It was on July 20 2005 12:18PM when Fernando Gont sent an email to bugtraq (at) securityfocus.com, a security mailing list full of people submitting information about software bugs or vulnerabilities from any software or hardware product. On his email, Fernando Gont disclosed the information about “ICMP attacks against TCP” [Security Focus 2005a].
Theo de Raadt, leader of OpenBSD operating system which claimed to be the most secure operating system in the world (OpenBSD 2005), was the person that Fernando talked to and seemed that both person has the same understanding on how to fix the problem. Theo invited Fernando to join OpenBSD Hackathon which is the place for all of computer expert gathered to fix software problems. [KernelTrap 2005]
And the problem begun. As Fernando sent several notifications to CERT/CC and NISCC, and privately notified several open source projects including OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD and Linux, as well as larger vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems, his intention is to fix this problem together with software vendors before the problem will be publicly disclosed.[KernelTrap 2005]
Cisco then replied the email claiming that Cisco has the patent of his work but refuse to give further details. Later on the thread, Cisco then admit that Cisco had withdrawn their patent. Cisco even accused Fernando working with terrorist.[KernelTrap 2005]
Microsoft also replied the findings saying that Fernando should inform Microsoft confidentially yet Fernando found out that Microsoft refused to give him credits for the discovery.[KernelTrap 2005]
The discovery was supposedly to be made public by January 2005 but it was repeatedly delayed until April 2005 as many vendors were not ready with fixes.[KernelTrap 2005]
Fernando regretted the hesitate responds from vendors to fix the problem.[KernelTrap 2005] The main point of the case is the hesitation from vendors to fix the problems and the idea of patenting the technology finding that supposed to be owned by public.