Why Silent Updates Boost Security

http://www.techzoom.net/publications/silent-updates/

by briansmith • 17 years ago

10 7 17 years ago

khandekars2• 17 years ago

Interesting paper. Thoughts about tradeoff:

1. What if the update breaks some user code / extension and causes loss of productivity? 2. What if the update server gets hacked (though highly unlikely)?

On the whole, silent updates are useful when: a. attack surface is greater, b. they are geared towards security fixes than enhancements.

deno2• 17 years ago

AD1: Possible solution might be signing updates. Microsoft already provides way to sign assembly files. Ohama (Google update tool) uses HTTPS, but I doubt they are signing files they download.

eru2• 17 years ago

Ubuntu also signs updates. And I guess they did not invent it, but took the process from Debian.

sundarurfriend• 17 years ago

I really hate it when suddenly out of the blue, my Comodo asks permission for some random 'setup.exe' to change things in the Google Chrome folder. If you're making me practise allowing this, you're making me learn to allow cleverly contrived cracker attacks.

At the minimum, if you don't like asking user's permission to install stuff on his/her own computer, please for heaven's sake _inform_ me (within the browser) that you've got an update and are going to update yourself at some random point in the future. Then, I'll have at least a very little amount of confidence that this setup.exe isn't something evil.

There are many things wrong about Google's update mechanism from running a GoogleUpdate.exe at startup and then continuously without permission (what, are you Adobe?) to updating my software silently without even providing an option for how it's done.

If you're trying for the IE marketshare, make what they want the defaults, and give the advanced users _some_ way to customize things. I'd be happy even to have even the slightly advanced options in an about:config window, rather than not have them at all.

Why Silent Updates Boost Security

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