n3td3v wrote:
[introduction]
n3td3v is deeply sad at the new trend of morally accepted blackmail by
the security community, known better as a month of bugs.
sincere researchers are coming forward more frequently to threaten
companies with a month of vendor bugs.
because they are known to be sincere they are morally left off the
hook from what is known by n3td3v to be straight forward blackmail.
blackmail is illegal, for this reason n3td3v wishes to make the
following recommendations:
[1]bug a day for a month campaigns are blackmail on the part of the
researcher, all should be outlawed by government.
[2]n3td3v calls on the government to make it highly illegal and
morally unacceptable to threaten a month of bugs for a vendor and its
customers
[3]security researchers think its "fun" but all it amounts to is blackmail
[4]all blackmail attempts shouldn't be dressed up as harmless fun
[5]governments need to wake up and swiftly arrest those making month
of bug claims in the future
[6]corporations and its consumers shouldn't be scared mongered and
threatened by individuals
[7]researchers shouldn't use their real name or real place of
employment and expect exclusion from legal action against blackmail
[8]researchers shouldn't be allowed to profit or gain career
opportunities by such claims to action by the researcher
[9]researchers should be taken into custody, questioned and have their
hardware obtained for forensic analysis before a month of bugs is due
to start
[10]individuals threatening to carry out a month of bugs shouldn't be
labelled as "security researchers" by the media and security experts
[11]such individuals should be clearly labelled as "criminals",
"malicious attackers" and "blackhats", no matter what other "friendly"
or "useful" research they've carried out in the past.
[media dork reference]
http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-6144833.html
there's one extremely simple solution: write good code!
furthermore, vendors who sell crap deserve to be blamed to do so.
Mercedes-Benz' sales of their E-Class went down enourmously when the
fact was known that it was extremely poorly engineered, especially wrt
electrics.
no one could fill a whole month of bugs (a bug/day) when the vendor did
good (!) work.
it's, again, a thing capitalism enforces. vendors sell immature
soft-/hardware, and services, and let the customers do the beta testing.
*that* should be defined illegal by governments! but guess what -- most,
if not all of the western countries can be defined as fascist countries
as (huge) corporations are the real entities in power.
that given, the guys you call 'blackmailers' are like Robin Hood.
they're heroes.
(it was the same with brazil some months ago; they told the pharmacy
corporations to sell their drugs for HIV infected people at a reasonable
price to the brazilian govt, otherwise the govt would ignore patents and
re-engineer and build the drugs themselves. again, the govt was
perfectly right. however, pharmacy corporations' PR guys knew this and
so they sold and sell the medicine to the price brazil was willing to
pay...)
--
Timo Schoeler | http://riscworks.net/~tis | timo.schoeler@riscworks.net
RISCworks -- Perfection is a powerful message
Ex-ISP | RISC aficinados | Networking, Security, OpenBSD services
GPG Key fingerprint = l33t
What are you gonna do? Release the dogs?! Or the bees?! Or dogs with
bees in their mouth so that when they bark they shoot bees at you?
(Homer J. Simpson)
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