Well, I'm not longer buying Samsung anyway. That's for sure.
Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
11–20 of 84 posts
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#12Well, I'm not longer buying Samsung anyway. That's for sure.
Care to explain why?
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everything is useless. Code auditing is not necessarily useless; looking at the physical security of smart cards is not necessarily useless (but it looks like they could use some tougher certifications); pentesting/social engineering can have its uses. That said, "security appliances" and other magical solutions tend to be rather imperfect. tptacek (of http://insecure.org/stf/secnet_ids/secnet_ids.pdf ) may have…
Everyone I've met who's been working in the "IT Security Industry" have been exceptionally coy about what they test for and how. After a few drinks I've managed to get out that they're testing for "XSS, and SQL injection, you know things like that". It stinks of proprietary crap and I wonder what it would look like if they took a more OSS approach? When you can't even talk about XSS testing without a bit of prodding…
I've never done anything with them, but e.g. http://www.rootlabs.com/engineer-job.html sounded a lot more interesting than what you describe. On the open-source front, you find stuff like Metasploit, nmap, Snort, previously Nessus (forked as OpenVAS), web stuff like Nikto, etc.
Don't forget that lots of "programmers" are barely-skilled and working on VBA macros - one label can cover a wide range of skill.
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#14This is a good reminder to always do your homework before making such a strong accusation. Samsung's reputation is probably largely undamaged, other than among people who just read the headlines on news aggregator sites. Even searching for 'Samsung Key Logger' pulls up mostly articles about the false alarm situation. Mohamed Hassan [MSIA, CISSP, CISA and graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSI…
To be fair, Mohamed Hassan did contact Samsung support and they didn't clear up the issue. In fact, I believe they may have even confirmed that there was a key logger installed! At that point his due dilligence has been done and he has confirmation. He doesn't need to do anything further than that. Shame on Samsung support for such a pathetic showing.
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#15This is a good reminder to always do your homework before making such a strong accusation. Samsung's reputation is probably largely undamaged, other than among people who just read the headlines on news aggregator sites. Even searching for 'Samsung Key Logger' pulls up mostly articles about the false alarm situation. Mohamed Hassan [MSIA, CISSP, CISA and graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSI…
Everything that he did was just shameful. Suggesting class-action, writing two articles essentially saying the same thing (in a "2-part series"), shoving our faces with his credentials (that obviously didn't do much for him), claiming that his anti-virus program never had false positives, drawing comparisons to the Sony rootkit debacle, etc.
I hope this guy has it coming to him. If he's going to put his creds up like that, he's putting himself out there as an informed source. You expect that sort of sensationalism from journalists, not from a security "expert". Shameful work, overall.
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#16This is a good reminder to always do your homework before making such a strong accusation. Samsung's reputation is probably largely undamaged, other than among people who just read the headlines on news aggregator sites. Even searching for 'Samsung Key Logger' pulls up mostly articles about the false alarm situation. Mohamed Hassan [MSIA, CISSP, CISA and graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSI…
> Any Google search on his name from now on will probably reveal this whole debacle.
Actually, he has a sufficiently common name that those results will be relegated to the 2nd or 3rd page of search results within a few weeks:
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#17Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#18This is a good reminder to always do your homework before making such a strong accusation. Samsung's reputation is probably largely undamaged, other than among people who just read the headlines on news aggregator sites. Even searching for 'Samsung Key Logger' pulls up mostly articles about the false alarm situation. Mohamed Hassan [MSIA, CISSP, CISA and graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSI…
To be fair, Mohamed Hassan did contact Samsung support and they didn't clear up the issue. In fact, I believe they may have even confirmed that there was a key logger installed! At that point his due dilligence has been done and he has confirmation. He doesn't need to do anything further than that. Shame on Samsung support for such a pathetic showing.
He did not fulfill his due diligence. Not if they're going to add this to the article:
"Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA is the founder of NetSec Consulting Corp, a firm that specializes in information security consulting services. He is a senior IT Security consultant and an adjunct professor of Information Systems in the School of Business at the University of Phoenix."
If they're going to pass him off as an expert, then he better be doing analysis that a normal lay-man can't do. If he has the credentials, then why is he basing his claim off of a conversation with low-level customer support?
Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, Mohamed Hassan did contact Samsung support and they didn't clear up the issue. In fact, I believe they may have even confirmed that there was a key logger installed! At that point his due dilligence has been done and he has confirmation. He doesn't need to do anything further than that. Shame on Samsung support for such a pathetic showing.
He did not fulfill his due diligence. Not if they're going to add this to the article: "Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA is the founder of NetSec Consulting Corp, a firm that specializes in information security consulting services. He is a senior IT Security consultant and an adjunct professor of Information Systems in the School of Business at the University of Phoenix." If they're going to pass him off as an exper…
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Re: Confirmed: Samsung is not shipping keyloggers
#20This is a good reminder to always do your homework before making such a strong accusation. Samsung's reputation is probably largely undamaged, other than among people who just read the headlines on news aggregator sites. Even searching for 'Samsung Key Logger' pulls up mostly articles about the false alarm situation. Mohamed Hassan [MSIA, CISSP, CISA and graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSI…
To be fair, Mohamed Hassan did contact Samsung support and they didn't clear up the issue. In fact, I believe they may have even confirmed that there was a key logger installed! At that point his due dilligence has been done and he has confirmation. He doesn't need to do anything further than that. Shame on Samsung support for such a pathetic showing.
He did talk to customer support, and once in a while, I'd rather have a false alarm (keeping it to the level of information, rather than lawsuits) now and then, than something like this actually happening and kept under the radar.