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Incite 6/11/2014: Dizney

Mike Rothman June 11, 2014 No Comments

This week I will take a page from Adrian’s Friday Summary approach, and just offer a stream of consciousness about the recent trip the family and I took to DisneyWorld. We went down there to watch the girls dance in Downtown Disney. Their dance company does this every other year, which means we are down in Orlando doing the Disney thing every two years. Trying to be more present and aware in my daily life was interesting in a place like Disney. So let me start with a few observations. First of all, it’s expensive to hang out with the Mouse. We get a great deal on tickets to the parks and it still costs a metric crap ton of coin to be there for a couple days. Then you throw in food, bottled water, and the bargain $8 ponchos (which are a bargain during the 20 minute daily downpours) – and it’s not a cheap vacation. Next you have people of all shapes, sizes, nationalities, languages, cultures, etc. If you think America in general is a great melting pot, spend a little time at Disney. You see young and old. Extended families. Those from the US and those not. Newlyweds. Bachelorette parties and all sorts of other groups. Most of these families have group t-shirts on. I just don’t get that. Do you think they wear that T-shirt any other time? Okay, don’t answer that. Actually the best shirts we saw all week were on a family that said, “We don’t believe in family trip t-shirts.” On all 20 of them. Hilarious. The diversity you see is really cool. The downside for me is varying levels of hygiene. I have a pretty sensitive nose and it can get a little steamy in June in Orlando. So standing on line for 40 minutes to ride Peter Pan (I’m still peeved at XX1 about that) next to a group that don’t get deodorant is unpleasant to say the least. You can also see the impact of mobile technology. We let XX1 roam around EPCOT with her dance friends one of the days. We always knew how to get in touch with her. The expectation was that she would check in every hour or so. And worst case we could always use Find My Friends to see where she was. I noticed loads of people with heads down on mobile devices as they walked the park. They were missing the experience, but that’s the culture today. Same goes for folks who watch rides or their kids dancing through the viewfinder of a camera. That doesn’t work for me but it’s common. One dude got it right and had a GoPro camera affixed to his kid’s stroller. I guess to record the reactions to seeing Mickey and the like. That was pretty cool – like a second set of eyes. I didn’t see anyone with Google Glasses on, so there’s that. Last summer I rued missing XX1’s first experience riding a big roller coaster. I did make amends by doing the Rock and Roller Coaster with both the girls and then the Tower of Terror. The girls couldn’t be more different. XX1 was cursing up a storm on both rides (though she did ask before spewing profanity – manners first). I wonder where she got that from? The Daredevil (XX2) was laughing throughout both rides. And best of all, I was right next to the Boy as we rode the Everest coaster in Animal Kingdom. He was scared, like I was the first time I rode a coaster. Which was a little curious given he has no issue doing a 5-story drop at the water park. He cried a little as we boarded the car, much to the chagrin of the family behind us – who thought I was a monster forcing my son onto the ride. I was in his ear the whole time assuring him it was going to be great. As we made the first climb, he ducked a little to not see much of anything. Then we were off, and as he squeezed my hand through the backwards drop and as we pulled a G or 2 through the curves and drops. You know what? He survived. And he loved it! I loved being there right next to him as he experienced it. That’s what being a Dad is all about. The reason we went to Orlando also worked out marvelously. Despite raining pretty much all day, the sun came out and shined during their performance. And the girls shined as well. I have mentioned there are few things more gratifying than seeing your kids excel at something they are passionate about. So as long as they want to dance in Disney, I’ll be down there every two years, contributing to the Mouse economy and riding roller coasters with all my kids. And loving every minute of it. –Mike Photo credit: “Mickey Mouse Magician” originally uploaded by Alain The fine folks at the RSA Conference posted the talk Jennifer Minella and I did on mindfulness at the conference this year. You can check it out on YouTube. Take an hour and check it out. Your emails, alerts and Twitter timeline will be there when you get back. Securosis Firestarter Have you checked out our new video podcast? Rich, Adrian, and Mike get into a Google Hangout and.. hang out. We talk a bit about security as well. We try to keep these to 15 minutes or less, and usually fail. June 2 – Sputnik or Sputnot May 19 – Wanted Posters and SleepyCon May 12 – Another 3 for 5: McAfee/OSVDB, XP Not Dead, CEO head rolling May 5 – There Is No SecDevOps April 28 – The Verizon DBIR April 14 – Three for Five March 24 – The End of Full Disclosure March 19 – An Irish Wake March 11 – RSA Postmortem Feb 21 – Happy Hour – RSA 2014 Heavy Research We are 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

