Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

To the amazing chaos of the 2010s

I expect that there will be senseless acts of violence, planes destroyed and perhaps a city attacked with effective biological weapons. There will be crazy people with more power than we want to comprehend. There will be a billion malnourished, undereducated folks whose lives don’t improve. The first world will continue to be saddled with […]

 

Airplane Terrorism, Data-Driven Edition

I’m just off a flight from London back to the United States and I’m hesitant to attempt to think while jet-lagged.  I’ll have some more thoughts and first-hand observations once my head clears, however. In the meantime, Nate Silver has broken down the risk of terror attacks on airplanes so I don’t have to.  Summarizing […]

 

The New School of Air Travel Security?

As I simmer with anger over how TSA is subpoening bloggers, it occurs to me that the state of airline security is very similar to that of information security in some important ways: Failures are rare Partial failures are generally secret Actual failures are analyzed in secret Procedures are secret Procedures seem bizarre and arbitrary […]

 

What the FBI Was Doing on Beethoven's Birthday

This is unfair, but I can’t resist. Nine days before we found out again that PETN is hard to detonate, the FBI was keeping us safe: FBI FINALLY MAKES AN ARREST OVER ‘WOLVERINE’ LEAK The FBI has announced the capture of an individual connected with the leak of 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” … […]

 

Abdulmutallab/Flight 253 Airline Terror links

Air Canada is canceling US flights because of security. (Thanks, @nselby!) The New York Times reports that “Britain Rejected Visa Renewal for Suspect.” NPR reported that the State Department may have raised some sort of flag, but I don’t have a link. ABC is reporting that two of the “al Qaeda Leaders Behind Northwest Flight […]

 

Observations on the Christmas Bomber

Since there’s been so much discussion about the Chrismas Bomber, I want to avoid going over the same ground everyone else is. So as much as I can, I’m going to try to stick to lightly-treaded ground. This is a failure for the terrorists. A big one. Think about it; put yourself on the other […]

 

Abdulmutallab/Flight 253 Airline Terror links

The Economist “The latest on Northwest flight 253:” “the people who run America’s airport security apparatus appear to have gone insane” and “This is the absolute worst sort of security theatre: inconvenient, absurd, and, crucially, ineffective.” Business Travel Coalition, via Dave Farber and Esther Dyson, “Aviation Security After Detroit:” “It is welcome news that President […]

 

76% Organic

The back does explain that it’s 76% organic petite sirah, and 24% non-organic grapes. I just thought it was a pretty funny thing to put on the front label, and wonder which consumers are going to be more likely to buy it, knowing that it’s 76% organic.

 
 

New Restrictions: No Using Electronic Devices for the Last Hour

Apparently, in the wake of thousands of deaths from idiots paying more attention to GPS, cell phones, GameBoys, iPods and other such electronic devices, TSA has announced a ban on all use of such devices for the last hour of your commute. No, just kidding. Apparently, they may be imposing new secret restrictions on use […]

 

Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft

I never heard of C Recursion till the day before I saw it for the first and– so far– last time. They told me the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I learned about C Recursion. […]

 
 

Burning News: Gavle Goat

USA Today informs us that: Despite surveillance cameras and heavy security, vandals in a small Swedish town have burned down a giant Yuletide straw goat for the 24th time since 1966, the Associated Press reports. Here at Emergent Chaos, we’re deeply concerned that the goat ended up with neither privacy nor even temporary safety. Photo: […]

 

An Open Letter to the New Cyber-Security Czar

Dear Howard, Congratulations on the new job! Even as a cynic, I’m surprised at just how fast the knives have come out, declaring that you’ll get nothing done. I suppose that low expectations are easy to exceed. We both know you didn’t take this job because you expected it to be easy or fun, but […]

 
 

Biggest Breach Ever

Precision blogging gets the scoop: You’re probably talking about this terrible security disaster already: the largest database leak ever. Arweena, a spokes-elf for Santa Claus, admitted a few hours ago that the database posted at WikiLeaks yesterday is indeed the comprehensive 2009 list of which kids have been naughty, and which were nice. The source […]

 

NotObvious On Heartland

I posted this also to the securitymetrics.org mailing list.  Sorry if discussing in multiple  venues ticks you off. The Not Obvious blog has an interesting write up on the Heartland Breach and impact.  From the blog post: “Heartland has had to pay other fines to Visa and MasterCard, but the total of $12.6 million they […]

 

Open Thread

I’ll give you a topic, eh, no I won’t. Have at it, but not at each other.

