Well, last time I rushed to judgment without properly reading the
articles, and I stuck my foot in my mouth big-time. Now we have a
new "Zero-day" flaw announced, and this time I'm not the only one
complaining about misuse of the term, as you may see in the
discussion at Slashdot:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/05/21/220225/new-ie-8-zero-day-discovered
So it seems that people do use the term just because it "sounds
cool", and it has ceased to mean anything useful. I suggest we get
rid of "zero-day".
-- dkm
At 4/29/2014 03:10 PM Tuesday, David McFarlane wrote:
>About my screed on "0-day": Looks like I need a lesson on reading
>comprehension. As has been kindly pointed out to me, the first
>sentence of the original Microsoft Security Advisory at
>https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/2963983.aspx
>says, "Microsoft is aware of limited, targeted attacks ..." I would
>have had to click through an extra link to get to that statement,
>but even the press account that started this thread, in the first
>sentence of the second paragraph, reads, "Attacks taking advantage
>of the vulnerability are largely targeting ..." So this does honor
>the traditional use of "0-day", and I have no excuse.
>
>Mea culpa,
>-- dkm
>
>
>At 4/29/2014 11:42 AM Tuesday, David McFarlane wrote:
>><editorial>
>>And going off on a tangent here... Have we changed the meaning of
>>"Zero Day Vulnerability"? According to my understanding, and as
>>corroborated by Wikipedia, a "Zero-day attack" refers to a
>>situation where "There are zero days between the time the
>>vulnerability is discovered (and made public), and the first
>>attack." But in this case we have not yet seen any attack, so it
>>would be more proper to refer to this as an n-day vulnerability,
>>where n indicates the number of days since the vulnerability was
>>discovered. Or has "0-day" suffered journalistic inflation, like
>>so much of our terminology? If every discovered vulnerability is
>>now considered "0-day", then what function does the modifier
>>"0-day" serve? What then makes a "0-day" vulnerability different
>>from a non 0-day vulnerability?
>>
>>This is much like the misused term DDoS, where in many cases the
>>first "D" is irrelevant and simply DoS would serve. Sigh.
>></editorial>
>>
>>-- dkm
>>
>>
>>At 4/29/2014 11:29 AM Tuesday, David Graff wrote:
>>>I agree that this is sensationalist. We have arbitrary code execution
>>>vulnerabilities against Flash, Acrobat, and Java all the time and those have
>>>active user bases on par with IE these days. What's one more way to
>>>infiltrate an XP system?
>>>
>>>But, if you're looking for mitigation against unpatched buffer overrun
>>>attacks Windows, its worth installing the EMET package from Microsoft and
>>>accepting the default config which will run DEP and SEHOP in opt-out mode.
>>>
>>>http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41138
>>>
>>>Hopefully the IE sandboxing that UAC creates is also containing this attack
>>>for anything running Vista and newer.
>>>
>>>On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:41:39 -0400, David McFarlane
>>><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> >Yet another (less alarmist) perspective on
>>> >this:
>>> >http://steve.grc.com/2014/04/28/a-quick-mitigation-for-internet-e
>>> x p lorers-new-0-day-vulnerability
>>> >
>>> >-- dkm "What, me worry?"
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >At 4/28/2014 08:57 AM Monday, Murray, Troy wrote:
>>> >>Zero-day exploit in every version of Internet Explorer discovered
>>> >>late yesterday, and XP won't be patched when a fix is released.
>>> >>
>>> >><http://gizmodo.com/new-vulnerability-found-in-every-single-vers
>>> i o
>>> n-of-inte-1568383903/+whitsongordon?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lifehacker%2Ffull+%28Lifehacker%29>http://gizmodo.com/new-vulnerability-found-in-every-single-version-of-inte-1568383903/
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