LMH and InfoSec Sellout unmasked?
Month of Apple Bugs kingpin comes clean
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The equivalent of a virtual nuke has just been set off in the field of vulnerability research and disclosure. The identities behind two of the noms de guerre that have elicited some of the most heated vitriol over the last 12 months appear to have been disclosed.
In a post to the Fuzzing mailing list, a "Lance M Havok" (LMH) claimed that he was David Maynor, previously known as part of the team that claimed an exploit against OS X wireless drivers at Black Hat, and that InfoSec Sellout was Jon Ramsey, David Maynor's former manager at SecureWorks.
For the uninitiated, LMH was responsible for the Month of Apple Bugs project, including much of the pointed commentary that accompanied each day's release, while InfoSec Sellout has posted commentary that is better hidden behind anonymity - now offline (as well as developing Rape.osx).
At the time of writing, this information has yet to filter to online archives of the mailing lists, but copies can soon be found in the archives of Daily Dave, Full Disclosure, and the Fuzzing mailinglist operated by Gadi Evron.
InfoSec Sellout has previously stated that David Maynor is looking in the wrong direction in his attempts to unmask the identity behind the name, but there is no comment yet on the latest claim being released.
The decision to unmask apparently came after some third parties appeared to be on the right track towards uncovering the identities behind the names. If true, it could mean that the unmask.py tool written by Dave Aitel is mature enough to be of great use in tracking and identifying the movements and posts of otherwise anonymous internet posters.
Analysis of the message shows it originating from a Google GMail session, but beyond that little other information is available. Time will show whether the people named in the email step forward to corroborate the claims being made.
It is expected that more information will come to light over the next couple of days which should settle the issue about these latest identity claims.
This article originally appeared at Sûnnet Beskerming
© 2007 Sûnnet Beskerming Pty. Ltd
Sûnnet Beskerming is an independent Information Security firm operating from the antipodes. Specialising in the gap between threat emergence and vendor response, Sûnnet Beskerming provides global reach with a local touch.
COMMENTS
Maturing = running while standing still ?
" If true, it could mean that the unmask.py tool written by Dave Aitel is mature enough to be of great use [ ... ] "
"Mature enough"? That's a strange way to describe something that was released five years ago and hasn't changed in any way whatsoever since then.
For reference, here's the changelog from unmask.py, in full.
------------------- quote -------------------
1.0
Released on Sep 09,2002
Features:
* stores, compares and identifies text. Works for me. :>
----------------- end quote -----------------
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