BROADCASTS.com

In September of 2003, a noted security consultant was terminated from his job over controversy surrounding a document that he co-authored. One key focus of the document was the risk associated with operating system monocultures. This idea was nothing new. In fact, in 1989, the following passages appeared in a book that spent over four months on the New York Times best seller list:

"Just like genetic diversity, which prevents an epidemic from wiping out a whole species at once, diversity in software is a good thing."

"A computer virus is specialized: a virus that works on an IBM PC cannot do anything to a Macintosh or a Unix computer. [snip] Diversity, then, works against viruses. If all the systems on the Arpanet ran Berkeley Unix, the virus would have disabled all fifty thousand of them. Instead, it infected only a couple thousand."

-- Stoll, Cliff. THE CUCKOO's EGG, New York: Simon and Schuster
Pocket Books, 1989. Pages 51 and 347.

The point of this citation is not to cast any disrespect on the authors of "CyberInsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly" (on the contrary, in fact). Rather, we wish merely to note that the risk of monocultures was identified at least fourteen years ago, and was widely published. Why fuss if someone repeats it?

Foofus.net wants in on this kind of action. In that spirit, we"ve looked high and low for a bunch of other old ideas so that we can breathe new life into them, and (in the famous words of a respected security research team), make "the theoretical practical," in an effort to tax the patience of those who would rather we kept our heads in the sand about ideas that are right there in the open, but inconvenient to demonstrate. Until now.

Come to this presentation, and savor some exquisite fun. We will demonstrate our tools and techniques, and we think you will find that they are interesting and useful. But not new. We promise that we have not invented a damn thing here; the basic concepts are 100% recycled, but we hope they will encourage people to get serious about areas where they"ve been coasting for too long.

The focus of the talk is Windows: tools will be presented for identifying potential trust relationships between disparate hosts, tinkering with friendly wireless interfaces, easy access to network shares without bothering to crack password hashes, and (if our luck holds) maybe even alittle more. It"ll be really fun, and stuff.

Foofus leads a team of security engineers at a midsize technology consulting firm in the midwest, where he has worked for the past seven years. He has spoken at a variety of events and conferences including Toorcon and LISA. His chief technical interest is software security, and in his spare time he enjoys playing guitar, cooking, and attending the symphony.