Microsoft: We Don't Want to Zero-Day Our Customers

The head of Microsoft's Security Response Center defends keeping its initial vulnerability disclosures sparse — it is, she says, to protect customers.

2 Min Read
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LAS VEGAS — A top Microsoft security executive on Aug. 11 defended the company's vulnerability disclosure policies as providing enough information for security teams to make informed patching decisions without putting them at risk of attack from threat actors looking to quickly reverse-engineer patches for exploitation.

In a conversation with Dark Reading at Black Hat USA here, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Response Center, Aanchal Gupta, said the company has consciously decided to limit the information it provides initially with its CVEs to protect users. While Microsoft CVEs provide information on the severity of the bug, and the likelihood of it being exploited (and whether it is being actively exploited), the company will be judicious about how it releases vulnerability exploit information.

For most vulnerabilities, Microsoft's current approach is to give a 30-day window from patch disclosure before it fills in the CVE with more details about the vulnerability and its exploitability, Gupta says. The goal is to give security administrations enough time to apply the patch without jeopardizing them, she says. "If, in our CVE, we provided all the details of how vulnerabilities can be exploited, we will be zero-daying our customers," Gupta says.

Related:How to Spot a Fake Microsoft Security Warning

Sparse Vulnerability Information?

Microsoft — as other major software vendors — has faced criticism from security researchers for the relatively sparse information the company releases with its vulnerability disclosures. Since Nov. 2020, Microsoft has been using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) framework to describe vulnerabilities in its security update guide. The descriptions cover attributes such as attack vector, attack complexity, and the kind of privileges an attacker might have. The updates also provide a score to convey severity ranking.

However, some have described the updates as cryptic and lacking critical information on the components being exploited or how they might be exploited. They have noted that Microsoft's current practice of putting vulnerabilities into an "Exploitation More Likely" or an "Exploitation Less Likely" bucket does not provide enough information to make risk-based prioritization decisions.

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About the Authors

Jai Vijayan

Contributing writer, Dark Reading

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a senior editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a master's degree in statistics and lives in Naperville, Illinois.

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