Re: What use is the NIPC? / RFF Comments

From: Richard Forno (rfornoat_private)
Date: Sun Aug 05 2001 - 16:40:58 PDT

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    Pardon the comments and mini-rant.
    
    In partial defense, as a security director for a net company, I worked with
    NIPC since their inception in 1998 - while they had some really good techhie
    folks there, many have sinced moved on to Cisco and other IT industry
    vendors. There's not much meat left there, and it's been woefully
    understaffed since its beginnings - even the April GAO report on NIPC said
    so.
    
    NIPC is a noble idea on paper, but was designed as one of several White
    House pet projects designed as knee-jerk reactions to the sensationalized
    nature of information security and the new term of critical infrastructure
    protection. Look what web vandals were able to get the USG to build and fund
    - an entirely new organization!!! (How's that for a kiddie's ego trip?)
    
    Recall that NIPC is the same entity that ran a one-line virus advisory for
    I-LOVE-YA that simply read "A new virus has been detected in thie
    Philippenes" ..... they updated it 4 hours later to say that it was a VBS
    event and that more info would be provided as it became available. I got
    better info on the radio driving into work then from NIPC....From what I've
    seen, their advisories and alerts are redundant to any number of free
    listservs, vendor, and the time-delayed CERT advisories. Chances are when
    NIPC reports something, it's been common knowledge for a while. No great
    secret there.
    
    You want cracker-jack computer crime investigations, check out USAF OSI and
    NASA ... they wrote the book on computer crime investigations and analysis.
    You want cracker-jack security information on exploits and vulnerabilities,
    check out BUGTRAQ, INCIDENTS, and such....it's free, useful, and
    interactive. (yeah, yeah, I plugged the list....)
    
    We now return to your regularly-scheduled Code Red analysis.
    
    
    Rick Forno
    infowarrior.org / incidentresponse.com
    
    
    
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