education – Page 20 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Cucumber going bananas

Anyone care to share their found most sorry news item re information security this Summer? Since it appears that the Cucumber Season (silly season) of InfoSec has started already. I mean: Is there anything infosecnews that is greeted with more than a wry cynical smile ..? Like, you know, “Been there done that ages ago, like, last May”. And nothing that the General Public panics about, that wasn’t in the same response category on the In side.

Or …? Is there anything that you, as the Insider par excellence, might go bananas about? Your ~~vote~~ opinion counts!

[Prayers ~~go the same way, still~~ may have changed somewhat; insider tip: Old Church Amsterdam]

Print Goodbye World

Somehow, got triggered that there’s a near future where 100 print “Hello world” would meet with Sorry Dave, I can’t compile that not even with warnings (what; no 200 End ..!?) — because one’s not supposed to be able to influence the Machine. No red pills allowed.

Oh the things that keep me awake at night [they don’t]. Soon, baby, soon. Plus:

[Just Lotharingen things; Nancy]

Generation Majordomo

In a slight twist of fate, two weeks ago some fashionable magazine decided to drop caps off ‘Internet’ and just write it internet.
Back then, when drafting this post. About the good times, when people hung out at Woodstock or so, or, well, say, since the 80s, when all sorts of inventions brought one wave of new jargon words and meanings after another.

Also when it struck me that, e.g., ‘majordomo’ seems to be a derelict word. At least, re moderated discussion sites. What Happen — All Your Base Are Belong To Us is almost gone, superseded by Dat Boi (as here). ‘PC compatible’, ‘carriage return’, ‘portals’, ‘surfing’, ‘fax’, ‘PDAs’, ‘modem’ (Hayes compatible, 2800 baud!), ‘Alta Vista’ (the search engine), ‘dynamic HTML’, … all goners.

But apart from the curiosity value, and a few Googled sites with partial information, there’s no real one go-to (sic, or even Goto Considered Dangerous!) site or, in?appropriately, physical location where one can find exhibits of Lost Computer Words.

How sad. We’re losing massive historic reference here, people! Get up and Do Something!

’cause I have no clue how to tackle such a thing… But I do have:
DSCN6309
[A gem oh so easily missed; the Aubette at Place Kléber Strasbourg — sorry old unedited pic, still]

Pebnickanic

Hey why are so many using PICNIC instead of the age-old PEBKAC ..? No, I’m not complaining ‘because’ old, nor on the ‘ …, got the T-shirt’ route. Just would want to know. Is it that the latter is too difficult to remember the meaning of ..? If so: Sad for its Shallows calibre. If otherwise: Please advise.

Well then…:

[Trismegistus’ view on things. Obvious where.]

Human / Not

Of course Cerf is right. But also … is the opposite side; human error would be harmless (save the Almost part) when vulnerabilities wouldn’t be attacked. As long as they exist, they will. And human error will exist; that’s just the way our genes, and memes, and all of Nature, play it out. The instability of Nature (here and here!) means evolution happens, works. On the Changing-environment- and on the trial-through-error sides.

Hence, you’re still where you started. Still pursuing max fault-freedom but sure to not achieve it. I.e., in danger — the Condition Humaine since the dawn of Time (on that in a PhD thesis, some other time) and dismissing Hegelian progress fantasies, forever.

Well then, to leave in a positive tone:

[No time ?? for R&R; outside Siena]

Overwhelmed by ‘friendly’ engineers

The rage seems to be with chat bots, lately. Haven’t met any, but that may only be me — not being interesting enough to be overwhelmed by their calls.
Which will happen, in particular to those in society that have less than perfect resistance against the various modes of telesales and other forms of social engineering (for phishing and other nefarious purposes) already. Including all sorts of otherwise-possibly-bright-and-genius-intelligent-but (??)-having-washed-up-in-InfoSec-for-lack-of-genuine-societal-intelligence types like us. But these being the ones of all stripes that ‘we’ need to protect, rather than the ones apparently already so heavily loaded that they can spare the dime for development of such hyper-scaling ultra-travelling foot-in-the-door salesmen. Is this the end stage, where none have a clue as to which precious little interaction is still actually human-to-human, and the rest may be discarded ..?

