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Incite 9/20/2012: Scabs

Mike Rothman September 20, 2012 2 Comments

You will probably read this on Thursday or even Friday, and that’s late. This week got all screwed up. It’s a little matter of a bunch of things happening at the same time, mostly personal, all good. So Monday was a holiday for me and starts the fall renewal process where I don’t set goals and don’t worry about what I’m striving for any more. It also turns out Monday night was the Falcons home opener. Many of my ATL buddies consider me a sinner for going to a football game on the High Holy Days. As I told the Boss, “Football is my other religion,” so there was never a question whether I would go. Normally I work late on Tuesday night, but we took XX2 to see a Ben Folds concert for her birthday. So up late Monday (I’ll get to that) and up late Tuesday. And a check-up for the kids Wednesday morning. Which means not a lot of time to actually, well, work. And I won’t even mention the road trip to go see the Giants play in Carolina on Thursday night. Yeah, I have a pretty sweet deal. Now back to Monday night. Everyone was amped up for the game. The Broncos and their rebuilt QB, Peyton Manning, were in town. The atmosphere was electric. Until about midway through the first quarter, when the replacement refs lost control of the game. I mean totally lost control. I have never seen anything like it. Penalties were reversed or not called. Fights broke out. The ball was spotted wrong. The first quarter took over an hour. Monday Night Football didn’t end until Tuesday morning. NFL referees are like security folks. Until they are gone and all hell breaks loose, you don’t even notice them. The NFL is taking a hard line about pensions, and they locked out the regular referees. I thought I had a sweet deal, but refs have it pretty good too. Some make as much as $120K a year to work maybe 20 games, including playoffs. Even based on the NFL’s latest offer, they’ll still get something like $15K contributed to retirement. But it’s not enough. Everyone always wants more. So the NFL finds replacement refs, most of whom do a good enough job. Some don’t (like the team on the field in ATL on Monday night). But at the end of the day, Steve Young was right. The NFL is in an inelastic demand situation, and how cool is it that a Hall of Fame QB talks about Econ 101 on national TV? The NFL will take a hard line because the fans will continue to show up. And we will. I’ll bitch and moan to my pals. The football talking heads (which is actually a much bigger echo chamber than security) will bitch and moan. The fans will keep showing up. As evidenced by my upcoming road trip to Charlotte. So the scabs will continue to be entrusted with keeping games on track and in control. Hopefully no one gets hurt and the games end fairly. Truth be told, scabs is a derogatory and unfair term for the replacement refs. It’s not their fault they are in deep water. It’s like taking a recent security graduate and asking them to defend something important from [name your favorite pen tester]. It’s going to end poorly. Ultimately the real refs will cave. It’s all about the leverage. It’s always about the leverage. The real refs have none. The NFL continues to have record ratings and record attendance and record activity in the NFL ecosystem, even with replacement refs. And once the refs realize they are very small cogs in a multi-billion-dollar wheel, they will pull off the scabs and get back to work. –Mike Photo credits: Scabs originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk Heavy Research We’re back at work on a variety of blog series, so here is a list of the research currently underway. Remember you can get our Heavy Feed via RSS, where you can get all our content in its unabridged glory. And you can get all our research papers too. Defending Against Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks Introduction Securing Big Data Security Issues with Hadoop Incite 4 U What makes an expert? Rob G levels a very uncharacteristic personal attack in his The know-nothings of cybersecurity, with the argument that someone who hasn’t actually configured a firewall or injected SQL cannot really be an expert. I reject that – it depends on what aspect of cybersecurity you’re talking about. A cybersecurity policy wonk probably hasn’t pwned devices using cool XSS code, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand policies. And even if you are talking about technical expertise, it depends on who you’re talking to. Anyone can be an expert, if they are talking to n00bs. I’m no fan of generic statements that can’t be proven, nor am I a fan of the tons of charlatans claiming to be something they aren’t. But I don’t buy that there is only one kind of cybersecurity expert. – MR Mobile payments are HOT HOT HOT: Hat tip to Martin McKeay for bringing this up as we were recording this week’s Network Security Podcast. It looks like the PCI Council is going to release guidance on mobile payment applications. This is a big deal – a lot of apps tie into credit cards in some way, shape, or form. On one side are tools like Square payment card readers, but I suspect we might see other forms of apps tying to credit cards coming under scrutiny. It’s not something I would put money on – just something to watch. Think of all the QR-code based apps that use credit card somewhere on the back end. Then again, the PCI will do whatever they expect to piss off the smallest number of vendorsmembers, and Visa will end up making a blanket decision, anyway. – RM Estimates are like … never mind: There is a reason

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