Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show where I spend 5-20 hours finding the most interesting stories in security, technology, and humans, which I then curate into a 30-minute podcast & companion newsletter. The goal is to catch you up on current events, show you the best content from around the web, and hopefully give you something to think…
Those Bashing Smart Locks Have Forgotten How Easy it is to Pick Regular Ones
There’s currently a major backlash in the InfoSec community against so-called “smart” locks. And it’s not just by people who naturally overreact to change, or from people outside of InfoSec: there are plenty of smart people in our field—whom I respect greatly—that are making loud noises against this technology. So I want to make it absolutely clear that…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 160 (Member Edition)
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week. Become a member to get access immediately
Why I Think the NSA is Releasing a Free Reverse Engineering Tool This Year at RSA
The NSA is releasing a free reverse engineering tool this year at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. A lot of people are asking about the motive of the NSA releasing a free reverse engineering tool at RSA this year.Theories include: it’s a backdoor, it’s a tracking mechanism, etc.My opinion? Recruiting.It’s a PR move to attract talent…
A Remarkably Clear Overview of The Border Security Situation
I recently stumbled onto a podcast with Scott Adams about border security, and what I learned from it not only surprised me, but also Scott Adams as the host. I used to be a huge Scott Adams fan, but that went away when he revealed himself to be one who places his tax rate above the welfare of…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 159
Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show where I spend 5-20 hours finding the most interesting stories in security, technology, and humans, which I then curate into a 30-minute podcast & companion newsletter. The goal is to catch you up on current events, show you the best content from around the web, and hopefully give you something to think…
How to Monitor a Website’s Uptime for $0.75/month on Amazon
If you’re like me, you care if your website goes down. There have been services available for years that monitor your site and let you know if it goes down. The one I’ve been using for over a decade is Pingdom, which is great. It gives you tons of advanced options like searching for text within probe responses,…
How Nassim Taleb is Both Right and Wrong About IQ
Nassim Taleb is making loud noises about how IQ is basically a big scam, and how it doesn’t mean anything. Like usual, he’s onto something, but also like usual his passion and snark is causing him to miss something major. For the record, I think Taleb is an absolute genius. I’ve read all of his books, and some…
How to Ctrl-Alt-Delete in VMware
Few things are more annoying than being stuck inside a bad UI, and withinin virtualization environments is a common place for that to happen. Here’s how to do the three-finger-salute inside VMware. Regular: Ctrl+Alt+Del Full-sized Mac keyboard: FwdDel+Ctrl+Option (Delete below Help key) Abridged Mac Keyboard, Fn+Ctrl+Option+Delete
Site Traffic Metrics for 2018
So the biggest story for my site’s traffic in 2018 is the Google Algorithm Changes that I wrote about here. It was a bloodbath, basically. I am currently at 50% of my traffic as compared to the beginning of 2018. But I’m hoping that’ll re-adjust as Google tries to figure out who has authority on various topics and…
The Difference Between Security and Privacy
Short answer: it’s a trick question. Privacy is part of security. But just because one is part of the other doesn’t mean they are the same. There’s a nuance there that’s important. The word “security” is shorthand for “information security” or “cybersecurity” in this parlance. Information Security is about controlling access to information. Privacy is about making sure…
It Appears China is Building a Massive Espionage Database on America
I’ve mentioned this in numerous places for the last few years, so I decided it was time to finally put it into a formal piece. It seems obvious at this point that China is building a massive database of information on American individuals and companies, which they can then use for various purposes—including espionage, intellectual property theft, extortion,…
The Differences and Similarities Between IoT and ICS Security
I saw a tweet recently by Robert M. Lee—a highly respected ICS Security professional in the industry. When folks put “ICS” in the category of “IOT” it conflates the systems, purpose, value, and risks of separate communities. There’s important differences between a robot arm in a car manufacturing plant and your internet connected doll even if both have…
Things I Like to Do In January
January always feels fresh to me—a chance to be better. But at the same time, it’s really just a day after the end of December. This is why I don’t do New Year Resolutions. Basically, if you wanted to do that thing bad enough, you would have done it already. But that’s for things that you can do…
The Polarization of the Bay Area’s Quality of Life
I’m a life-long Bay Area resident—born and raised—and I’m starting to see transformations in various communities that are setting off my dystopian spidey senses. Basically, I’m seeing stark and disturbing differences between communities that are just a few miles from each other. I’ll take the Newark / Fremont area as an example, since I’m familiar with it, but…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 158 (Member Edition)
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week. Become a member to get access immediately
Red Teaming is Vaccination for the Enterprise
I was doing the Twitter thing recently, and someone was talking about red teaming and I had an epiphany: Vaccination and Red Teaming are extremely similar. Or at least they should be. Here are some similarities: The main purpose is to strengthen the defenses It’s done by exposing defenses to the bad stuff Its effect weakens over time,…
