HBGary planned to "blow the balls off Nmap"

http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2011/q1/767

by desigooner • 15 years ago

168 101 15 years ago

I am deeply sceptical of any technology where the builders think up the name first and then try to find a reason it should be called that. It just seems too much like stuff I did when I was 12.

bl4k• 15 years ago

or people who register a domain name first

and then do nothing with it

slapshot• 15 years ago

How do you feel about GNU?

mahmud2• 15 years ago

GNU is not a technology, it's a movement. And to get all Marxist up on this joint, the building blocks for a new movement is created long before the leader is conscious of the need for one; the status-quo automatically provides an anti- checklist to motivate mobilization. One only has to scream "down with the government!" in a poor neighborhood to prove this; no further deliberation is needed, as the audience comes equipped with its own reasons to revolt.

pyre2• 15 years ago

My impression is that this part of the email sounds like some business/sales guy that has a great idea where the technical parts are 'easy' and can be 'implemented by monkeys.'

"I have a great idea, let's make a product that can make us a lot of money. We'll work out the details later, that's the easy part."

tzs• 15 years ago

It doesn't say they came up with the name first.

sorbus• 15 years ago

"I would like to call it "B.E.S.T. Scanner" so people kind of get stuck calling it "the best scanner". We can figure out what BEST means later."

Vivtek• 15 years ago

This characterizes his entire attitude better than anything I've seen so far: "too much like stuff I did when I was 12". That, and some of my early Web customers in the 90's. I cringe just to read this stuff.

chopsueyar• 15 years ago

where the builders think up the name first and then try to find a reason it should be called that

How about federal legislation?

nikcub• 15 years ago

I was reading this and thinking 'I am pretty sure nmap already does this', and as the first reply confirms, it does:

http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2011/q1/768

all these leaked emails just remind me why I left the netsec industry so long ago

Just reading this email and knowing these types of people I already know how this came about:

1. random surfing on the web and finds out about LFSR

2. thinks 'this would be awesome for a port scanner'

3. sends email with 'lets do something like nmap but better and faster using this thing i just read about on reddit'

4. 'i done my bit, GO TEAM!'

5. add 'software architect' to email signature

tptacek20• 15 years ago

"There's this thing called an LFSR; it's math-y, but very cool" in a 2009 message from someone pretty well plugged-in to the vulnerability research scene tells you a lot about where we stand with crypto vuln research.

barrkel3• 15 years ago

I think that's slightly unfair; Greg's expertise isn't in crypto, but in Windows NT kernel internals.

Natsu• 15 years ago

I wonder what he'll write when he discovers the Mersenne twister?

FirstHopSystems3• 15 years ago

He was probably looking at a data structure white papers/research. LFSR is good to use as a primary key for DB's./Linked lists(sequential numbers, no so great) I was working on an API along while ago using C.

I think this could be a mission for Redis and Node! Anyone want to hack together a little API/framework for LFSR Generation?

pnathan3• 15 years ago

What sort of LRSRs are you looking for? And what language? I put together a LFSR generator as a test demo for a bit vector I homebrewed a while ago -

https://bitbucket.org/pnathan/logic-vector/src/598a6cddb080/...

barrkel3• 15 years ago

Any particular reason it needs to be an LFSR?

A question I posted on SO some time back may be of interest, it solves a similar problem using an LCG (generating a shuffled range of numbers with no repeats):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/464476/generating-shuffle...

mkramlich2• 15 years ago

> Anyone want to hack together a little API/framework for LFSR Generation?

I'm kinda interested. But I'm opposed to blowing the balls off anything.

mh_• 15 years ago

Related HBGary, Anonymous post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2311067

(What we learn about Cyber War from the incident)

olalonde• 15 years ago

> I would like to call it "B.E.S.T. Scanner" so people kind of get stuck calling it "the best scanner". We can figure out what BEST means later.