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Open Source Development and Application Security Analysis [New Series]

Adrian Lane June 11, 2014 2 Comments

Earlier this year I participated in the 2014 Open Source Development and Application Security Survey, something I have participated in the last couple years. As a developer and former development manager – and let’s face it, an overtly opinionated one – I am always interested in adding my viewpoint to these inquiries, even if I’m just one developer voice among thousands. But I have also benefitted from these surveys – looking at the stuff my peers are using, and even selecting open source distributions based on these shared data points. Crazy, I know, but it’s another way to leverage the community. But I am equally interested in the survey questions asked, as they hint at what the sponsors are most interested in learning about their community. The organization that conducts this survey is Sonatype, and the 2014 survey was their 4th annual review of open source usage. This year’s survey was co-sponsored by Contrast Security, Rugged Software, NEA, and the Trusted Software Alliance. What piqued my interest is that this year is that I noticed more questions regarding security and vulnerabilities than in previous years. Even the name of the survey changed. But another interesting facet is that the survey was conducted right when OpenSSL’s Heartbleed vulnerability was discovered. It takes a lot for a security vulnerability to make mainstream news, but Heartbleed managed it. For any of you reading this who were not aware of it, OpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL protocol. The disclosure simultaneously illustrated that open source components are in use just about everywhere – across industries and organizations of all sizes – and disrupted IT practitioners’ blind faith in this ubiquitous cryptographic module. But Heartbleed is not the story here – the more interesting thing is how it affected people’s understanding of open source software and security. My question was “Did the vulnerability change the survey results?” In past years Sonatype provided us with a pre-briefing before they announced the survey results, and this year was no different. And after going through the survey myself I was extremely interested in the results. As we went through the data and discussed what it all meant, Sonatype said they were interested in getting someone to perform an independent analysis of the data. You don’t have to ask me twice – I jumped at the chance! As a security practitioner who has built software and managed development teams for a couple decades, I could offer some perspective. And we are beginning to see changes in developer attitudes and participation with security, not to mention a disruption of development approaches with DevOps, so I am eager to go through the data to better understand what developers are doing and what issues they face – in both security and product development. So over the next couple days I will discuss the results, with a focus on two key areas: Security Trends Analysis: The survey poses several questions about security and open source policies as they relate to security, vulnerability tracking, and responsibilities. We will examine tools usage, with trending data from prior years where applicable. Because the survey was conducted during the Heartbleed and Struts vulnerability disclosures, we can examine the data for important differences between responses, before and after disclosure. Development Trends and Operations Management: The survey data contains several important questions on development policies around open source management and use. These trends may not have specific security implications, but they impact how teams manage open source and the general quality of their releases. I will discuss trends in open source policy management, licensing, and security testing approaches; as well as where security testing occurs within the development process. I will highlight key takeaways and make recommendations. Finally, for those of you in security who are not familiar with Sonatype, think Apache Maven and Nexus. Their founder built Maven, which is probably the most widely used build automation tool out there. The company also builds the Nexus repository manager, used by over 40,000 organizations for storing and organizing binary software components, including management of policies for their use and automated health checks for security vulnerabilities. As the steward of the Central Repository, which handled over 13 billion requests for open source components last year, they are in a unique position to monitor use of open source development components – including version management, license characteristics, update frequencies, and known security vulnerabilities. This perspective helped them formulate the survey and reach the 3,300+ development professionals who participated. Next week I will cover the report’s security trend analysis. And if you’re interested I will also do a webcast with Brian Fox of Sonatype to discuss the highlights, comparing and contrasting our views on the results. Check it out! Share:

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