New Full Disclosure, Website Vulnerabilities Database

The biggest news in security circles in the past day or so is the new full disclosure site, Vulnerable Sites DB database.Though such efforts existed before, what makes this site special is its goal to publicly display vulnerable Websites.

Thus, vulnerable Websites that an attacker would have needed to use Google and perhaps another tool to find are now sitting publicly available for all to see -- and potentially deface or even steal their databases.

In the past, I might have viewed such an effort as a black hat one, but today? Today I see it as a service to the community. On the one hand, it provides the good guys with data the bad guys would have available, without breaking the law. On the other hand, it provides these Websites a free QA service.

Most important, though, and with no apologies, it names and shames. The only reason worms used to be a big deal after a while, while botnets were not noticed, was PR. The only reason DDoS (while a serious threat) is treated as the essence of information/cyber warfare rather than espionage is good PR.

Perhaps when these Websites are named and shamed, they will fix their security vulnerabilities -- and let's be honest, most SQL injections don't really have an excuse to exist in modern Websites anymore. Plus, it may raise awareness to this beaten-to-death security issue so that others will have a business reason to take care of it before a compromise.

All in all, I am in support of this effort. Those who are not should remember this information is available to the criminals almost as easily available to the Good Guys, and this old easily solvable -- technically -- security problem, has not yet been solved. It's time to try something new and stop hiding behind outdated and pointless ethics that didn't survive the test of time with a changing landscape.

Follow Gadi Evron on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadievron.

Gadi Evron is an independent security strategist based in Israel. Special to Dark Reading.