As Muhammad Faisal Rauf Danka recalls it, he tried 10 times to call a software maker about a devastating security flaw in one of its most popular programs. “It is so simple it is funny,” the Pakistani researcher says. But nothing happened. Then he took his findings to a global audience – a worldwide mailing list devoted to exposing and exploring software bugs. Vindication came swiftly: Within days, Microsoft acknowledged that 200 million of its Passport accounts had been left open, apparently for months, allowing the easy hijacking of credit-card and other personal data. The company shut down the Passport system and fixed the hole. To some, Danka is a hero for publicly prodding a big company into swiftly correcting an error. But to Microsoft, he is an “information anarchist” who makes it easier for malicious hackers to inflict havoc on the masses. Those viewpoints frame the ongoing debate about the principle of “full disclosure,” the computer world’s longtime standard for exposing security flaws so that they can be isolated and repaired. Full Story
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