On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, John Compton wrote: > First of all, there is good news for those of you out there who are > worried about the new ASN.1 vulnerability in Microsoft operating > systems. It is NOT exploitable to run arbitrary code in anything > approaching a real-world scenario. With all due respect, doesn't your argument for this claim boil down to "I can't see a way to exploit it therefore it can't be exploitable?". This is hardly a compelling case for sysadmins not to patch, particularly when we're hearing other self-proclaimed experts contradicting your claim. Maybe you're right, but I would be professionally negligent to leave my employer's systems unpatched based on the case you've presented. My job is to minimise risk to our operations and maximise confidence in the integrity of our systems: I'm not about to wait to be compromised so I can say "oh look, it was exploitable after all - I guess patching is justified now". Like it or not, our line of work is all about dealing with uncertainty and making tough calls based on insufficient evidence. I too would like to see a single, clearly authoritative advisory on any given security issue, but that doesn't seem likely out here in the real world. -- Simon Brady mailto:simon.brady@otago.ac.nz ITS Technical Services University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
