I have a 1,001 friends in InfoSec who I hear things like this from on a regular basis: I’d never put one of those things in MY house! I’m in security! They’re going to find flaws in those things, you wait and see! Then when something happens, like a private conversation being sent to a random person, they…
Economic Inequality is the Norm, Not the Exception
I read and think a lot about technology, automation and how it will impact humanity. One of the most important dynamics there is the potential for technology to increase income inequality, and for automation to take jobs from those who need them most. For some reason—perhaps my being born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area—I have…
The Single Reason Harry Potter is Better Than the Marvel MCU
I’ve been having a heated discussion with a friend about why I can only take Marvel movies so seriously, and why it’s objectively lower quality entertainment than Harry Potter. There are spoilers below for Harry Potter, Infinity War, Deadpool 2, and The Bible. The answer is death. Humans, as a rule, don’t value that which they cannot lose,…
Security Report Analysis: 2018 DBIR Report
In this Security Report Analysis (SRA) series I look at various security reports and pull out the main points. This doesn’t replace a complete and detailed read of these reports, but it exposes you to some of the key takeaways that you might not otherwise have seen. REPORT: The 2018 DBIR Report Key points These points are a…
The Waking Up Podcast: Sam Harris vs. Sean Carroll on Free Will
Sam Harris recently had Sean Carroll on his Waking Up podcast, and to my delight they arrived pretty quickly at the free will topic. You can read more of my free will content here. Carroll is both a physicist and a compatibilist, which was both surprising and exciting. It was surprising because I naturally expect hard science types…
John Gruber Wrong About the Duplex Demo
John Gruber of Daring Fireball took a big shot at Google Duplex recently. He basically said that the way the demo was conducted should make us doubt the legitimacy of the tech. Why not demo it live? Why only play recordings? When is it rolling out to actual customers? Was there a hands-on after the event where members…
The Future of Content Destroys the Middleman
I think the content creation ecosystem—especially around blogging—will be ultimately disrupted by the rise of three interlocking componets: Digital Assistants APIs Customized interfaces Google Duplex just gave us a preview of how natural it’ll soon be to interact with assistants. This is currently quite different. There is no Digital Assistant yet, and content and interface are currently merged…
America is Rotting
We in the West are in the beginning—or perhaps the middle of—a catastrophic crisis of meaning. Many of us sense it. We know it’s happening. But it’s hard to corner and identify. And it’s even more difficult when authors like Steven Pinker use all of their intellectual powers to convince us that things are in fact getting better.…
Thoughts on Podcast vs. Newsletter Content
I’m thinking of stopping my regular podcast and only doing my weekly update in Newsletter form. There are a number of reasons. Far more people consume the newsletter. The podcast is actually just the newsletter content (sometimes with some opinion added). The newsletter is hard enough to get out, let alone having enough energy on Sunday to record…
If You’re Not Doing Continuous Asset Management You’re Not Doing Security
The more a company can tell me about their assets the better their security is, and the more comprehensive and realtime the inventory is, the more mature they are. This has been true for me over 15 years of consulting across hundreds of organizations. Click here to listen to the audio version of this essay. But just try—either…
Announcing the Launch of HELIOS
For a number of years I’ve been waiting to launch a project of mine called HELIOS. HELIOS actively monitors a company’s external attack surface in near-realtime and notifies you when it finds anything dangerous. I’m super excited about it, and I think it’s going to help a lot of companies. Ping me with any questions! [ HELIOS: Know…
Facebook’s Failure is a Reflection of American Ignorance
Facebook didn’t fail anyone. We failed ourselves. Sure, they could have been a bit more careful with some settings, but it’s not like they accidentally shared data with a third party. The way Cambridge Analytica accessed the data was completely authorized—it was just what they did with the data that was bad. Facebook’s entire business model is sharing…
My Postmortem Summary of The Sam Harris & Ezra Klein Podcast
If you’re a fan of Sam Harris or Ezra Klein you know that they’ve been engaged in a year-long online skirmish that recently culminated in a direct face-off in the format of a podcast. Listening to the podcast first would be helpful, but not necessary, to appreciate this analysis. I’ve been waiting to hear this interaction finally play…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 120
