French Company That Sells Exploits To The NSA Sat On An Internet Explorer Vulnerability For Three Years

from the kicking-open-backdoors-and-charging-admission dept

Thanks to Snowden's leaks and a host of other information proceeding those, it's become clear that intelligence agencies -- despite their constant and loud "worrying" about cyberattacks -- are more than happy to make computers and the Internet itself less safe by purchasing, discovering and hoarding vulnerabilities. These are exploited to their fullest before being reported to the entities that can patch the holes. In the meantime, the NSA and others make use of security holes and vulnerabilities, leaving millions of members of the public exposed.



It may just be arrogance. Maybe these intelligence agencies believe they're the only ones with this access and, because they're ostensibly the "good guys," any collateral damage caused by unpatched vulnerabilities is acceptable. The other option is worse: they just don't care. Their "higher calling" -- the fight against terrorists and hackers -- is more important than the security of computer users around the world.



VUPEN, a French company that sells exploits to the NSA (as well as intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world) recently capitalized on an Internet Explorer vulnerability it's been sitting on for over three years.

Security outlet VUPEN has revealed it held onto a critical Internet Explorer vulnerability for three years before disclosing it at the March Pwn2Own hacker competition.



The company wrote in a disclosure last week it discovered the vulnerability (CVE-2014-2777) on 12 February 2011 which was patched by Microsoft on 17 June (MS14-035).



The flaw affected Internet Explorer browsers eight through eleven and allowed remote attackers to bypass the protected mode sandbox.

In March 2014, VUPEN has once again won the 1st place at the Pwn2Own 2014 security competition by creating and showing zero-day exploits for Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Adobe Reader XI, Adobe Flash, and Mozilla Firefox. The exploits have fully bypassed all Windows 8.1 security protections and exploit mitigation in place, and all sandboxes. VUPEN has reported all the discovered zero-day vulnerabilities to the affected vendors to allow them fix the flaws and protect users from attacks.

Do not wait 6 to 9 months for vendor patches to protect your infrastructures and assets from critical vulnerabilities.

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For three years, VUPEN held onto this, allowing the exploit of four straight Internet Explorer versions. IE may be losing its grasp on home users, but governments around the world still tend to opt for Microsoft's browser (along with its suite of productivity products). VUPEN finally notified Microsoft of this vulnerability en route to collecting $300,000 for this and other exploits its been hoarding. (Additional products affected include other widely-used programs like Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader.)There can be little doubt that VUPEN turned out these vulnerabilities to whatever intelligence/law enforcement agency would have them during the last three years. Informing Microsoft of this flaw at the point of discovery just isn't a great way to make money. IE users were left unprotected against anyone who wished to exploit the same hole the security contractor had slapped a price tag on. VUPEN's spin on this bug hoard/$300,000 windfall conveniently leaves out the fact that it sat on these exploits for extended periods of time.The word "creating" implies it discovered these holes during the conference and immediately turned them over to the vendors. While it's true that the vendors can now "fix the flaws," the latter half of that sentence ("protect users from attacks") is only true going forward. There's no telling how many attacks occurred over the past months and years while VUPEN hawked its vulnerability stash.But that's not even the most disingenuous part of VUPEN's pitches. This is:If you can't read the text, it says:So, VUPEN will "protect" your private company from exploits it knows about but won't pass on to vendors until it's managed to sell enough protection plans. Your company wouldn't need to "wait 6 to 9 months" for vendors to patch products if VUPEN and others would turn these over to them sooner. But that's not part of the business plan. There's nothing wrong with a company trying to make money, but hoarding exploits and selling protection against them seems to run very close to extortion. It's like selling home security while running a gang of thieves on the side.

Filed Under: hacking contest, internet explorer, prize money, pwn2own, security holes, vulnerability

Companies: microsoft, vupen