[Techtalk] Re: Gender as a weapon? Pen-testing and female auditors

[Raven Alder]

Heya --

Quoth Devdas Bhagat (Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 10:35:02PM +0530):
> > I can't constantly be telling me people "just treat me like any
> > other geek, not like a piece of meat" and then turn around and act
> > like a piece of meat. That's hypocritical.
>
> Its not. Remember that when you are pen testing, you are /not/ a geek,
> you are a spy with one mission: Get the information at any cost. You
> can be a geek when not social engineering. Come to think of it, being
> a woman geek who does not want to be treated as a piece of meat should
> get you a lot more leverage with male geeks.  So long as you are not
> doing something that violates your personal moral principles here, its
> perfectly all right. Just remember that you are acting (as in a
> play/movie) and that this is not your real character.
 
	I can't induce that artificial separation.  Yes, I am being paid
to be SecretUndercoverHacker, but that doesn't remove the moral
responsibility from me for my choice to do so.  "Just following orders"
doesn't cut it.  "Any tactics possible" are not okay.  I'm not going to
smile and flirt with the security guard and then really knife him in the
back, even though The Real Bad Guys might do that, and even though he
should have been prepared.

	Similarly, I feel bad taking more extreme measures against
anyone that's not a TLA or megacorp.  I don't want to get Grandpa Joe
fired because he let the nice young lady in to PopAndMom.com.  That
feels like I'm contributing to making the world a nastier harsher place.
If I'm hired by Verizon or the FBI or someone like that, fair enough,
I'll throw everything I can at them, because they should have the
facilities to address and deal with those situations.  But for anyone
but the most paranoid, I don't feel that it's ethically justifiable for
me.

	Heh.  I wonder if I would be vastly more successful in security
if I had less morals.  (Stupid Ethics degree.  [grin])  I'm doing pretty
well, though.
 
> > Is it encouraging or setting back feminism?
>
> Perhaps neither? In the best case, it might expose the guy who fell
> for your charms to a certain amount of ridicule, and that will
> hopefully keep him from treating women as just another piece of meat

	Read my .sig line for the best quote ever to that effect, from
my ex.  [grin]  It rocks.
 
Cheers,
Raven
 
"See what happens when you treat women like pieces of meat?
 Kapow, your network's broken, and you're fired!"
  -- RavenBlack, on using gender as a weapon during pen-testing