Category: Conferences

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 changed and evolved over time.
  • The best talk in the world, delivered to the wrong audience, is not the best talk in the world. For example, there’s lots of interesting stuff happening with CRISPR. We probably wouldn’t even accept a talk on the security implications. Similarly, we probably wouldn’t take a talk on mosquito-zapping lasers, as much fun as it would be.
  • I and other members of the PC, work to change those expectations by getting good content that is at the edge of those expectations. Thus, there’s a human factors track again this year.
  • That track gets a lot of “buy a UPS uniform on ebay” submissions, and the audience doesn’t tend to like those. They’re not cutting edge.
  • I would love it if we got more SOUPS-like content, redone a little to meet audience expectations for a Blackhat talk, which are different than expectations for an academic talk.
  • So what I look for is something new, in a form that I believe will be close enough to the expectations of the audience that we drive and evolve change in useful directions.
  • Finding the right balance is hard.

So, what do you think a good BlackHat talk on human factors talk might be?

(I should be clear: I am one of many reviewers for BlackHat, and I do not speak for them, or any other reviewer. I cannot discuss specific submissions or the discussions we have around them.)

Update: Since this was written quickly, I forgot to link to “How to Get Accepted at Blackhat.” Read every word of that, ask yourself if your submission is a good one.

RSA Planning

Have a survival kit: ricola, Purell, gatorade, advil and antacids can be brought or bought on site.

Favorite talk (not by me): I look forward to Sounil Yu’s talk on “Understanding the Security Vendor Landscape Using the Cyber Defense Matrix.” I’ve seen an earlier version of this, and like the model he’s building a great deal.

Favorite talk I’m giving: “Securing the ‘Weakest Link’.”

A lot of guides, like this one, are not very comprehensive or strategic. John Masserini’s A CISO’s Guide to RSA Conference 2016 is a very solid overview if you’re new, or not getting good value from a conference.

While you’re there, keep notes for a trip report. Sending a trip report helps you remember what happened, helps your boss understand why they spent the money, and helps justify your next trip. I like trip reports that start with a summary, go directly to action items, then a a list of planned meetings and notes on them, followed by detailed and organized notes.

Also while you’re there, remember it’s infosec, and drama is common. Remember the drama triangle and how to avoid it.

Sneak peeks at my new startup at RSA

Confusion

Many executives have been trying to solve the problem of connecting security to the business, and we’re excited about what we’re building to serve this important and unmet need. If you present security with an image like the one above, we may be able to help.

My new startup is getting ready to show our product to friends at RSA. We’re building tools for enterprise leaders to manage their security portfolios. What does that mean? By analogy, if you talk to a financial advisor, they have tools to help you see your total financial picture: assets and debts. They’ll help you break out assets into long term (like a home) or liquid investments (like stocks and bonds) and then further contextualize each as part of your portfolio. There hasn’t been an easy way to model and manage a portfolio of control investments, and we’re building the first.

If you’re interested, we have a few slots remaining for meetings in our suite at RSA! Drop me a line at [first]@[last].org, in a comment or reach out over linkedin.

The Drama Triangle

As we head into summer conference season, drama is as predictable as vulnerabilities. I’m really not fond of either.

Look Sir Drama

What I am fond of, (other than Star Wars), as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about models, is the model of the “drama triangle.” First discussed by Stephen Karpman, the triangle has three roles, that of victim, persecutor and rescuer:

Drama triangle of victim, rescuer, persecutor


“The Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor Triangle is a psychological model for explaining specific co-dependent, destructive inter-action patterns, which negatively impact our lives. Each position on this triangle has unique, readily identifiable characteristics.” (From “Transcending The Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor Triangle.”)

One of the nifty things about this triangle — and one of the things missing from most popular discussion of it — is how the participants put different labels on the roles they are playing.

For example, a vulnerability researcher may perceive themselves as a rescuer, offering valuable advice to a victim of poor coding practice. Meanwhile, the company sees the researcher as a persecutor, making unreasonable demands of their victim-like self. In their response, the company calls their lawyers and becomes a persecutor, and simultaneously allows the rescuer to shift to the role of victim.

Rescuers (doubtless on Twitter) start popping up to vilify the company’s ham-handed response, pushing the company into perceiving themselves as more of a victim. [Note that I’m not saying that all vulnerability disclosure falls into these traps, or that pressuring vendors is not a useful tool for getting issues fixed. Also, the professionalization of bug finding, and the rise of bug bounty management products can help us avoid the triangle by improving communication, in part by learning to not play these roles.]

I like the “Transcending The Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor Triangle” article because it focuses on how “a person becomes entangled in any one of these positions, they literally keep spinning from one position to another, destroying the opportunity for healthy relationships.”

