Bugtraq mailing list archives

Re: Vulnerabilites in new laws on computer hacking


From: ArkanoiD <ark () eltex ru>
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 16:19:27 +0300

nuqneH,

Actually, both are quite useless and non-informative.
(should i explain?)
"fixing the holes" is, for my estimation, hardly more than 10% of
computer security process. Thanks to stupid hollywood movies, 
customers are almost completely unaware of that :-(
They still think a computer security expert is a person who performs
attacks and provides a report if he succeeds.

On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 12:43:49AM -0500, Seth Breidbart wrote:
"Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com> wrote:

If you're trying to understand the security properties of a
system by breaking into it, you not producing valuable
reports, anyhow. All you are doing is telling them where
to put the next band-aid.

I know of too many (more than none is too many) examples where a
company went to a Big Consulting Firm and asked for a report on the
security of their systems.  Many tens of kilobucks later, they got a
fancy bound report that said "we couldn't break in" followed by 200
pages of ass-covering by the consulting firm.  Then they went to a
real security expert, who spent one day attacking their system and
gave them a report saying "here are the five easiest ways I found to
break into your system.  Fix them and call me back."

You might not consider that valuable; but how do you consider the
expensive fancy bound completely worthless report?

Seth


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