Firewall Wizards: Re: The Morris worm to Nimda, how little we've learned or gained

[Frederick M Avolio <fred () avolio com>]

At 03:44 PM 1/3/02 -0500, Marcus J. Ranum wrote:
> R. DuFresne wrote:
> >And we have not even broached the topic here of vendor
> >responsibility...
>
> There's enough blame that everyone involved can shoulder a ton of guilt.
>
> I've been watching the blame in computer security flow in circles for
> years. The flow looks like this:
> - The hackers blame the sysadmins who leave their machines open
> - The sysadmins blame the vendors who write buggy insecure code
> - The vendors blame the customers who place a premium on features over quality

Yes, although the above is not circular.

Vendors give exactly what customers want. I mean *really* want. If security 
was most important to customers, Check Point wouldn't be the #1 firewall, 
for example. (Or Cisco.) Microsoft would not be able to get away with 
shipping security problems-in-waiting. But when money is on the table, 
features -- and features, NOW not later -- always win.
That's what keeps our job interesting.

Great editorial, Ron. (In many of the security classes I teach, no one in 
the room knows what I mean by "the Morris Worm.")

Fred
Avolio Consulting, Inc.
16228 Frederick Road, PO Box 609, Lisbon, MD 21765, US
+1 410-309-6910 (voice) +1 410-309-6911 (fax)
http://www.avolio.com/

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