Redmond no longer tells world about bugs until it checks own exposure
By Darren Pauli, 15 May 2014 AusCERT A team of Microsoft researchers had kicked an own goal by alerting a third party to a zero day vulnerability that they were unaware also affected Redmond.The gaffe in the early days of the Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) team didn't result in Redmond getting owned, but prompted the creation of a rule in the department that all vulnerabilities sent out to third parties be checked for effectiveness against Microsoft's own kit.
Microsoft security bod Jeremy Brown described the scenario which was manipulated to protect the researchers involved.
"There's this problem that occurs in payment networks where you can report two transactions and get paid multiple times. They reported it to a couple of payment networks but what they didn't report it to was Microsofts own payment network through Bing ... this is what MSVR was designed to prevent," Brown said at the AusCERT conference in Brisbane yesterday.
"Before we report a bug we see if it affects Microsoft -- we won't necessarily hold the vulnerability report until we fix the issue but we want to know of we were affected party because we want to coordinate a simultaneous release."
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Ooooooops...how embarassing...but in a way quite delicious!