The first step, if I may, is recognizing and admitting you’re in a drama triangle, and refusing to play the game. There’s a lot more and I encourage you to go read “Transcending The Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor Triangle,” and pay attention to the wisdom therein. If you find the language and approach a little “soft”, then Kellen Von Houser’s “The Drama Triangle: Victims, Rescuers and Persecutors” has eight steps, each discussed in good detail:

  1. Be aware that the game is occurring
  2. Be willing to acknowledge the role or roles you are playing
  3. Be willing to look at the payoffs you get from playing those roles
  4. Disengage
  5. Avoid being sucked into other people’s battles
  6. Take responsibility for your behavior
  7. Breathe

There’s also useful advice at “Manipulation and Relationship Triangles.” I encourage you to spend a few minutes before the big conferences of the summer to think about what the drama triangle means in our professional lives, and see if we can do a little better this year.

[Update: If that’s enough of the wrong drama for you, you can check out “The Security Principles of Saltzer and Schroeder” or my “Threat Modeling Lessons from Star Wars” talk.]

Conference Etiquette: What’s New?

So Bill Brenner has a great article on “How to survive security conferences: 4 tips for the socially anxious
.” I’d like to stand by my 2010 guide to “Black Hat Best Practices,” and augment it with something new: a word on etiquette.

Etiquette is not about what fork you use (start from the outside, work in), or an excuse to make you uncomfortable because you forgot to call the Duke “Your Grace.” It’s a system of tools to help otherwise awkward social interactions go more smoothly.

We all meet a lot of people at these conferences, and there’s some truth behind the stereotype that people in technology are bad at “the people skills.” Sometimes, when we see someone, there will be recognition, but the name and full context doesn’t come rushing back. That’s an awkward moment, and it’s worth thinking about the etiquette involved.

When you know you’ve met someone and can’t recall the details, it’s rude to say “remind me who you are,” and so people will do a bunch of things to politely encourage reminders. For example, they’ll say “what’s new” or “what have you been working on lately?” Answers like “nothing new” or “same old stuff” are not helpful to the person who asked. This is an invitation to talk about your work. Even if you haven’t done anything new that’s ready to talk about, you can say something like “I’m still exploring the implications of the work I did on X” or “I’ve wrapped up my project on Y, and I’m looking for a new thing to go frozzle.” If all your work is secret, you can say “Oh, still at DoD, doing stuff for Uncle Sam.”

Whatever your answer will be, it should include something to help people remember who you are.

Why not give it a try this RSA?

BTW, you can get the best list of RSA parties where you can yell your answers to such questions at “RSA Parties Calendar.”

Workshop on the Economics of Information Security

The next Workshop on the Economics of Information Security will be held June 11-12 at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Many of the papers look fascinating, including “On the Viability of Using Liability to Incentivise Internet Security”, “A Behavioral Investigation of the FlipIt Game”, and “Are They Actually Any Different? Comparing 3,422 Financial Institutions’ Privacy Practices.”

Not to mention “How Bad Is It? – A Branching Activity Model to Estimate the Impact of Information Security Breaches” previously discussed here.

AdaCamp: San Francisco June 8-9

(Posted for friends)

AdaCamp is a conference dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture: open source software, Wikipedia-related projects, open data, open geo, fan fiction, remix culture, and more. The conference will be held June 8 and 9th in San Francisco.

There will be two tracks at the conference: one for people who identify as significantly female, and one (likely on just the Saturday) for allies and supporters of all genders.

Attendance to AdaCamp is by invitation following application. Please spread the word and apply. Travel assistance applications are due April 12; all other applications are due April 30. (Yes, the application process looks kind of daunting, but it’s worth it!)

Details at http://sf.adacamp.org/

Hacking Humans at BlackHat

Hacking humans is an important step in today’s exploitation chains. From “2011 Recruitment plan.xls” to instant messenger URL delivery at the start of Aurora, the human in the loop is being exploited just as much as the machine. In fact, with the right story, you might not even need an exploit at all.

So I’m looking to be able to put together an awesome track on hacking humans for Black Hat USA 2013. I’d love work on things like:

  • Unusable security or privacy (preferably with user studies)
  • The cognitive science of attention
  • Conditioned-safe ceremonies
  • Measuring the effects of security awareness training
  • Human compliance budgets
  • Threat modeling techniques for user interfaces
  • What any of these attacks might teach defenders about user interface design.
  • Engineering for real world human error
  • New ceremony analytic techniques
  • New frameworks for thinking about hacking humans, or defending against attacks on people
  • This list is incomplete

At BlackHat we like talks about hacking stuff. We like technical talks. We don’t like pure theory, without demonstrated application. We don’t have talks about getting a UPS uniform.

If you have such content, I encourage you to check out the Black Hat Call for Papers and consider submitting by April 15th.