[Dataloss] rant: Abandon Ship! Data Loss Ahoy!

[Jackson, Ben (ITD)]

A co-worker pointed out that they have updated their press release with
a general "not our fault!" text:

http://rapid7.com/docs/rapid7-hannaford.pdf


--
Ben Jackson - Sr. Security Engineer - Commonwealth of Massachusetts
ben.jackson at state.ma.us - +1-617-626-4575 (v) - +1-617-626-4459 (f)
"Security software is no replacement for secure software"

-----Original Message-----
From: dataloss-bounces at attrition.org
[mailto:dataloss-bounces at attrition.org] On Behalf Of Jamie C. Pole
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 9:57 PM
To: dataloss at attrition.org
Subject: Re: [Dataloss] rant: Abandon Ship! Data Loss Ahoy!


Yup.  And does anyone doubt that a company using Qualys would be in the
same boat?

All of these vendors that sell non-functioning crapware are seriously
damaging the efficacy of online commerce moving forward.  They sell a  
false sense of security.  Nothing more.  PCI compliance in a box?   
Yeah, right...

Then again, Visa is also very much to blame.  Until Visa gets serious
about PCI compliance and starts certifying expert security
practitioners, rather than clueless companies with big checkbooks, this
is just going to keep happening over and over again.  Visa should be
paying expert security practitioners to do PCI compliance assessments,
rather than having the big consulting companies pay THEM for the
privilege of saying they are certified to conduct PCI assessments.

All of these automated vulnerability assessment processes achieve the  
same result - they identify only the lowest of the low-hanging fruit.   
Automated tools might identify the exposures that script kiddies are
looking for, but they most certainly can't identify the exposures that
motivated and competent hackers are looking for.  Show me an automated
tool that can identify vulnerabilities that are contingent on the
successful exploit of other vulnerabilities, and I just might change my
mind.  I'm not going to hold my breath, because companies are too
wrapped up in buying automated scans for $19.99 per host.  As we can
see, they always get exactly what they pay for.  What exactly do they
think they are buying??

What's even worse is that there are "security consultants" running
around telling the world that they base their entire vulnerability
assessment offering on some of these useless tools.

Oh, well...

Jamie



On Mar 18, 2008, at 8:53 PM, lyger wrote:

>
> http://attrition.org/security/rant/z/rapid7.html
>
> Tue Mar 18 16:10:57 EST 2008
> d2d
>
> You are a security vendor. You sell the mightiest security doohickey 
> the world has ever seen. It does it all, including "...ensuring your 
> network is safe from hackers..." and amazingly it "...scans for Web 
> site and database vulnerabilities that hackers can use to capture 
> credit card information without you being aware". Since your doohickey

> does what no others have ever successfully managed to do, you can tout

> your client list proudly, and pimp your customer implementations 
> liberally.
>
> UNTIL...
>
> One of your customers joins the etiolated top 10 with a massive hacker

> perpetrated data loss incident.
>
> OUCH.
>
> [...]
> _______________________________________________
> Dataloss Mailing List (dataloss at attrition.org) 
> http://attrition.org/dataloss
>
> Tenable Network Security offers data leakage and compliance monitoring

> solutions for large and small networks. Scan your network and monitor 
> your traffic to find the data needing protection before it leaks out!
> http://www.tenablesecurity.com/products/compliance.shtml
>

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Tenable Network Security offers data leakage and compliance monitoring
solutions for large and small networks. Scan your network and monitor
your traffic to find the data needing protection before it leaks out!
http://www.tenablesecurity.com/products/compliance.shtml