Re: concerning ~el8 / project mayhem

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com>]

Paul D. Robertson wrote:
> > in the past. If you're a true white hat, you're not replete with
> > hacking technique and you're not the kind of guy who can whip out
> > a tool to crack into any website any time, or whatever. UNfortunately,
>
> I'm not sure I totally agree with this premise-  I think I couldsit 
> and find and code exploits on my test network if I had the time.

That's not hacking technique, that's commonsense engineering.
I should have been more clear in my terminology: I meant that you
don't need to run around with a big encrypted CDROM full of your
toolz to be a security guru. You need to understand the forms and
functions of categories of attacks so you can defend against them
or design around them as _categories_ - having specific knowledge
(or toolz) to break specific versions of software on specific architectures -
that's just lame script-kid stuff. And there are a kit of "security
analysts" whose level of expertise is more in the script kiddy vein
than not. Perhaps we should call them "Scanner-kiddies" ? ;)

>  I most 
> certainly could run the kiddie tools, and let's face it, there isn't 
> really all that much to "hacking technique" until you start to get into 
> really sophisticated stuff- finding overflows and races is certainly 
> doable if you're completely clean- you just have to do it on your own 
> stuff.

You're talking about real analytics, there. Applying and customizing
knowledge. That _is_ what security is about. That's how to do it
right. Collecting the kiddie toolz is book-keeping. Writing the toolz is
just an exercise in patience.

> I think the biggest trouble with the current scenerio is that many, many 
> customers don't understand that you don't *need* the attack tools to mount 
> an effective defense, nor to tell what's wrong with the current one.  I 
> think even vulnerability scanners are mostly a waste of time.

Yup. In order to "do it right" you have to first overcome a level
of induced ignorance (or would "disinformation" be a better term?)
before you can begin to really educate customers. That's lame. It's
part of the price we've all had to pay because hacking has been
promoted as cool and sexy while merely writing bulletproof code
is uninteresting dull rote work.

mjr.
---
Marcus J. Ranum - Computer and communications Security Expertise
mjr () ranum com  (http://www.ranum.com)

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