Always pleasant, to read one’s (almost…) correct, on off-off-Broadway analysis and postpredictions. Like this one, corroberated here, in a way.
Yes, I kno. I almost got that correct. Enough to confirm the line of reasoning, if you read it / both correctly, they turn out correct. I’ll stop now. And:
[Check, for Dutch ad viewers; Valencia]
Tag: Information security
Some Quotum of Questions of Quantum
Am I the only one with questions how the following intertwine:
An article on how quantum-secured blockchain may be so safe, but possibly not in the hands of whom you’d want it? If in anyone’s hands at all, since no-one can be trusted forever; if you wouldn’t believe that, you declare yourself incapable of discussion on this subject…
A most brillant blog post on a related subject.
An equally insightful piece on how blockchain-of-command would lead to Totalitarianism.
An equally … Being the Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt, 2017 version. Notably, the previous versions hadn’t been patched properly…
So, you see a Perfect Storm or what ..?
Plus:
[Why did you cross the street, you chicken? M’drid]
Nudging to intermittance; 5 steps to awa success
As by now you have become accustomed to, this isn’t anything about five steps, or success. Or, I mean, the latter, maybe. Was triggered by the to be, should be classic on all thing #ditchcyber ψchology, where it discusses the lure of games and the reward structure therein. From there I wondered three things:
How can we deploy true gaming (not the quiz / survey kind) in raising, and maintaining, awareness in information security praxis for end users? Like, not the Training kind, but the Knowledge → Attitude → Behaviour – into eternity kind. For end users, and for infosec-(more-)deeply involved staff, differentiated.
The latter, probably requiring training upfront, but towards actual technology deployment, tuning (!) and use. And, moreover and probably much more important to get right, BCM style training. Train like you fight, then you’ll fight like you train. Since when it comes to damage control (and in infosec, the “it’s not if but when” is even harder fact than elsewhere!), one wants to have trained all on cool, controlled response not mere panicky reaction even more rigorously than in about any other direction.
Where does the Nudging part come into gaming ..? The thing, nudging rewards and penalties, is in use everywhere in public policy, to inobtrusively (sic; by governments yes, beware of the Jubjub Bird!) coerce people to change their social habits. At least a frog will jump out of slowly heating water… [Yes it does. But how did you want to jump out of the complete, total slavery of the Social Contract ..? You can’t. You’re bound from and by birth. You’ll be a slave forever, the more so when your mind is free…]
But besides; how do ‘we’ use nudges in infosec behaviour change games? How, in daily mundane practice where attention is to other things only, not to infosec as that stands in the way of efficient objectives realisation ..?
Third, how are the above two things combined, through ‘intermittent rewards’ as the most addictive element in games ..?
Just wanted to know. Thanks for your pointers to answers. [Have I ever received any? Nope.] And:
[On a bright day, for Stockholm, the Knäckeboat museum]
Macrodots on your Opsec training card
Already a couple of weeks (month) ago, the whole secret-microdots-ID-your-printer thing came out. Re the leakage of something-TLA in relation to electionhacking [let’s write that as one word, better aligning the construct] or what was it, where the leakster was IDd quickly because the microdot on the published material(s) revealed the printer used.
Here I was, thinking that this microdot thing – Some claim it goes with laser printers only, not inktjet/dot matrix ones; anyone has any definitive confirmation of this? If confirmed, how many non-stupid bad guys will still use laser printers not have switched already …? – was wider known (like, I had yet to meet anyone in the infosec field that didn’t know of them or could not expect them, nor give any canary) but was supposed to not be used for any but the most extreme evidence-requiring circumstances. Like, you let incidental bombers walk because you don’t want to reveal your methods in order to be able to trace networks of them.
But here, a simple case of whistleblowing (is it, or is there more at play, like, Western democracy or even something serious, unfake …?) and everyone knows it now, in the open. Strange.
Tons of good info in the link, BTW.
Also strange that someone with such high clearance wouldn’t be better trained in Opsec, hence a. know about microdots and b. have used more covert leak channels. If training of such critical staff is so poor, there’s more serious troubles than just the demise of democratic institutions forthcoming.
Or maybe pretty-face leakster was ousted for not (falling for blackmail pushing to) providing some kind of services. Who knows. No one, these days of non-non-repudiatable news.
