From benc@geocel.com Sun Sep 15 06:51:19 1996 Received: from potassium.geocel.com (lithium.geocel.com [208.199.81.2]) by suburbia.net (8.7.4/Proff-950810) with ESMTP id GAA28829 for ; Sun, 15 Sep 1996 06:51:14 +1000 Received: from sodium.geocel.com ([206.81.59.215]) by potassium.geocel.com (8.7.5/8.7.5) with SMTP id PAA03758; Sat, 14 Sep 1996 15:50:51 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19960914204327.006e72a4@lithium> X-Sender: benc@lithium X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 15:43:27 -0500 To: Pat Becker , best-of-security@suburbia.net From: Ben Camp Subject: Re: BoS: Re: Phrack vs. RealSecure For whatever record there is, I think its insane to implicate ISS in any sort of wrong doing. He did not make ISS (i guess SafeSuite now) what it is by naming it Satan, looking for bad press, and throwing his ego all over the place. He wrote a genuinely useful program and people saw the value. Though it might be easier for a mongoloid to assume that he's trying to force people to buy the software, that is completely insane. Is it very practical to do this with something as trivial as SYN flooding? ISS is very responsible and probably first hand knowledge of at least -something- more interesting than SYN flooding. But if you look for a conspiracy in everything, maybe you can link their CFO back to the Kennedy assasination. As for the two magazines mentioned... Phrack is certainly not trying to give out a golden key that lets you destroy everyone, and if the source was published in 2600 it probably didn't work anyway. BTW - that SYN flood source has been out and publicly posted for alot longer than Phrack or 2600 has had it. Ben Camp At 04:12 PM 9/14/96 -0400, Pat Becker wrote: >This post is slightly off topic, but I feel it is needed after the >allegations posted by SSI@upt.org > >First of all the timing of the alpha release of RealSecure and the >release of Phrack is coincidental. Although Dave Meltzer works at ISS >as an engineer he has not contributed to the RealSecure product. >period. > >What David Meltzer does on his own time is not a concern of ISS. It >just happens that Dave is interested in computer security. > >If you look at the RealSecure product there are many other features >beyond the SYN/RST attack. I consider the SYN/RST problem a small >part of RealSecure. > >And panix or anyone else is not our first customer. At this point the >product is in alpha and we do not have any customers. We are making >it publicly available to get constructive input as we move toward >release. > >The incorporating of the SYN flood denial of service recognition >into RealSecure actually came about because of DOS checks we already >had in our ISS Internet Scanner (now known as SafeSuite). > >Pat Becker >pmb@iss.net > > >