Flaw hunters pick holes in Oracle patches

Published vs Unpublished Exploits: "It is not true that criminal hackers are just behind them when it comes to uncovering bugs, he said. Instead, attacks always take advantage of bugs published by researchers, he said: 'Maybe the good guys should stop finding bugs for the bad guys.'" (Quote from last page of article.)

Lindstrom has his/her head in the sand and is totally clueless. Only the script kiddies take advantage of published exploits, whereas criminals keep their discoveries to themselves so that the exploit has a longer life of usefulness. The last thing a criminal hacker wants is for the exploit to be published!

Blackhats (criminals) use the same methods that whitehat hackers use to discover exploitable vulnerabiities...thus it is a race to beat the criminals to the punch and get the vulnerabilities patched. If it were not for whitehats, the general user population would be far more vulnerable than it is without the efforts of whitehats.

Oracle's attitude toward whitehat's being the problem used to be typical with all software vendors, put in the last few years many software developers have changed their opinion and now view whitehat's as a valuable asset of the computing community.

Within the computing community, whitehats are the leaders of a cyber "neigborhood watch" effort to keep us all safer from cyber thugs, thieves, and hoodlums.; Posted by: cburgess Posted on: 10/27/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use