0day Contest for End-of-Life Devices Announced

https://www.districtcon.org/junkyard

by winnona • 2 years ago

261 154 2 years ago

asabla2• 2 years ago

Ooh, this looks like a lot of fun. Really hope they'll either have recordings and/or stream this event.

Why would they do this? Knowing that any bugs found won't be patched since EOL, and will just be used for mass exploitation and harm??

Why is the cyber industry so desperately stupid for attention?

Aissen• 2 years ago

To protest stupidly short EOL deadlines.

schlauerfox• 2 years ago

Just went to get some BIOS files for the 5th gen Intel NUCs and they've purged them from the site. It's like when Microsoft purged the KB of everything not in current support. Burning of libraries, it's sickening.

Hackbraten• 2 years ago

I think this contest is a good thing.

It might put pressure on customers to demand products with longer support lifecycles, which in turn forces vendors to offer longer support and/or make their software and APIs open source once support ends.

wpm• 2 years ago

It might put pressure on customers to demand products with longer support lifecycles

It won't. It'll allow vendors to put pressure on customers to buy new shit to replace their old shit that still works just fine that the vendor would rather not spend the resources patching.

1970-01-01• 2 years ago

Why do you think the industry is morally obliged to have them remain untouched?

asabla2• 2 years ago

I don't see it like that at all. Some 0-days can (somewhat) be mitigated by other hardware/software.

I rather have as many "known" 0-days in the open. Then having it the other way. Even if it means I won't see any updates to affected devices or software

1oooqooq• 2 years ago

I cannot say if your comment is sarcasm.

Do you think devices are retired because they aren't sold? Why would you want that information to be known only by bad actors? Just imagine trying to convince someone who mounted a beautiful android 4.4 tablet to control their smart home (heh) 5 years ago that they will have to redo every thing because they bought into a proprietary protocol and the base os isn't receiving security updates.

Or do you truly believe you are safe if you hide under your bedsheet?

computersuck3• 2 years ago

It's about the barrier to entry and amount of effort to exploit something. When public information comes out about a vulnerability that can't be patched in a reasonable amount of time (due to EOL or some other reason), the bad actors have the upper hand.

Giving ransomware actors free bugs for mass exploitation when they are unlikely to be patched is just putting innocent users in harms way. It doesn't really make a dent in the shit vendors' profits, so the only other motives are 1) to show off your cool research or 2) protest ridiculous EOL deadlines (which sure, might make a difference).

computersuck3• 2 years ago

When there's no publicly known bug, someone needs to spend the time and effort to research it; when public POCs come out every skid cybercrime crew jumps on and starts exploiting it for financial gain.

thomascountz• 2 years ago

I'm thinking that bugs may not necessarily disappear when the device or application where they are discovered is EOL'd. This research could discover attack vectors and vulnerabilities that will need to be addressed in active implementations.

freehorse• 2 years ago

The first best thing for vulnerabilities is fixing them, the second best is knowing they exist and what they specifically are (so one can either try to mitigate them or make an informed choice on replacing equipment).

amenghra• 2 years ago

Also great for learning. Vendors learn from their mistakes, right?

hedgehog2• 2 years ago

Without splashy narrative and quantifiable risk the vendors won't change and the general public won't perceive the danger of unsupported devices. Public bounties are one way to change both so this seems like a reasonable project with net benefit.

sandwichmonger4• 2 years ago

Let's say there's a group of people living a small, old house. They have the money to move to a bigger, newer one, but there's sentimental and other value to the one they're in.

Yeah, they don't have the latest door chain and fancy security systems, but that just means they don't open the door to random people who come knocking and are more careful and wary of burglars.

Now imagine a real estate company paying people to try and break into houses like theirs in order to scare the people into spending money and moving to a bigger and newer house they don't want to move to, claiming that the people don't know any better and need to be FUD'd for their own good.

