Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

bbc.co.uk

31–40 of 165 posts

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#31

Google is just a bunch of hypocrites. Do you remember what happened when they're new ReCaptcha was reverse engineered? Let me remind you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8728336 Disclaimer: I work for TAGA (The Arrogant Google Assholes)

https://github.com/darkitecht/InsideReCaptcha lulz, the Streissand effect is a real killer

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#32
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't they give MS 90 days to patch? (That's two or three patch Tuesdays).

And they asked for 92 days and Google decided to publish anyway? While I'm not surprised, it doesn't strike me as the most responsible action.

If you define a limit for disclosure, and then not stick to it, why to define a limit in the first place? 90 days is more than enough - if MS has a lot of internal overhead, you should probably complain to them, not to google.

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#33
Everyone is saying that Google should have waited for Microsoft's patch day, but why should Google bend their standard procedure to fit Microsoft? If it really meant that much to Microsoft, they could have released a patch earlier.

They knew they had 90 days and decided to ignore it.

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#34
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if other people already know about the breach? Would you prefer the joy of ignorance, or would you rather protect yourself by some means?

Does it really matter if it's 90 or 92 day disclosure?

Or you could ask: do two more days of the bug being secretly exploited in the wild matter?

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#35
post #10
post #2

2 days leeway is not uncalled for. Bad form Google.

unlikely we will know the true internal discussion, but it seems unlikely it realistically took MSFT 92 days to put together a patch. It seems far more likely they sat on the disclosure and did not prioritize it appropriately, after google continued to push for an estimated release date (which they never got). Then when the clock was running out, MSFT asked for extension, and Google being tired of getting put off, sa…

Alternatively, and without your unsubstantiated knocking of Microsoft, perhaps they were needing to conduct serious regression testing. This isn't the "unit tests pass, whack it into production" leagues after all.

Plus there's also the small matter of Christmas, and for many countries, significant developer unavailability falling into that period.

What's more likely, Microsoft can produce, test and deploy a patch in a few days, but chose not to until they had to. Or that they did get a patch ready and tested, but not in time for the patch Tuesday the previous month (so actually got it done in ~62 days) but it didn't warrant an out of band release?

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#36

TL;DR -- Google found bug in Windows 8.1. Gave Microsoft standard 90 days notice of public release on 11 January. Microsoft wanted to move release date to patch Tuesday on 13 January. Google released on their 90 day notice date of 11 January. Personally, I don't think Google should bend to the internal red tape of other companies. You are going to start maintaining this long list of exceptions based on other peoples…

Zero tolerance policies are never a good idea, there's always some exception that seems far fetched until it actually happens that proves this.

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#37
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if Microsoft actually talked to Google about waiting a couple more days, or are MS just saying that in their press release?

From the article: >"We asked Google to work with us to protect customers by withholding details until Tuesday, January 13, when we will be releasing a fix," Microsoft's senior director of research Chris Betz said in a blog post.

You're just citing the press release (or a blog post, or whatever). How does that respond to the original question?

The issue mentioned in the article [https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/de...] says that:

> Microsoft confirmed that they are on target to provide fixes for these issues in February 2015. They asked if this would cause a problem with the 90 day deadline.

So (a) Microsoft is unable to comprehend a simple 90-day policy or (b) do basic math.

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#38
post #5

This is crazy. By now the world really knows about Microsoft's second-tuesday-of-the-month policy for patches. If Google isn't willing to wait the two additional days such that the patch can be deployed within the regular update window, this means that Google effectively gives MS only 60 days to react and fix issues (because once they missed the second patch day, the vulnerability will be disclosed before the third).…

Microsoft was actually asking for 92 days to fix the bug, not 2 days...

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#39

TL;DR -- Google found bug in Windows 8.1. Gave Microsoft standard 90 days notice of public release on 11 January. Microsoft wanted to move release date to patch Tuesday on 13 January. Google released on their 90 day notice date of 11 January. Personally, I don't think Google should bend to the internal red tape of other companies. You are going to start maintaining this long list of exceptions based on other peoples…

If there can't be any common sense exceptions to the 90-day policy, that's just bureaucracy by itself.

If you start making exceptions, everyone will want one.

Re: Microsoft hits out at Google team over bug report

#40
post #34
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter if it's 90 or 92 day disclosure?

Or you could ask: do two more days of the bug being secretly exploited in the wild matter?

As opposed to 2 days of the bug being openly exploited?
Post reply on HN