Forwarded from: Chris Wysopal <cwysopalat_private> > Forwarded from: McDonald Patrick <mcdonald_patrickat_private> > > I have to respectfully disagree with Chris Wysopal. > > <snip> > > "Chris Wysopal, director of research and development for security > company @Stake, argued that an early warning can sometimes > actually hurt security, tipping off malicious attackers to the > vulnerability." > > <snip> > > Does early warning help script kiddies, most definitely. However > it also helps admins protect their systems against these attacks. > A script kiddie can't use an exploit that an admin has prepared > against. Thus the exploit is useless against an informed admin. Seems there was some selective <snip>ing. You left out the part where I say. "It does make sense to warn people up front that they can take actions now". If admins/users can take action on their own it is a good idea to let them know. The complete context is this: <snip> Chris Wysopal, director of research and development for security company @Stake, argued that an early warning can sometimes actually hurt security, tipping off malicious attackers to the vulnerability. Still, Wysopal said, with the Plug and Play incident, Microsoft could have told customers to just turn off the function if they weren't using it. "It does make sense to warn people up front that they can take actions now," Wysopal said. "I would like to see people not rely on patches so much. I was disappointed with the FBI's retraction (after they) proposed a solution that did not require a patch." <snip> Cheers, Chris - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 15 2002 - 15:07:01 PST