That sounds like an evil thing to me.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

These devices don't magically become secure just because white hats decide not to attack them.

You're advocating security through sticking-your-head-in-the-sand.

frankharv• 2 years ago

I think we need a cyber swat team to assassinate anybody doing a port scan.

You want to play with something you don't own or have permission to play with it.

Assassinate target. You want to make money/fame off others. DIE.

If somebody came to you house and started jiggling doorhandles what would you do?

Why is cyber different?

NO CONSEQUENCES.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 2 years ago

Why is the cyber industry so desperately stupid for attention?

Burglaries aren't getting enough attention.

nashashmi3• 2 years ago

Look at what they are saying. They want to document all sorts of bugs in past products for future research purposes. And they want to draw attention to the product that it be replaced.

I agree putting such burdens on companies with little IT resources isn’t healthy for the company, its customers or anyone else. This is hostile.

jon-wood• 2 years ago

If you put a product out in the field which can potentially be remotely exploited it’s on you to either patch it when someone does find an exploit or possibly open source everything so others can. If you genuinely can’t support it I guess you could put a self-destruct mechanism in which remotely bricks the device instead, just don’t expect your customers to be happy about it.

stackghost• 2 years ago

Dunking on Internet of Shit^H^H^H^HThings vendors is always a win in my book.

busterarm• 2 years ago

Would be cool but "responsible disclosure" is a non-starter for me. Full disclosure is the only way to operate, IMO.

sidewndr462• 2 years ago

If the device is explicitly past EOL what is the point anyways? Just to wait 60 days and hear they aren't going to do anything?

winnona• 2 years ago

not necessarily! If the 0day is bad enough the vendor may patch it or release further guidance - most recent case is Ivanti this week (https://cyberscoop.com/ivanti-vulnerability-cisa-kev/)

Techbrunch2• 2 years ago

Depending on the target and the severity of the vulnerability the vendor might consider fixing the vulnerability even if EOL.

If the target is an IOT device the vulnerability will likely be mass exploited to create a botnet.

The U.S. government recently ‘took control’ of a botnet run by Chinese government hackers made of 260,000 Internet of Things devices... (Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/18/u-s-government-took-contro...)

Retr0id3• 2 years ago

60-90 day disclosure windows with vendor

This is not 0day. (but I think this is a fun initiative nonetheless)

Retr0id3• 2 years ago

I'm also not sure what the point of vendor disclosure is, if the product really is EOL

codetrotter• 2 years ago

Maybe mainly to avoid legal trouble? Even if you “know” the answer from the vendor will be that it’s EOL, notifying them of your findings and giving them time to fix it shows that you have good intentions. That they then do choose to do nothing about it, well that’s not your fault.

Additionally, it helps you avoid the situation where you thought the device was EOL because there hadn’t been any updates for a long time but then it turns out that they actually do still respond to, and fix, security issues. And it just happened that there hadn’t been updates for a long while because no one had reported anything for a while.

stvltvs• 2 years ago

The vulnerabilities might still exist in current products even if discovered in an EOL product.

citrin_ru• 2 years ago

Depending on vulnerability impact and difficulty fixing it, some vendors may choose to release a fix even after EOL. Generally EOL means that users should not rely on getting an update (but it still may be released as an exception).

myself2482• 2 years ago

I think the point is to embarrass vendors into extending their support periods. Giving them 60 days to think about that is a shot across the bow.

qwery• 2 years ago

An attempt to avoid unnecessary harm, I'd guess.

To see what they do?

Because it will be more damning if they ignore something significant they had explained to them?

creatonez• 2 years ago

Sometimes an EOL is ignored if it's serious enough - https://msrc.microsoft.com/blog/2017/05/customer-guidance-fo...

Techbrunch2• 2 years ago

"Although the term "zero-day" initially referred to the time since the vendor had become aware of the vulnerability, zero-day vulnerabilities can also be defined as the subset of vulnerabilities for which no patch or other fix is available." - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-day_vulnerability

londons_explore• 2 years ago

- You are not under any restrictions or sanctions from the US.

