Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

The Rhetorical Style of Drama

There is a spectre haunting the internet, the spectre of drama. All the powers of the social media have banded together to not fight it, because drama increases engagement statistics like nothing else: Twitter and Facebook, Gawker and TMZ, BlackLivesMatter and GamerGate, Donald Trump and Donald Trump, the list goes on and on. Where is […]

 

"Think Like an Attacker" is an opt-in mistake

I’ve repeatedly spoken out against “think like an attacker.” Now I’m going to argue from authority. In this long article, “The Obama Doctrine,” the President of the United States says “The degree of tribal division in Libya was greater than our analysts had expected.” So let’s think about that statement and what it means. First, […]

 

Humans in Security, BlackHat talks

This is a brief response to Steve Christey Coley, who wrote on Twitter, “but BH CFP reads mostly pure-tech, yet infosec’s more human-driven?” I can’t respond in 140, and so a few of my thoughts, badly organized: BlackHat started life as a technical conference, and there’s certain expectations about topics, content and quality, which have […]