Pete Finnigan's Oracle Security Weblog

I was made aware of the page The Week of Oracle Database Bugs on Argeniss site today. They have announced that for one week on December (the actual date is not shown on the site) they will release a 0-Day exploit every day for the Oracle database server.

For those people who do not know what a 0-Day exploit is, I will explain. This is a bug that has not been fixed by the vendor and is not known publicly. A hacker or researcher releases the exploit and immediately anyone using the software is at risk of being attacked. They say they are doing this to show the current security state of the software.

In my opinion Oracle have been getting much better in recent times towards security. They have been fixing a lot of bugs in the main code line (The current release) quite quickly, the advisories are getting much better and we are also told by Mary Ann (and I have been told by insiders the same) that Oracle are now committed to training their developers on how to code against security bugs. I beleive them, I know Oracle is a big monster and we should not expect it to turn like a formula one car but like a 100 ton truck pulling 17 trailors. This is to be expected. The view last week at the UKOUG talking to quite a few people is that Oracle are getting on top of the bugs and should close out most PL/SQL injection type bugs within a year. Lets hope its true.

I just want to quote CERT, they say that 95% of all intrusions are made using known vulnerabilities. Therefore if you patch and secure your configuration you should be reasonably secure. If the bugs are not public then they are not as common or easy to find as some would have you beleive.

I don't agree with Argeniss planned 0-Day week against Oracle it will just make life more difficult for many hard working DBA's and security managers. I don't see that it will prove or highlight anything that has not been said over the last year or so in the press, Oracle are getting better at fixing bugs, give them a chance and don't make further un-necessary risks to customers.