Re: "Free" pen-test

Hi Pete

I can tell you how *I* approach similar cases. I'll go to Mr. Director and say "pay me now, or pay me later" (you can use
"hire me now, or hire me later"). This wonderful piece of wisdom was told
to me aeons ago by Mr. Mike Harris, of Linux fame (Mike, if you're reading this: HI!).
The meaning of later is "after you've been cracked" ;-) If they're willing to hire and pay you now, you will detect and solve problems now, when it's easier and cheaper to do that. If they call you after a successful crack, they'll be in an emergency, they'll be willing to pay a lot more money, and you'll be in the position to be paid for your 2am work in their NOC ;-) Business are business... doing pen-tests can be wonderful, but if I'm not going to be paid for that, I prefer to practice in my lab or in some other people's honeynet.
Cheers,

Miguel
aka Nekromancer

"Pete" <pen_test_list@petesmithcomputers.com>
19/06/2003 10:53  

        To:     
        cc: 
        Subject:        "Free" pen-test

{snip}

Well. Fred is keen to keep going. But I reckon that someone who is
"not worried" that his web server could have been taken down in about
4 hours is not worth wasting time on. Needless to say, the cunning plan was to sell him a pile of stuff once he was scared enough.

My question is this: how do white-hatters usually approach these things?

Grateful for any tips (and thanks for reading if you got to here)

Do you need help?

In addition to our free technical library, Pantek provides professional IT services to companies who utilize Open Source software: Learn more about Pantek's Technical Support offerings Place an order for 24/7/365 Technical Support here Learn more about Pantek, who we are, and what we do Chat with a Live Operator Related securityfocus.com Links bugtraq certification focus-bsd focus-ids focus-ih focus-linux focus-ms focus-sun focus-unix-other focus-virus forensics incidents libnet linux-secnews ms-secnews pen-test secpapers secprog sectools secureshell security-basics securityjobs sf-news vuln-dev webappsec Request more information about Pantek

You're a pen tester, but is google.com still your R&D team? Now you can get trustworthy commercial-grade exploits and the latest techniques from a world-class research group.

Visit us at: www.coresecurity.com/promos/sf_ept1 or call 617-399-6980