
Leaked cables suggest China Access to Microsoft source used for cyber attacks - joelhaus
http://www.winrumors.com/leaked-u-s-embassy-cables-suggest-china-uses-access-to-microsoft-source-code-for-cyber-attacks/
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dlsspy
I hope the Chinese never get access to the Linux or BSD source code that runs
my computers.

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sixtofour
The difference is that Windows code is closed. Microsoft has given access to
that code to allegedly hostile individuals, but not to friendly individuals.

Bad guys can reverse engineer and read code. Good guys can only reverse
engineer.

With *nix it's a level playing field, because both sides can reverse engineer
and read code, and contribute code.

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dlsspy
I wanted to give you a non-anonymous +1 on this. Your point about the level
playing field is a great one.

My preference is obviously to just avoid the black boxes where I can, but it's
not particularly surprising to think that the true color of the box is the
inverse of the color of the hat.

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tptacek
Meh. No doubt someone in the US government thinks this is a serious issue, but
lack of access to Windows source code is little more than a speed bump for
professional exploit developers.

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daeken
We've heard these claims ever since MS started releasing source to certain
institutions/governments, and my reaction has always been the same: Reverse-
engineering non-obfuscated code is absolutely trivial, and can be automated
99% of the way. If you can find vulnerabilities in source code, you can find
vulnerabilities in a binary. For some reason, no one ever seems to understand
this...

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SkyMarshal
I always assumed Windows binaries are heavily obfuscated, is that not the
case?

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tptacek
The opposite is mostly the case; Microsoft even makes the PDB debugging
symbols available for many of its core components.

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daeken
Even for the bootloader, where the signature checks for the driver signing
chain occurs. The MS symbols database is a goldmine.

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trotsky
This could apply to any of the other state actors with NT source trees, it's
not like Israel, France, US etc don't develop their own. China just does it a
lot louder. Much of it probably gets bought from third parties anyway, it's
just cheaper than developing your own. And microsoft isn't going to be able to
sell into any sensitive state platforms without providing source code, for
obvious reasons.

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sp332
When source code review is outlawed, only people outside your jurisdiction
will review your source code.

------
est
previous discussion

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054791>

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sitmack
Back in 1997-1999 it was fairly easy to get access to MS source code on the
corp net. Esp if you were in Visual Studio or Windows NT (2000, XP, etc) team.
Meaning pretty much anyone could get it. I had a local copy on my workstation
I would study. Very readable code the NT 4 codebase. Everyone who wants a copy
of codebase X can get a codebase X with a concerted amount of work. It will be
impossible to stop this.

Having access to the source can give you insights into the various ways you
can attack a system. It saves months if not years of hacking. Yes you can make
exploits w/o the source. With the source it is a whole new ballgame.

Firewalls, MAC, separation of concerns, etc. With the proper virus one can
bring the whole system down (pick your system).

