Full Disclosure, What Do You Think?
In recent posts we have been discussing full disclosure. Some of you may or may not know what full disclosure really is. Full disclosure is basically the making of information public. In terms of exploits, this means that the method and sometimes even the patch are disclosed.
I for one think that full disclosure is a necessary thing. Yes, it can create issues but what has been shown in the past is that companies will fix the problem a lot sooner after a full disclosure post has been made than when one is not. The generally consensus is contacting the vendor and give them a reasonable amount of time to address the problem and fix it before making the vulnerability public.
I think that is a very good practice. The problem being is that a lot of the time the companies will not get back to you in the time frame in which you requested. By releasing the exploit/vulnerability in the wild under full disclosure certainly seems to speed the process up. So the downfall however is obviously the exploit being in the wild which will affect more users for a short period of time. The benefit is however the patch will be made all the more quicker.
So what are your thoughts on full disclosure?
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June 26th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I believe it sometimes is necessary. Especially where Yahoo! Inc. is concerned. We are all familiar with Yahoo’s slow responses to exploits found in their chat servers. Example the buffer exploit. 6+ months before it was finally patched after public consumption. Public consumption meaning released in various “programs” to effectively disrupt Yahoo! Chat. The latest exploit through Yahoo! Mobile was patched in a record breaking time. I totally agree with full disclosure unless the exploit is extremely dangerous.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
If the vendor fails to respond within a reasonable length of time it’s necessary.