Can we make this a condition of giving any prizes, rather than of entry to the competition? This restriction affects literally 200 + million people.

throwaway484764• 2 years ago

How likely is it that a sanctioned individual shows up for an event in Washington DC?

dghlsakjg• 2 years ago

This is likely a restriction that applies whether or not they put it in the terms and conditions.

tonetegeatinst• 2 years ago

Wouldn't the legal definition of "restriction" also include the laws covering computers etc?

A technicality but one could argue that if the law is the only barrier to exploiting something then the vulnerability needs to be fixed and proven, which a US citizen can not do.

drclegg• 2 years ago

It's more likely to cover the organizers legally.

I imagine no-one wants to be on the receiving end of "You are accused of actively encouraging Iranian / Russian / <insert other sanctioned state here> hackers to identify exploitable security vulnerabilities in appliances owned and operated by Americans; how do you plead?"

efields• 2 years ago

I read this thinking it was a contest for suicide booths.

myself2482• 2 years ago

Hack Kevorkian?

moffkalast3• 2 years ago

You have chosen: slow and horrible.

jdironman• 2 years ago

The pod just reopens and lets you back out

meindnoch3• 2 years ago

EoL devices are a huge liability. We need laws that require vendors to equip smart devices with remote hardkill switches, so they can be permanently disabled by the vendor when they reach EoL. A disabled smart device is better than one that can be weaponized by threat actors.

notfed• 2 years ago

Yikes -1 to that. Sounds like a vendors dream anyway, I don't know if that needs to be incentivized.

nashashmi3• 2 years ago

The terms of service of the device did not require replacement nor issue end of life date. What basis would the law have to enforce replacement?

compootr• 2 years ago

Right, but do you want these still usable devices to become e-waste?

for those that can secure them properly (e,g air-gapping) why do we need to make old iot stuff non-functional bricks?

something I'd be more ok with is to disable it, but in the device's settings, allow it to be re-enabled

meindnoch3• 2 years ago

If you truly air-gap the device, then the kill signal wouldn't reach it, so all is well.

Cheetah26• 2 years ago

Much better legislation would be requiring that the firmware/software source be released at EOL, so that users can maintain the hardware they purchased for as long as they like.

meindnoch3• 2 years ago

Probably we need both. Hardkill all devices, and let determined users resurrect their own devices with the open source firmware if needed. The point is that millions of vulnerable devices won't stay online by default.

liotier• 2 years ago

Want to sell a device ? Deposit the software in escrow, released one year after the firm stops supporting the device !

mnau2• 2 years ago

How big percentage of customers even logged to their home router. It will be way below 10% (I would wager in lower single digit percents).

* manufactures open source it

* "someone" is going to maintain it, for free

* all these people are going to find non-malware infested fork

* upload custom ROM to their devices.

I just don't see it.

Automatic updates/killswitch are the only way forward.

UniverseHacker• 2 years ago

That is insane. I mostly buy and use “EOL” devices because they’re cheaper and have no issues. Recently bought my son an old Intel Mac Mini and he loves it.

You can easily still secure an EOL device- with the old Mac I just use it with the firewall on, no ports open, and a modern secure browser. There is really no attack surface from the OS which is EOL, and this old device has aged past being worth developing attacks for.

getcrunk2• 2 years ago

Tell that to the recent windows bug where even if you block ipv6 in your device firewall or was it even turn off the stack your device is vulnerable to specially crafted ipv6 packet

heraldgeezer5• 2 years ago

Go ahead and disable 47% of gaming PCs in 2025 then. lmao ur insane.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

jodrellblank• 2 years ago

PCs aren't "smart devices".

aeternum• 2 years ago

Auto-applying security updates is actually a major threat vector. It's often easier to compromise a cloud deployment system/key rather than thousands of edge-deployed devices.

