Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Democracy, Gunpowder, Literacy and Privacy

In an important sense, privacy is a modern invention. Medieval people had no concept of privacy. They also had no actual privacy. Nobody was ever alone. No ordinary person had private space. Houses were tiny and crowded. Everyone was embedded in a face-to-face community. Privacy, as idea and reality, is the creation of a modern […]

 

It’s a warning, not a manual, part MCMLXXXIV

“He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen…” Photo: “Under surveillance,” Toban Black, in the 1984 Flickr pool.

 

How to Present

As I get ready to go to South Africa, I’m thinking a lot about presentations. I’ll be delivering a keynote and a technical/managerial talk at the ITWeb Security Summit. The keynote will be on ‘The Crisis in Information Security’ and the technical talk on Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle. As I think about how to deliver […]

 

TSA Kills Bad Program!

The government is scrapping a post-Sept. 11, 2001, airport screening program because the machines did not operate as intended and cost too much to maintain. The so-called puffer machines were deployed to airports in 2004 to screen randomly selected passengers for bombs after they cleared the standard metal detectors. The machines take 17 seconds to […]

 

Web 2.0 and the Federal Government

This looks interesting, especially in light of the launch of data.gov: The Obama campaign—and now the Obama administration—blazed new trail in the use of Web 2.0 technology, featuring videos, social networking tools, and new forms of participatory and interactive technology. This event will feature government, technology, and new media leaders in addressing the special challenges […]

 

Giving Circles and de Tocqueville

There was an interesting story on NPR the other day about “giving circles.” It’s about groups of people getting together, pooling their money, investigating charities together, and then giving money. The story mentions how the increasing bureaucratization* of fund-raising leads to groups whose involvement is “I write them a cheque each year.” It also mentions […]

 

Secret Questions

Congratulations to Stuart Schechter, A. J. Bernheim Brush (Microsoft Research), Serge Egelman (Carnegie Mellon University). Their paper, “It’s No Secret. Measuring the Security and Reliability of Authentication via ‘Secret’ Questions” has been Slashdotted. It’s really good research, which Rob Lemos covered in “Are Your “Secret Questions” Too Easily Answered?”

 

Can't Win? Re-define losing the TSA Way!

We were surprised last week to see that the GAO has issued a report certifying that, “As of April 2009, TSA had generally achieved 9 of the 10 statutory conditions related to the development of the Secure Flight program and had conditionally achieved 1 condition (TSA had defined plans, but had not completed all activities […]

 

Just Landed in…

Just Landed: Processing, Twitter, MetaCarta & Hidden Data: This got me thinking about the data that is hidden in various social network information streams – Facebook & Twitter updates in particular. People share a lot of information in their tweets – some of it shared intentionally, and some of it which could be uncovered with […]

 

Need ID to see Joke ID card

A bunch of folks sent me links to this Photography License, which also found its way to BoingBoing: Now, bizarrely, if you visit that page, Yahoo wants you to show your (Yahoo-issued) ID to see (Matt’s self-issued) ID. It’s probably a bad idea to present a novelty version of a DHS document to law enforcement. […]

 

Definitions: cloudenfreude

cloudenfreude — Feeling of happiness at watching the discomfort of others, especially senior management, as they accept in aggregate for *aaS the same risks which were easily accepted piecemeal over time for the analgous service internally.

 

First International Alternative Workshop on Aggressive Computing and Security

Thinking security can not be done without adopting a preferential mode of thought of the attacker. A system cannot be defended if we do not know how to attack it. If the theory is still an interesting approach to formalize things, the operational approach must be the ultimate goal: to talk about security is meaningless […]

 

PCI Data Available

Interesting information was made available today from VISA about PCI Compliance status for Level 1, 2, and 3 merchants.  Find it as a .pdf >>here<< (thanks to Mike Dahn for bringing it to our notice). **UPDATE** You may want to check out what Pete Lindstrom has done with that data, in his Blog Post, “Is […]

 

Richard Bejtlich's Quantum State

Is Statistically Mixed? Richard Bejtlich (whom I do admire greatly in most all of his work) just dug up a dead horse and started beating it with the shovel, and I just happen to have this baseball bat in my hands, and we seem to be entangled together on this subject, so here goes: I […]

