From the “Would You Buy A Used Car From…” Department

Thomas Ptacek | July 26th, 2006 | Filed Under: Industry Punditry, Uncategorized

A better title for this Secure Computing press release would be, “Secure Computing Thinks Trade Journalists Are Pretty Dumb”. Choice quotes:

… artificial intelligence (AI) software used in testing by a small number of software developers is now being widely used by hackers to find formerly undiscovered vulnerabilities. These AI tools use a methodology referred to as “Fuzzing.” …

and

“Software vendors were already struggling to keep up with patches for software bugs; the use of Fuzzing tools by hackers and the flood of newly discovered vulnerabilities may overwhelm software vendors’ ability to respond with patches.”

… because prior to advent of “fuzzing”, vendors were doing just peachy keeping up with patches. Damn you hackers!

A question for the journalists reading chargen (we know you’re out there): do vendors get penalized in any way when they’re this blatant?

Thanks to HDM for the headsup.

2 Comments so far

  • ivan

    July 27th, 2006 11:18 pm

    Artificial Intelligence?! What are they doing up the at SCUR? Smoking their stock certificates?
    So, they now think that:
    1. Fuzzing is a new technique.
    Suggestion: check out where the name comes from
    2. Fuzzing is intelligent.
    Granted, new fuzzers are smarter than the dumb bruteforcer of the past but calling that AI is a bit hmm…far fetched
    3. Fuzzers are revealing overwhelming amounts of new serious bugs
    I supposse they have factual data so support such a statement and they just decided to keep it confidential, right?

    Maybe I’m too suspicious but lately it looks like some mktg bs-spin campaign to get SCUR back in the infosecurity game is underway.

  • Thomas Ptacek

    July 28th, 2006 10:01 am

    It’s actually really obvious what they’re doing.

    There’s a trend story about “bug of the day” and and browser fuzzing.

    The SCUR marketing people see this.

    Their goal is to get SCUR mentioned in the press as much as possible.

    Their press release is designed to get the attention of trade journalists writing the trend stories.

    It advertises SCUR as “qualified and available to comment about this story”.

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