Conspiracy theories abound in security mailing list launch
By John Leyden
Posted: 26/03/2003 at 09:03 GMT
Danish security service outfit
Secunia this week launched an
independent mailing list for security vulnerabilities.
Secunia makes no bones in saying that its Security Advisories mailing
list initiative is a direct attack against competitor SecurityFocus. The
Danes are highly critical of SecurityFocus and security clearing house
CERT. And they hope that their Secunia mailing list will replace at the
"one source of information regarding the latest vulnerabilities and
the security patches released by vendors".
The Secunia Security Advisories list is based on more than 200 different
sources of security information, including VulnWatch and Full-Disclosure.
All the advisories on the Secunia Security Advisories list are written,
verified and qualified by Secunia staff based on security research made
by the security community and Secunia's own security staff.
Thomas Kristensen, CTO of Secunia, says: "At Secunia we feel that
SecurityFocus has betrayed the community it used to serve so loyally,
that's why we started Secunia".
SecurityFocus and CERT deliberately "delays and censors the
information disclosed on BugTraq and in their vulnerability
database," Secunia alleges.
Symantec acquired SecurityFocus last year in a move greeted by suspicion
in some segments of the security community. SecurityFocus is run as a
separate organisation, Symantec tells us (most recently when we quizzed
it about its handling of early alerts on the Slammer worm). The reason
for any delay is attributed soley to the time needed by the list's
moderators to review information, Symantec says.
In the case of CERT the more valid criticism appears to be that the
organisation is not doing enough to keep sensitive information
confidential. eWeek reports that CERT
is to review its security disclosure policy following the leak of three
(actually four) unpublished security advisories in recent days.
The leaked information, taken from advance copies of advisories on
cryptographic weakness in the popular Kerberos protocol, Open SSL
vulnerabilities and a flaw in a Sun library, made its way onto full
disclosure mailing lists ahead of patch availability.
eWeek publishes a timeline on the
premature disclosure of these serious vulnerabilities. The anonymous
cracker had been in touch with us to say that he's since posted a fourth
(less serious flaw) onto a full disclosure mailing list. His motives
remain unclear.
But back to the main point.
Secunia's strident criticism is premised on the idea that their needs to
be a single source for security information in order for security to
improve. This ignores the point that people in the community get their
information from numerous sources (BugTraq, CERT, and yes Secunia,
security blogs, news sites, vendor sites etc. etc.)
If Secunia does a good job of informing people, then people will
gravitate towards its free service. Meanwhile let a thousand flowers of
free information bloom.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29941.html
