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TidBITS: Isolate Flash Using Google Chrome

Rich February 10, 2013 No Comments

My latest TidBITS piece on Mac security: Under normal circumstances, we recommend updating immediately whenever an important security patch is released, but in this case, we have a somewhat different recommendation. Instead of leaving Flash on your Mac, you can instead isolate it and thus reduce the attack surface available to the bad guys. This is both easier and require far less fuss going forward than you might think, and it is how I’ve been using my Mac for the past year or so. This may not work for those of you in enterprise environments (my TidBITS writing is all for consumers), but you should consider it. The technique should work on Windows, not just Macs. Some people also like ClickToPlugin, which blocks all plugins on a page until you click to enable them. I deliberately left this out of the TidBITS piece because it is more advanced users. Then again, if you are in enterprise security I suggest you take a hard look at Bromium, Invincea, or any competitors who crop up. They can give fairly good results without interfering with user experience at all. Share:

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Low Risk Doesn’t Mean It Won’t Kill You

Mike Rothman February 10, 2013 No Comments

Got an interesting link from my friend Don, who prefers to stay behind the scenes, pointing out an interesting perspective on Jared Diamond, an older guy evaluating the risks of his daily activities. Consider: If you’re a New Guinean living in the forest, and if you adopt the bad habit of sleeping under dead trees whose odds of falling on you that particular night are only 1 in 1,000, you’ll be dead within a few years. In fact, my wife was nearly killed by a falling tree last year, and I’ve survived numerous nearly fatal situations in New Guinea. Most folks won’t bat an eyelash about a 1 in 1,000 event. But Jared hopes to have 15 years of life left, so if he averages one shower per day that’s 5,475 showers. If he were to fall once every thousand showers, he would still take 5 or more spills. Obviously falling in a confined area is problematic for the elderly. So the small risk is quite real. But the real point isn’t to forget about personal hygiene – it’s to be constructively paranoid. Build on-the-fly threat models, and mitigate those risks. Regardless of what you are doing. My hypervigilance doesn’t paralyze me or limit my life: I don’t skip my daily shower, I keep driving, and I keep going back to New Guinea. I enjoy all those dangerous things. But I try to think constantly like a New Guinean, and to keep the risks of accidents far below 1 in 1,000 each time. Can you see the applicability to security? Photo credit: US 12 – White Pass – Watch for falling trees #2, originally uploaded by WSDOT Share:

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