Thanks to Alex for emailing me a link to this great news story. The story is on SecurityFocus and is titled "Reverse engineering patches making disclosure a moot choice?" and is by Robert Lemos. The article talks about the latest trends in doing a binary comparison of a pre-patched binary and its post patched cousin. The latest tools such as BinDiff from SABRE Security have been used by Halvar Flake to demonstrate how easy it was to reverse engineer the patch for pinpointed the portable networked graphics (PNG) vulnerability fixed in a recent Microsoft patch. This article also highlights the fact that the time to find an exploit after a patch is released has been dropping.
The article also quotes Mary Ann Davidson the Chief Security Officer for Oracle who says she will not be altering Oracles patching mechanisms just yet but she is aware of the techniques and issues being discussed here. This article is worth reading if you are interested in just how quickly you need to patch up a database after the patches are released.
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Pete Finnigan's Oracle Security Weblog
This is the weblog for Pete Finnigan. Pete works in the area of Oracle security and he specialises in auditing Oracle databases for security issues. This weblog is aimed squarely at those interested in the security of their Oracle databases.
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July 2005
- whilst on the subject of orablogs - version 2 is in the wings - 07/01/2005 by 07/01/2005
- A new sample installation session for Oracle Password Repository (OPR) version 1.1.8 - 07/02/2005 by 07/02/2005
- Frank talked about form-based authentication with struts - 07/04/2005 by 07/04/2005
- orablogs is back - 07/05/2005 by 07/05/2005
- 10g Release 2 allows deletion of datafiles - 07/06/2005 by 07/06/2005
- Oracle have issued a second email with another exploitable vulnerability in 10.1.0.2 in CPU 12APR - 07/07/2005 by 07/07/2005
- Paying a ransom to read your data - 07/08/2005 by 07/08/2005
- Two security bugs found and reported to Oracle in 10g Release 2 already! - 07/11/2005 by 07/11/2005
- Self signed SSL certificates with JInitiator - 07/12/2005 by 07/12/2005
- Oracle Simplifies SOA Security - 07/13/2005 by 07/13/2005
- Internet News talks about Oracles latest Critical Patch Update - 07/14/2005 by 07/14/2005
- A good German new item on CPU 12 July 2005 - 07/15/2005 by 07/15/2005
- More news on silent fixes in CPU July 2005 - 07/16/2005 by 07/16/2005
- Sun has released an alert notification (15 July 2005) about multiple security vulnerabilities in Oracle affecting SunMC - 07/19/2005 by 07/19/2005
- Oracle researcher announces high-risk database flaws - 07/20/2005 by 07/20/2005
- An Oracle spokeswoman speaks to TheAge - 07/21/2005 by 07/21/2005
- Oracle Confirms Holes in Two Latest Patch Sets - 07/22/2005 by 07/22/2005
- [Argeniss] Oracle 9R2 Unpatched vulnerability on CWM2_OLAP_AW_AWUTIL package - 07/23/2005 by 07/23/2005
- New Oracle Security Forum opened - 07/25/2005 by 07/25/2005
- Mary Ann Davidson fights back - When security researchers become the problem - 07/27/2005 by 07/27/2005
- iDefense ups the bidding for bugs - 07/28/2005 by 07/28/2005
- VeriSign boosts security with iDefense acquisition - 07/29/2005 by 07/29/2005
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