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Technology Industry News & Career Management information, brought to you by BrainWave Consulting Company.
December 2007 - Posts
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This is a couple of years old, but I hadn't seen it before. Funny.... Share Post: Read More...
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I've already written about the Storm worm, and how it represents a new generation of worm/botnets. And Scott Berinato has written an excellent article about the Gozi worm, another new-generation worm/botnet. This article is about yet another new-generation worm-botnet: Nugache.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I recently went to a "conflict management" class and got classified high on the "Conscientious" division on the basis of a short questionnaire. Leaving aside the validity of such a short instrument (never let facts get in the way of a good hunch), I agree with the classification. The sad Read More...
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Starting in 2008, there are new rules for bringing lithium batteries on airplanes: The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of "equivalent lithium content." 8 grams of equivalent lithium... Share Post: Read More...
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The FBI is building a vast biometrics database. Given its track record, does anyone believe for a minute that his or her biometrics information will be secure in this database?... Share Post: Read More...
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This article claims the software that runs the back end of either 35% or 80%-95% (depending on which part of the article you read) has been compromised, and that the adult industry is hushing this up. Like many of these... Share Post: Read More...
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A professional job: The thieves used a hydraulic car jack to pry their way past the pull-down metal gate that protects the museum's front entrance. Then, they smashed through two glass doors, probably using a crowbar, to get to the... Share Post: Read More...
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Surprising nobody, a new study concludes that airport security isn't helping: A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks. They also... Share Post: Read More...
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MessageLabs is evil.Not really. I'm sure most of the people who work there, and even most of the people who direct the company are very nice human beings who treat their families well, don't kick dogs, and host backyard barbecues.Nonetheless.As many Advice Line readers know, I also send out an independent Read More...
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On Court TV: This vérité action series follows Tiger Team a group of elite professionals hired to infiltrate major business and corporate interests with the objective of exposing weaknesses in the world’s most sophisticated security systems, defeating criminals at... Share Post: Read More...
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Ohio just completed a major study of voting machines. (Here's the report, a gigantic pdf.) And, like the California study earlier this year, they found all sorts of problems: While some tests to compromise voting systems took higher levels of... Share Post: Read More...
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A Vermont federal judge has ruled that a person cannot be compelled by police to divulge his PGP key. This is by no means the end of the legal debate (Orin Kerr comments), but it's certainly good news.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...This is strange, but true. My wife has been strongly and relentlessly pushing me to leave my current job because the company sucks and has been getting worse on a daily basis for the last ten to fifteen years.I respond by pointing out options and the positives of working there to my beloved Read More...
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Last week, Ask.com announced a feature called AskEraser (good description here), which erases a user's search history. While it's great to see companies using privacy features for competitive advantage, EPIC examined the feature and wrote to the company with some... Share Post: Read More...
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I know nothing about the politics of this organization, but their "I am not afraid" campaign is something I can certainly get behind. I think we should all send a letter like this to our elected officials, whatever country we're... Share Post: Read More...
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In this essay, Clark Ervin argues that airport security should begin at the front door to the airport: Like many people, I spend a lot of time in airport terminals, and I often think that they must be an awfully... Share Post: Read More...
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IEEE Spectrum has a three-part article on Tasers and how they work. Interesting reading, although be aware that two of the authors have connections to Taser manufacturers -- so you should expect biased treatment of the issues.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...You may have already entertained this topic but I have not seen it. It has to do with the ugly reality of vested interests and marginal or even improper relationships, usually with vendors.As a consultant who has seen it many, many times around the world I think of it as "Listen To Me..........Not."It Read More...
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Details: Police said Espinosa and Blunt were in adjacent cells and used a long metal wire to scrape away mortar around the cinder block between their cells and the outer wall in Espinosa's cell. Once the cement block between the... Share Post: Read More...
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Last year, Netflix published 10 million movie rankings by 500,000 customers, as part of a challenge for people to come up with better recommendation systems than the one the company was using. The data was anonymized by removing personal details... Share Post: Read More...
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This program mimics a human in a chat room, and attempts to extract personal information. And I thought ELIZA was so 1960s.... Share Post: Read More...
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Microsoft has added the random-number generator Dual_EC-DRBG to Windows Vista, as part of SP1. Yes, this is the same RNG that could have an NSA backdoor. It's not enabled by default, and my advice is to never enable it. Ever.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...Well, I just found out that my boss is interviewing people to replace me. I have no idea why. We don't have performance reviews and my boss has never had a bad word to say to me. So far as I knew everything was fine. Obviously not. Is there any hope of salvaging my job here? Or should I just Read More...
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A wound-healing gel made from a polymer derived from squid.... Share Post: Read More...
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Short fiction by Ramon Rozas III.... Share Post: Read More...
