Penetration Testing mailing list archives
Re: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities...
From: "mailing lists" <bofn () irq org>
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 09:27:37 +0200
My experiences are that companies and organisations really do not want to know about such things. and will aggressively deny the facts when confronted, after they tried to not respond for a while. they will only Shoot the Messenger and hardly ever fix their infosec issues. we have to understand that its confronting people with blunt prove of their failure. and the natural reaction in these days of endless disclaimers is 'never admit fault'. we have talked to a few international banks, government departments in different countries, and also well known security companies like Cenzic, and they all seem to follow the same procedure when confronted with a friendly email detailing major security flaws in their public facing infrastucture. Being: - Ignore, no response - Friendly {substance less} Public Relations response - Annoyed "what do You Want from us!?" response - Aggressive "we will call the cops" response - Silence..., and the bugs/flaws stay in place. so, i think its just a sign of the times, people refuse to take any responsibility for their actions, and will rather try to send a friendly helping hand to jail then sit down for 10 minutes to look at what they could improve. Cheers.. #--------------------
So I drafted a letter to the editor as well as several other prominent people at the newspaper. It detailed my finding and recommended some possible mitigation strategies. After emailing this I didn't hear anything for a few days, so I emailed it again and followed up with a phone call. After getting no response to the second email and then having been bounced around from department to department when I called I just said forget it. Has anyone else gone through a similar situation? Was the company receptive? Other companies I've contacted in the past have been quite receptive - I'm just curious if other people have gone through this as well. No need to fill the list with this, you can email me directly with your inputs and stories. -- Joe McCray Toll Free: 1-866-892-2132 Email: joe () learnsecurityonline com
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Current thread:
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities..., (continued)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Krpata, Tyler (Oct 04)
- Re: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... bugtraq (Oct 04)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Craig Wright (Oct 04)
- Re: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... techlists (Oct 04)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Craig Wright (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Arian J. Evans (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Michael Scheidell (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Michael Scheidell (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... alan (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Clemens, Dan (Oct 05)
- Re: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... mailing lists (Oct 05)
- Re: RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... jay.tomas (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Levenglick, Jeff (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Arian J. Evans (Oct 05)
- WAS Informing Companies NOW Announcing ' or 1=1-- Thor (Hammer of God) (Oct 06)
- Re: WAS Informing Companies NOW Announcing ' or 1=1-- Ian Scott (Oct 06)
- RE: WAS Informing Companies NOW Announcing ' or 1=1-- Arian J. Evans (Oct 06)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Arian J. Evans (Oct 05)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Krpata, Tyler (Oct 04)
- RE: Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Levenglick, Jeff (Oct 05)
- RE: (illegal?) Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Arian J. Evans (Oct 05)
- Re: (illegal?) Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Nathan Keltner (Oct 06)
- RE: (illegal?) Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Arian J. Evans (Oct 06)
- RE: (illegal?) Informing Companies about security vulnerabilities... Arian J. Evans (Oct 05)