Re: On product vulnerability history and vulnerability complexity

["Steven M. Christey" <coley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Gadi Evron wrote:

> Looking at Microsoft's software of today, it is extremely well-written
> and professional. Far beyond that of most others. Finding
> vulnerabilities in them is extremely difficult. Most vulnerabilities you
> will find will be logical in nature and not easy.

A researcher mentioned to me offline that it takes a lot more time to find
vulnerabilities in such software.  This could be another quantitative
indicator, although it would be highly variable depending on each
individual researcher's methods and tools.

> That is key, as today's data is very lacking to base much on. But we use
> what we have, right?

Until we start to collect what we should.  Disclosure timelines weren't
that common a few years ago, and now there's a virtual goldmine of data
waiting for some enterprising person to examine notification-to-patch
timelines as well as overall vendor responsiveness.

- Steve