The security anti-heroes

Posted on 3 Dec 2009 at 14:44

In every fight there are always those caught in the middle, trying to do the right and getting it hopelessly wrong. These are five such people.

If you've just finished discovering our top ten security heroes, you might be interested in their opposite number. Security anti-heroes are the well-meaning folk who have – despite their best intentions – unwittingly made things much worse. Here’s our top five.

1. RAY TOMLINSON

Tomlinson invented internet-based email back in 1971 while working as a computer engineer for the company that was hired to build the predecessor to the internet, Arpanet. He could never have imagined that, 38 years on, 90% of all email sent is unwanted, unsolicited and often full of security compromises.

2. SHAWN FANNING

The Napster developer kick-started the whole P2P file-sharing industry. Legal issues aside, nothing wrong with that you might say. Apart from the security risks of exposing personal information and downloading malicious code along with the files being shared, of course. There are 150,000 tax returns and more than 600,000 credit reports available via file-sharing services, for example.

3. BRENDAN EICH

Eich is currently the chief technology officer at the Mozilla Organisation, but he’s also the man who gave the world JavaScript while working at Netscape. A brilliant invention, JavaScript is now integral to most web browser clients and responsible for enhancing many a user interface. Unfortunately, it’s also become something of a security nightmare: cross-site scripting and buffer overflow exploits, anyone?

4. MARK ZUCKERBERG

Zuckerberg didn’t invent social-networking sites, but he’s the founder of the undisputed Daddy of the genre: Facebook. It’s brilliant for keeping in touch with friends old and new, letting them know what you’re up to day-to-day, where you live, work, holiday and so on.

The raison d’être of social networking is to share personal information, after all. But couple this with the desire to have more “friends” than just your real friends and the scene is set for the all-seeing identity thieves. And that’s not to mention the security vulnerabilities that regularly crop up in Facebook’s myriad applications.

5. DAN HARKABI

Harkabi is credited by many with pioneering the concept of the USB flash drive after joining M-systems (which has since been acquired by SanDisk) and producing the successful DiskOnKey product. Thumbdrives are a brilliant invention, making it really easy to carry all your personal, confidential and often commercially sensitive data around with you in your pocket. Can you tell what the security problem here is yet?

Author: Davey Winder