Udooz!

Two security issues really surprised me. One is with Linux and another one is Adobe Flash.

Linux Kernals and NULL Pointers

To handle unavailable operations for some protocols, Linux kernal has methods that are not doing any NULL pointer check before deferencing those methods.  An attacker can put his code that will get executed with kernel privileges.  For more details, visit: http://blog.cr0.org/2009/08/linux-null-pointer-dereference-due-to.html.

Flash’s Vulnerability Pitch

Flash is one of the premium vechile for web sites with extravaganza contents.  A critical vulnerability allows attackers can compromise the system with Flash 9.x and 10.x for all platforms.  Visit: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-10.html to download the patch for the pitch.

Finally, one good news about IE 8.

IE8 – Highly Secured Browser in the Universe (Google’s promo style!)

NSS Lab is one of the leading product security testing and certification independent body has published comparative browser security testing in IE 8, Firefox 3, Safari 4, Chrome 2 and Opera 10.  The report said that IE 8 (83%) followed by FF 3 (80%) are most consistent in the high level of protection from phishing URL block rate.  Chrome and Safari score 26% and 2% respectively.

The  socially engineered malware block rate for IE8 is 81% which surpassed all the other browsers in the earth (again Google’s promo style!).  FF3 scores 27% and Chrome2 7%.

Read the complete report at http://www.nsslabs.com/browser-security.

Okey, now let me brief the reason for this post’s title.  Always, people from OS (open source) said that they are more stronger in skills than the engineers at Microsoft and other CS (closed source) No.1s.  Now, they have to understand that skill is not at all related to open source.  It is a myth. 

PS: I am not against OS.

Sans Institute, the largest information security firm in association with software and security giants including Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, published a hot 25 programming errors under three categories:

• Insecure interaction between components (9)
• Risky resource management (9)
• Porous defenses (7)

Insecure interaction between components

1. CWE-20: Improper Input Validation
2. CWE-116: Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output
3. CWE-89: Failure to Preserve SQL Query Structure (aka ‘SQL Injection’)
4. CWE-79: Failure to Preserve Web Page Structure (aka ‘Cross-site Scripting’)
5. CWE-78: Failure to Preserve OS Command Structure (aka ‘OS Command Injection’)
6. CWE-319: Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information
7. CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
8. CWE-362: Race Condition
9. CWE-209: Error Message Information Leak

Risky resource management

1. CWE-119: Failure to Constrain Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
2. CWE-642: External Control of Critical State Data
3. CWE-73: External Control of File Name or Path
4. CWE-426: Untrusted Search Path
5. CWE-94: Failure to Control Generation of Code (aka ‘Code Injection’)
6. CWE-494: Download of Code Without Integrity Check
7. CWE-404: Improper Resource Shutdown or Release
8. CWE-665: Improper Initialization
9. CWE-682: Incorrect Calculation

Porous defenses

1. CWE-285: Improper Access Control (Authorization)
2. CWE-259: Hard-Coded Password
3. CWE-732: Insecure Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
4. CWE-330: Use of Insufficiently Random Values
5. CWE-250: Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
6. CWE-602: Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security

Our responsibility is to literate these top 25 errors to your colleagues, friends and follow these guidelines during your product development.

More details about the list, visit here.