Nilesh's Weblog

Now, catch me if you can

Frank William Abagnale [FWA], the real-life "hero" of Catch Me If You Can, has vowed to stay away from all on-line, computer or cyber security conferences. The reason? Some other famous infosec professionals were irked by his presence as the keynote speaker at the CSI's 31st Annual Conference. They boycotted the conference. William Murray had this to say about his boycott -

For most of my forty year career I have systematically and consistently refused to participate on programs with known rogues and felons. At first it was because it was a condition of my employment. As I became more independent, it was to protect my professional reputation. Now it is to protect the profession. Most of the senior members of the profession have followed this policy; I consulted some of them before making my decision.

If you ask me, I'd say these people are simply trying to put up a face of 'professional ethics'. I see no harm in listening to how an actual forger operates. This is very essential today because of the everchanging nature of security threats. Unless you see things from the eyes of the doer, it becomes very difficult for you to keep pace with things in the security world. The use of honeypots essentially means you are seeing attacks from the eyes of a black hat or a potential felon. The Blackhat Briefings are the most informative of any security conferences.

Besides, Abagnale is apologetic about his deeds as a teenager -

When I was 28 years old, I thought it would be great to have a movie about my life, but when I was 28, like when I was 16, I was egotistical and self-centered. We all grow up. Hopefully we get wiser. Age brings wisdom and fatherhood changes one's life completely. I consider my past immoral, unethical and illegal. It is something I am not proud of. I am proud that I have been able to turn my life around and in the past 25 years, helped my government, my clients, thousands of corporations and consumers deal with the problems of white collar crime and fraud.

Now compare that with the self-centered convicted felon, Kevin Mitnick who used similar social engineering techniques to break into systems. But when you read what Mitnick's girlfriend had to say some time back, you know the real difference.