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Technology Industry News & Career Management information, brought to you by BrainWave Consulting Company.
August 2007 - Posts
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Mmmmm: Put a big heavy pot on the stove and get some heat under it. Fry up the bacon until it starts to get crispy. Toss in the onions. Stir around until they start to get soft. Pile in the... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I'm not really looking for advice. Or maybe I am, if you have any.My management style, if you will, was considered completely unacceptable by our Corporate Office. I have since been in a "lengthy transition" so that they can rid themselves of my influence and bring on a new IT Manager who Read More...
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This is a report on the presentation of computer forensic evidence in a UK trial. There are three things that concern me here: The computer was operated by a police officer prior to forensic examination. The forensic examiner gave an... Share Post: Read More...
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Given the recent spate of breach announcements from companies like Monster.com and TradeFreedom Securities Inc. , I've been thinking about how poor security is going to impact organizations and consumers over the next few years. Even though there have...( read more ) Share Post: Read More...
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The headline is all you need to know: Teen cracks AU$84 million porn filter in 30 minutes (AU$84 million is $69.5 million U.S.; that's real money.) Remember that the issue isn't that one smart kid can circumvent the censorship software,... Share Post: Read More...
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Interesting: Reducing Shoulder-surfing by Using Gaze-based Password Entry Manu Kumar , Tal Garfinkel, Dan Bohen, Terri Winograd Abstract: Shoulder-surfing -- using direct observation techniques, such as looking over someone's shoulder, to get passwords, PINs and other sensitive personal information is... Share Post: Read More...
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There's a must-read article on Wired.com about DCSNet (Digital Collection System Network), the FBI's high-tech point-and-click domestic wiretapping network. The information is based on nearly 1000 pages of documentation released under FOIA to the EFF. Together, the surveillance systems let... Share Post: Read More...
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I just had to comment.In a recent Ask the Headhunter ("I, Programmer," 8/23/2007), my friend Nick Corcodilos worries about Gordon Morrison's "new" approach to software development: Use more automation to write code. In other words, no more programmers.I put "new" in quotes because in the context of information Read More...
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Okay; this is clever: Rex IV, a highly trained Belgian Malinois sheepdog with a string of drug hauls behind him, was checked on to a flight from Mexico City this week with seven other police dogs bound for an operation... Share Post: Read More...
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There has been much written about the new German hacker-tool law, which went into effect earlier this month. Dark Reading has the most interesting speculation: Many security people say the law is so flawed and so broad and that no... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...From your most recent column ("More bridge lessons," Keep the Joint Running, 8/25/2007): <snip>Here's why it's relevant. Your job isn't to be right about all of this, then to say I-told-you-so when something goes wrong.It's to establish strong enough working relationships throughout Read More...
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Fusion centers are state-run, with funding help from the Department of Homeland Security. It's all sort of ad hoc, but their purpose is to "fuse" federal, state, and local intelligence against terrorism. But -- no surprise -- they're not doing... Share Post: Read More...
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What? Are the police taking stupid pills? Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge. The competition is fierce,... Share Post: Read More...
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Clever idea. Only five buttons, a maximum of ten digits for the PIN, and almost certainly a gazillion ways to get around the padlock function once you pry the case open -- but definitely on the right track.... Share Post: Read More...
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Response from the CEO responsible for "Defending tough CEOs," Advice Line, 8/22/2007:Well, seems we disagree. I don't condone, I don't defend. What I know is that top performers need to be and are READY for the grist mill of working side by side with the CEO.If there are people intimidated by their CEO, Read More...
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Instructions and video for building a giant squid kinetic sculpture. More pictures here.... Share Post: Read More...
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The Minneapolis City Pages published a nice profile on me this week.... Share Post: Read More...
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You won't identity individual users, but you can test for the prevelence of drug use in a community by testing the sewage water. Presumably, if you push the sample high enough into the pipe, you can test groups of houses... Share Post: Read More...
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Mike McConnell, U.S. National Intelligence Director, gave an interesting interview to the El Paso Times. I don't think he's ever been so candid before. For example, he admitted that the nation's telcos assisted the NSA in their massive eavesdropping efforts.... Share Post: Read More...
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I had been thinking about writing about the massive distributed-denial-of-service attack against the Estonian government last April. It's been called the first cyberwar, although it is unclear that the Russian government was behind the attacks. And while I've written about... Share Post: Read More...
