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>http://www.msnbc.com/news/621462.asp
>
> There's an interesting piece at the above URL by veteran journalist
> Howard Fineman. Seems he had some difficulties installing a firewall
> router on his cable connection. Among the problems he cites was
> 'the absurdly complicated instruction manual that came with the first
> firewall router' he brought home.
Probably SonicWall. Its a POS. Manual is incomprehensible. But it sure
does have some gorgeous fonts and a real keen looking template.
> Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I gather that in the opinion of
> the esteemed members of this list, Fineman is a sniveling, incompetent
> boob who isn't worthy to use high-tech equipment, and the author
> of that firewall router manual, whose name was probably
> Archimedes Socrates or something like that, is a hero because
> he eats lunch with systems engineers and really understands the
> complexities of router technology.
No, the author of the document was probably a sniveling, incompetent boob.
A lot of writers in the infosec space are completely clueless. If this
writer "ate lunch" with the engineers he probably would have understood
how the thing actually worked vs. how to just slap text into a template
and collect his paycheck.
A few weeks ago I bumped into a SENIOR writer with a very well-known
security firm (no I won't tell you who). I asked this person if they were
dealing with the code red problems: blank stare..."what's that?" "Blah,
blah, blah, exploits IIS by using the ISAPI buffer, hard to stop cuz it
comes in on port 80 (HTTP)." More blank stares.
Hello, anybody alive in there or did you blow your buffer?
Infosec is complex stuff with a lot of intricate interdependencies. I have
read a TON of documentation for security products. Most infosec docs are
terrible. And its most often because the author didn't understand what
he/she was documenting. There is no explanations WHY things are done a
certain way - which is the hallmark of an ignorant writer.
Andrew Plato
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