Inflammation in the Body Keeps Being Tied to Depression
If a rat is experimentally injected with infectious bacteria, it behaves a bit like I did after the dentist. It withdraws from social contact with other animals; it doesn’t move so much; its sleeping and eating cycles are disturbed. In short, infection reliably causes a syndrome in animals — called sickness behavior — that is roughly recognizable as akin to the human…
The Effect of Google’s Late 2018 SEO Algorithm Changes on Multi-Discipline Sites
Starting around October 1st I saw something catastrophic happen to my incoming traffic from Google. Compared to the beginning of the year I have gone from around 10,000 pageviews a day to around 5,000—a 50% loss in traffic. Once I noticed (which took a while), I started reading a ton of articles on all the various potential causes.…
The Difference Between Decompilers, Disassemblers, Debuggers, and Hex Editors
For people looking to get into reverse engineering, the barrier to entry can be fairly steep—starting with the terminology. Here are the differences between a few key tools you will encounter on the path. Decompilers reverse binaries into higher-level languages, like C++. Disassemblers reverse binaries into assembler language. Debuggers allow you to view and change the state of…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 157
Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show where I spend 5-20 hours finding the most interesting stories in security, technology, and humans, which I then curate into a 30-minute podcast & companion newsletter. The goal is to catch you up on current events, show you the best content from around the web, and hopefully give you something to think…
The Unsupervised Learning Gift List
I often find myself in the unpleasant position of wishing I could send people a gift, but not knowing what to get them. What I like to get people are smallish things that produce absolute delight, like the perfect knife, whiskey glass, or end-table book. So what I’m going to do here is capture my list of items…
Sensors + Algorithms Are the New Camera
Don’t call them cameras or microphones anymore. Those are human-centric names, and humans are about to be the Neandertals of detection. I first heard this idea regarding cameras from Benedict Evans. What we’re moving towards is a world where sensors are everywhere—and of multiple types: Visible light Non-visible light Radio waves Sound Vibration Chemicals Radioactivity Air pressure Etc,…
The Difference Between a Penetration Test and a Red Team Engagement
One of the most frustrating things to me as a security person is having sales and marketing types confuse the different types of security assessment. Similarities And among those types of assessment, the pentest and red team are two of the most commonly mangled. First, let’s start with similarities. They’re both types of security assessment, meaning their goal…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 156 (Member Edition)
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week. Become a member to get access immediately
Medium Just Became an Even Worse Option for Blogging
Medium has quietly been making a series of changes that are all bad news for writers who still publish articles on their platform.I discovered the most recent—and most significant—change when I emailed the Medium support a few days ago asking to update the canonical links of the e-Residency article that I had just re-written and updated on nomadgate.com.It’s…
Do Great Minds Come from Lives of Comfort?
I’m not sure where all I am getting this from, but I know it’s multiple angles. I just got done watching a documentary on Mr. Rogers, and something struck me about his background: he grew up with a rich and successful family. Bertrand Russell then came to mind. He was from a rich family as well, and he…
The Strange Game of Shared, For-profit Cybersecurity Risk Scores
Brian Krebs ran a story recently about how FICO has a new service for rating the Cybersecurity risk level of various companies. Problem is, in one of their marketing communications about the new offering, they leaked the actual report data for a little company called ExxonMobil. I find this space both strange and fascinating. On one hand I…
The Future of Config-file-based IT Infrastructure
To me the main feature is that they’re the beginning of config-file-based infrastructure. Imagine a language that can translate a business requirement into a full tech stack. That’s where we’re heading.— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ (@DanielMiessler) December 15, 2018 I saw this tweet by Dan Kaminski recently, and gave a quick response as one does on Twitter. But I think…
Remote Doctor Visits Are Spectacular
I just recently did my first remote doctor visit, and it was life-changing. I’m generally not the type who goes to the doctor. I sometimes go for years without seeing one, and I don’t even have a primary care physician. I haven’t for decades. Anyway. I was in Vegas for conferences a couple of years back and needed…
How to Survive if You Wake Up in the Past
My friends and I have always had a fun game we play, where we imagine what we’d do if we were thrust backward in time. So you’re like dropped in Rome at 1 BC, or Britain in 1300. What would you do? We’re ignoring language, but that’s important too of course. You know all these technologies are possible,…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 155
Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show where I spend 5-20 hours finding the most interesting stories in security, technology, and humans, which I then curate into a 30 minute podcast & companion newsletter. The goal is to catch you up on current events, show you the best content from around the web, and hopefully give you something to…
Why I Believe Postmodernism is Causing Depression
