Reporters to start sniffing Naptha?

Rob Rosenberger, Vmyths co-founder
Friday, 1 December 2000 BINDVIEW ASKED CERT^Ž to release an advisory in conjunction with a blatant press release for their anti-hacker product. And CERT obliged! How nice of them.

BindView discovered Naptha five months ago. Hackers didn't know about it, nor did cyber-terrorists, nor did military info-warriors.

I can imagine their first phone call. "Hello, CERT? This is BindView. Our guys found a new vulnerability they like to call 'Naptha' and we enhanced our products to stop its exploitation. Now we want to launch a PR campaign. We'd like you to issue a 'Naptha' advisory to help increase the popularity of our software. Can we count on your support?" Let's get one thing straight, folks. A reliable source claims BindView discovered Naptha five months ago. They followed a "security through discretion" policy, quietly telling vendors to patch vulnerable operating systems. Hackers didn't know about it, nor did cyber-terrorists, nor did military info-warriors. BindView knows Naptha will quickly join its brothers in the land of obscurity, yet they still resorted to hysteria in their press release. Reporters have a fetish for juicy computer security stories and BindView used enough trigger phrases to get their attention. "Potentially devastating denial-of-service security vulnerability ... total operating system failure ... entire operating systems are at risk of attack from Naptha ... exploits the TCP protocol..." ("TCP protocol" is redundant, but let's not digress.) BindView warns Naptha "threatens at least seven major operating systems including Microsoft, Novell, Solaris and Linux." What a coincidence — the CERT advisory mentions seven OSes:

Compaq Tru64 UNIX
FreeBSD
IBM AIX
Windows 2000 (not affected)
Windows NT4
Windows 9x and Windows Me
Sun Solaris

CERT's advisory says Naptha doesn't affect Windows 2000. As for Win9x, you just follow the timeworn advice to disable file & print sharing. (If you offer file & print sharing on a Win9x PC, you've got waaay more to worry about than just Naptha.) Wait, it gets better. The press release says Naptha " 'puts every corporate network at risk because of its ability to render applications, servers, networks and even the Internet useless,' said Kevin Weiss, chief marketing officer at BindView." Weiss states the obvious about a useless Internet, but Naptha certainly didn't cause it!

BindView's chief marketing officer said Naptha can "render ... the Internet useless."

Naturally, "there have been no reports of customers being adversely affected by this vulnerability." BindView again states the obvious, since they discovered it.
NOW LET'S TALK about a company called ISS. Or as I like to call them: "NostradamISS." I recently slammed them for predicting the death of e-Christmas — but BindView's PR campaign might give them a much-needed boost. Script kiddies obviously will want to exploit Naptha. (They love new toys, you know.) Look for NostradamISS to scream "I told you so!" every time a Naptha tool surfaces. We still won't see the death of e-Christmas, but Naptha hysteria could help ISS save some face. And generate more free publicity in the process. Grab a bag of popcorn, folks. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the media will give us another fireworks show...