As of Wednesday, an exploit code allowing someone to attack the domain name system (DNS) was available in various places on the Internet.
On July 8, IOActive researcher Dan Kaminsky disclosed a flaw in the DNS but would not provide the details until all the affected vendors had released patches and all the systems worldwide could be patched. He figured that it would take about 30 days for that to happen.
The 30-day mark just happened to coincide with his speaking engagement at Black Hat in Las Vegas on August 6.
But on Monday, fellow Black Hat presenter Halvar Flake attacked Kaminsky's plea that a security flaw such as this be kept a secret. Flake then proceeded to lay out what he thought the flaw was. Turns out, he was right and laid the foundation for others to create and publicize an exploit.
On Thursday, Kaminsky will be a guest on the second Black Hat Webinar. This is the second of what is hoped to be a monthly series produced by the conference. Kaminsky will be joined by Jerry Dixon, former director of the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division; Rich Mogull, founder of Securosis; and Joao Damas, a senior program manager at the Internet Systems Consortium. The Webinar begins at 1 p.m. PT.
To see if your connection to the Internet is vulnerable to DNS cache posioning, use this test on Kaminsky's site. As of Monday, researcher Neal Krawetz was reporting that servers at several high-profile ISPs remained vulnerable.
Thirteen days after Dan Kaminsky asked his fellow security researchers not to speculate on the details of his DNS flaw, a fellow Black Hat researcher published his own speculation, and apparently got it right.
On July 8, IOActive researcher Kaminsky disclosed a flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS), but would not provide the details until all the affected vendors had released patches and all the systems worldwide could be patched. He figured it would take about 30 days for that to happen. The 30-day mark also just happened to coincide with his speaking engagement at Black Hat in Las Vegas on August 6.
Kaminsky has worked for about 6 months with major vendors, coordinating a massive synchronized release of patches. It was an effort at responsible disclosure. However, in an interview with CNET News, Kaminsky suggested, in retrospect, he should have been more candid with more of his peers.
Those he did confide in appeared to be won over.
Writing on Monday in his blog, Halvar Flake first attacks the very idea that a security flaw such as this could be kept a secret, then proceeds to lay out what he thinks the flaw is:
"Mallory wants to poison DNS lookups on server ns.polya.com for the domain www.gmx.net. The nameserver for gmx.net is ns.gmx.net. Mallory's IP is 244.244.244.244.
"Mallory begins to send bogus requests for www.ulam00001.com, www.ulam00002.com ... to ns.polya.com."
Flake's entire speculation can be found here.
In response, Dan Kaminsky wrote Monday afternoon on his blog "Patch. Today. Now. Yes, stay late," suggesting that Flake has either guessed correctly or is very close.
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