Posted on 12/09/2005 5:54:30 AM PST by markedmannerf
Details of a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program have been put up for sale on eBay, with the seller offering a starting price of 1 US cent. At the time of writing, the bidding had reached $US60 ($A79).
Zero day means information that is not publicly available and is used to describe security vulnerabilities exploits which are unknown to security professionals.
The seller said the vulnerability had been discovered on December 6 and the details had been sent to Microsoft.
"All the details were submitted to Microsoft, and the reply was received indicating that they may start working on it," he wrote. "It can be assumed that no patch addressing this vulnerability will be available within the next few months.
"So, since I was unable to find any use for this by-product of Microsoft developers, it is now available for you at the low starting price of $0.01 (a fair value estimation for any Microsoft product). A percentage of this sale will be contributed to various open-source projects."
As a special offer, he said Microsoft representatives who bid would get 10 per cent off the price they offered. "To qualify, you
must provide @microsoft.com e-mail address and must mention discount code LINUXRULZ during checkout," the seller specified.
(Excerpt) Read more at smh.com.au ...
ping
MS has billions in the bank ... if they really cared about the security of their system, you'd think they'd be able to outbid terrorists bent on creating havoc in cyberspace.
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