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I live in Minneapolis, so the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River earlier this month hit close to home, and was covered in both my local and national news. Much of the initial coverage consisted of... Share Post: Read More...
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Another article about risk perception, and why we worry about the wrong things: Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming "crisis" and... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I was surprised that you even bothered to comment on that letter ("How to deal with a really bad CEO," Advice Line, 8/8/2007) for advice.People want to play close to the heartbeat but can't stand the thumping sound - get over it. Things sometimes get harsh and, well, disagreeable when you're Read More...
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Taser -- yep, that's the company's name as well as the product's name -- is now selling a personal-use version of their product. It's called theTaser C2, and it has an interesting embedded identification technology. Whenever the weapon is fired,... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...You may not be full of beans on this one ("Fun for fun and profit," Keep the Joint Running, 8/20/2007), but you're close.Our company has a policy: Win and have fun. And a lot of managers I know try to follow it. We have quarterlies and team builders, management doesn't have a problem with Read More...
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Uh-oh: Ohio law permits anyone to walk into a county election office and obtain two crucial documents: a list of voters in the order they voted, and a time-stamped list of the actual votes. "We simply take the two pieces... Share Post: Read More...
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Pig Latin: A 29-year-old man was taped using the code language Pig Latin to organise reprisal gangs the day after the Cronulla riots, a Sydney court heard today. Yep, Pig Latin.... Share Post: Read More...
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REAL ID is the U.S. government plan to impose uniform regulations on state driver's licenses. It's a national ID card, in all but cosmetic form. (Here is my essay on the security costs and benefits. These two sites are also... Share Post: Read More...
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I am auctioning my DefCon speaker badge on eBay. The curious phrasing -- "upon completion of this auction, Schneier will donate an amount equal to the purchase price to the Electronic Privacy Information Center" -- is because eBay has complex... Share Post: Read More...
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At least it was on August 13: "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams had a cameo on "Sesame Street" today, introducing the word of the day, which was "squid." Just in case there was any confusion, he said the word... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I've been out of work for 7 months, now, and I'm wondering whether it is because I did something I thought was reasonable and moral.Just before I was about to leave, I found out that our IT Manager had been slipped in by the Supreme Court. OK, not really but...There were two people in the Read More...
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Information from San Francisco public housing developments: The 178 video cameras that keep watch on San Francisco public housing developments have never helped police officers arrest a homicide suspect even though about a quarter of the city's homicides occur on... Share Post: Read More...
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New York is installing an automatic toll-collection system for cars in the busiest parts of the city. It's called congestion pricing, and it promises to reduce both traffic and pollution. The problem is that it keeps an audit log of... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I would like to raise a topic that needs to be considered in this rapidly growing age of technology.I'm interested in the trend most companies have about making IT Departments an income rather than expense unit. The reason I want the issue raised is that many of the IT developments now are Read More...
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Interesting article on security-aware consumer items. I especially liked the chair design with a place to hang a purse. Seems like a better idea than the "Chelsea clip."... Share Post: Read More...
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Two studies. The first one looks at social phishing: Test subjects received an e-mail with headers spoofed so that it appeared to originate from a member of the subject's social network. The message body was comprised of the phrase "hey,... Share Post: Read More...
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Fascinating New Scientist article (for subscribers only, but there's a copy here) on conspiracy theories, and why we believe them: So what kind of thought processes contribute to belief in conspiracy theories? A study I carried out in 2002 explored... Share Post: Read More...
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We've seen calls for transparent backpacks. Here's a call for bulletproof backpacks, which -- I presume -- go hand in hand with bulletproof textbooks. With this kind of thinking, we'll have the school shooting problem licked in no time!... Share Post: Read More...
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This is a good article about the use of paid informants in Muslim communities, and how they are both creating potential terrorists where none existed before and sowing mistrust among people. Defense lawyers in a number of other terrorism suspect... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...We're going from Novell (dead end) to ActiveDirectory. And even as a developer (mostly Unix, but some PC), "they" want to lock down my desktop so I can't install apps (not even give me a login I can switch to to do the installs, and switch back).But, wait! There's more! I get a second computer Read More...
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The Science and Technology Committee of the U.K. House of Lords has issued a report (pdf here) on "Personal Internet Security." It's 121 pages long. Richard Clayton, who helped the committee, has a good summary of the report on his... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ... We are a small group of dedicated people working for a public safety unit under a large agency. We have accomplished the impossible and have worked in an environment of hostility towards the public safety department by other support units. There is central IT at six of the agencies and we Read More...
