Re: Intel Microcode updates

[Elmar Stellnberger <estellnb@gmail.com>]

  Just because you disable Javascript in your browser I would not trust 
that you will be save from arbitrary code execution. I am using 
Thunderbird as an email client and it has the same intrusion problem as 
the browsers running Javascript. The arbitrary binary code execution 
problem does to my believe more relate to common vulnerabilities like 
buffer overflows in the whole code than just to the Javascript subsystem 
which is of course an additional security risk. As long as the code base 
is changing rapidly and as long as new arbitrary code execution problems 
are discovered from time to time you are not save. The speed new bugs 
are moved in is simply higher than the speed by with some of the old 
bugs are corrected for browsers like Chromium or Firefox (I would not 
trust software from Google anyway as it is part of the empire of 
'evil'.). Intelligence services usually use zero days exploits for which 
there is no known mitigation. If you wanna be save on a computer do not 
use an email client or web browser; at least not if it can connect to 
sites spoofed by secret services. To avoid connecting to a 1:1 mirror 
site of an intelligence service we would need an improvement of https 
certificate management like f.i. DANE provides. There are many rogue 
certificates issued for intelligence services out there and restricting 
your browser to use https does not help.

Regards,
Elmar



Am 11.06.19 um 21:09 schrieb Andrew McGlashan:
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> Hi,
>
> > On 12/6/19 3:16 am, Holger Levsen wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 03:05:13AM +1000, Andrew McGlashan
> > > wrote:
> > > > Exploiting the flaws needs malicious code to be running on your
> > > >   box.  If you are in total control over all VMs and processes
> > > > on the box, then you should be good.
> > > do you use a webbrowser with javascript enabled?
> > Good point, yes that is another risk.
> Actually though, if you update your browser to lessen the granularity
> of time that the exploits require, it might not be an issue.  So,
> don't run an out of date browser....  is that enough?
>
> Cheers
> A.
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