I just noticed this story in my feed reader from before Christmas. I don’t know why I found the Computerworld story on the Massachusetts inmate ‘hacker’ so funny, but I do. Perhaps it is because I envision the prosecutor struggling to come up with a punishable crime. In fact I am not totally sure what law Janosko violated. An additional 18 month sentence for ‘abusing’ a computer provided by the correctional facility … I was unaware such a law existed. Does the state now have to report the…
An interesting discussion popped up on Slashdot this Saturday afternoon about Preventing My Hosting Provider From Rooting My Server. ‘hacker’ is claiming that when he accuses his hosting provider of service interruption, they assume root access on his machines without permission.
This is going to be a pretty short summary. If you noticed, we were were a little light on content this week, due to out-of-town travel for client engagements and in-town client meetings. On a personal note, early this week I had a front tire blow out on my car, throwing me airborne and backwards across four lanes of traffic during the afternoon commute. A driver who witnessed the spectacle said it looked like pole vaulting with cars, and could not figure out how I landed on the wheels,…
Akamai announced that they are adding Web Application Firewall (WAF) capabilities into their distributed EdgePlatform netwok. I usually quote from the articles I reference, but there is simply too much posturing and fluffy marketing-ese about value propositions for me to extract an insightful fragment of information on what they are doing and why it is important, so I will paraphrase. In a nutshell they have ported ModSecurity onto/into the Akamai Edge Server. They are using the Core Rule Set…
This is my MacBook sale progress report. For those of you who have not followed my tweets on the subject, I listed my MacBook for sale on Craigslist. After Bruce Schneier’s eye-opening and yet somehow humorous report on selling his laptop on eBay, I figured I would shoot for a face to face sale. I chose Craigslist in Phoenix and specified a cash-only sale. The results have been less than impressive. The first time I listed the laptop:
I have had friends and family in town over the last eight days. Some of them wanted the ‘Arizona Experience’, so we did the usual: Sedona, Pinnacle Peak Steak House, Cave Creek, a Cardinals game, and a few other local attractions. Part of the tour was the big Crossroads Gun Show out at the fairgrounds. It was the first time I had been to such a show in 9 or 10 years. Speaking with merchants, listening to their sales pitches, and overhearing discussions around the fairgrounds, everything was…
Today Verizon released their Supplement to the 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report. As with previous reports, it is extremely well written, densely loaded with data, and an absolute must read. The bulk of the report gives significantly more information on the breakdown of attacks, by both how often attacks occurred, and how many records were lost as a result of each attack.
As you are already well aware (if not, see the announcement – we’ll wait), Google is now offering a free DNS resolver service. Before we get into the players, though, let’s first understand the reasons to use one of these free services.
One of the more difficult aspects of medical research is correlating treatments/actions with outcomes. This is a core principle of science based medicine (if you’ve never worked in the medical field, you might be shocked at the lack of science at the practitioner level).
My Friday post generated some great discussion in the comments. I encourage you to go back and read through them. Rocky in particular wrote an extended comment that should be a blog post in itself which reveals that he and I are, in fact, in violent agreement on the issues. Case in point, his first paragraph: