Many 0-days are built of of multiple bugs. A triple letter may use bug #1 and bug #2 to get a result, but another party will use bug #1 and bug #3 to get a similar result. Back to square one with corporate/government/personal equipment getting hacked reducing overall security.
Traditionally the meaning of “backdoor” has involved intent as well as access. Unlike a basic bug, the system is working as designed but the designer wasn't trustworthy.
This is not true. A backdoor indicates that Microsoft is aware of it (and/or colluded to put it in), but there is no evidence of that. I respect your disagreement with my thoughts on how they should handle 0-days, but re-defining "backdoor" does not seem helpful.
By de facto, I was implying that they both accomplish the same things with almost the same list of pros and cons.
While I know there may be reasons to disagree with that practice, I think it would be a major stretch to say that it meant iOS suddenly had a backdoor.
The 0-day you were not reporting gave you escalated access to iOS devices. If Apple had given you a backdoor, you would have had the exact same access to the device.
Not saying its the same thing, which is why I used "de facto". The government just wants the access. Regardless the hole is intentional or unintentional, if a hole exists, then overall security is weakened
The best solution enables both of these to the maximal extent possible (and has honest discussions about their relative values).
And this seems a little disingenuous. Perhaps there is no evidence so far regarding these particular leaks from Shadow Brokers, but in general the NSA has a history of creating backdoors.
You and I discussed some of this a bit already in one of the older NSA threads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
The idea of "key escrow", used by the NSA in the Clipper Chip's Skipjack algorithm, is really a euphemism for a built-in cryptographic backdoor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
And right there, GP is correct. Either there is evidence to suggest that these were planted backdoors (difficulty: patched out long before the leaks), or there is not.
1. Discover 0-day exploits relevant to mission
2. Build modular tools to utilize the 0-day
3. Do nothing
4. Lose control of 0days, or allow other actors to discover them.
It seems like the NSA is trying to avoid perceptions that they're scanning domestic internet traffic, but that leaves us in the vulnerable position of hacking everyone while leaving our own doors wide open.
I'm curious as to what your response would be to solve this. If it's to scan domestically, then that's a 180 from every other argument point people make against the NSA and domestic operations. That said, they do spend a regular amount of time working with private companies to remedy and solve breaches by nation- state & similar actors. For an example lookup the aurora investigation.
Yes, it's a good thing that very illegal cyberattacks are never done over encrypted channels. To catch the once-in-a-blue-moon hacker who has their bots log in to the mothership with ssh or something, we could just go ahead and let the government write ring-0 antivirus for us.
EDIT: I would agree that without intent to gain access, it's not inserting a backdoor.
Part of the NSA's job is signals intelligence, so they specifically find the vulnerabilities as a means of access. And if that were not the case, they would not have spent the time finding the vulnerabilities, so those 0-days would still exist and be potential attack vectors regardless.
That seems intentionally dishonest, no? If I disagree with a position I'm not justified in intentionally misrepresenting it because I feel morally correct. Unless you're alleging that these vulnerabilities were intentionally placed there, I don't understand why you'd feel the need to say that. Worrying about the effects of stockpiling vulnerabilities seems like a defensible position in and of itself.
This seems like a disingenuous statement. I believe many reasonable folks would agree that inserting backdoors is an awful idea.
However, there is no evidence at all which indicates the exploits leaked by Shadow Brokers are intentional backdoors. Mentioning backdoors dilutes the discussion as it makes it seem like there is any sort of relationship with 0-day exploits (Which are the issue at hand).
0-days are going to be in code regardless of who finds them. It would be great to get some clarification on this from the government, but I would be pretty OK if the process looked anything like this:
1. Discover 0-day exploit relevant to mission.
2. Build modular tools to utilize the 0-day.
3. Create detection signatures for the exploit to run against Upstream collected internet communications.
4. If another party is seen using the same 0-day (doesn't matter if it was via leak or independent discovery), have a cutout such as FBI or DHS contact vendor with details to get it patched ASAP.