This week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning is now available. Subscribe below and get this episode’s podcast and newsletter. This week’s topics: It’s 2 billion users now, Liinux beep, Digital Shadows finds fail files, cloud misconfiguration, AlterEgo, AI applications, Alexa sending payments, Tech, Ideas, Recommendation, Aphorism, and more… Listen to this week’s Podcast Become a Member to Get This…
Online Education May Be Poised to Replace Dying Universities
Higher education is in the middle of an elaborate suicide ritual. It’s implements are: skyrocketing costs to students financial failure outdated content (often by decades) an academic infrastructure that seeks tenure rather than excellence an extreme-left attack on freedom of speech These are all combining to put traditional universities at risk. It’s hard impossible to predict the future,…
The Definition of Security is “Without Worry”
A lot of people in Information Security think security means “stopping bad things from happening”. It’s understandable, given that we’ve been practicing it that way for decades now. Basically, security has been synonymous with prevention for as long as most can remember, and that’s the way the entire industry is configured and oriented. But there’s another, far deeper…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 119
This week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning is now available. Subscribe below and get this episode’s podcast and newsletter. This week’s topics: Atlanta disabled, MyFitnessPal hacked, Cambridge Analytica election tampering, Drupal, Saks, DARPA drones, Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, Slack bosses, Democratic Chinese AIs, Georgia facepalm, tech, humans, ideas, and more… Listen to this week’s Podcast Read this week’s Newsletter
Why I Switched from Patreon to Memberful
Like many people I’ve been soured on ads and sponsors for my podcast and newsletter: Unsupervised Learning. If you hav a decent following it’s actually possible to make a significant living off of both sponsors and ads—and especially sponsors. At one point I was getting a couple thousand a month from just a couple of sponsors, and I…
DevOps as the Art and Science of Deliberate Practice
The best definition I’ve ever heard for DevOps is the ability to practice frequently and well. I prefer DevOps to DevSecOps because I feel security should be part of both development and operations, but I also see the merit in calling it out where this isn’t regular practice. I think there is a powerful analog here to professional…
Analysis of the 2018 F5 Threat Intel Report
F5 just released a threat intel report that covered 433 breach cases spanning 12 years, 37 industries, and 27 countries. When companies release reports like these I go through them and extract nuggets for those who don’t have time to look at the full report. You will find the extraction for this report below. Applications were the initial…
Learn the Difference Between Real and Fake Machine Learning
There are few technologies as misunderstood right now as Machine Learning. Some think it’s 100% hype, sales, and marketing, and others think it’s humanity’s Messiah in the form of math and code. Unfortunately, there’s currently not a lot of space between those two extremes. Here’s how I think about it. Machine Learning is much like Love and Sex.…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 116
This week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning is now available. Subscribe below and get this episode’s podcast and newsletter. This week’s topics: Chinese at CanSecWest, Applebees POS, Palantir, Poisoning, TensorFlow DoD, Amazon laughing, Google 72-qbits, Amazon FinTech, Android P, and more… Listen to this week’s Podcast Become a Member to Get This Week’s Newsletter
The Two Kinds of Privacy Loss
I like to think about our impending loss of privacy as two separate issues. The first type is against the will of the victim and is caused by malice and/or negligence on the part of the entity with your data. This is where you trust your data to a company, and they sell that data to a number…
How to Download the Data Facebook Has on You
People are becoming increasingly worried about the data that Facebook and other social media sites have on them. Luckily, the platforms make it fairly easy to download that data to see for yourself. For Facebook, here’s the process. 1. Go to any Facebook page and hit the down arrow in the corner. 3. Click “Download a Copy of…
The Reason Software Remains Insecure
There are myriad theories as to why software remains insecure after we’ve spend decades trying to solve the problem. Some say it’s the lack of will to secure things, the lack of vendor liability, the insecure languages we use, insufficient developer training, not enough security products—and the list continues… But there’s a far simpler and more powerful explanation,…