My recollection of his networking utilities is similar. The raw sockets thing was obvious nonsense and demonstrated a fundamental inability to understand security (software/capabilities of remote parties are completely independent from your local environment - removing a feature from Windows that can facilitate attacks would not affect Windows's defensive vulnerabilities!). You'd meet plenty of types of these people in the 90's/00's, possessing security "certifications" but no actual mental model of how anything worked. I once had to suffer a university head of IT who was scared of individuals running Linux connected to the campus network because "there was no company to sue".
Gibson's whole schtick felt like a snake oil salesman that got a cult following of a bunch of Windows noobs that found his simple utilities useful (perhaps SpinRite was one of these) and then extrapolated from that into believing the vacuous technobabble marketing. In the circles I ran in, "Gibson" and "Shields Up!" were more punchlines for jokes than anything else. The concurrent "Hack the Gibson" meme didn't help that either.
I've thoroughly enjoyed posts on this blog. Based on the title I was actually worried that this post was going to be talking about GRC uncritically, and was greatly relieved when it did not.
It's a great blog, discovered it a few months ago and read every post within a few weeks. Love the random tangents - sometimes more interesting than the topic under discussion.
Gibson's whole schtick felt like a snake oil salesman that got a cult following of a bunch of Windows noobs that found his simple utilities useful (perhaps SpinRite was one of these) and then extrapolated from that into believing the vacuous technobabble marketing. In the circles I ran in, "Gibson" and "Shields Up!" were more punchlines for jokes than anything else. The concurrent "Hack the Gibson" meme didn't help that either.
I've thoroughly enjoyed posts on this blog. Based on the title I was actually worried that this post was going to be talking about GRC uncritically, and was greatly relieved when it did not.