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Histioteuthis heteropsis, from the other Friday squid blogging.... Share Post: Read More...
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Wow. I must remember never to piss a squid off.... Share Post: Read More...
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Very funny, from Matt Blaze and Jutta Degener.... Share Post: Read More...
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One of the problems with airport security checkpoints is that the system is a single point of failure. If someone slips through, the only way to regain security is for the entire airport to be emptied and everyone searched again.... Share Post: Read More...
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It's nice to find an example of the police using data mining correctly: not as security theater, but more as a business-intelligence tool: When Munroe took over as chief two years ago, his department was drowning in crime and data.... Share Post: Read More...
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Last week Congress gave President Bush new wiretapping powers. I was going to write an essay on the security implications of this, but Susan Landau beat me to it: To avoid wiretapping every communication, NSA will need to build massive... Share Post: Read More...
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My contest idea (first and second) has gone mainstream: Hearing about these rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires... Share Post: Read More...
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Over the past several months, the state of California conducted the most comprehensive security review yet of electronic voting machines. People who I consider to be security experts analyzed machines from three different manufacturers, performing both a red-team attack analysis... Share Post: Read More...
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Seems like bad design: My laptop bag has scared TSA security personnel at several airports recently, requiring manual bag inspections each time. And when it happened again this week I finally figured out what it is that was freaking them... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I have some understanding of being demeaned while at work. My boss, the CEO, likes to play games with his employees. He will put them in a position so that he can use them to get something done for him and then he pulls you out of that high position and puts you in a smaller one and then Read More...
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Interesting: In fact, vein recognition technology has one fundamental advantage over finger print systems: vein patterns in fingers and palms are biometric characteristics that are not left behind unintentionally in every-day activities. In tests conducted by heise, even extreme close-ups... Share Post: Read More...
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Yet another good report on elections: this one on post-election audits: "Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections."... Share Post: Read More...
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How do you get a password out of an IRS agent? Just ask: Sixty-one of the 102 people who got the test calls, including managers and a contractor, complied with a request that the employee provide his or her user... Share Post: Read More...
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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is releasing details about last summer's liquid-bomb plot: Sources tell ABC News that after studying the plot, government officials have concluded that without the tip to British authorities, the suspects could have likely smuggled... Share Post: Read More...
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In this otherwise lopsided article about security cameras, this one quote stands out: But Steve Swain, who served for years with the London Metropolitan Police and its counter-terror operations, doubts the power of cameras to deter crime. "I don't know... Share Post: Read More...
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In even more voting news, the UK Electorial Commission released a report on the 2007 e-voting and e-counting pilots. The results are none too good: The Commission’s criticism of e-counting and e-voting was scathing; concerning the latter saying that the... Share Post: Read More...
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Florida just recently released another study of the Diebold voting machines. They -- and it was real security researchers like the California study, and not posers -- studied v4.6.5 of the Diebold TSx and v1.96.8 of the Diebold Optical Scan.... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...I'd like to submit a topic you may be able to shed some light on. I hope you can find a way to make this into something more generally useful to your readers. There are a lot of traditional ways to do manage projects that may very well be good ideas in general, but if applied too religiously, Read More...
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Beautiful. Review and article (pdf, pp. 3-5).... Share Post: Read More...
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This is a follow-on to this post. What's new is that the source code reviews are now available. I haven't had the chance to review the reports. Matt Blaze has a good summary on his blog: We found significant, deeply-rooted... Share Post: Read More...
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This is Part 5 of a five-part series. Links to Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. BS: So far, we've only talked about passengers. What about airport workers? Nearly one million workers move in and out of airports every day... Share Post: Read More...
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For a few months, German police tested a face recognition system. Two hundred frequent travellers volunteered to have their faces recorded and three different systems tried to recognize the faces in the crowds of a train station. Results (in German):... Share Post: Read More...
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Wow: We've discovered a 4.5 hour time frame each night when virtually anything can be brought into the secure side of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. There's no metal detector, no X-ray machine, and it's apparently not a problem. Afraid to... Share Post: Read More...
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Dear Bob ...Normally I agree with you, but I guess this time, I am one of the prudes ("The new prudes," Keep the Joint Running," 7/9/2007), and am somewhat pleased with it.Why? I work on a team of 6 people supporting server and desktop OSes, all applications that run on them as well as the imaging system. Read More...
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