 

For Blog/Twitter Conversation: Can You Defend "GRC"?

Longtime readers know that I’m not the biggest fan of GRC as it is “practiced” today.  I believe G & C are subservient to risk management. So let me offer you this statement to chew on: “A metric for Governance is only useful inasmuch as it describes an ability to manage risk” True or False, […]

 
 

St. Cajetan's Revenge

For some time, I’ve watched the War on Bottled Water with amusement. I don’t disagree with figuring out how to reduce waste, and so on and so forth, but the railing against bottled water per se struck me as not thought out very well. The major reason for my thinking is that I never heard […]

 

Top Security Stories of the Year?

On Wednesday, I’ll be joining a podcast to discuss “top security stories of the year.” I have a couple in mind, but I’d love to hear your nominations. What are the most important things which have happened in information security in the last year? (I posted this on Emergent Chaos, but forgot to post it […]

 

We Take Your Privacy Seriously

So after BNY Melon dropped a tape with my social security number and those of millions of my closest neighbors, they bought me a one year subscription to Experian’s “Triple Alert” credit monitoring service. Today, I got email telling me that there was new information, and so I went to login. Boy, am I glad […]

 

Data Not Assertions

There have already been a ton of posts out there about the Verizon DBIR Supplement that came out yesterday, so I’m not going to dive into the details, but I wanted to highlight this quick discussion from twitter yesterday that really sums of the value of the supplement and similar reports: georgevhulme: I’m glad we […]

 

Huh, who knew?

We have a comments feed. I suppose we should add that to somewhere sane. In the meanwhile, you should click here. We have smart commenters, and what they say is usually worthwhile.

 

Emerging threat: Social Botnets

We think of botnets as networks of computing devices slaved to some command & control system. But what about human-in-the-loop botnets, where humans are either participants or prime actors? I’m coining this label: “social botnets”. Recent example: “Health Insurers Caught Paying Facebook Gamers To Oppose Reform Bill”.

 

Top Security Stories of the Year?

Next week, I’ll be joining a podcast to discuss “top security stories of the year.” I have a couple in mind, but I’d love to hear your nominations. What are the most important things which have happened in information security in the last year?

 

NEW: Verizon 2009 DBIR Supplement

The supplement provides case studies, involving anonymous Verizon clients, that detail some of the tools and methods hackers used to compromise the more than 285 million sensitive records that were breached in 90 forensic cases Verizon handled last year.

 

Monkeys krak-oo krak-oo

According to “Campbell’s Monkeys Use Affixation to Alter Call Meaning:” We found that male alarm calls are composed of an acoustically variable stem, which can be followed by an acoustically invariable suffix. Using long-term observations and predator simulation experiments, we show that suffixation in this species functions to broaden the calls’ meaning by transforming a […]

 

Sweden: An Interesting Demographic Case Study In Internet Fraud

(quietly, wistfully singing “Yesterday” by the Beatles) From my favorite Swedish Infosec Blog, Crowmoor.se. I don’t speak Swedish, so I couldn’t really read the fine article they linked to.  Do go read their blog post, I’ll wait here. Back?  Great.  Here are my thoughts on those numbers: SWEDISH FRAUD STATISTICS RELEASED The World Bank estimates […]

 

Manditory web client scripts analogous to CDOs

The widespread and often mandatory use of client scripts in websites (e.g., JavaScript) are like CDOs [Collateralized Debt Obligations}. They both are designed by others with little interest in your security, they leverage your resources for their benefit, they are opaque, complex, nearly impossible to audit, and therefore untrustworthy.

