RE: Pen-Test as a favor

From: Barnhart, Troy (TBarnhart@rcrh.org)
Date: Thu Jul 13 2006 - 15:52:31 EDT


No offense and in all seriousness, let's play word-association with the key words from your email...

1) IT intern / on own time >> Disposable -> "Plausible Deniability"
2) Their servers / Doctors' office >> HIPAA
3) CTO / Pretty Good Friend / No Legal Action >> Until the Doctors' Office gets Legal-Action.

I repeat again - HIPAA and even futher... JCAHO/OIG/AMA/SOX.
That's a HUGE rabbit-hole you don't want to go down...

You should have it in writing and your "get-out-of-jail-free" card in hand before the very first keystroke.

After your FIRST lawsuit that is related to an "electronic" patient-data disclosure -
you won't believe that you even considered it originally...

You can tell the doctors who've been through an eDiscovery procedure -
they have no problems with complex passwords and such...

The other doctors [who haven't] are demanding for "single-signon"; 3-character, alpha-only passwords; and root-level access.

Troy Barnhart, Sr. Systems Programmer,
tbarnhart@rcrh.org
Regional Health Corp.
Rapid City, South Dakota

-----Original Message-----
From: "Chris Benedict" <chrisb@daemonnews.org>
To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
Sent: 7/12/06 8:49 PM
Subject: Pen-Test as a favor

Hey, I'm working as an IT intern in a doctors office and I got
permission to do a little pen-testing on their servers on my own time.
How necessary would it be to get written permission before I take any
action? The Admin/CTO is a pretty good friend and I doubt would even
consider taking any legal action if anything happened.

If I do need a contract or something could someone point me in the
direction of a template. I have never even seen such a
contract/agreement before and I would never be able to write one up on
my own properly.

Thanks,
Chris Benedict

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