An EOL device that has withstood the test of time, and has had many security patches but is no longer connected if often one of the most secure devices.

olabyne• 2 years ago

The planet is dying and the way you think is part of it. IT security is important, but none of that is more important the planet's ressources

technofiend4• 2 years ago

This just underscores the fact (IMHO) we need a "cash for clunkers" program for obsolete and unsupported devices. I mean I'd love to see more moonshot programs like DARPA's Tractor but in the meantime why not create incentives to get insecure equipment off the net?

throwaway484764• 2 years ago

A lot of the time the EOL hardware is exactly the same as the supported hardware. The software just needs to be supported for longer. For example the 2014 and 2015 mac book pro, same CPU, same motherboard, etc and yet the 2014 is EOL a year earlier.

technofiend4• 2 years ago

I'm thinking of the millions of IOT devices like old internet firewall appliances that make up modern botnets. Those need to die ASAP.

bee_rider3• 2 years ago

Reaching the the legal hammer out to be a last resort, but IMO, EOL-ing a device should require open sourcing it and handing over any info required for administration to the users. Or refund for full price.

A device which can not be administered by the end user is administered (perhaps negligently) by the company who sold it.

saagarjha• 2 years ago

You know you can look up the specs of those machines, right? The 2015 MacBook Pro updates the processor from fourth-generation Haswell (22nm) to fifth-generation Broadwell (14nm) cores and also bumps the memory speed slightly to 1866MHz. They're not the same hardware.

Qwertious3• 2 years ago

"Cash for clunkers" only made sense because they weren't fuel efficient. If old devices are insecure, then the only sane long-term solution is to incentivize long-term device security.

We already have 10-year-old devices which are perfectly performant for their tasks but are being turned to ewaste due to lack of support, rather than any material need. Moore's law isn't coming back, devices will have longer and longer performances relevant lifetimes from here on out, and if the current market doesn't support that then it's the market that's broken, not the devices.

atomicthumbs• 2 years ago

As someone who works at an e-waste recycler, I can tell you that what you are describing is an environmental and ecological nightmare.

phendrenad22• 2 years ago

A cynical person (not me, not I, I'm not a cynical person) might think that this is the opening salvo in a campaign to "save" the US tech sector by getting rid of old hardware. See the comments in this very thread calling for a "cash for clunkers for old devices" or a "remote kill-switch" to disable them (!)

Right now you can go to eBay and buy a used PC for $200 that will do everything you need to do, including gaming. You can buy a 64GB iPhone X for $100, which will do everything a new phone will do (basically). Can you imagine the drain on the hardware sector in the US due to these old devices piling up? And the trend is only going to accelerate. If the powers that be aren't conspiring to "fix" this "issue", it's only a matter of time until they do.

hnuser123456• 2 years ago

As soon as they feel like TPM isn't pushing enough HW upgrade purchases...

heraldgeezer5• 2 years ago

Yup Windows 10 EOL will be fun...

Windows 10 is "still" on 47% of PCs with Steam installed.

Windows 11 is at 49%.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

isodev2• 2 years ago

I think hardware vendors have been allowed way too much freedom in trying to turn hardware into a subscription. The yearly release of new phone models isn’t helping either.

winwang2• 2 years ago

What if we turned hardware support into a subscription (kind of like JetBrains model I think?) and stopped yearly releases in favor of more interesting releases? I wonder how many resources are used just to make the next iteration a bit shinier to catch the consumer's eye.

kypro• 2 years ago

People don't have to buy this stuff you know...

In a free market vendors should have the freedom to create bad subscription services and consumers should be free to buy other hardware if they don't like it...

I buy a $100 phone like once every 3 years... No one is forcing me to buy a premium Apple phone every year. Doing so is purely a consumer choice. Perhaps a stupid one, but one consumers should have imo.

