Google’s unwavering vulnerability disclosure deadlines are the latest chapter in a decades-long debate about how to best inform affected users that there’s a security problem with their software.
Since the start of the year, Google’s 90-day clock has most notably ticked down to zero on a trio of flaws in Microsoft products and two others in Apple’s OS X. And upon doing so, Google’s researchers shared with the world technical details and proof of concept code for each vulnerability.
Proponents of Google’s policy will argue that 90 days is plenty of time for a vendor to address a “responsibly” disclosed vulnerability. Opponents argue that a zero day is a zero day, and in such cases, a greater cut of attackers has vital information for exploit building when the details are public.
Google, being the giant that it is, threw more gasoline on the controversial fire when, with one of the Microsoft flaws, it refused to sit on the details reportedly for two more days until Microsoft said it would be ready with a patch.
Today, Google announced several adjustments to its disclosure policy, one of them being a 14-day grace period afforded to vendors that inform Google before the expiration of the 90-day deadline that a patch is scheduled for release within the 14-day extension.
“Public disclosure of an unpatched issue now only occurs if a deadline will be significantly missed (2 weeks+),” the Project Zero team said in its announcement.
“As always, we reserve the right to bring deadlines forwards or backwards based on extreme circumstances. We remain committed to treating all vendors strictly equally,” the researchers wrote. “Google expects to be held to the same standard; in fact, Project Zero has bugs in the pipeline for Google products (Chrome and Android) and these are subject to the same deadline policy.”
Google also announced that the first public mention of a vulnerability needs to include a CVE identifier and that Google will obtain a pre-assigned one for vulnerabilities that go past deadline. It also said that if a 90-day deadline expires on a weekend or a U.S. public holiday, the deadline will be extended to the next working day.
“Putting everything together, we believe the policy updates are still strongly in line with our desire to improve industry response times to security bugs, but will result in softer landings for bugs marginally over deadline,” Google said. “Finally, we’d like to call on all researchers to adopt disclosure deadlines in some form, and feel free to use our policy verbatim if you find our data and reasoning compelling.”
This should make some major vendors breathe a little easier. Microsoft, for its part, said that it disagrees with arbitrary deadlines because of the uniqueness of vulnerabilities and variables introduced during patch development and testing time.
“We prioritize security updates based on the probability and impact to customers,” said Chris Betz, head of the Microsoft Security Response Center. “When finders publically disclose vulnerability information with exploit details, they are increasing the potential for attack for millions of customers.”
Google isn’t the only major technology company with a disclosure deadline. HP’s Zero Day Initiative, one of the first vulnerability programs, has a 120-day deadline, while CERT at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, a DHS-sponsored organization, has a 45-day deadline. Deadlines ensure that vendors don’t sit on vulnerabilities for months, or years in some cases.
“The idea of disclosure deadlines is an old one and in practice in a lot of organizations,” said Katie Moussouris, chief policy officer at HackerOne. “The idea behind it is that people are protected and risk is minimized by limiting the window of exposure caused by an unpatched vulnerability.”
Google, meanwhile, made its case that its disclosure policies are working, with vulnerabilities patched consistently and quicker by most of the affected vendors. It says, for example, that Adobe has patched 37 vulnerabilities reported by Google inside of the 90-day deadline; 154 Project Zero vulnerabilities overall (85 percent) were fixed inside of 90 days.
