CRIME Security Mailing Lists Come Under Fire

From: Andrew Plato (aplato@private)
Date: Mon Mar 31 2003 - 17:48:30 PST

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    Here's an interesting little drama that's been playing out recently. 
    
    Since Symantec has taken over Security Focus, apparently they have
    started censoring posts on the mailing lists. 
    
    I had heard a lot of anecdotal evidence of this. On the Focus-IDS
    mailing list a number of people who slammed ManHunt got censored. One of
    the posts pointed out the BS in ManHunt's marketing fluff and it was
    deleted it within hours. Ah well. In the land of Symantec, the one-eyed
    IDS will be king. 
    
    Anyway, looks like a movement is a afoot to get away from Security Focus
    and their lists, specfically BugTraq. See article at: 
    
    http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,974781,00.asp
    
    -----------
    
    A Danish security company, angry over what it perceives as censorship on
    several popular mailing lists, is launching "a revolution to remove
    SecurityFocus and CERT from power." 
    At present, the revolution consists of a new mailing list that will
    aggregate vulnerability advisories and other security-related reports
    from a variety of sources. Employees of Secunia Ltd. will take
    advisories from these sources, research and verify them and then submit
    them to the new list. 
    
    The list, known as the Secunia Security Advisories List, is designed to
    compete with lists such as SecurityFocus' BugTraq and to complement more
    open lists, including VulnWatch and Full-Disclosure, Secunia executives
    say. Company executives are upset with the direction that BugTraq has
    taken since Symantec Corp. acquired SecurityFocus last year. 
    
    "The problem with SecurityFocus is not that they moderate the lists, but
    the fact that they deliberately delay and partially censor the
    information," said Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer of
    Secunia, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. "Since they were acquired by
    Symantec, they changed their policy regarding BugTraq. Before they used
    to post everything to everybody at the same time. Now they protect the
    interests of Symantec, delay information and inform their customers in
    advance. This is a problem as only companies who pay over $30,000 can
    get access to this information." 
    



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