Just because you and I don't like it surely doesn't mean it should be regulated.

heraldgeezer5• 2 years ago

200 for gaming might be cutting it close for me but I am using a 10 year old PC with an upgraded GPU. I guess thats "bad" lmao. Can we end of life the people who will decide and implement some shit like that? :)

Also enterprise will buy new and then sell, why Thinkpad etc is popular. Should that also be banned?

No used cars too, sound good. No used goods at all. Imagine the productivity!!!

technofiend4• 2 years ago

Right now you can go to eBay and buy a used PC for $200 that will do everything you need to do...

100%! And the average HN poster presumably has the skills to make that work. My suggestion to retire vulnerable devices isn't a US jobs or tech sector program; it was born from a sincere desire to see vulnerable and most likely already compromised devices removed from use.

It seems logical to me if we're going to look for vulnerabilities in order to help harden devices you might want to address ones with known issues. And frankly the reason so many devices still out there are in use because their owners simply don't know any better or see no value in upgrading. Cash for clunkers creates an incentive to fix a situation that I'm guessing many don't even know exists.

phendrenad22• 2 years ago

I mean if we're committed to spending a bunch of taxpayer money on this problem, maybe education and investment into Linux is better than spending it to increase the amount of toxic waste in the ground.

technofiend4• 2 years ago

For example getting rid of these: https://apnews.com/article/fbi-justice-department-chinese-ha...

getcrunk2• 2 years ago

I’ve bought three laptops this year from eBay. The second was shortly after the first because I thought it was such a good deal.

A few months later the first laptops exhaust started smelling like burning plastic and i also discovered that if you move the lid/screen a certain way the laptop hard freezes. A few months after that same smell from the second laptop (different model/seller) that progressed into a proper burning smell. In both cases I’m out my purchase price and for the total could have bought new.

On a whim after coming across the thinkpad subreddit I bought a t480s recently. As soon as I got it paid attention to folding the hinges excessively and noticed it creaks sometimes and the exhaust also gets a little too toasty. So this one is going back.

I’m not against used. I’m a lifelong 2nd hand buyer. No problems with phones or even mini pcs.

I don’t recommend laptops anymore tho. Too delicate and can have hidden issues.

If you read this far. It’s not enviornmental cus my bought new laptop (4yo) doesn’t have any issues. And also I did take off the back cover in both laptops and didn’t see any obvious blown parts. And neither are overheating from sensor data even under p95

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

After going through 6 very high end gaming laptops the last few years, I agree. 4/6 of them failed for insanely stupid issues, 2 were my fault.

makeitdouble• 2 years ago

Yes, laptops are really not a great for resell.

We only buy new and kept ours until they die, and they sure die or become quirky in ways we'd be pissed about if we bought it in that state.

The big issue is of course repairability: buying a second hand business DELL Opiplex is mostly fine because replacing anything other than the motherboard/power supply will be dead simple, and even that can be managed either through salvaging or diy. A flacky or half broken laptop is a world of hurt, for any brand, even if you're into soldering.

transpute• 2 years ago

Some eBay ex-enterprise laptops include vendor warranty that can sometimes be extended. Dell US-based ProSupport and Lenovo International Warranty (3 years, optional years extra) offer competent phone support and relatively quick repairs. Well worth the insurance for mobile computing devices in a hostile world.

cstrat• 2 years ago

If you're not against supporting Apple, their laptops always seem to have the most longevity. I am still running my M1 with 8G of RAM and it out performs the latest "top of the line" Windows laptops my work are handing out.

Prior to this one I had a MacBook Pro for about 7 years and before that one the black plastic MacBooks from 2007.

So three laptops for the better part of 20 years.

phito• 2 years ago

Agreed, buying used is very often a waste of time

rdujdjsjehy6• 2 years ago

This seems like that useless definition of "need" that completely discards any real standards for the sake of an argument. A 200 dollar computer at best is going to let you play low demand indie games and things with garbage mode settings for running on potatoes.

ruthmarx2• 2 years ago

A 200 dollar computer at best is going to let you play low demand indie games and things with garbage mode settings for running on potatoes.

