Puzzle for February 1, 2006

Dr. Roger Moore directs the Vulnerabilities Project in the Computer Security Corporation. Dr. Moore is nicknamed “007” by his managerial colleagues, because of his ability to get things done; but he's not very knowledgeable technically, which led his technical staff to nickname him “003½”. His latest idea has them talking.

Dr. Moore has decided to establish a set of corporate sponsorships for the lab. When a vulnerability is discovered, he will take exactly the following steps:

  1. All corporate sponsors will be notified at once, immediately.
  2. After two months, the incident response teams making up FIRST (such as CERT and CIAC) will be notified.
  3. The vulnerability will be released on a wider scale no earlier than 2 months after the FIRST teams are notified.

The technical group thinks the above plan would be acceptable with one minor modification. What is the change, and why is it so important?


Version of January 31, 2006 at 10:20 PM
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