I disagree. If MS is going to treat major issues like this then researchers should be selling them to the highest bidder. Maybe that way they'll actually treat disclosures properly.
The amount of damage the NSA or some other state sponsored actor could do with this... It would be very bad to say the least. How bad depends on which state acquires it.
If a script kiddy got it they would likely do a mass randomware infection, hospitals would get hit, people would die. Millions in crypto would be lost to unencrypted wallets found on the vulnerable machines (yes people do that..), this could cause some to lose their life savings... People have commit suicide for less.
My point is its important to look past FAANG being cheap and look at 2nd and 3rd order effects from something this powerful and widespread.
That isn’t to advocate for brokering to a government, just to say that the market already exists and contains comparable exploits. It’s only a matter of time until we see the next EternalBlue to WannaCry lifecycle.
But what about all of the innocent people who would be harmed by such a callous approach? I'm glad some researchers have a conscience.
They should then think again about their choice of using teams. Why should Microsoft rake in money from a shabby product while volunteers have to fix their shit?
Assigning a ridiculously low score to significantly lower the bounty as a billion dollar company is disgusting.
Try saying that to a student who is using Teams on a school-issued laptop, by no choice of their own.
I'm not in any way defending how Microsoft handled this. Frankly, I'm ashamed of my former employer (though I worked in a completely different division). But your outrage toward the company should not extend to its unwitting users.
And thinking these huge metrics get changed by selling black hat exploits to what? Teach Microsoft a lesson? While harming an already vulnerable population (not just children are obligated to use Teams). As if the long term goal of educating "unwitting" users is advanced at all by blackhat behaviour.
Deschooling is done on discord
Let's see how Ring goes over the next few years... ;)
What percentage of Teams users do you think have a choice in their use of Teams?
I work at an university and I've been forced to install that crap on my home computer because I need to teach from home. And so do all the professors in around half the universities I know in my country.
In Australia, the emp is generally responsible for providing any necessary tools or equipment needed to do the job (contractors are another matter though)
Anyway, those of us who have research projects (as is my case) typically do have computers provided by the university at home, because research has strange schedules and working from home has always been a need (meeting with colleagues in different timezones, waiting for experiments to complete at night, rushing for deadlines, etc.).
But... it's not really practical to make room for two different desktop computers for my own use in an already spaced-starved flat, or to work in a laptop for many hours when I could do so in a desktop. So in practice, my home computer and my work computer are one and the same. And it's like that here for most, if not all, people I know.
We are a Latin country and also tend to live in small flats, maybe in other places it's different. I can imagine that if I had one of those American McMansions, it would make sense to have a home office with a sober, black work computer, a good camera setup and a green screen, and then a gaming room with a flashy gaming computer and huge speakers (near the billiards and darts room, probably :)). But that's not really how things work about here. Here, separation of home and work computers at home is almost exclusive of jobs with high security restrictions. Most people in normal jobs just don't do it because it's not practical.
Necessity is the mother of invention, I have no doubt that the opportunities created by blowing away poorly-behaved incumbents will cause a healthy collections of startups who will be operating within the required framework.
Personally I would prefer just having all new vulnerabilities immediately disclosed once found. No selling, but letting people decide for themselves if they want to continue to use a product after someone has found a vulnerability. I also think the incentives this creates would mean that Microsoft and similar shops would put more effort into testing their own software because they would no longer have the safety net of a grace period when someone finds a problem.
This thing sounds like it is mostly pretty straight forward to find once you start looking - "you" being somebody experienced in this field of research, that is. At least you don't have to construct fancy weird machines (with type confusion, heap spraying and all those shenanigans). It comes down to finding something that can perform code execution in their internal API (here: "electronSafeIpc") and then finding a way to get there (here: angular escape bypass/not-properly-sanitized user provided data) and you can do both in javascript and don't have to read tons of machine code.
Given that Teams is a great target because of it's large and often corporate user base, I'd be surprised if none of the usual industrial espionage suspects (e.g. China, NSA, etc) had a look at Teams before. And I'd think the chance of them having found the same bug, or a related bug, once they looked is pretty good too.
From what I am hearing even the (US) military uses Teams sometimes... If that isn't incentive to look at this thing for "interested parties", then I don't know.
Most security bugs with 20/20 hindsight are "obvious" when explained well. Personally, I think that is an insulting and immature thing to say IMHO.
(it’s more than 30MB of compressed JS)
I have analyzed foreign code bases of similar dimensions in the past myself and found critical bugs. The size doesn't say much, it comes down to identifying the "interesting" bits (like the electronSafeRpc in this case), which can be hard and tedious, but greatly reduces the code you have to look at in detail. My assertion is that if your name is e.g. China then you will not be turned off by that.
No, I do agree - from my perspective C/C++ class bugs are more difficult. Maybe they see this as magic as well.
Still, it was painstaking work and in either case CountryX will easily surpass those difficulties.
With that much code I'd expect an AI to talk to people so I don't have to.
Then people will move to some understuffed FOSS alternative with 5 people working part-time on it, with as severe bugs that nobody notices (remember Heartbleed and countless others?)...
Imagine thinking PHBs at most companies even care about security.
From a business perspective, the reason exploits are bad for companies is because they generate bad press, right? Well, it's not obvious to me that an exploit which was being used in the wild gets significantly worse press than one which was not. There's also the possibility the buyer will reserve an exploit for super-targeted attacks, and the public won't find out at all until year later.
Profiting from the very likely unethical use of the exploit would be unethical.
Instead this mishandling by M$ should rather cause researchers to publicly announce the vulnerabilities which would hopefully cause M$ to change their ways in future dealings.
It is ofcourse easy for me to say this, not being a researcher who lives off of the discoveries made.
My point is that in the case of M$ the defects could be publicly announced to all parties at once as a way of making M$ realize that how bad their handling is/was. In all likelyhood this shouldn't have to happen for too long before they would realize their mistake.
Many other corporations do indeed value the discoveries of researchers and do pay accordingly for being notified. Never did I suggest that this should become the industry norm (i.e not paying for private disclosures).
Now what ever your personal feelings on that idea is, it does not change the fact that selling exploits to other parties would be unethical.
Furthermore, participating in a system that promotes assumptions and flawed reading comprehension is not conductive to a good discourse. That means you.
Lol, no.
That crufty electron apps are a security risk is not. So yes, you do need someone to run out into the streets and yell that the emperor has no clothes. Otherwise common knowledge will not be established.