On Wednesday 06 March 2002 16:15, Starks, Michael wrote: > What is the consensus in regards to anonymously posting to security > mailing lists and USENET when discussing specific network > configurations? Is it considered the prudent thing to do? Is > credibility affected? It doesn't seem wise to me to discuss a specific > vulnerability which points back to you own network.
Anonimity might be good (and even desirable) in some cases. However, I personally don't like anonymous posters on mailing lists. There are two reasons for someone to post anonymously: either the honest person wants to protect itself from getting into trouble, or the person is *not* honest. Sometimes it is hard to find out if the anonymous person is someone who really needs help or just another wannabe HaX0r. I prefer not to give answers to people who are afraid of giving out their identity, for I could help someone with malicious intents to do the bad thing. Yet, there's that trouble when you find out that someone's system is vulnerable and you want to fix it or tell the person about it, but it might be illegal to do so. In my country it is not defined well, so as well as it might be illegal, it still isn't - AFAIK our law is strict on whether the intrusion is done to harm data or not, so in Croatia you might contact the person to tell about the vulnerabilities with no fear of going to jail for helping them, but in other countries it's not like that. I like such honest people and I protect their right to try to help other people, but who can be 100% sure that the person is honest? None of us have a magic wand to wave it around the monitor and see who's the anonymous poster and what his intentions are. While Usenet has it's tradition of anonymous/fake posters, mailing lists, esp. security mailing lists aren't the place where the anonymous person could collect sensitive information. So in my opinion, if you want to talk to the people, and be taken seriously, you should tell your identity! -- Radoslav Dejanovic Senior Associate to Mayor's Office City of Zagreb, Croatia
