[ISN] Re: Hollywood hacks impress experts

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Tue Sep 23 2003 - 08:03:34 PDT

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    Forwarded from: security curmudgeon <jericho@private>
    
    Amusing article. Follow the link for the entire thing and to avoid my
    snide remarks!
    
    http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/6800620.htm
    Hollywood hacks impress experts
    SECURITY TECHNOLOGY BECOMES MORE REALISTIC IN FILM
    By Tamara Chuang
    Orange County Register
    
     | Sometimes Hollywood's knack for exaggeration misleads the movie-going
     | public, Gibson said.
    
     | ``I actually had one of my field agent contacts tell me that FBI
     | management is upset because they can't track down hackers like they do
     | in the movies,'' Gibson said.
    
    [...]
    
     | Gibson tries not to think about inaccuracies in movies. He goes to be
     | entertained.
    
     | ``There is definitely a trade-off between accuracy and entertainment,''
     | he said. ``This isn't a computer seminar.''
    
    
      http://grcsucks.com/
    
      Stating Patricia McNeill : "Gibson is masterful at stirring up an
      emotional response in the people who come to his site, and then
      manipulating these people into believing exactly what he wants them to.
      The tragedy is that these people come to him looking for facts and
      information, and come away thinking that they have found some! Gibson
      tries to present himself as a selfless source of public information, yet
      his entire site is full of emotional manipulation, misinformation, and
      misdirection. This man is nothing more that a self-promoting braggart."
    
    Perhaps Gibson is jealous that HE isn't writing these movie segments
    as seen in Swordfish? Let's take a look at some of his lingo!
    
    http://grc.com/np/np.htm
    
    "does not suffer from this serious shortcoming since it continuously
    and affirmatively induces NanoProbe reflections from the host system"
    
    "Our NanoProbe packets are able to (benignly) penetrate a user's
    stealth firewall to verify the presence of the system hidden behind.
    Since our NanoProbe packets are able to bypass stealthing, we are able
    to "grade" the level and quality of the user's stealthing technology."
    
    
    http://grc.com/r&d/nomoredos.htm
    
    "If a client's ACK fails the GENESIS validation, it is tested again
    using the previous random-mix value to see whether the packet was
    generated under the influence of that immediately preceding random
    value."
    
    Sounds like Gibson qualifies to write future bad hacking scenes.
    
    
    
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