From: Bobby.Clarke@sealedair.com
Date: Fri Jul 14 2006 - 16:42:52 EDT
The friend is hardly CTO caliber allowing such activity.
Bobby Clarke GSEC, GCIH, CISSP
"Trust but verify." Ronald Reagan
Ronald Chmara
<ron@Opus1.COM>
To
07/14/2006 01:19 Chris Benedict
AM <chrisb@daemonnews.org>
cc
pen-test@securityfocus.com
Subject
Re: Pen-Test as a favor
On Jul 12, 2006, at 8:49 PM, Chris Benedict wrote:
> 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.
Gee, what's the worst that could happen?
I guess you could try to pen-test a live db server, get it stuck in a
loop, and accidentally have the office bill the government for several
million dollars, which then results in a fraud conviction, and prison
time....
Or maybe a live prescription verification system could go down,
resulting in people not getting their prescriptions in time, resulting
in their deaths, millions of dollars in civil lawsuits, and possible
homicide charges, resulting in long prison terms....
How good of a friend did you say he was?
Would you say he's willing to spend 20 years in jail for you? 30? How
about a Death Penalty sentence, or commit suicide rather than reveal
*your* name as the person who accidentally killed several hundred
patients?
You see. written legal documents are not created for the best case
scenario, they are created for the worst case.
OTOH, you're not pen-testing, oh, a nuclear weapons lab, so it's
somewhat unlikely you'll actually kill *millions* of people, which
should help shorten the legal document somewhat. :-)
So, how *does* one pen-test such a sensitive environment?
1. Ghost/mirror the drives.
2. Create an artificial network of the needed machines *WITH NO
PHYSICAL CABLES, OR WIRELESS ACCESS, TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD* for testing.
3. Test away.
4. *Destroy all data on the drives after testing*, or just feed them
into a industrial grinder, to ensure that batch jobs never execute if
the drive is used in the future a real world machine.
-Ronabop
-- 4245 NE Alberta Ct. Portland, OR 97218 503-282-1370 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This List Sponsored by: Cenzic Concerned about Web Application Security? Why not go with the #1 solution - Cenzic, the only one to win the Analyst's Choice Award from eWeek. As attacks through web applications continue to rise, you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the most comprehensive solutions to meet your application security penetration testing and vulnerability management needs. You have an option to go with a managed service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software (Cenzic Hailstorm). Download FREE whitepaper on how a managed service can help you: http://www.cenzic.com/news_events/wpappsec.php And, now for a limited time we can do a FREE audit for you to confirm your results from other product. Contact us at request@cenzic.com for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This List Sponsored by: Cenzic Concerned about Web Application Security? Why not go with the #1 solution - Cenzic, the only one to win the Analyst's Choice Award from eWeek. As attacks through web applications continue to rise, you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the most comprehensive solutions to meet your application security penetration testing and vulnerability management needs. You have an option to go with a managed service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software (Cenzic Hailstorm). Download FREE whitepaper on how a managed service can help you: http://www.cenzic.com/news_events/wpappsec.php And, now for a limited time we can do a FREE audit for you to confirm your results from other product. Contact us at request@cenzic.com for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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