Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: Your Opinion
From: Crispin Cowan <crispin () novell com>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:29:42 -0700
Mark Litchfield wrote:
I have heard the comment "It's a huge conflict of interest" for one company to provide both an operating platform and a security platform" made by John Thompson (CEO Symantec) many times from many different people. See article below. http://www2.csoonline.com/blog_view.html?CID=32554 In my personal opinion, regardless of the vendor, if they create an OS, why would it be a conflict of interest for them to want to protect their own OS from attack. One would assume that this is a responsible approach by the vendor, but one could also argue that their OS should be coded securely in the first place. If this were to happen then the need for the Symantec's, McAfee's of the world would some what diminsh.
I've done both: sold a security enhancement for someone else's OS (Immunix) and now I'm responsible for that same technology as part of SUSE Linux (AppArmor). I have no idea how Thompson gets his conflict of interest. It makes no sense to me. I agree with Litchfield that it is an OS vendor's responsibility to secure their OS as best they can, and using intrusion prevention technologies is perfectly fair game. However, Microsoft is a special case, because they have been legally found to be a monopoly, and so special laws apply. So what Microsoft can legally do may be different from what Red Hat, Novell, or Sun can do. I am not a lawyer, so I won't speculate on what those differences might be. Is Thompson talking about OS vendors in general having a conflict of interest? Or just referring to Microsoft's monopoly status? I can't tell, but it sounds like the former, and that sounds wrong. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://crispincowan.com/~crispin/ Director of Software Engineering http://novell.com AppArmor Training at CanSec West http://cansecwest.com/dojoapparmor.html
Current thread:
- Your Opinion Mark Litchfield (Mar 16)
- Re: Your Opinion bugtraq (Mar 16)
- Re: Your Opinion Jonathan Glass (GM) (Mar 16)
- RE: Your Opinion Mario Contestabile (Mar 16)
- Re: Your Opinion Crispin Cowan (Mar 16)
- Re: Your Opinion William A. Rowe, Jr. (Mar 16)
- RE: Your Opinion Scott Blake (Mar 16)
- Re: Your Opinion The Fungi (Mar 17)
- Re: Your Opinion Casper . Dik (Mar 17)
- RE: Your Opinion Jim Harrison (Mar 20)
- RE: Your Opinion Jim Harrison (Mar 17)
- RE: Your Opinion Alex Eckelberry (Mar 19)
- Re: Your Opinion Andrew Kramer (Mar 20)
- Re: Your Opinion Forrest J. Cavalier III (Mar 19)
- Re: Your Opinion Paul Stepowski (Mar 20)
(Thread continues...)