Security Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 19, 2023

• Bug bounties are broken - the story of 'i915' bug, ChromeOS + Intel bounty programs, and beyond : pi3 blog

  At first, I didn’t plan to write an article about the problems with bug bounty programs. This was supposed to be a standard technical blogpost describing an interesting bug in the Linux Kernel i915 driver allowing for a linear Out-Of-Bound read and write access (CVE-2023-28410). Moreover, I’m not even into bug bounty programs, mostly because I don’t need to, since I consider myself lucky enough to have a satisfying, stable and well-paid job. That being said, in my spare time, apart from developing and maintaining the Linux Kernel Runtime Guard (LKRG) project, I still like doing vulnerability research and exploit development not only for my employer, and from time to time it’s good to update your resume with new CVE numbers. Before I started to have a stable income, bug bounties didn’t exist and most of the quality vulnerability research outcome was paying the bills via brokers (let’s leave aside the moral questions arising from this). However, nowadays we have bug bounty programs…

  For the last decade (a bit longer), bug bounty programs gained a lot of deserved traction. There are security researchers who rely on bug bounties as their primary(!) source of income. Such cases are an irrefutable proof of the success of the bug bounty programs. However, before the industry ended up where it is now, it went through a long and interesting route.

• Millions of Smartphones Distributed Worldwide With Preinstalled ‘Guerrilla’ Malware

  A threat actor tracked as Lemon Group has control over millions of smartphones distributed worldwide thanks to preinstalled Guerrilla malware.

• Cisco Says PoC Exploits Available for Newly Patched Enterprise Switch Vulnerabilities

  Cisco has released patches for critical vulnerabilities in small business switches for which public proof-of-concept (PoC) code exists.

• PoC Tool Exploits Unpatched KeePass Vulnerability to Retrieve Master Passwords

  Researcher publishes PoC tool that exploits unpatched KeePass vulnerability to retrieve the master password from memory.

• Google Announces New Rating System for Android and Device Vulnerability Reports

  Google is updating its vulnerability reports rating system to encourage researchers to provide more details on the reported bugs.