek contest. Another great time of the year, though we only did
it a couple times. It was a competition where everybody got a task (say,
“write a software that does this and this”), and had to hide a bugdoor
(AKA backdoor). You got points for finding out other people’s bugdoors, and
got (negative) points for each one that found your bugdoor. Go play it!
|=---=[ Will mitigations eventually make exploitation impossible?
Hah! We asked ourselves the same question in 2001 with StackGuard and
StackShield, but the answer was obviously “no” (see papers). Then again
with ASLR, x^w, stack canaries, heap canaries, pointer canaries, guard
pages, virtualization... I don’t think it’ll make it impossible, but it has,
already, made it hard, and that means, more expensive, what means: only for
a few that can pay for it.
As a user, and friend of users, and worried about users, I’m all for
protections. I think it does make a difference. It raises the bar, and makes
attackers really think before attacking. There’s more chance of being
detected and of getting your exploit or technique screwed.
This all is “good”.
Bad is that it’s harder and harder to get started in exploit writing, and
less and less satisfactory as you learn. When I wrote the ABOs back in a
forked past, there were just no protections. It was easy, the challenge was
in figuring out how to use the hidden menu option (AKA exploit the bug). But
then, as we used ABOs to warm up new exploit writers at Core, it got harder
and harder. I loved seeing the solutions running on newer and protected
operating systems. Many times, completely different from what I originally
intended. I can’t think what somebody starting today could do with the ABOs
running on a current OS. So, bad: it makes it harder for the general public
to learn exploitation, it raises the bar, it makes it more expensive (needs
more time to dedicate, and a serious interest). It may require dedicated
training camps, and paid students.
Bad is also that once you know the techniques, writing a particular exploit
is increasingly hard (the 9 chained bugs to get root), which makes them more
expensive, i.e. only for a few.
So, I love protections, all my serious admiration to pipacs, the pax team,
and all his other handles (see Phrack 62), for pushing everybody else to
think on OS protections, including Theo and Microsoft. But protections leave
space for power inequalities, as the fewer who can bypass them, have more
power than before... no, I don’t see any solution, sorry.
Will they make exploitation impossible? Yes, for many they will, for others,
never.
|=---=[ Would you recommend newcomers to contribute to open source projects?
Totally! Why not? I wish I had time and energy to do more of that. I’m
all for full disclosure, even of exploits. And all for contributing.
Contributing back to OS is sort of the easiest way to get your code
maintained :-p (not quite). Commercially you may think that “giving up” your
code for free is not a good idea, but it comes back, and sometimes
surprisingly soon. It’ll get you a job, that’s for sure, but it could also
become an income by itself.
But then, also, and more seriously (if anybody needed to get serious),
it’s fine to do things just because you can. We used to answer exactly that
Why do you do that?!
>>> Because I can <<<
Technology has a significant impact. At some point, I began thinking
about how my work could help people and make their lives better, even just a
little bit. You never know what people will find useful, and the feedback
you receive when you release something is a great feeling: the realization
that someone is actually using what you created.
|=---=[ Your opinion in the infosec scene now vs then
All mercenaries. Don’t get me started. Not really, not everybody. But that
catches my feelings. When the big money entered the scene, we all lost
friends and stopped sharing as much as before. The flow of information
slowed down, though we still have Phrack, Ekoparty, H2HC, Defcon and the
others, it doesn’t feel the same. Maybe the great techniques were always
kept secret and surfaced only 20 years later, but it seems worse than
before.
Science and technology can have real-world impact. If you saw the movie, you
believe scientists were aware of the impact of their research, some rebelled
against it, some understood the consequences but decided to do it anyway
(for their reasons). But it seems they stopped to think. Are we thinking and
discussing it at least? It’s only mutually assured destruction that still
today keeps us safe, so maybe that’s what we should aim for: democratization
of hacking and espionage tools, to keep the balance.
It’s not fair, there’s still a lot of people believing in full disclosure
for a better World, and they do a great job at it. My special admiration and