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Overall: Getting out of my hometown. Almost everyone is born there, lives there, and dies there. I wanted to get out from an early age, and I managed to do it
by daeken 12y ago
Overall: Getting out of my hometown. Almost everyone is born there, lives there, and dies there. I wanted to get out from an early age, and I managed to do it at 17, after dropping out of school to take a job.
Personal: Managing to keep my bipolar in check (more or less) and be happy. I have a girlfriend who means the world to me; few things can match up to that.
Career: Discovering and disclosing the Onity hotel lock vulnerability. The remediation of that bug may have legitimately saved lives; it's certainly saved property.
- tuna-piano 12y agoHonest question. I just read a bit about the Onity lock vulnerability, and it states that the hack was released to the public before Onity had a chance to fix it. If true, wouldn't that put people and property at risk?
- daeken 12y agoYes, it did put people and property at risk -- and also forced their hand. It cost them an enormous amount of money to fix the bug, and if I had not gone public with it and put substantial pressure on them, it's very likely that we would be in a courtroom right now, as they attempt to keep it secret. The bug existed for nearly 20 years, affecting over 4 million hotel rooms. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they knew about this vulnerability at least 10 years prior to my disclosure, having seen proof of that (in the form of a diagnostics device for dumping the memory of the locks, produced by TESA, the precursor to Onity). I've never seen proof that it was known before then, but given the nature of the bug, I'd be amazed if this wasn't known when the protocol was designed. In short, this was the only way that I knew to guarantee that people would be made aware of this bug. Three years later, I couldn't be more confident that I made the right decision.