Microsoft to Publish Blue Hat Findings

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an InfoWorld article about Microsoft's plan to publish some of the findings from last week's Blue Hat conference. From the article: "'Everything was fair game,' wrote SQL Server engineer Brad Sarsfield in a blog posting. 'Hearing senior executives say things like: 'I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week; I want to get to the bottom of this' was at least one measure of success from my point of view for the event.' The Blue Hat name is a play on the Black Hat conferences, which have occasionally been criticized by IT vendors. The 'Blue' part comes from the color of badges that Microsoft staffers wear on campus." They have descriptions of some of the sessions up on the site for your perusal.

Comments

Blank passwords

[dedazo]

I'm sure the executives started the whipping sessions with the person responsible for allowing SQL Server to function happily with a blank 'sa' password.

Which is it?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> Microsoft's site will not have the kind of controversial material that has popped up at Black Hat. "All researchers at the BlueHat are responsible," Kornbrust said.

Does that mean domesticated or tame?

Blame to Go Around

[vjmurphy]

"Hearing senior executives say things like: 'I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week; I want to get to the bottom of this' was at least one measure of success from my point of view"

Ah, good to know the culture of blame is still a backbone of American industry. Likely that those senior executives are the ones that requested said features originally. But that's okay, I'm sure they'll find some scapegoats.

Corporate Goonspeak...

[GeneralEmergency]

Microsoft's site will not have the kind of controversial material that has popped up at Black Hat. "All researchers at the BlueHat are responsible," Kornbrust said.

Translation: All presenters know what side of their bread is buttered and by whom.

Let's celebrate our new openness by censoring ourselves!

Somebody kick me in the shin please. I must be asleep and dreaming that I'm stuck on that Moron Planet again.

Re:The People Responsible

[Drizzt Do'Urden]

Well.. according to Wikipedia, it is false to say that Apple stole it from Xerox, because it extended a lot from the work done at Parc.

Re:Poor executives.

[AutopsyReport]

I find it perticulary funny that executives want to smack the ones resonsible for random features.

Oh it's very typical for management to put the heat on individuals, but problems like this come about because of an extremely poor process. While one may argue that an individual has a responsibility to follow standards, it is also management's responsibility to ensure everyone else does, too.

So when something like this leaks, you can blame management, not the programmer. He made the mistake, but the even larger mistake is that the process didn't catch it. There will be no success when the course of action is for an executive to call out a programmer, but it is strongly indicative that these problems will be repeated.