Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

When an interrupt is important

So it’s cool that this “S.M.A.R.T” stuff tells the computer when the hard drive is failing. The next step in user interface is to take the message out of /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and into an interruptive UI, so that I don’t discover this problem when I happen to get an extra drive for backup. I know […]

 

Toorcamp: Gender Issues, Cognitive Psychology and Hacking

So the announcement for Toorcamp is out, and it looks like an exciting few days. A few talks already announced look very new school, including “How you can be an ally to us females” by Danielle Hulton and Leigh Honeywell, and “Cognitive Psychology for Hackers.” It’s in the far northwester corner of the US, and […]

 

How to get my vote for the ACM Board

I’m concerned about issues of research being locked behind paywalls. The core of my reason is that research builds on other research, and wide availability helps science move forward. There’s also an issue that a great deal of science is funded by taxpayers, who are prevented from seeing their work. One of the organizations which […]

 

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-22

RT @calyxinstitute We've reached over $50,000 in donations and are 44 donors shy of breaking 1,000! Help us keep the momentum going. # RT @deviantollam "It's a sad day in America when you're driving down the road one of these pulls up next to you: http://t.co/1Ksxn5ja " # RT @markrussinovich Debunking of exaggerated cybercrime stats […]

 

Suck My Underground

Hey! Jam Jarr has a new album and its free today. They asked for a Facebook link, and since I can’t do that, I figured a blog was in the right spirit. So go check it out: Jam Jarr: Suck My Underground. It’s free. Why not take a listen? PS: When I say free, I […]

 

Dennis Fisher's Novel ("Motherless Children") is out

You probably know Dennis Fisher because of his writings on Threatpost or his Digital Underground podcast, where I’ve appeared several times. I wanted to help him spread the news that his first novel “Motherless Children” is now available. You should check it out. I’ll get my review done shortly, but I wanted to help spread […]

 

Calyx and the Market for Privacy

So there’s a new startup in town, The Calyx Institute, which is raising money to create a privacy-protecting ISP and phone company. I think that’s cool, and have kicked in a little cash, and I wanted to offer up some perspective on the market for privacy, having tried to do this before. From 1999 until […]

 

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-15

RT @bruces http://t.co/7BfPuW40 *TSA really keen on putting the electronics border-crunch on dissidents << Worse, add http://t.co/3qTkucub # RT @justintroutman @csoghoian If there's one thing that will identify the right privacy expert, it's the urinalysis and one-year probation. # I bet Facebook is going to start auto-sepia toning everyone's pictures as they age. # New […]

 

Fascinating Storyline around Instagram & Facebook

First, congratulations to the folks at Instagram, who built something that was so valuable to Facebook and managed to get a great exit. Me, I suspect that Facebook did it so they can gradually sepia-tone all your photos, but that’s not important right now. I was struck by the nature of this article by the […]

 

Checklists and Information Security

I’ve never been a fan of checklists. Too often, checklists replace thinking and consideration. In the book, Andrew and I wrote: CardSystems had the required security certification, but its security was compromised, so where did things goo wrong? Frameworks such as PCI are built around checklists. Checklists compress complex issues into a list of simple […]

 

Edited Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-08

Things I said: Google continues to hobble their services, push accounts/wallet names, now w/ Scholar http://t.co/IIQ7xk15 (cc @rileycrane @tgoetz @skud) # In other words, why not create timelines for every scholar who's published? That would be organizing the worlds info & making it useful. # You need a Google account to get that citation history, […]

 

Chaos Emerges from Demanding Facebook Passwords

On the off chance that you’ve been hiding under a rock, there’s been a stack of news stories about organizations (both private and governmental) demanding people’s Facebook passwords as part of the process of applying for jobs, with much associated hand-wringing. In “I hereby Resign“, Raganwald discusses the downside to employers of demanding to look […]

 

Dear FBI, Who Lost $1Billion?

In a widely discussed op-ed, Richard Clarke wrote: It’s not hard to imagine what happens when an American company pays for research and a Chinese firm gets the results free; it destroys our competitive edge. Shawn Henry, who retired last Friday as the executive assistant director of the F.B.I. (and its lead agent on cybercrime), […]

 

How Harvey Mudd Brings Women into CS

Back in October, I posted on “Maria Klawe on increasing Women in Technology.” Now the New York Times has a story, “Giving Women The Access Code:” “Most of the female students were unwilling to go on in computer science because of the stereotypes they had grown up with,” said Zachary Dodds, a computer scientist at […]

 

Edited Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-01

That’s what I said: Photographers should check out these awesome lens physics simulations from Stanford http://t.co/hlNrqQT3 # Good article by @elinormills "Why data breach isn't a dirty word anymore" http://t.co/JXtTOTbT # New blog with a TED talk, "Doctors Make Mistakes, can we talk about that?" http://t.co/c00zcvMr # .@RSAConference can we go so far as "highly […]