So says USA Today, in “Theft of personal data more than triples this year.” A few small quibbles: I’d prefer if Byron Acohido had said “reported” thefts It’s not clear if thefts or reports tripled. I suspect the reports, but proving that would be tough. Both of those things said, it’s a good article, and…
Read More Data Thefts Triple This Year?This New York Times really is interesting. It’s all about how candidates are losing control of their campaigns, and they’re in a new relationship with emergent phenomenon on the internet. Now, as we come to the end of a tumultuous political year, it seems clear that the candidates and their advisers absorbed the wrong lessons…
Read More The Emergent Chaos of the US Presidential CampaignIn the new book [Paddington] bear, who arrived in the country as a stowaway, is interviewed about his right to stay in England. He has no papers to prove his identity as his Aunt Lucy arranged for him to hide on a ship’s lifeboat from Peru when she went to live in the Home for…
Read More Paddigton Bear, Illegal ImmigrantI love my Prius. It’s fun to drive, eco-friendly and even has lots of geek appeal. However it has one incredibly moronic safety feature which I was reminded of while driving through the snow the other day. Now I have the base model which means I don’t have fancy features like the automatic skid prevention.…
Read More Stupid Safety Feature Of The WeekLife is about to get a lot more complicated for companies that do business in California. I completely missed this getting signed back in October, but on 10/14, the Governator signed AB1298 which updates CA1386 to mandate that medical and health insurance policy information also are to be treated as PII. To say that this…
Read More CA1386 meet AB1298If you travel a lot, you’re used to dealing with many network difficulties. For a while now, I’ve been traveling with an Airport Express, which has made life a lot easier. I set it up to use DHCP, plug it into the hotel Ethernet, and go. At the very least, it means I can work…
Read More Working on the Traveling BandI’ve been thinking about Franklin, Perrig, Paxson, and Savage’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Internet Miscreants” for about three weeks now. This is a very good paper. For the infosec empiricist, the dataset itself is noteworthy. It consists of 13 million public IRC messages (that is, in-channel stuff, not…
Read More Thoughts on "Internet Miscreants"Today marks the 64th 74th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition in the United States. For 14 years, Americans were unable to legally have a drink. This led to a dramatic growth in the acceptance of organized crime and violence. Al Capone made his money in the demon rum, and was willing to fight for…
Read More Toasting Repeal DayThis in reference to the recent HMRC breach… However, [Gartner VP Avivah] Litan warned that the chance of identity theft was actually small, at just 1%. Digitaltrends.com The probability of this estimate being scientifically defensible is 0.00%. I’ll have something to say about learning (for real) from the HMRC breach in a soon-to-come post.
Read More Gartner the omniscientFrans Osinga’s book on Boyd, “Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd” has been issued in paperback. Previously, it was $90 for a copy. The new paperback edition is $35.95, and is easily worthwhile at that price. Science, Strategy and War is an academic analysis of the John Boyd’s thinking and its…
Read More Book on Boyd