HP offers to hack punters' systems

According to ZDNet, HP wants to launch a penetration-testing service for businesses in October. It is unclear if its methods will involve ringing up and pretending to be someone else, fishing around in rubbish bins or outright spying. Apparently HP will draw the line at sending worms into to punters' servers.

The company said it would use the same techniques as hackers to gain access to its customers' machines. Its methods will controlled and will not propagate itself, HP promised.

It seems the penetration-testing service, HP Active Countermeasures (HPAC), will exploit vulnerabilities by sending malformed protocol messages to open ports.

HP hackers will use buffer overflows, heap overflows and stack overflows to gain control of clients' systems.

Then the team from HP will alert customers and work with them if necessary until the issue is resolved. Of course, punters must give permission for HP to scan their systems so it wont be as if they were an HP board member or anything.

L'INQ
ZDNet