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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.
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.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
The 'Blue' part comes from the color of screens that Microsoft staffers see on campus.
Someone had to say it, folks!
- Andrew
I meta-moderate because I care.
I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week
With quotes like that, it's no wonder Vista's long list of features has been dwindled down to a new Media Player and better video drivers.
We could tell you, but we'd have to throw a chair at you.
(It's really a conspiracy against Red Hat)
/ducks chair
//adjusts tinfoil hat.
the Seattle Inquisition!!!
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
You put on the blue hat - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
You put on the red hat - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the security-hole goes.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Now just how do they expect to get Steve Jobs in their office?
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
This is a pretty standard way for companies to handle lynch mobs of unhappy people: Put an exec up on a stage and have everyone yell their guts out and promise to investigate it thoroughly. This is not done just for software security, but just about everything.
Undoubtedly one or two simple, yet highly visible, things (eg. the password check) will be fixed to show that some action was taken.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Ok, now Im confused. I thought the current /. theory about delays and feature cancellations in Vista was that the development team were to busy dodging chairs to get any coding done?
OK, it's time to have mercy on you guys who haven't figured it out.
There is no Microsoft.
It's all a MMOG/interactive fiction thing where geeks pretend to be code monkeys in service to the evil empire. C'mon, the Gates was a bit subtle, I admit; you could almost believe he existed. But Ballmer should have clued you in. No real board would hire a guy like that unless they were running a side show and needed a "Wild Man of Borneo".
The coolest part of the hack was when they started sending out boxes of their "product", complete with CDs and manuals (look closely -- a lot of it's just "ipsum lorem"). That was sheer brilliance. I picked one myself as a souveneir, I'm looking at the box up on my book shelf right now, it's very well done. Just the other I had to keep my elderly father-in-law, who was an engineer back in the day and no dummy, from "borrowing" my copy. Boy would he have been surprised.
Oh... God Gad.
You didn't actually install any of that shit, did you?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I believe Microsoft DOES support 3DES on SSL. My "FIPS 140-1" configurations require it. Look for this key in your windows registry - if you have this key, your SSL does 3DES:
r ol\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\ciphers\Triple DES 168/168
HHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Cont
"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.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
"I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week"
The features with security issues? Isn't he risking a fire hazard by doing this? I thought buildings had maximum occupancy ratings?
*ducks*
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
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.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
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.
Actually the Blue Hats are a symbolic salute to their employer's greatest technical accomplishment: The Blue Screen of Death
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.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Not that weird. Yes, every other browser/client/server supports it. IE still has comfortably more than half of the browser market, even though it's in decline. So, if the NSA can't break AES, they ask M$ not to put it in, and a large chunk of the traffic remains readily readable.
"But," you may say, "anyone who knows what they're doing will use something more secure." True. However on one hand, crooks and terrorists are often (albeit not always) stupid, and might not always do so; and on the other hand, the easily broken traffic can be quickly sorted out, leaving a smaller quantity of harder-to-break traffic where content analysis is neglected but traffic analysis approaches become profitable. Limiting the capabilities of the drooling-luser set is helpful, because it makes it easier to pick out the bad guys who hide by leaving a smaller set of both the good and the bad guys who can hide. Rather than struggling to separate all the good from the bad, they can first quickly separate the smart from the stoooopid.
Of course, there's no proof the AC's assertion is true... but it doesn't matter much for the sake of arguement.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
People do things for reasons. Hammering them for things that turn out badly just produces CYA, fear and paralysis. Red in tooth-and-claw management always devours itself.