1. "XSS isn't technical"
That, sir, is an argument that XSS is *more* important to customers, not less. When you snatch user credentials from a web portal login page, or own the entire population of client desktops 'cause they're all configured to totally trust the vulnerable site, the notion that "any fool could've found that" is just one more reason to take the issue seriously. Second, XSS exploits can get pretty effing technical. Try using XSS to do something meaningful to a cookieless app that uses client certificate authentication. It'll give you a real appreciation for why people write things like xssproxy. 5. "Only lamers publish XSS" Posting about XSS bugs on wherever.com = lame. Posting about XSS bugs in shipping software products = cool. Re. what's lame, it's because the case for full disclosure doesn't work for web sites. Seriously. There are a million regulatory schemes in place (PCI, SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, SB1386, etc, etc) that exist to penalize organizations for failing to protect customer data. Any hacker who wants to feel righteous can anonymously tell a company that they're vulnerable, and later, when the company gets owned, that hacker can bust their balls by telling the world how they made the company aware of the threat, yet nothing was done to mitigate it. Re. what's cool, it's because for a software product, there is no legislation to protect customers' interests. (i.e., no product liability) Therefore, we have the full disclosure debate, and anyone who believes in full disclosure for buffer overflows has no reason to look down their nose at a meaningful XSS advisory. Unless they just gotta feel cool. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of reepex Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2007 2:26 PM To: full-disclosure@lists.grok.org.uk; pdp (architect) Subject: [Full-disclosure] on xss and its technical merit Pdp architect and I have been emailing back and forth about whether xss has a place in fd, bugtraq, or the security research area at all. He decided that we should start a discussion about in on here and gets peoples unmoderated opinion. This discussion should not concern whether its important due to stealing bank info, paypal, whatever it should only stick to xss as a pure research area. Or as pdp described it: "we are talking about whether XSS is as technical as other security disciplines. We are also talking about whether it should have a deserved an recognized place among FD readers and contributers. however, the topic wont cover only whether you can detect or inject XSS, this is lame. it will cover the whole 9 yards... pretty much all the topics covered inside the XSS book." My ideas on the topic are 1) XSS isnt techincal no matter how its used 2) people who use xss on pentests/real hacking/anything but phishing are lame and only use it because they cannot write real exploits (non-web) or couldnt find any other web bugs (sql injection, cmd exec,file include, whatever) 3) XSS does not have a place on this list or any other security list and i remember when the idea of making a seperate bugtraq for xss was proposed and i still think it should be done. 4) if you go into a pentest/audit and all you get out is xss then its a failed pentest and the customer should get a refund. 5) publishing xss shows your weakness and that you dont have the ability to find actual bugs ( b/c xss isnt a vuln its crap ) i think pdp is going to respond first. should be fun ;)
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