FC: How to mass-market a Windows cracking tool

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 11:23:15 -0800
To: politech () politechbot com
From: "A.Lizard" <alizard () ecis com>
Subject: mass-marketing a cracking tool

for those of you who read ISN Security News, yes, this is a copy of the 
post I just sent to the list. I figured this would be of interest to 
politech subscribers as well.

Would you believe that someone is marketing a Windows computer cracking 
tool as a Napster alternative?

["ShareSniffer Inc.'s newly-launched software, also called ShareSniffer, 
allows people to hunt for exposed Windows file systems with the ease of a 
Napster-user searching for a favorite track. "Right now... there are tens 
of thousands of computers worldwide that have their files deliberately 
shared with the Internet with no password required," reads the ShareSniffer 
web site.  The site goes on to encourage netizens to rummage through 
strangers' music files, digital movies, Microsoft Word documents and 
spreadsheets.  The company motto: "Because it's there."]

In other words, it's a user friendly Windows cracking tool marketed to the 
general public. This class of tool is well-known, It's making this kind of 
tool usable even for novices and marketing it that's the innovation.

Handing this kind of tool out to people too unsophisticated to know that 
snooping through the hard drives of others is bad manners at best, likely 
to get their ISP accounts terminated, and even get put them in jail and 
encouraging them to use it is one of the most irresponsible things I've 
ever heard of.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/159

news.admin.net-abuse.email
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=alt.sharesniffer&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rnum=10&seld=922054339&ic=1 


And the site URL, which for some reason isn't in the article is:
http://www.sharesniffer.com .

I'd say security by obscurity about this isn't working, when I searched on 
sharesniffer earlier at google, I turned up hits on alt.hacker.malicious 
and alt.fan.cult-dead-cow

I immediately checked my Windows network permissions to make *sure* I 
hadn't inadvertently turned "file sharing ON"... and I'm running dialup 
behind the ZoneAlarm firewall. :-)

Of course, people who don't have their network permissions turned on to 
share files are immune, as are people with decent firewalls.

While I strongly suspect that sharesniffer is going to disappear very soon, 
the program is going to be showing up at a great many places in the future, 
among them your friends / neighbors / clients / users' hard drives.

A.Lizard




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