Month: June 2011

  • Rebuttal: The Curious Case of Sam Bowne

    [This was originally published on attrition.org. This is a rebuttal piece to Sam Bowne, the person, Twitter personality (@sambowne), City College San Francisco professor and self-proclaimed whitehat hacker.] Background: I was first introduced to Sam when noted charlatan Gregory D. Evans accused Bowne of being one of the “world’s biggest cyber bully’s” (sic). I was briefly involved in an e-mail…

  • Rebuttal: Paul C Dwyer, ICTTF and LulzSec

    [This was originally published on attrition.org. This is a rebuttal piece to “Lulzsec Hits ICTTF?” (June 26, 2011) by Paul C. Dwyer.] Apparently, the now-notorious group “LulzSec” attacked the International Cyber Threat Task Force (ICTTF), despite no mention of the attack on their Twitter feed or their various pastebin.com releases. I certainly hope the attack really did happen, and…

  • Rebuttal: Ponemon on Network Breaches [Richmond/Ponemon]

    [This was originally published on attrition.org. This is a rebuttal piece to “Security Professionals Say Network Breaches Are Rampant” (2011-06-22) by Riva Richmond (@rivarichmond) of the New York Times.] The Ponemon Institute does not command much respect in many InfoSec circles. Like other ‘research analysis’ firms (e.g., Gartner), their reports rarely provide any insight or information that hasn’t been known for…

  • Rebuttal: Northrop Grumman, Cyber-gangs, APT and 0-day [Messmer]

    [This was originally published on attrition.org. This is a rebuttal piece to “Northrop Grumman constantly under attack by cyber-gangs” (June 21, 2011) by Ellen Messmer (@EllenMessmer), Senior Editor at Network World. Warning: Due to Northrop Grumman, Timothy McKnight and Ellen Messmer’s use of inflammatory words like “Advanced Persistent Threat” and the mis-use of “zero day”, the witnesses will be…

  • Rebuttal: The difference between curmudgeon and curmudgeon [@shrdlu]

    [This was originally published on attrition.org. This is a rebuttal piece to “The difference between curmudgeon and curmudgeon.” (May 27, 2011) by shrdlu, which is itself a reply of sorts to my reply to Bill Brenner’s “Take the word curmudgeon and shove it” rant. Blockquoted material is from @shrdlu.] “It’s about maturity, which is a very different beast.” According to the dictionary, mature is defined as…

  • Rebuttal: LulzSec Ups The Ante

    [This was originally published on attrition.org. This is a rebuttal piece to “Lulzsec Ups The Ante” (June 16th, 2011) by Brian Honan.] Reading Honan’s article will set the stage and provide backstory as to the topic at hand. Honan goes on to offer his opinion and commentary on the events surrounding LulzSec and their activities of breaking into…