Re: Rate Stratfor's Incident Response

[Laurelai <laurelai () oneechan org>]

On 1/12/12 11:21 AM, Ian Hayes wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Benjamin Kreuter<ben.kreuter () gmail com>  wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA512
> >
> > On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:39:07 -0800
> > Ian Hayes<cthulhucalling () gmail com>  wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 9:18 PM, Laurelai<laurelai () oneechan org>
> > > wrote:
> > > > On 1/10/12 10:18 PM, Byron Sonne wrote:
> > > > > > Don't piss off a talented adolescent with computer skills.
> > > > > Amen! I love me some stylin' pwnage :)
> > > > >
> > > > > Whether they were skiddies or actual hackers, it's still amusing
> > > > > (and frightening to some) that companies who really should know
> > > > > better, in fact, don't.
> > > > And again, if companies hired these people, most of whom come from
> > > > disadvantaged backgrounds and are self taught they wouldn't have as
> > > > much a reason to be angry anymore. Most of them feel like they
> > > > don't have any real opportunities for a career and they are often
> > > > right.
> > > [citation needed]
> > >
> > > > Microsoft hired some kid who hacked their network, it is a safe bet
> > > > he isn't going to be causing any trouble anymore.
> > > Are you proposing that we reward all such behavior with jobs? I've
> > > always wanted to be a firefighter. Forget resumes, job applications
> > > and interviews, I'm going to set people's houses on fire.
> > No, it is more like you see a house on fire, call 911, then clear the
> > road so that firefighters can get to the house.  You know, someone who
> > is helping the professionals do their job?
> Yes. But by Larueli's logic, since I know how to use a Bic lighter,
> I'm infinitely more qualified that a trained firefighter. By setting
> fire to other people's houses, I'm announcing my intention to join
> their ranks, and deserve a job at the nearest station. Nevermind, that
> 20 people died and hundreds of thousands of dollars of property
> damage- if the firemen were true professionals, they would have made
> the houses completely fireproof a long time ago, or at the very least
> responded and put out the fire before any real damage was done.
>
> Plus, I have a Zippo, which makes me uber-leet.

*Laurelai* I know its a strange spelling but it is spelled correctly in 
my email address, and its than not that. Committing arson is not 
comparable to a digital intrusion, no lives are lost and any enterprise 
system worth speaking of has backup systems so very little real damage 
is done, the most damage that occurs is to their reputation, it injures 
peoples pride and causes humiliation.  The people being humiliated have 
created reputations as experts in infosec, reputations that as its being 
shown they don't deserve. Lets be honest here if it wasn't anon/antisec 
doing it someone else would have eventually (perhaps they already were) 
and they probably wouldn't have made the incident public, they would 
have just quietly stolen user data and credit card information and sold 
them off to the highest bidder for as long as they possibly could. Or 
used stolen credentials to gain access to even more data. You seem to be 
missing the point that anon/antisec is using methods for the most part 
that are simple attacks that any company has absolutely no excuse to be 
vulnerable to. This is more like owning a large store and leaving the 
doors unlocked at night and finding that some kids walked in and put all 
of your stock outside of the store and pinned your internal finance 
documents that show you have been embezzling to the windows, plus they 
drew penises on the pictures in your office just to pour salt on the 
wound. In this case you have nobody to blame but yourself. My suggestion 
that they should hire these kids was meant to imply that as bad as they 
are they probably are more ethical than the people they are attacking 
since they aren't storing all sorts of sensitive user data in plain text 
and telling people its all safe.
> > > By your
> > > logic, an arsonist is not only the best person to combat other
> > > arsonists, but due to his obviously unique insight into the nature of
> > > fire, simply must know how best to fight a fire as opposed to someone
> > > who went to school for years to learn the trade.
> > Unless you are going to give me a proof that no attack on my network
> > could be successful, you need people who can find their way through the
> > cracks to evaluate the efficacy of your security system.  If the people
> > you already hired to maintain your security are not able to identify
> > threats and design systems that are resilient to those threats, then
> > you need to hire someone else.  A security team will benefit from
> > having someone poke holes in their design.
> Anyone who says "you are secure, you are hacker-proof" should be shown
> the door. But this is reality. Companies don't WANT to know that the
> Emperor is naked. All they want is to fill in the checkbox that says
> that they did their due diligence, so they pass their annual audit. If
> holes are found, now they have to spend time, money and effort fixing
> them, or they lose their insurance/merchant status/some kind of
> accreditation. That's why most organizations are happy with some guy
> who charges $500/hr to run a Nessus scan and walk out the door. He had
> a goatee, and ate all of our donuts, so he must have been a real pro!
>
> Once these businesses start asking for real security professionals and
> real assessments, these "white hat" versions of script kiddies will
> get weeded out.

We can at least agree on that much. However the only way to show these 
companies that the emperor has no clothes is to show them that the 
emperor has no clothes.
> > > > Talking about the trust issue, who
> > > > would you trust more the person who has all the certs and experience
> > > > that told you your network was safe or the 14 year old who proved
> > > > him wrong?
> > > This is asinine. WHY would I want to hire someone for a position of
> > > trust that just committed a crime, or at the very least acted in an
> > > unethical manner?
> > The problem is that we have criminalized too much here.  If some 14
> > year old comes to you and hands you supposedly secret documents, he is
> > behaving very ethically -- he is telling you that you have a
> > vulnerability, rather than simply trying to sell your secrets to a
> > competitor.  That sounds like a person who can be trusted to work for
> > you -- someone who could have easily betrayed you, but did not, and who
> > knew when and how to do the right thing.
> One right does not erase a wrong. Strip away the "robbed from the
> rich, gave to the poor" mythos, Robin Hood was still a thief, robber
> and murderer.
>
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