Gray Hat Hacking, Second Edition, 2nd Edition

Patching

The only sure way to secure a vulnerable application is to shut it down or patch it. If the vendor can be trusted to release patches in an expeditious manner, we may be fortunate enough to avoid long periods of exposure for the vulnerable application. Unfortunately, in some cases vendors take weeks, months, or more to properly patch reported vulnerabilities, or worse yet, release patches that fail to correct known vulnerabilities, thereby necessitating additional patches. If we determine that we must keep the application up and running, it may be in our best interests to attempt to patch the application ourselves. Clearly, this will be an easier task if we have source code to work with and this is one of the leading arguments in favor ...