full-disclosure - NSA tracking open source security tools

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Date: Sat Feb  4 22:55:40 2006
From: mhoye at neon.polkaroo.net (Mike Hoye)
Subject: NSA tracking open source security tools

On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 11:23:10AM +1300, Jason Coombs wrote:
> Fyodor wrote:
> >George Bush visiting the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.  A wall-sized
> >screen in the background displays the latest versions of our favorite
> >open source security tools, including Nmap, Metasploit, Snort,
> >Ethereal, Cain & Abel, and Kismet.  Nifty.
> 
> The NSA must have learned information security tricks from Microsoft.
> Who in their right mind would focus their attention on software version 
> numbers and think that makes for better security?

Or, alternatively, it was just a quickly ginned-up background made to
look "high-tech" for the President's visit. Yeah, it's stupid to have
version numbers scrolling by on the screen as useful information, but
it's even dumber to think that the NSA would put live, or even important,
data on the screen during a freaking photo op, with the press all over
the place.

-- 
"After a while, the hanged man will become motionless and his gallows
will oscillate as if its fulcrum were the hanged man." - Mario Salvadori,
Columbia University, 1984.