UK ISP threatens security researcher

Fri Apr 20 20:16:16 UTC 2007

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:56:06 EDT, Kradorex Xeron said:

> In my personal opinion, ISPs, vendors, and such should legally be held 
> responsible for their product's security and unconditionally be made to 
> repair any security holes. -- if a vendor or ISP maintains good security 
> practices, there will be nothing for them to fear from this.

Repair *ANY* holes?  *unconditionally*? Including ones that are *demonstrably*
difficult to actually exploit (for instance, attacks that require physical
access to the router), or have a low probability of causing significant damage?

For a "reducto ad absurdum" - I have found an attack against the MPEG format,
which combined with a known weakness in one vendor's handling of long runs of
zero bits, has the potential of corrupting one or two pixels in every 56
minutes of downloaded video, and requires that I be able to clamp a device of
my design around the cable within 2 feet of the router.  You're required to fix
it, even though the fix will require the forklift upgrade of your entire
backbone, as the long-run issue is a design limitation of the router you use
throughout your core, and also harden all your PoP's to withstand an attack by
a squad of 3 to 5 M1 Abrams tanks, just in case I'm *really* determined to get
into the room with the router rack. Oh, and it's arguable that it isn't even
*your* problem to fix, but somebody else's.

Did you want to be legally held to this?

Be careful what you ask for - you might actually get it.

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