Epic.

icarus_drowning• 15 years ago

Certainly blew my balls off.

electromagnetic• 15 years ago

Are you sure it didn't just cause them to shrink to unrecognisable size through its ultimate suckitude?

defen2• 15 years ago

Ball Erupting Scanner Technology

tomelders• 15 years ago

I almost bust a nut loling out loud at that.

jarin4• 15 years ago

Mental note: come up with a new site "B.E.S.T. Social Network"

smokestack• 15 years ago

You just did! Time to send it off to the developers. Your work here is done.

joezydeco• 15 years ago

Bowel Express Speed Technology. Remember, it has to be FAST AS SHIT.

tptacek20• 15 years ago

Yeah so these are ideas that date back to the '90s, so it is genuinely weird to see Hoglund talking about them in 2009. But for whatever it's worth: if ever a tool needed its balls blown off, it's nmap. I have nothing but respect for Fyodor, but that space badly needs real competition.

There is, for what it's worth, very little reason why the best scanner need be written in C. Scanners aren't even I/O bound in their most common use case; they're timer-bound.

electrum• 15 years ago

> There is, for what it's worth, very little reason why the best scanner need be written in C.

What about all the packet manipulation code? Bit twiddling tends to be difficult in other languages.

tptacek20• 15 years ago

Bit twiddling is much easier in other languages than in C. And virtually every mainstream language has a pcap binding for the packet reading and injection (although a good straight-socket scanner could still give nmap a run for its money).

rwmj• 15 years ago

I give you https://code.google.com/p/bitstring/

defen2• 15 years ago

What kind of things are wrong with nmap (I've never used it). Fundamentally flawed, poorly implemented, neglected project, documentation, etc?

tptacek20• 15 years ago

Nmap isn't fundamentally flawed. It's ambitious and sprawling in ways that detract from its basic purpose. It wants to be a general-purpose network surveying tool, but is constrained to the UX of a port scanner.

Someone else should write the best possible port scanner and free nmap up to be the giant network profiling system it clearly wants to be.

burgerbrain5• 15 years ago

If you feel the need to justify nmap being writting in C, which you shouldn't, just remember: The people who wrote nmap know C, and managed to write fucking nmap in it.

If you want a better one written in something else, then get cracking...

tptacek20• 15 years ago

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Are you an avid C programmer? Or do you just really like nmap? I am asking seriously.

Getahobby2• 15 years ago

Please, please, please STOP referring to networks as class a, b, c, etc. The 1980s called, they want their networking jargon back.

nostromo• 15 years ago

I doubt HBGary reads HN. And if he does, it's only for reconnaissance missions.

Getahobby2• 15 years ago

Apparently there are people I insulted that still use that terminology. It really makes you sound, umm, managerial and pointy haired when you use those.

jarin4• 15 years ago

What are you talking about? It is a critical part of Layer 3 of the OSI Model!!

bingaman• 15 years ago

What is the correct terminology?

jf• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_Inter-Domain_Routing

bdhe3• 15 years ago

Could you enlighten me? What is a better way to refer to /24 /16 /8 networks?

tedunangst• 15 years ago

/16 obviously. Say it aloud a few times and just feel how it flows off the tongue. "slash sixteen, slash sixteen." So much smoother than getting tongue tied saying "class B" out loud...

pyre2• 15 years ago

  > It should be FAST AS SHIT

Last I checked, fecal motility was pretty low. Maybe he should get that checked out...

[update]

http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2011/q1/771 :

  > I've already had my brain cranking on what
  > elite networking code I could now write in
  > the kernel and I've always wanted to write
  > a badass portscanner too.

And now he can program those both over wifi with his laptop while in his tree fort with the "no parents allowed" sign hung off the side. Afterwards he can rescue his girlfriend from ninjas with is excellent karate skills...