As for the latter … It raises the question of Why, in communications as a human endeavor… Quite a thought.

But for the time being, you’re hosed, anti-phishing-through-social-engineeringwise.

Just sayin’. Plus:

[Retreat, a.k.a. Run to the hills / Run for your life; but meant positively! Monte Olivieto Maggiore near Siena]

Last night a … saved me (updated)

Just a repost, as due to some obvious glitch, the below didn’t get the chart storming air play it deserves (hence, it must’ve been a glitch).
[To the music of Indeep — somewhat outdated lyrics but what style …]

You gotta reboot ~~get up~~
You gotta reload ~~get on~~
You gotta restore ~~get down~~ girl
You know you drive me #DIV/0! ~~crazy~~ baby
You’ve got me turning to another OS ~~man~~
Called you on the VOIP ~~phone~~

No one’s pinging back ~~home~~
Baby why ya leave me all >dev/null ~~alone~~
And if it wasn’t for the endless GitHub surfing ~~music~~
I don’t know what I’d do

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC ~~life~~
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC ~~life~~ from a broken pipe ~~heart~~
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC ~~life~~
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC ~~life~~ with a patch ~~song~~

You know I hopped into my notepad ~~car~~
Didn’t need to leave the coffee shop ~~get very far no~~
Because I had you on my stash of data-breached X-rated pics ~~mind~~
Why only give you a ticket and secretly close it immediately ~~be so unkind~~?

You’ve got your hapless users ~~women~~ all around
All around this AD ~~town~~, boy
But I was trapped in the SLA from hell ~~love~~ with you
And I didn’t know what to do
But when I turned on my RTFManual ~~radio~~
I found out all I needed to key in ~~know~~
Run the diagnostics kit ~~Check it out~~

Hey listen up to your local information risk / security management professional
You better hear what he’s got to type so fast you can’t keep track ~~say~~
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite ~~mix~~
And if your crappy ol’ XP machine ~~man~~ gives you trouble
Just you step away from the keyboard ~~move~~ out on the double
And you don’t let it trouble your ‘brain’ ~~brain~~
Cause away goes PEBKAC ~~troubles~~
Down the drain
I said away goes PEBKAC ~~troubles~~
Down the drain

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC ~~life~~
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite ~~mix~~
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite ~~mix~~

Quite an improvement indeedp … And leaving you with, of course a new pic:

[Old and new in one pic … Haut K again]

Plusquote: Critique of the Pure Reasonlessness

This episode, by reference to the excellent Future Crimes (Marc Goodman, as here), one originally by G.K. Chersterton (The Blue Cross):

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic

To which we would want to add: And the auditor, only the disgruntled desk-bound traffic cop.
Since, the checker (and penaliser) of the trivial petty little rules, should remain in the third line, right ..?

Where by the way, the creativity of the artist is required to make the art work that sells — and hence all make their living off straightforward crime or would perish. The more you bureaucratise into totalitarianism, the more you see life wither, till death. Even if the crime keeps on being perpetrated — by laxity of the second and particularly third lines, in cahoots with the profiteers. … Maybe that’s a bit deep-but-overly-lapidary …
Hence, just:

[Panopticon Central, Strassbourg]

The ‘Bucks logo, again

The @Starbucks logo once again, in an unsuspected place. Like, this:

[Haut Koenigsbourg castle indeed, in the Alsace]

Begging for some explanation. Why here, in/on a 190x rebuild of a medieval (origin) castle in the middle of (Western) Europe, no Norse sailor in sight? As previously mentioned, there’s more to it than some simple explanation. Hopefully.
E.g., any History grad student interested to write a thesis on this? Said coffee house might be found willing to provide a stipend …? ;-|

For this one’s exact location:
Bucks at Haut K
[I.e., in the very inner courtyard, where no Norseman ever arrived (back in the day)]

After last (mentioned, linked) post, the answer was inconclusive unless 50-50 is a conclusion… Let’s hope for better, this time…

Big Data as a sin

Not just any sin, the Original one. Eating from the ultimate source of Knowledge that Big, Totalitarian, All-Thinkable Data is, in the ideal (quod non).
We WEIRDS (White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich Democratic people), a.k.a. Westeners, know what that leads to. Forever we will toil on spurious correlations…