There’s a lot of confusion about the term Postmodernism. To people on the far left, it’s their shadow religion—basically a healthy disregard for any value system that has exerted influence (and caused suffering) in the last few thousand years. To the far right, it’s a rejection of all that is good in the world—like tradition, family, piety, and…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 154 (Member Edition)
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week. Become a member to get access immediately
What I Found Most Interesting from Amazon re:invent 2018
Amazon has completely crushed it again at this year’s re:invent conference. They continue to innovate a truly frightening pace. And when I say frightening, I mean…in that it creates fear within me. It’s just doing so much, so quickly, that I can’t help but feel uncomfortable. But it’s a good thing. I think. It’s definitely sending a great…
My Friend Chris Romeo Died Yesterday
I used to work at Aflac with a bunch of cool guys. One of them was named Chris Romeo. He was always smiling and trying to figure out how to turn the previously uttered sentence into a joke. He called it checking someone’s oil. One day he came up behind me next to our cubes and tried to…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 150
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week. Become a member to get access immediately
Why You Should Directly Support as Many News Sources as Possible
By now most people understand that there’s a serious problem with the news, but I’m not sure how many know how fundamental it is. Here’s the underlying issue: The companies that make the news we consume are for-profit businesses. These companies aren’t just pressured to increase profits, but will go out of business if they don’t constantly adapt…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 153
🛡️ Security News Ukraine has found another nasty piece of malware targetting their government systems. It’s a Windows backdoor called Pterodo. Link China has turned on their social credit system that was basically a Black Mirror episode, and it’s resulted in the blacklisting of millions of Chinese from booking flights. Their scores were too low. Unreal. Link The US…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 152
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week. Become a member to get access immediately
Some of My Favorite Shell Aliases From Over the Years
Aliases are one of those things that follow you, from laptop to laptop, and server to server—like snippets of your educational DNA. Here are some of mine that have followed me for two decades: Type f to find things by name using find $ alias f="find . -name" A super quick speed test You can do this with…
The Few Are Winning, The Many Are Losing
I was just watching the mid-term results come in this evening and was struck with an idea: even in our democratic republic, it’s the few elites that seem to be winning. Trump won by electoral college, and he lost the popular vote. The electoral college is a collection of a few super influential people. The people are—well—the people.…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 151
Security News 👋 We’re preparing to release the 2018 version of the OWASP IoT Top 10, and we would love your feedback! Updated to include a feedback form. Form Link 🛑 Check your Facebook account to see if it was hacked. Link The company that owns Fortnite has purchased a company focused on stopping cheaters. Link A government report…
Building Your Own Dedicated IPSEC VPN in Less Than 10 Minutes
There are tons of VPN options out there, and the field is confusing enough that I did a post on the topic a while back to help people pick one of the better ones and avoid the scams. But if you look at the considerations for making a good choice, they mostly reduce to the following: Privacy Log…
What If Corporations Provided For Their Customers?
I was talking about books with my friend Jon Robinson the other day, and he said something offhand that I’ve not been able to chase out of my brain. It sounds like a silly idea until you realize that what we’re doing now is not likely to work for much longer. Corporations are becoming more powerful. They’re buying…
Entropy and Security
I’ve been obsessed with entropy since I learned about it in high school. It’s highly depressing, but it’s awesome at the same time given how inevitable it is, and how it’s happening all the time and all around us. I was just reading The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian, and it reminded me that I’ve wanted to…
Falling Testosterone, Poverty, and Violence, and How That Will Combine With Rising Inequality
It’s interesting to think about all the different trends happening at the same time right now: This is obviously not a complete list. Testosterone has been falling in men for decades Link Global violence is at an all-time low Link Global poverty is at an all-time low Link Income inequality is the worst it’s been in over a…
The Cybersecurity Hiring Gap is Due to The Lack of Entry-level Positions
If you haven’t heard yet—which is unlikely—there’s a problem with hiring in cybersecurity. The issue is we’re not sure of the nature of that problem. A number of studies are talking about there being 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions by 2021. But many are in that same market looking for work and are unable to find any. So…
On the History of Watches
Some friends just commented about a video on Twitter where a watch guy basically described why real watches are real watches, and technology-based watches like the Apple Watch don’t qualify. You should take a moment to watch the video. I agree with many of his points, and I’ve recently consumed a number of similar opinions from similar people.…
Preparing to Release the OWASP IoT Top 10 2018 (Updated: Released)
[ UPDATE: The project is now live here. ] Please give your feedback on the list here. The OWASP Internet of Things Top 10 has not been updated since 2014, for a number of reasons. First of which was the fact that we released the new umbrella project that removed focus from the Top 10 format. This, in…
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