Both of those emails seriously boggle my mind...

tptacek20• 15 years ago

Everything about it is mindboggling; if you're going to put effort into building something in a place as inhospitable as the kernel, a portscanner? Who's going to pay for that?

jrockway• 15 years ago

The harder it is to write an application, the better the application must be. Putting stuff in the kernel means it will be harder to get right, so clearly the app will be better.

A security hole in the kernel is a small price to pay for a 0% speed increase.

lurkinggrue• 15 years ago

Dude! I so want this scanner as it will clearly be the best.

chipsy• 15 years ago

Most programmers I know get the "I just discovered a silver bullet, damn I'm awesome" nonsense schooled out of them somewhere between entering college to a few years after, but apparently HBGary is an entire organization built on the exception.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

Yeah, I remember the day when my default action on thinking up an "awesome game-changing idea" became immediately looking up who had already tried it and why it didn't work.

Older, sadder, wiser.

It gets better, eventually you think of an idea that some tried that did work and feel a little better.

blhack• 15 years ago

What's terrifying about this is that this company somehow scored a contract with the FBI.

How many other HBGary Federals are there out there?

tptacek20• 15 years ago

Why is wanting to compete with nmap a terrifying attribute of an FBI contractor? Technology within the FBI pretty much begins and ends with EnCase.

kovar2• 15 years ago

While the FBI isn't known for being on the technical bleeding edge, and used to bleed a lot for technical screwups, the RCFL's - Regional Computer Forensics Labs - are very much out there on the leading edge of computer forensics technology.

---

There are some amazing technical innovations in EnCase and the products built on it. Unfortunately, the company has management issues that result in some very poor decisions in many areas, including deployment of software development resources.

arctangent• 15 years ago

One who immediately springs to mind is Dennis Montgomery. Here is a link that is NSFW: http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-man-who-conned-the-penta...

In all of these cases one of the main problems seems to be that non-technical people have too much decision making power in technical areas. (I'm not going to address this huge problem here.)

I've lost count of the number of times I've been in a meeting listening to someone talk about something like the "Linear Feedback Shift Register" mentioned in the article.

Unfortunately, technology seems like magic (or snake oil) to people who don't know anything about it...

kovar2• 15 years ago

Greg and Aaron, two of the guys involved with HBGary, are incredibly smart and capable. They were very well respected in the industry for their intelligence, products, and services.

---

How well would you stand up in the court of public opinion if several years of the internal email messages for your startup were leaked?

I'm very concerned about the rise of the cybersecurity/infosec complex ala the military-industrial complex, but one of the reasons for my concern is that they have very bright, very motivated people working for them who know how to play the D.C. political games.

pnathan3• 15 years ago

Well, that email is a piece of relatively ignorant crap that I could have written when I was 17. The last time I read something like that was a Phrack interview....

cookiecaper• 15 years ago

The longer you're involved the more you'll find that people in positions of authority and prominence rarely deserve them.

wheels• 15 years ago

It's lame that this is on HN. Basically it's just finger pointing and laughing at someone for being stupid on the internet (in a private mail, it seems).

jarin4• 15 years ago

Not being stupid on the Internet could be considered relevant for Internet entrepreneurs

desigooner• 15 years ago

Is this a case of greed and a road to fast fame?!

This coming out from someone as respected (at least in the past) and renowned researcher like Hoglund doesn't give a ringing endorsement to the industry. Was he that desperate for fame and fortune?!

svag• 15 years ago

I think a similar effect with LFSR you can have with a De Bruijn sequence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence.

s00pcan• 15 years ago

"We can find source code for such things on the net to help us write it. It's just a few lines of code."

some1else• 15 years ago

So this is really what all the commercially oriented security researches are like?

It seems that the people I truly consider hackers rather commit a patch.

sucuri2• 15 years ago

Everyone says stupid things on emails. Specially on PRIVATE emails.

It is funny, sounds stupid what he is saying, but how many stupid things we say on email, IM etc on a daily basis? Don't judge just because of it...

HBGary planned to "blow the balls off Nmap"

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