There are parasites that take over the minds of animals. Once occupied by the parasite, the animal behaves in a way that helps the parasite, not the animal. There’s the wasp that injects a spider with a chemical that forces it to make a giant web and sit paralyzed in it—to be eaten by the wasp. There’s the…
Archives for August 2015
Data Processing Using the UNIX Philosophy
In fact, when you look at it through the Unix lens, Kafka looks quite like the pipe that connects the output of one process to the input of another. And Samza looks quite like a standard library that helps you read stdin and write stdout Source: Apache Kafka, Samza, and the Unix Philosophy of Distributed Data This is…
Take 1 Security Podcast: Episode 18
Topics for this episode: News and analysis Sonar framework Schneider Electric SCADA issues revealed at DEFCON Ashley Madison hack, extortion will become more common, passwords added to SecLists Hackers attack PR firm and manipulate stocks Uber is quadrupling their security staff in 2015 Android vulnerabilities lately Ideas and commentary Business-based hacking: extortion-based hacking, ransomware, prediction-based hacking, PR releases,…
How Cybersecurity Insurance Will Take Over InfoSec
I am often asked to describe my dystopian view of how cybersecurity insurance will come to take over information security. I’ve given the pitch numerous times in talks and panels, but it’s never really been captured anywhere, so here it is. Insurance as a maturity indicator People see insurance entering into security as a bad thing, and maybe…
Conservative Hypocrisy on Contraception, Abortion, and Life
Conservatives are reportedly about protecting life, but a modicum of scrutiny quickly dissolves this illusion. Here are a few things to consider: Conservatives are anti-abortion, which is where people terminate unwanted pregnancies The easiest possible way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is to use contraception Many conservative groups are trying as hard as possible, using lobbyists and churches, to…
The Future of Happiness as Digital Humans
In this post I talk a good amount about the future of happiness, but I want to expand further on what this might look like once we become digital lifeforms. Background Here’s some background from the future. Humans have been seeking immortality for thousands of years. Ever since we’ve been afraid of death, really. Which is since we’ve…
What I’m Afraid Of
When I was a kid I used to be afraid of things. I can’t remember exactly what they were, but they were silly and mostly based around superstition and religion and such. When I got older those went away for the most part, but I still don’t watch the latest generation of horror films. I think they’ve mastered…
My Problem With Threat Intelligence
For the majority of companies, implementing Threat Intelligence is the equivalent of fixing one’s hair while bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Do you have a fully updated asset management system? Are you patched? Do you know what traffic is leaving your network? Doing all three of those is the white belt of InfoSec. It’s also the brown…
My 2015 Blackhat and DEFCON Security Talks
I gave two talks at BlackHat and DEFCON this year in Vegas. Here is a brief description of each, along with the slides. A BlackHat Arsenal talk on the SecLists Project This was a talk at BlackHat’s Arsenal about the SecLists project, run by my friend Jason and I. It’s basically a Pentester’s Companion, with numerous testing resources…
Ruby vs. JavaScript as a First Language
I recommend Ruby. If my goal is to teach “programming,” then I want a language that has a clear syntax, has very few surprises and allows the student to focus on the “Tao of Programming” and not the “WTF of function-level scope?” A friendly syntax allows students opportunity to work at understanding “programming” before understanding the multiform and…
The Problem With Security Conference Training
I’ve had an issue with the training at security conferences for a while now, but I’ve been unable to articulate it. I think I have it now. The issue is competing incentives. Trainers are incentivized by the conference to get the highest ratings possible on the feedback forms after the class Students of the classes are there to…
Project vs. Company
The best companies start out with ideas that don’t sound very good. They start out as projects, and in fact sometimes they sound so inconsequential the founders wouldn’t let themselves work on them if they had to defend them as a company. Google and Yahoo started as grad students’ projects. Facebook was a project Zuckerberg built while he…
Hollywood Imitating the United States
Many people are lamenting over how Hollywood isn’t doing anything innovative or interesting anymore. All they do is remakes and sequels, and the real cinema is being generated by smaller groups. I think it’s fascinating, since that’s exactly what’s happening to the United States. The U.S. isn’t taking chances. It’s cutting NASA. Our bridges are failing. Our roads…
Heat Death Explained
I just read a phenomenal explanation of heat death over on Reddit that was very similar to how I describe it to others. It inspired me to want to capture my more succinct version, so here it is. — Heat Death is the inevitable result of the playing out of the second law of thermodynamics, which basically says…