Comsec Data Security, a Houston-based firm recently incorporated by
reformed members of the defunct Legion of Doom, counters that the attack is
an attempt by competitors to discredit the company.
Scott Chasin, a Comsec principal, acknowledged that he and his
colleagues surveyed competing firms by posing as prospective customers.
But he emphatically denied that the activity included unauthorized
access to comuter systems.
"It was not a Legion of Doom operation, it was not some big
clandestine thing," Chasin said. "It's called shopping for yoour
competitors, that's what it's called, competitive shopping, and thats what
we did. But some of these consultants that have been in the industry, some
of the dinosuars, got upset."
To survey the pricing and services offered by its competition,
Comsec called security consulting firms around the nation, representing
itself as an unrelated company with a hacker problem.
They said they were from Landmark Graphics, a real Houston
technology company with a real hacker problem - one it didn't know about at
the time. They gave out information regarding Landmark's computer system
that the company says wasn't publicly available.
Chasin said the computer system they described was generic and was
drawn from their knowledge of such systems but not from any unauthorized
information about Landmark.
But Landmark chief financial officer Hardie Morgan questioned the
ethics of the Comsec survey, regardless of whether it included hacking.
"My thoughts are that in effect they haven't changed their way of
doing business," he said.
Morgan said Comsec representatives asked security firms to send
information, and left a phone number and address. "Most of those firms
followed u pand got a constant busy signal," he said. The address was the
home of a Comsec principal.
But the phone number belonged to Southwestern Bell.
