The 2009 Pwnie Nominee For Most Over-Hyped Bug

Clickjacking (CVE-2008-4503)

Discovered by: Jeremiah Grossman, Robert Hansen

Of course, the best way to ensure that a talk gets hyped is to get it canceled, which is already becoming a regular occurrence at information security conferences. In fact, conferences should get in on the action by sponsoring betting pools on which talk is going to get pulled, perhaps in their automated talk review systems (hint, hint). Side bets for which presenters will quit their jobs and present their material anyway should definitely be allowed.

Jeremiah Grossman and Robert Hansen’s Clickjacking talk at OWASP 2009 was canceled in this way, and when the salacious information finally hit the Internet, it of course already fully protected against it. It’s a good thing Adobe protected everyone by asking these researchers to keep mum about their security issues. Maybe they should ask all of those nasty spear phishers abusing Adobe Reader 0day to do the same since it apparently works so well.

Clickjacking (CVE-2008-4503)