Tag Archives: backdoor

The most magnificent thing about Vulnerabilities and who is behind the magic

What I like the most about software vulnerabilities is how “vulnerability”, as a quality of a real object (and the computer program is real), literally appears from nothing.

The most magnificent thing about Vulnerabilities and who is behind the magic

Let’s say we have a fully updated server. We turn it off, lock it in a safe and forget about it for half a year. Six months later, we get it, turn it on. It is the same and works absolutely the same. But now it is also exposed to dozens of critical vulnerabilities that, with some (un)luck, can be exploited by any script kiddie. New important characteristic of the material object appeared from nowhere, isn’t this magnificent? ?

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Vulnerability Life Cycle and Vulnerability Disclosures

Vulnerability Life Cycle diagram shows possible states of the vulnerability. In a previous post I suggested to treat vulnerabilities as bugs. Every known vulnerability, as same as every bug, was implemented by some software developer at some moment of time and was fixed at some moment of time later. What happens between this two events?

Vulnerability life-cycle

Right after the vulnerability was implemented in the code by some developer (creation) nobody knows about it. Well, of course, if it was done unintentionally. By the way, making backdoors look like an ordinary vulnerabilities it’s a smart way to do such things. 😉 But let’s say it WAS done unintentionally.

Time passed and some researcher found (discovery) this vulnerability and described it somehow. What’s next? It depends on who was that researcher.

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