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Schneier
IT Security
- Putting FUD Back in Information Security 8 mai 2018
FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A tactic well played in the early days of Information Security. I never liked it because… well you know that Boy Who Cried Wolf story, right? It appears to me that FUD is making a strong comeback. This time instead of being used to help bolster InfoSec budgets or […] - Windows 10 Update Disrupts Pen Input; Microsoft Offers Potentially Dangerous Fix 16 avril 2018
A recent Microsoft security update – according to Wacom’s support pages, the OS build 16299.334 – has had a rather unexpected side-effect. Many users of have been experiencing issues where drawing apps, such as Photoshop, no longer function correctly. For example, pressing the pen to the tablet device does not “draw” as it should, but […] - Information Security and the Zero-Sum Game 1 avril 2018
A zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant. In Information Security a zero-sum game usually references the trade-off between being secure and having privacy. However, there is another zero-sum game often played with Information […] - Google’s new Gaming Venture: A New Player? 16 mars 2018
Google in Gaming – Facts and Speculation In January 2018, game industry veteran Phil Harrison announced that he was joining Google as a Vice President and GM. With Harrison’s long history of involvement with video game companies – having previously worked with Sony and Microsoft’s Xbox division – this immediately prompted speculation and rumours about […] - Bubble Economies and the Sustainability of Mobile Gaming 9 février 2018
Old Bubbles and New Bubbles Gaming is a technology-based market, and tech markets are no strangers to economic bubbles and the effects of them bursting. The market recession of the early 2000s, most commonly known as the Dotcom Crash, is probably the biggest and most influential ‘burst bubble’ of the internet era. The Dotcom Bubble […] - GDPR Material and Territorial Scopes 8 février 2018
The new EU General Data Regulation will enter into force 25 May of this year. The GDPR contains rules concerning the protection of natural persons when their personal data are processed and rules on the free movement of personal data. The new regulation is not revolutionary but an evolution from the previous Data Protection Act 1998 […] - Uh Oh 365 10 janvier 2018
In an earlier post, I talked about how some vendors tend to push enterprises into a weaker security posture. In this post, I continue with information relating to Office 365. Microsoft’s cloud implementation of the Office suite is mind boggling in its complexity and sheer want of native connectivity. If you are using a proxy, […] - Deceit and duplicity in the pursuit of monetizing social media 7 janvier 2018
One thing I really dislike is deceit and duplicity in the pursuit of monetizing social media. LinkedIn is a prime example, especially after its acquisition by Microsoft. Ever since Nadella took the helm, Microsoft seems hell bent on monetizing anything that moves — and I think we’re just seeing the beginning with LinkedIn. LinkedIn members […] - The Gaming Industry Going Into 2018 4 janvier 2018
Is the Game Industry Today Mirroring the Landscape of the 1983 Crash? Given the industry’s early years, the continued strengthening of the economics of video games has enjoyed phenomenal longevity since its last recession. With the industry having survived two severe crashes in quick succession – in 1977 and then in 1983 – the fact […] - Credit Due Where Credit Deserved – Microsoft 21 décembre 2017
In the past, I have criticized Microsoft for the privacy invasive defaults of Win10. I failed to mention a feature that sheds a bit of light on what they collect. Beyond changing many of the settings using tools (which I highlighted here), you can actually review and delete some of the metadata being collected. If […]
TAO Security
- Troubleshooting NSM Virtualization Problems with Linux and VirtualBox 8 avril 2019
I spent a chunk of the day troubleshooting a network security monitoring (NSM) problem. I thought I would share the problem and my investigation in the hopes that it might help others. The specifics are probably less important than the general approach.It began with ja3. You may know ja3 as a set of Zeek scripts developed by the Salesforce engineering team to profile client and server TLS paramete … - Thoughts on OSSEC Con 2019 28 mars 2019
Last week I attended my first OSSEC conference. I first blogged about OSSEC in 2007, and wrote other posts about it in the following years.OSSEC is a host-based intrusion detection and log analysis system with correlation and active response features. It is cross-platform, such that I can run it on my Windows and Linux systems. The moving force behind the conference was a company local to me calle … - Thoughts on Cloud Security 13 mars 2019
Recently I’ve been reading about cloud security and security with respect to DevOps. I’ll say more about the excellent book I’m reading, but I had a moment of déjà vu during one section.The book described how cloud security is a big change from enterprise security because it relies less on IP-address-centric controls and more on users and groups. The book talked about creating security groups, and … - Forcing the Adversary to Pursue Insider Theft 9 février 2019
Jack Crook pointed me toward a story by Christopher Burgess about intellectual property theft by « Hongjin Tan, a 35 year old Chinese national and U.S. legal permanent resident… [who] was arrested on December 20 and charged with theft of trade secrets. Tan is alleged to have stolen the trade secrets from his employer, a U.S. petroleum company, » according to the criminal complaint f … - Fixing Virtualbox RDP Server with DetectionLab 29 janvier 2019
Yesterday I posted about DetectionLab, but noted that I was having trouble with the RDP servers offered by Virtualbox. If you remember, DetectionLab builds four virtual machines:root@LAPTOP-HT4TGVCP C:\Users\root> »c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage » list runningvms »logger » {3da9fffb-4b02-4e57-a592-dd2322f14245} »dc.windomain.local » {ef32d493-845c-45dc-aff7-3a86d9c590cd} »wef.windomain. … - Trying DetectionLab 28 janvier 2019
Many security professionals run personal labs. Trying to create an environment that includes fairly modern Windows systems can be a challenge. In the age of « infrastructure as code, » there should be a simpler way to deploy systems in a repeatable, virtualized way — right?Enter DetectionLab, a project by Chris Long. Briefly, Chris built a project that uses Packer and Vagrant to create an instrumen … - Happy 16th Birthday TaoSecurity Blog 8 janvier 2019
Today, 8 January 2019, is TaoSecurity Blog’s 16th birthday! This is also my 3,041st blog post.I wrote my first post on 8 January 2003 while working as an incident response consultant for Foundstone.Here are a few statistics on the blog. Blogger started providing statistics in May 2010, so these apply to roughly the past 9 years only.As of today, since May 2010 the blog has nearly 9.4 million all t … - Notes on Self-Publishing a Book 31 décembre 2018
In this post I would like to share a few thoughts on self-publishing a book, in case anyone is considering that option.As I mentioned in my post on burnout, one of my goals was to publish a book on a subject other than cyber security. A friend from my Krav Maga school, Anna Wonsley, learned that I had published several books, and asked if we might collaborate on a book about stretching. … - Managing Burnout 21 décembre 2018
This is not strictly an information security post, but the topic likely affects a decent proportion of my readership.Within the last few years I experienced a profound professional « burnout. » I’ve privately mentioned this to colleagues in the industry, and heard similar stories or requests for advice on how to handle burnout.I want to share my story in the hopes that it helps others in the securit … - The Origin of the Quote "There Are Two Types of Companies" 18 décembre 2018
While listening to a webcast this morning, I heard the speaker mentionThere are two types of companies: those who have been hacked, and those who don’t yet know they have been hacked.He credited Cisco CEO John Chambers but didn’t provide any source.That didn’t sound right to me. I could think of two possible antecedents. so I did some research. I confirmed my memory and would like to present what …