Oh well. And:
[In some relation to the above, that guy on the pole would know much better than to want encryption banned or backdoor’d to counter some moronic attackers like latter-day flat-out lying PMs]
Top 5 things that Awa isn’t
When dealing with awareness, certainly in the infosec field (#ditchcyber!), there seems to be a lot of confusion over the mere simple construct under discussion. Like, the equasion (with an s not a t) of Awareness with Knowledge plus Attitute plus Behaviour. Which, according to the simplest of checks, would not hold. Since Knowledge, and maybe Attitude, are apt components. But Behaviour is what eludes the other two, by the unconscious that drives 95% of our behaviour, in particular when dealing with any but the most hard-core mathematical-logic types of decision making and interaction.
Which is why so many ‘Infosec awareness programs’ fail …
First of all, they’re Training, mostly, even when in the form of nice posters and QR cards [that’s Quick Reference, not QR-code you history-knowledgeless i.e. completely clueless simpleton-robot-pastiche one!], and it’s true that “If you call it Training, you’ve lost your audience’s want to learn” – your audience will figure out it’s Training despite you packaging it differently; they needn’t even explicitly but intuitively (the level you aimed for, or what?) they will.
Second, all the groupwise that you do, doesn’t reflect in-group dynamics at the actual workplace and work flows, nor does it reflect the actual challenges, nor the individuals changing moods (attitudes). Oh the latter: Your attempt at changing Attitude is geared towards A in relation to infosec but that’s only such a tiny, so easily overlooked and forgettable part of the A all-the-time in the workspace.
Third, and arguably foremost, to plug ‘arguably’ as a trick’let to appear more interesting, What you aim for is not blank flat knowledge, nor even attitude, but Behavioural change. Do you really use the methods to achieve that ..?
No you don’t.
Oh and of course I titled this post with something-something 5, to get more views. Geez, if you even fell for that… And:
[Your kindergarten Board wish they could ever obtain such a B-room; Haut Königsburg]
Ten reasons quantum crypto will not
There may be more reasons that quantum crypto will not protect you against those evil villains out there, as suggested here (in Dutch) but quod non!!! (as I said; in Dutch ;-| ), for the not ten but one single reason:
When ‘hackers’ will not be able to access your comms when you will be using quantum crypto, so governments will also not so forget about it you will be jailed for life for using quantum crypto in the first place and also you are the most suspect of all and if still you’d try to use it, you will be whacked off-line … and your house raided, etc.etc. Because this.
And because, however clever you might think you are, obviously in vein, there will always be the ‘endpoint-to-you gap’ where parties may intervene.
Or they put a gun to your head. Good luck refusing.
And governments will restrict to their own comms; the most powerful one grabbing the scene and leaving all of the rest in the dust. And IF you believe their beneficial ethics, well you just removed yourself from serious discussion.
Anyway:
[Drone with too much tilt shift, or ’70s display scanned from an (actual, physical) slide..? (mine; ed.); <undisclosed location>]
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what infosec behaviour I mean?
Am working on an extensive piece, a long-longread, on as many aspects of behavioural change towards true ‘secure’ user behaviour as I can cram into text. I.e., moving beyond mere full ‘awareness’ as phases 2/3 of this, to phase 4. Strange, by the way, that there is in that no end ‘phase’ or cycle in which one finds out to have been in phase 4 already for some time but didn’t notice and now forgets just as quickly as that seems ‘logical’.
But back to today’s subject, which is the same, but on a tangent. My question to you dear readers [why the plural, or >0 ..?] is:
Would you have pointers to (semi)scientific writing on the use of nudges to (almost)stealthily change (infosec-related) behaviour ..?
I could very much use that. Other sectors of human behaviour influencing studies have ample info on the effectiveness of such nudges, but for infosec I’m still with Googlewhack-like results.
Thanks in advance… Plus:
[The ways to seek prosperity from misery; EPIC Dublin]
Knitting against Cyberrrr…
This here piece, being the explanation why hiding in plain sight beats overtly-crypto tools. Quite enough said, right, apart from the note that the solution is a form of arms’ race flipping, as predicted. Would only wonder (again) how many cat pics out there, have stego messages, and how many TLAs are constantly scanning all Pinterest- and others- uploaded pics for nefarious content. Where the sheer volume created by innocent users, helps the bad guys (girls…!) to escape (timely) detection, or what?
