Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

In “The Galactic Empire Has Terrible Cybersecurity,” Alex Grigsby looks at a number of high-profile failures, covered in “A New Hope” and the rest of the Star Wars canon. Unfortunately, the approach he takes to the Galactic Empire obscures the larger, more dangerous issue is its cybersecurity culture. There are two errors in Grigsby’s analysis, […]

I had not seen this excellent presentation by the engineer who built the Death Star’s exhaust system. In it, he discusses the need to disperse energy from a battle station with the power draw to destroy planets, and the engineering goals he had to balance. I’m reminded again of “The Evolution of Useful Things” and […]

John Masserini has a set of “open letters to security vendors” on Security Current. Everyone involved in product or sales at a security startup should read them. John provides insight into what it’s like to be pitched by too many startups, and provides a level of transparency that’s sadly hard to find. Personally, I learned […]

One of the most interesting security books I’ve read in a while barely mentions computers or security. The book is Petroski’s The Evolution of Useful Things. As the subtitle explains, the book discusses “How Everyday Artifacts – From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers – Came to be as They are.” The chapter […]

Apparently, the CISO of US Homeland Security, a Paul Beckman, said that: “Someone who fails every single phishing campaign in the world should not be holding a TS SCI [top secret, sensitive compartmentalized information—the highest level of security clearance] with the federal government” (Paul Beckman, quoted in Ars technica) Now, I’m sure being in the […]

This is a survey from Doug Hubbard, author of How To Measure Anything and he is currently writing another book with Richard Seiersen (GM of Cyber Security at GE Healthcare) titled How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk. As part of the research for this book, they are asking for your assistance as an information […]

As you may be aware, I’m a fan of using Star Wars for security lessons, such as threat modeling or Saltzer and Schroeder. So I was pretty excited to see Wade Baker post “Luke in the Sky with Diamonds,” talking about threat intelligence, and he gets bonus points for crossover title. And I think it’s […]

One of the values of models is they can help us engage in areas where otherwise the detail is overwhelming. For example, C is a model of how a CPU works that allows engineers to defer certain details to the compiler, rather than writing in assembler. It empowers software developers to write for many CPU […]

A conversation with an old friend reminded me that there may be folks who follow this blog, but not the New School blog. Over there, I’ve posted “Improving Security Effectiveness” about leaving Microsoft to work on my new company: For the last few months, I’ve been working full time and talking with colleagues about a […]

We have a new way to measure security effectiveness, and want someone who’ll drive to delivering the technology to customers, while building a great place for developers to ship and deploy important technology. We are very early in the building of the company. The right person will understand such a “green field” represents both opportunity […]

As we head into summer conference season, drama is as predictable as vulnerabilities. I’m really not fond of either. What I am fond of, (other than Star Wars), as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about models, is the model of the “drama triangle.” First discussed by Stephen Karpman, the triangle has three […]

There’s a great “long read” at CIO, “6 Software Development Lessons From Healthcare.gov’s Failed Launch.” It opens: This article tries to go further than the typical coverage of Healthcare.gov. The amazing thing about this story isn’t the failure. That was fairly obvious. No, the strange thing is the manner in which often conflicting information is […]

I was irked to see a tweet “Learned a new word! Pseudoarboricity: the number of pseudoforests needed to cover a graph. Yes, it is actually a word and so is pseudoforest.” The idea that some letter combinations are “actual words” implies that others are “not actual words,” and thus, that there is some authority who […]

Hossein Derakhshan was recently released from jail in Iran. He’s written a long and thoughtful article “The Web We Have to Save.” It’s worth reading in full, but here’s an excerpt: Some of it is visual. Yes, it is true that all my posts on Twitter and Facebook look something similar to a personal blog: […]

For the last few months, I’ve been working full time and talking with colleagues about a new way for security executives to measure the effectiveness of security programs. In very important ways, the ideas are new and non-obvious, and at the same time, they’re an evolution of the ideas that Andrew and I wrote about […]

I want to discuss some elements of the OPM breach and what we know and what we don’t. Before I do, I want to acknowledge the tremendous and justified distress that those who’ve filled out the SF-86 form are experiencing. I also want to acknowledge the tremendous concern that those who employ those with clearances […]

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which […]

This was a story back around RSA, but I missed it until RSnake brought it up on Twitter: “[A default password] can hack nearly every credit card machine in the country.” The simple version is that Charles Henderson of Trustwave found that “90% of the terminals of this brand we test for the first time […]

[There are broader critiques by Katie Moussouris of HackerOne at “Legally Blind and Deaf – How Computer Crime Laws Silence Helpful Hackers” and Halvar Flake at “Why changes to Wassenaar make oppression and surveillance easier, not harder.” This post addresses the free speech issue.] During the first crypto wars, cryptography was regulated under the US […]

Today, the Open Technology Institute released an open letter to the President of the United States from a broad set of organizations and experts, and I’m pleased to be a signer, and agree wholeheartedly with the text of the letter. (Some press coverage.) I did want to pile on with an excerpt from chapter 9 […]

So Bill Brenner has a great article on “How to survive security conferences: 4 tips for the socially anxious .” I’d like to stand by my 2010 guide to “Black Hat Best Practices,” and augment it with something new: a word on etiquette. Etiquette is not about what fork you use (start from the outside, […]

John Boyd’s ideas have had a deep impact on the world. He created the concept of the OODA Loop, and talked about the importance of speed (“getting inside your opponent’s loop”) and orientation, and how we determine what’s important. A lot of people who know about the work of John Boyd also know that he […]

The Washington Post reports that there will be a “New agency to sniff out threats in cyberspace.” This is my first analysis of what’s been made public. Details are not fully released, but there are some obvious problems, which include: “The quality of the threat analysis will depend on a steady stream of data from […]

If you listen to the security echo chamber, after an embarrassing failure like a data breach, you lose your job, right? Let’s look at Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll, who made what the home town paper called the “Worst Play Call Ever.” With less than a minute to go in the Superbowl, and the game hanging […]

It didn’t take long for the Seahawk’s game-losing pass to get a label. But as Ed Felten explains, there’s actually some logic to it, and one of his commenters (Chris) points out that Marshawn Lynch scored in only one of his 5 runs from the one yard line this season. So, perhaps in a game […]

Paul Gowder has an interesting post over at Prawfblog, “In Defense of Facebook Copyright Disclaimer Status Updates (!!!).” He presents the facts: …People then decide that, hey, goose, gander, if Facebook can unilaterally change the terms of our agreement by presenting new ones where, theoretically, a user might see them, then a user can unilaterally […]

Lately I’ve noted a lot of people quoted in the media after breaches saying “X was Security 101. I can’t believe they didn’t do X!” For example, “I can’t believe that LinkedIn wasn’t salting passwords! That’s security 101!” Now, I’m unsure if that’s “security 101” or not. I think security 101 for passwords is “don’t […]

I’m having a problem where the “key identifier” displayed on my ios device does not match the key fingerprint on my server. In particular, I run: % openssl x509 -in keyfile.pem -fingerprint -sha1 and I get a 20 byte hash. I also have a 20 byte hash in my phone, but it is not that […]