http://www.haftofthespear.com/?p=1913 By Mike Haft of the Spear August 7, 2011 Hundreds if not thousands of cyber security practitioners converged on Las Vegas this past week. They came to see and be seen, to occasionally share some newfound insight, but largely for the same reason everyone goes to Vegas . . . do I really need to elaborate? The media love these conferences because it’s easy to get quotes from "experts" since, well, no one admits to not knowing everything once they realize a reporter is within earshot. Therein we find a serious problem: how to tell the difference between a real expert and a pseudo one. Who truly has a broad base of knowledge about a wide range of related topics (exceedingly rare), or who is a mile deep in one area of emphasis (plentiful)? Who is the actual, technical guru (mildly Asperger-ish), and who is the security celebrity (glib, speaks in sound bites, blindingly white smile)? He calls something "sophisticated" or "advanced" without justification Just about every adjective applied to things-malicious online cannot be supported in any objective fashion. If the analysis applied to malicious software or attack methodology were applied to any other phenomenon that we apply scientific methods or practices to, it would be treated like astrology. There is no commonly accepted lexicon for what is advanced or difficult or sophisticated or complex. You could focus on a threat actor’s motivations and ascribe something more complicated at play than simple profit (say, Stuxnet, for which there are pretty clear political-military implications) but it has been a very long time since anyone has done something truly original (read: for which we have no defense -- no matter how woefully inadequate -- and is a complete surprise to everyone) or something has been discovered that is not simply evolutionary, in the cyber security realm. [...] _____________________________________________________________ Register now for the #HITB2011KUL - Asia's premier deep-knowledge network security event now in it's 9th year! http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2011kul/Received on Mon Sep 26 2011 - 01:42:01 PDT
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