 

Twitter Bankruptcy and Twitterfail

If you’re not familiar with the term email bankruptcy, it’s admitting publicly that you can’t handle your email, and people should just send it to you again. A few weeks ago, I had to declare twitter bankruptcy. It just became too, too much. I’ve been meaning to blog about it since, but things have just […]

 

European View on Breaches

I hadn’t seen this article by Peter Hustinix when it came out, but it’s important. He says that “All data breaches must be made public:” The good news is that Europe’s lawmakers want to make it obligatory to disclose data breaches. The bad news is that the law will not apply to everyone. Those exemptions […]

 

Camera thanks!

An enourmous thank you to everyone who offered advice on what camera to get. I ended up with a Canon Rebel after heading to a local camera store and having a chance to play with the stabilization features. It may end up on ebay, but I’m confident I’ll get high quality pictures. If they’re great, […]

 

I wrote code for a botnet today

There’s a piece of software out there trying to cut down on blog spam, and it behaves annoyingly badly. It’s bad in a particular way that drives me up the wall. It prevents reasonable behavior, and barely blocks bad behavior of spammers. In particular, it stops all requests that lack an HTTP Referer: header. All […]

 

My Wolfram Alpha Demo

I got the opportunity a couple days ago to get a demo of Wolfram Alpha from Stephen Wolfram himself. It’s an impressive thing, and I can sympathize a bit with them on the overblown publicity. Wolfram said that they didn’t expect the press reaction, which I both empathize with and cast a raised eyebrow at. […]

 

Camera advice bleg

I’m thinking about maybe getting a new camera. Before I say anything else let me say that I understand that sensor size and lens rule all else, and that size does matter, except when it’s megapixel count, which is a glamour for the foolish. That said, I’m off to South Africa in a few weeks, […]

 

The Eyes of Texas Are on Baseboard Management Controllers? WHAT??!!!

OR TEXAS HB1830S IS SWINEFLU LEGISLATION, IT’S BEEN INFECTED BY PORK! **UPDATE:  It looks like the “vendor language” around Section Six has been struck! Given Bejtlich’s recent promises, I thought we’d take a quick but pragmatic look at why risk assessments, even dumb, back-of-the-envelope assessments, might just be a beneficial thing. As you probably know, […]

 

Ban Whole Body Imaging

Congressman Jason Chaffetz has introduced legislation seeking a ban on Whole-Body Imaging machines installed by the Transportation Security Administration in various airports across America. Describing the method as unnecessary to securing an airplane, Congressman Chaffetz stated that the new law was to “balance the dual virtues of safety and privacy.” The TSA recently announced plans […]

 

Seattle Parking Monitoring

Seattle’s King5 TV reports on “Parking enforcement’s powerful new weapon:” An unassuming white sedan is the Seattle Police Department’s new weapon against parking violators. Just by driving down the street, George Murray, supervisor of SPD’s parking enforcement unit, can make a record of every parked car he passes. “What we’re doing here is we’re actually […]

 

Time To Patch, Patch Significance, & Types of Cloud Computing

Recently, a quote from Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek struck me kind of weird when I was reading Chris Hoff yet again push our hot buttons on cloud definitions and the concepts of information security survivability.  Wolfgang says (and IIRC, this was presented at Jericho in SF a couple of weeks ago, too): In five years, […]

 

Covering the Verizon Breach Report

As you probably know by now, the pattern of 1s and 0s on the cover of the 2009 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report contains a hidden message. I decided to give it a whirl and eventually figured it out. No doubt plenty of people managed to beat me to it, as evidenced by the fact […]

 

Cybersecurity Review Turf Battle

Many at RSA commented on the lack of content in Melissa Hathaway’s RSA keynote. The Wall St Journal has an interesting article which may explain why, “Cybersecurity Review Sets Turf Battle:” President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity review has ignited turf battles inside the White House, with economic adviser Lawrence Summers weighing in to prevent what he […]

 

Scalia: Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should

aka it’s not nearly as funny when you are the subject of the probe. At a recent conference Justice Scalia said “”Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly,” Well, a professor at Fordham University decided to take Mr Scalia at his word, and had one of his classes collect a dossier on […]