 

Time to update your threat model to include "friendly fire"

If you work in InfoSec outside of the military, you may be thinking that “offensive cyber capability” don’t doesn’t apply to you. Don’t be so sure. I think it’s worth adding to the threat model for every organization. New “hacking gadgets” could be put in the hands of ordinary soldiers, turning them into the equivalent of “script kiddies”. But what if the potential target knows that such attacks may be coming. They could sets up a deceptive defense and redirect the attack to another network

 

TSA Security Operating Procedures

Via Gary Leff, we learn that “The TSA Puts Their Sensitive Security Screening Procedures Online For All To See (oops).” It’s another “we blacked out the doc without blacking out the data” story. The doc is 93 pages, and I don’t have time to more than skim it right now. I think that the redactions […]

 

All in the Presentation

America’s Finest News Source teaches an excellent lesson on how to spin data: Labor Dept: Available Labor Rate Increases To 10.2% WASHINGTON—In what is being touted by the Labor Department as extremely positive news, the nation’s available labor rate has reached double digits for the first time in 26 years, bringing the total number of […]

 

Engineers vs. Scammers

Adam recently sent me a link to a paper titled, “Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security.”  The paper examines a number of real-world (i.e. face-to-face) frauds and then extrapolates security principles which can be applied generically to both face-to-face and information or IT security problems. By illustrating these principles with examples taken from […]

 

A sociologist reads a Twitter feed

So, Adam retweets a hysterical reference to a viral email about an absolute genius of a Xmas light display made to look like an accident with a ladder, and the hapless homeowner left hanging from the gutter of his house. The email explains that the display was taken down after two days in large part […]

 
 
 

Fingerprinted and Facebooked at the Border

According to the Wall St Journal, “Iranian Crackdown Goes Global ,” Iran is monitoring Facebook, and in a move reminiscent of the Soviets, arresting people whose relatives criticize the regime online. That trend is part of a disturbing tendency to criminalize thoughts, intents, and violations of social norms, those things which are bad because they […]

 

Dilbert On Reusable Code

A while back I wrote an article on reusable code for ThreatPost. Today’s Dilbert, has an alternate, equally useful take on reusable code.

 

The stupidest post of the year?

George Hulme nominates this as the stupidest blog post of the year. I’m tempted to vote, although we have 30 more days. Business leaders need to understand there is no more need for proper security to justify itself over and over again. It saves you time and money (period). My take? Anytime someone says that […]

 

Miscommunicating risks to teenagers

A lesson in miscommunication of risk from “abstinence only” sex education aimed at teenagers. The educators emphasize the failure rate of condoms, but never mention the failure rate of abstinence-only policies when implemented by teenagers.

 

We've made piracy a community activity.

From BoingBoing: Somali nautical pirates have established a stock-market where guns and cash are invested in upcoming hijackings, with shares of the proceeds returned to investors Emergent Chaos strikes again…

 

The Market for Fake Police Badges

But in New York, a city that has become almost synonymous with high security, where office employees wear picture IDs and surveillance cameras are on the rise, some officers don’t wear their badges on patrol. Instead, they wear fakes. Called “dupes,” these phony badges are often just a trifle smaller than real ones but otherwise […]

 

Awesome Vendor-Speak

I received an unsolicited ( I’ve tried to unsubscribe several times there, techtarget ) email today, that I actually happened to open because it advertised an “integrated maturity model for governance and security”.  Yeah, I’m a sucker like that.  This is what I read: …a practical maturity model with illustrative use cases that can be […]

 

Chris Soghoian’s Surveillance Metrics

I also posted about this on Emergent Chaos, but since our readership doesn’t fully overlap, I’m commenting on it here as well. Chis Soghoian, has just posted some of his new research into government electronic surveillance here in the US. The numbers are truly astounding (Sprint for instance provided geo-location data on customers eight million […]

 
 

Eight Million? Eight Million?!?!

Chris Soghoian, who we’ve mentioned here extensively in the past, has posted some new research around just how much electronic surveillance is really going on here in the US. Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of […]