Lynn Settles With Cisco, Investigated By FBI

Following up on yesterday's story, daria42 writes "Security researcher Michael Lynn has settled a dispute with Cisco over his presentation on hacking the company's routers, which was given at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week. The two parties and Black Hat organisers have agreed not to further discuss the presentation, which contained techniques Lynn said could bring the Internet to its knees." Not all is good news, though. jzeejunk writes "The FBI is investigating computer security researcher Michael Lynn for criminal conduct after he revealed that critical routers supporting the internet and many networks have a serious software flaw that could allow someone to crash or take control of them."

Comments

Re:No good deed goes unpunished.

[wfberg]

the issue is also about how he reported the flaw, not just tha he did. Cisco has its own vunerability submission protocols in house, be he instead showed his findings at a Black Hat conference instead, exposing it to any savvy hacker willing to act on them.

Yes, and this is exactly why the FBI should get involved! The army has stringent oversight procedures for this sort of thing, and to reveal flaws in top-secret installations without even going up the chain of command is tantamount to treason!

Oh wait. The dude isn't in the army. Or in government. Actually, his former employer settled the case. So the overriding federal government interest in this is...? Why, you might be forgiven to think "nothing at all, in fact, this sort of thing is precisely why such liberties as freedom of the press exist; even though this is a lone individual, surely some type of whistle-blower protection would exist that covers this, otherwise the public would never be made aware of critical flaws in the nation's privately-owned infrastructur until it was too late!"

But apparently, you'd be wrong. You see, by merely mentioning, without even going in to much specifics, that it might be possible for some-one else to exploit a flaw in Cisco's equipment, this guy has clearly commited a thought-crime. That's because warning people about security flaws is exactly the same as instructing people in cyberwarfare, and issueing commands to them to act on your behalve to bring down Western Civilization as we know it. You see, no difference there at all.

Of course, this is also why trains never run on time. If the published time tables were accurate, the railways would get prosecuted by the FBI for inviting people to commit suicide by throwing themselves in front of the 18:02 train.. Bet you didn't know that!

Re:No good deed goes unpunished.

[PriceIke]

Actually, what Sandy Burger did makes Watergate AND this Plame nonsense look like a college prank. But I don't see any outrage in Mediaville over that.

I'm sorry, was that off-topic? Well, since the parent was modded "interesting" I guess it isn't.

I looked at the presentation!

[putko]

I read the presentation. (here).

Lynn shows how to do a remote exploit on Cisco's firmware. This is impressive because the router runs software that attempts to detect inconsistencies. It will reset itself and start up afresh. The big deal is that Lynn shows how an exploit can fix things up and avoid those measures. Basically, his technique is like a ninja, that breaks into a building through a window, but then immediately reassembles the window before the security guard making his rounds can notice that the window got destroyed. That's it!

There's no indication Lynn stole ANYTHING from Cisco, or broke any law.

Lynn apparently "reverse engineered" the OS in order to do this. That's usually fine; it is his right to do that.

Considering this, I'm pretty pissed that Cisco's spokeswoman, Mojdan Khalili, said that Lynn broke the law (without saying what law it was). I think that could be libel (or slander -- I'm not a lawyer) -- in any case, Mojdan Khalili, working for Cisco, just ruined this guys rep, and sicced the FBI on his ass.

Perhaps if you write her, she will get Cisco to ask the FBI to lay off the good researcher (ask her to have Cisco "take it all back"). From yesterday, here's her contact info:

978-936-1297 mkhalili@cisco.com

Also, some total jerk looked up her address and posted it (here). I think that's totally inappropriate; if you show up on her doorstep and bother her, I hope she calls the FBI on you, you freak!