RE: Concepts: Security and Obscurity

["Craig Wright" <Craig.Wright () bdo com au>]

I accept the first bet and please send the $100 to ST Vincent's
Community Services.

I do believe that the bet was "1 instructor" - here are a couple quotes
and a couple courses that dispell your assumptions regards to SANS.
Don't bother sending me the money - just the charity above.

Security 309 - A Framework for Information Security - Day 1 (see course
notes)

(Schneier): Relying on security through obscurity (proprietary
interfaces and older equipment) is always a chancy proposition.

(Shpantzer): Security by obscurity MAY work for opportunistic threats
but determined threats targeting a particular network love this model.

Security/ Writing Secure Web Applications - SANS London 2006
"Developers who once could rely on application obscurity are  now
targeted by criminals who use their programming errors to make millions
of  dollars in illicit gains and bring shame and ridicule to the victim
organizations."

Thanks,
Craig


Craig Wright
Manager of Information Systems

Direct +61 2 9286 5497
Craig.Wright () bdo com au

BDO Kendalls (NSW)
Level 19, 2 Market Street Sydney NSW 2000
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-----Original Message-----

From: Daniel Miessler [mailto:daniel () dmiessler com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 18 April 2007 1:20 AM
To: Craig Wright
Subject: Re: Concepts: Security and Obscurity


On Apr 13, 2007, at 5:21 PM, Craig Wright wrote:

> This idea that your logs are not full of junk as you have  
> obscurity? Where did this come from? Please?

Are you serious? How about because the only people touching your  
daemon will be those with private information? Hence, less noise.

I hate to bust out with this, Craig, but you seem to have some major  
gaps in your understanding of the concepts being discussed here. You  
have SANS certifications. Find me a SANS instructor that disagrees  
with my article. I'll bet you $100 that you can't.

I'll also bet that I can find 3 (Mike Poor, Eric Cole, Ed Skoudis)  
that agree with it. Plus, I've already run the issue by Richard  
Bejtlich (a speaker at SANS and the author of Tao Of Network Security  
Monitoring). He promotes the running of SSH on a non-standard port,  
and agrees with my position.

In short, you're out in left field somewhere. You're obviously a  
bright guy, though, so I'm not quite sure why this isn't clicking for  
you. But since it isn't I'm not going to keep debating you about it.

Kind regards,

--
Daniel Miessler
E: daniel () dmiessler com
W: http://dmiessler.com
G: 0xDA6D50EAC