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Time Magazine article on Chinese hackers: But reports in Chinese newspapers suggest that the establishment of a cybermilitia is well under way. In recent years, for example, the military has engaged in nationwide recruiting campaigns to try to discover the... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...This ("Learning in the wrong direction," Keep the Joint Running, 12/3/2007, about a Help Desk employee who gamed the metrics) reminds me of what happened to Netware.A single smart Netadmin could keep a large number of Netware servers running smoothly ... but Windows Servers required lots Read More...
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For a while now, Heathrow Airport has had a unique setup for scanning shoes. Instead of taking your shoes off during the normal screening process, as you do in U.S. airports, you go through the metal detector with your shoes... Share Post: Read More...
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Weird: A Berlin hairdresser discovered top-secret plans for a safety vault at the Bundesbank's Berlin branch in a bin, the German central bank said Thursday.... Share Post: Read More...
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Interesting study on the effects of security-breach notification laws in the U.S.: This study surveys the literature on changes in the information security world and significantly expands upon it with qualitative data from seven in-depth discussions with information security officers.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I read your recent Keep the Joint Running about compensation ("Poor Joe," 10/22/2007) and understand your point about raises being forever.But salary freezes as punishment for being "written up" are forever too, no? Some co-workers of mine have been handed a lump of coal in the form of no Read More...
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This is a weird article. Local police are putting yellow stickers on cars with visible packages, making it easier for thieves to identify which cars are worth breaking into. How odd.... Share Post: Read More...
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It's getting easier to watch the watchers: A teen suspect's snap decision to secretly record his interrogation with an MP3 player has resulted in a perjury case against a veteran detective and a plea deal for the teen. Unaware of... Share Post: Read More...
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The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is now available online -- legitimately. This is a good book, and well worth downloading.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I don’t agree with your point below: “…Exceptional performance? That means repeating the results of others, not having them repeat yours,” (from "Creating a learning organization," Keep the Joint Running, 11/26/2007).Many of us are faced with the challenge of global standardization. We are Read More...
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Dear Bob ...Nice column! ("Creating a learning organization," Keep the Joint Running, 11/26/2007). I hope you follow this up with some thoughts on how you can reward learning from success without stifling innovation. Somehow I think you will do that; otherwise, why the teaser at the end? I'm actually Read More...
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Bizarre: Concert-goers who had queued for up to an hour in the Swan Valley paddock were told to return rugs to their cars -- and join the end of the queue again -- because picnic blankets were a "security risk."... Share Post: Read More...
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Fascinating article on how an overdependence on technology hurt us in Iraq.... Share Post: Read More...
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Interesting. So often man-in-the-middle attacks are theoretical; it's fascinating to see one in the wild. (I've written about anonymity and the Tor network before.)... Share Post: Read More...
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Yes, it's yet another story of knee-jerk overreaction to a nonexistent threat. But notice that the police evacuated everyone within a mile radius of the "dynamite." Isn't that a little excessive, even for real dynamite?... Share Post: Read More...
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News: Electronic voting systems used throughout California still aren't good enough to be trusted with the state's elections, Secretary of State Debra Bowen said Saturday. While Bowen has been putting tough restrictions and new security requirements on the use of... Share Post: Read More...
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I just did a Q&A on the Freakonomics blog. Nothing regular readers of this blog haven't heard before, but it was fun all the same. There's also a Slashdot thread on the Q&A.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I think it is great to point out management challenges and recommend ways to improve.Lately, many of my co-workers are going beyond this, taking opportunities to improve as indictments against the management of the company I work for.Although it would be great if management "got it" with Read More...
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News, press release, and white paper.... Share Post: Read More...
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This is a big deal: In an unprecedented alert, the Director-General of MI5 sent a confidential letter to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at banks, accountants and legal firms this week warning them that they were under attack from... Share Post: Read More...
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Computer security is hard. Software, computer and network security are all ongoing battles between attacker and defender. And in many cases the attacker has an inherent advantage: He only has to find one network flaw, while the defender has to... Share Post: Read More...
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Every year SANS publishes a list of the 20 most important vulnerabilities. It's always a great list, and this year is no different: The threat landscape is very dynamic, which in turn makes it necessary to adopt newer security measures.... Share Post: Read More...
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This is a conversation between myself and Marcus Ranum. It will appear in Information Security Magazine this month. Bruce Schneier: Predictions are easy and difficult. Roy Amara of the Institute for the Future once said: "We tend to overestimate the... Share Post: Read More...
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We're losing the "War on the Unexpected." A blind calypso musician and his band removed from an airplane: The passenger told the pilot of the Sardinia-Stansted flight that he was concerned about the behaviour of Michael Toussaint and four other... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I think you missed a bit in this week's Keep the Joint Running ("Creating a learning organization, 11/26/2007). Granted this is a controversial subject and hard to solve in a column.From your column:"That means consistently praising everyone who identifies mistakes and takes the lead in fixing Read More...
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