....kind of. There's something of a storm brewing, and it all centers on this writeup by Ben Edelman, and his refusal to hand over the rogue affiliate details to 180 Solutions.

On the one hand, 180 are claiming that their security procedures are fine...on the other, they are essentially making the security researchers a part of their seemingly broken loop. I'm reminded of that old line about not having your cake and eating it, but oh well. You can try, I guess...

As Wayne Porter says on his Revenews Weblog:

Many researchers have done this to help educate the public, law enforcement and the legal eagles, and it has had some effect. However the routine grows stale when Company X utilizes said research to clean up their network and then claim how great they are at making the Internet a better place and being proactive. (These are my words not those of any company I work for.)

Can you almost feel the inflection point shimmering before you in the battlefield air? Can you see the line in the sand being drawn? I can. I think in the future the anti-spyware minutemen will continue to fire volley after volley only instead of giving out the full dose of lead they are going to release only what needs to be released to call attention to the bad behavior and leave the rest in reserve as ammo for the real guns that are slowly pivoting into the battlefield.

Yep. I can see the line in the sand.