Pwnichiwa from PacSec!

WOW, it’s been a busy couple of weeks!  I was in Tokyo last week for PacSec.  PacSec was a great time, there were some GREAT talks, and Dragos knows how to party!  I co-presented a talk entitled “Cross-Domain Leakiness: Divulging Sensitive Information and Attacking SSL Sessions” with Chris Evans from Google.  I’m curious if this was the first time in history a Google Guy and a Microsoft Guy got on stage together and talked about security...  Anyway, you can find the slides here:

Chris is a super smart guy and demo’d a ton of browser bugs, most of which he will eventually discuss on his blog (which you should check out).  I had a chance to demo a few bugs and went over some techniques to steal Secure Cookies over SSL connections for popular sites.  Now, before I get into the details of the Safari File Stealing bug that was recently patched (provided in the next post) I did want to talk a bit about WebKit.

<WARNING Non-Technical Content Follows!>

You were warned!  Some friends and I have been playing around with Safari (we've got a couple bugs in the pipeline).  As everyone knows, Safari is based on the WebKit browser engine.  I think WebKit is a great browser engine and apparently so does Google because they use it for their Google Chrome.  So, once I discover and report a vulnerability in Safari for the Windows, Apple must also check Safari for Mac, and Safari Mobile for iPhone.  Additionally, “someone” should probably let Google know as their Chrome browser also takes a dependency on WebKit.  Now, who is this “someone”?   Is it the researcher?  Is it Apple?  Does the researcher have a responsibility to check to ensure this vulnerability doesn’t affect Chrome?  Does Apple have a responsibility to give Google the details of a vulnerability reported to them?  Our situation works today because we’ve got great people working for Apple and Google (like Aaron and Chris) who have the means to cooperate and work for the greater good.  However, as security moves higher and higher on the marketing scorecards and becomes more and more of a “competitive advantage” at what point will goodwill stop and the business sense take over?

Let’s contemplate a scenario that isn't so black and white…  Let’s say two vendors both take a dependency on WebKit.  An issue is discovered, but the differences in the two browsers make it so that the implementation for the fix is different.  Vendor A has a patch ready to go, Vendor B on the other hand has a more extensive problem and needs a few more days/weeks/months.  Should Vendor A wait for Vendor B to complete their patch process before protecting their own customers and pushing patches for their own products?

Let’s flip the scenario… Let’s say Vendor A has a vulnerability reported to them.  Vendor A determines that the issue is actually in WebKit.  Vendor A contacts Vendor B and discovers that Vendor B isn’t affected… does this mean Vendor B knew about issue, fixed the issue, and didn’t tell Vendor A?  Do they have a responsibility to?