Oh the naivete ...
Regardless of the fact that this is full disclosure, does anyone really
think that any medium to large business concern wants to make public the
fact that their IT infrastructure is vulnerable? Especially in the Fascist
Utopia that we call America? Pu-LEEZ!
The reason that you have not seen anything is because no one wants to
admit that (a) they are vulnerable, (b) their equipment sucks, (c) they
employ idiots, (d) seventeen year old hackers are more intelligent/
diligent/ persistent than their US$100,000+ per year IT guru (who's
currently in a meeting...please leave a detailed message).
As a normal part of any security audit that I perform, I provide the
client with a contract that explicitly states that I will not, under
penalty of law, divulge the identity of the client to anyone (except
maybe the DoJ if they come after me). Companies (infallible as they are)
have no desire to publicize their shortcomings. The lack of news
regarding victims of this huge gaping hole (HGH) is no conspiracy
or coverup. It's called "standard operating procedure". If you ever
get a job in a corporation, you will become familiar with it.
Acadamicians aren't supposed to practice information hiding. However I
wonder whether your search would uncover any academic institutions that
have suffered a similar fate?
BTW, I don't necessarily advocate the silence; I merely understand it.
G
On or about 2004.06.30 08:39:32 +0000, Edge, Ronald D (edge@indiana.edu) said:
From the latest issue of:
************************************************************************
*
SANS NewsBites June 30, 2004 Vol. 6, Num.
26
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*
Legal liability question: Has anyone contacted an attorney yet about
damage done by either of these two possibly negligent actions: (1) the
Wittie worm when the security software vendor may have allowed many
customers to have their systems disabled because selected users may not
have gotten the patch for weeks after it was ready, or (2) Download.Ject
damage done to consumers - through loss of identity data and banking
passwords -- by infected web sites that apparently did not tell their
clients that the site was infected? If you have gotten legal advice
about these, please let us know by emailing info@sans.org with subject
"legal liability."
================================
So here was my email to SANS:
What I want to know is where the heck are the publicized identies of the
supposedly many major web sites that were infecting their
customers/visitors??
I have rarely seen such an obvious massive hush job and coverup. I have
searched the news articles on Download.Ject and to date I have not found
a SINGLE EXPOSED IDENTITY of a web site.
I have pointed this out to a well known IT journalist I correspond with
by email regularly, and he replied that he thinks it is definitely a
story worth pursuing.
I frankly am appalled that not a single site has been named, at least
not to my knowlege, and I have TRIED to find one named in the news
online.
Ron.
Ronald D. Edge
Director of Information Systems
Indiana University Intercollegiate Athletics
edge@indiana.edu (812)855-9010
http://iuhoosiers.com
Corporate IT's reaction to spyware has been surprising: it's been
largely swept under the rug. The problem is that you can't hide an
elephant by sweeping it under the rug. It leaves quite a bulge.
_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
--
Gregory A. Gilliss, CISSP E-mail: greg@gilliss.com
Computer Security WWW: http://www.gilliss.com/greg/
PGP Key fingerprint 2F 0B 70 AE 5F 8E 71 7A 2D 86 52 BA B7 83 D9 B4 14 0E 8C A3
