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Comment by easy_rider | Hacker News Reader

Untill proven otherwise this totally violates full Disclosure policies. I know they are like 'gentleman agreements' but this feels bad, and looks bad, like the author is only out for some internet fame. I can not believe that he in any way tried to contact Microsoft, but clearly took his time on this publication.

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I kind of get the feeling that the author doesn't really know what he's doing. The actual exploit code is a fragment of what looks like a 'hello world' sort of console IO test. The 0xC0000000 he goes on and on about is just GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, which is a totally legal combination. And he disassembles his own code for no particularly good reason.

Given all of this, it's not really a surprise that he's not clear on responsible disclosure policies (this doesn't really violate 'full disclosure policies' - he's fully disclosing it, after all!). It sounds like he was just playing around with things, found a way to crash his own machine by accident, and decided to post it online.

I also note that the code is incomplete, and looks reasonably straightforward and correct from casual inspection. I wonder if the real cause is elsewhere?

I haven't exactly pinpointed the cause of the problem, I just noted that that call was the last point in my code to get executed before the system was hosed.

Also, the code is complete: check the tarball listed at the end of the page.

> this doesn't really violate 'full disclosure policies'

Well he kinda marked it down like he was.. talking about compiling an exe and all to crash any Vista/7 in 30 secs.

There are tons of developers who've got no experience dealing with (potential) security issues or have any idea about the "gentleman agreements" that are prevalent in the security- versus the IT-industry. So it could very well be that he has no idea what he's doing.

Then again; every 12 months or so the debate regarding full/responsible/no disclosure flares up again in the security-/IT-industry after another public outcry regarding one specific bug, company or patch. In the end nothing is resolved and we still continue to rely on gentleman agreements.

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