I’m packing up my bags and heading down to Orlando for the Gartner Symposium and IT Expo.
It’s a busy year, with 3 presentations and a panel:
Despite living in Boulder Colorado for 16 years I’m neither a hippie nor a conspiracy theorist. I don’t use patchouli oil, wear a beanie, or ingest any mood-altering substances you can’t buy in a grocery store. I don’t think the Masons control our destiny, black helicopters molest cattle, or the NSA monitors all our communications. Oh, really? Okay, but the cattle thing definitely isn’t real. Except maybe in Nebraska, but that’s not the CIA, not that there’s anything wrong with it…
For those that don’t know, VeriChips are implantable RFID tags “for people”. That way you can be tagged and tracked like cattle or Gillette razors.
This is just too good.
A friend who recently moved from the business side to the IT side just reported this.
Pete Lindstrom just posted a missive in support of the TSA.
Pete makes some good points about the limitations of policy- while you always need hard rules, you also always need exceptions and judgement.
Statement from SecureWorks:
SecureWorks and Apple are working together in conjunction with the CERT Coordination Center on any reported security issues. We will not make any additional public statements regarding work underway until both companies agree, along with CERT/CC , that it is appropriate.
I read an interesting article by Brian Krebs over at the Washington Post on ID theft. Brian did a little hunting on some underground IRC channels and witnessed a large amount of stolen personal data being exchanged, then went out and talked with around two dozen victims.
I now know that $40 and a quick web search will let any doofus figure out most of my former addresses, neighbors, home values, roommates, birthday, etc.
Last week the guys over at Matasano did some seriously great work on ATM hacking. So many blogs were running with it at the time, and I was on the road dealing with a family emergency, that I didn’t cover it here, but I think this is such an excellent example of disclosure working that it deserves a mention. It’s also just a cool story.
In a brief analysis/link to my privacy post Mike Rothman states we have a right to privacy in the Constitution, but the problem is enforcement.