Nicholas, I remember my early years in the infosec community - and sadly, so do some of the more seasoned readers of this list :-) Back then, I thought that the only thing that mattered is the ability to find bugs. But after some 18 years in the industry, I now know that there's an even more important and elusive skill.
That skill boils down to having a robust mental model of what constitutes a security flaw - and being able to explain your thinking to others in a precise and internally consistent manner that convinces others to act. We need this because the security of a system can't be usefully described using abstract terms: even the academic definitions ultimately boil down to saying "the system is secure if it doesn't do the things we *really* don't want it to do". In this spirit, the term "vulnerability" is generally reserved for behaviors that meet all of the following criteria: 1) The behavior must have negative consequences for at least one of the legitimate stakeholders (users, service owners, etc), 2) The consequences must be widely seen as unexpected and unacceptable, 3) There must be a realistic chance of such a negative outcome, 4) The behavior must introduce substantial new risks that go beyond the previously accepted trade-offs. If we don't have that, we usually don't have a case, no matter how clever the bug is. Cheers (and happy hunting!), /mz _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