Maybe sometimes human interaction can still help, like with this. Of quite another category but deserving massive global support nevertheless. Can ABC’s and Facebk’s image recognition engines be sollicited, or are we looking at the hardest pics still eluding the strongest AI-yet ..?
Back to knitting-style help it is … And:
[If you recognise this’ your country, you just got an interesting PM story… (truly congrats)]
Stay put while moving your address
Lately, there were a number of times I was reminded that for those that still use email (i.e., the overly vast majority of us!), some email addresses have been more stable over time than mere snail street addresses. And, with the different use of email versus the type that it was (derived-)named after, quite some times your ‘stable’ email address is harder to change. Where moving physical home address will easily redirect your mailman’s delivery for a large sway of services (utilities, subscriptions, et al.), such service doesn’t necessarily exist for email.
Not strange. You can move house and then take your email with you. Come to think of it, this is part of the greatness of the OSI model, right?
But strange. Try to ‘move’ (i.e., change) your private email address, that you use for innumerable websites, affiliation subscriptions, socmed profiles, etc.etc., and … you’re hosed. In particular, when you don’t have access to your former email address e.g., when switching employers (wasn’t a good idea to begin with, even in about-all of the world where using company equipment still leaves you with all privacy protection you’d need, excepting the corner of the world that their figurehead took out of the world’s developments so will revert to backwater, developing country-terrain), the confirm-change email may be unreachable as you can’t login to your old mail account… No solution provided anywhere.
So, as easy as it should be to move physically and have your physical address changed in public record systems, as easy it should be to keep some email address(es) that are used to identify you in person even when you’ve moved ISP…
Question to you: Is this covered under the “Must be able to move” hardcore requirement always under the GDPR..? *All* data should be coughed up in a machine-readable format to be processed in similar manner by some other service provider. That goes for email services too, automatically, so how will the (your!) sender/receiver addresses still be valid when you’ve moved ..?
If the latter works, then any service provider ID in your email address must work on any other provider’s systems, or your former is liable for up to 2% of global (sic) turnover. Quite a (damages avoidance) budget, to make things work…
Oh, and:
[Take a seat; not your address of any kind; Dublin Castle]
Panoptic business
Recently, I heard the gross error of thinking again “When people use their business IT for private purposes, they have no right to privacy” – rightly countered from the room that standing European law most clearly has the opposite: Employer has zero rights to see anything unless there’s prior evidence of some malfeasance or malfunctioning (e.g., performance problems – of the employee, not of the infra…). So, blanket or categorical surveillance (or blocking, which presupposes monitoring how the heck else would you detect the to-be-blocked URLs..!?): No sir.
What about the recent spat where a bank blocked Netflix because employees’ use of it at home, using company laptops that Citrixed back to the bank and from there onward, overloaded networks of sad (typo not said, intended to characterise the) bank? Well, a. how dumb can you be to Netflix over Citrix etc, or is one so incredibly cheap (hey, works at bank; apart from the exceptions you know, go figure) that bandwidth cost is an issue? Then maybe you’re too scroogy to be allowed to wok at a bank in the first place; monumental failure of ethics wise, b. in this case, clearly there are performance issues – when it’s noticable on the company network level, certainly it goes for a number of individuals, even if only by disturbing the performance (bandwidth availability) of others. c. there’s no absolutes in what employers cannot do.
But clearly, in just about every case considered today where categorical blocking by blacklisting would be attempted because managers sideways involved in HR stuff would understand what the URL is about, i.e., not-business-related entertainment however SFW or N-, skipping the blacklisting of the really to be blacklisted sites (torrents, malware shops and other rogue tooling),
we have again the panopticon argument of “observation changes behaviour” – and in these times of clueless managers (the less they know that of themselves, the worse cases they are!), you need in particular those ‘users’/employees that go beyond monkey typing away to be creative in their work and find new revenu / cost reduction directions. Which means that when you observe, or only log to be able to observe, you squelch productivity and profitability… Way to go!
Oh, and:
[Not the one mentioned above; HypoVereins München on a heat-hazy day]