That's not true. I still regularly use an old Dell Latitude from almost 15 years ago sometimes - it cost under $150. I can do everything I need on it, even compile Firefox. I can't run most new AAA games, but can play a bunch of FPS games from about up until when it came out. It still plays CSGO just fine, for example.

The real advances in performance the last decade has been in GPU performance, not general performance.

dangrossman2• 2 years ago

$200 on eBay will get you a used laptop with a Core i7, 16GB RAM and SSD; essentially the same specs as my year-old $1000+ laptop, other than having a newer generation CPU. It'll play many brand new games at 720p or better and acceptable framerates.

I still use an original Microsoft Surface Pro pretty often, and can barely tell the difference between using it and that year-old PC for web browsing, document editing, and tablet-style gaming. The Surface Pro came out in 2013.

sandwichmonger4• 2 years ago

I use multiple Windows 2000 computers as daily drivers for hobbies, writing documents, internet, et cetera.

It's hilarious to me that I get better performance doing those things on a 20+ year old computer and OS than I used to on a recent computer simply using an internet browser.

sulandor2• 2 years ago

it'll also be part of a botnet within seconds if you visit a wrong website.

though i also miss the ui-latency of the civilized age ...

zekica• 2 years ago

You are not "simply using" an internet browser. You are using an entire (browser) OS in itself on a 4x pixel count display with antialiased text, transparency, blur, scaling, video compositing... The OS itself is using additional compositing for windows using indirect rendering - all the things that add latency. Additionally, you are using a remote application that has it's own latency when talking to the remote server and even locally executing JS is doing everything in a single thread, plus V8 JIT only works for hotspots in the code.

DidYaWipe2• 2 years ago

"oday" contest?

DidYaWipe2• 2 years ago

Uh-oh, Alan O'Day got offended and down-modded.

userbinator• 2 years ago

There are already communities around providing fixes and drivers for OSes going back to at least Windows 3.x(!), so I hope things like this will also come with fixes too.

The complexity of essential system software has ballooned out of control, and it has always been my belief that "EOL" means eventual stability; known unknowns are better than unknown unknowns. They always tell you how many bugs they fixed in the new version, but they never tell you how many new ones they introduced.

Rygian2• 2 years ago

In my fictional country, in order to release a software product to the market, or a hardware appliance that runs software, the vendor must:

- Subscribe to an end-of-life insurance package for security software patches. Vendor must contribute periodically. The amount contributed is proportional to the number of appliances sold, with a multiplication factor to account for how hard it is to upgrade the software. Vendor is still legally bound, by SLA, to release software patches and provide an upgrade path to customers for as long as devices remain operational (ie. no fixed EOL). The insurance is only there in case vendor goes bankrupt.

- Or else release the software under an FSF-approved free software license, including all the needed toolchain to deploy software fixes on an appliance. Any third party is then legally empowered to provide patching services (caveat: the third party must agree to same SLA as vendor in point above).

- Or else vendor must put in place a guaranteed-buyback scheme whereby consumers can get at least 75% of the ongoing retail price (or last known retail price) by bringing back a device. The funds must be put in escrow, to protect users if vendor goes bankrupt.

euroderf2• 2 years ago

Musing...

All these things might need some flavor of escrow-with-indie-verification. For example, does the published source actually compile other what's on the device? And some flavors of escrow (like your #3) need a bankroll or some sort of insurance.

And anyways, given the inevitable enshittification of all the things, including "assurance", how is a grand scheme for preventing willful software obsolescence enforceable by anything less imposing than the gummint?

Rygian2• 2 years ago

In my fictional country, the gummint is BDFL-style. Regulation is broadly accepted as the lesser evil, when compared to letting the free market enshittify itself.

0day Contest for End-of-Life Devices Announced

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