Spirit on Insinuator.net - Bold Statements

Security Team 2.0

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m currently catching up on a lot of papers and presentation from the Usenix Security Symposium in order to finish the blog post series I started last week (summarizing WOOT and LEET). One presentation, which unfortunately is not available online [edit: see also update, videos are available now], included several particularly relevant messages that I want to share in this dedicated post. Chris Evans, the head of the Google Chrome security team (herein short: GCST), described some new approaches they employed for their security team operations, some lessons learned, and how others can benefit from it as well (actually the potential of these messages to make the world a safer place was my motivation to write this post, even though I got teased for supposedly being a Google fanboy 😉 ):

Ganz Gallien?

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

“Nein! Ein von unbeugsamen Galliern bevölkertes Dorf hört nicht auf, dem Eindringling Widerstand zu leisten.”

This is a famous quote pretty much every German kid used to know. Not sure if this still applies though, my three haven’t touched Asterix comics so far. Anyhow, you might ask why I cite this.

Simple answer: see this recent article from the Guardian on a Utah-based ISP “resisting some pressure”. That’s the spirit…

Have a great Sunday everybody,

“What’s so special about Troopers?”

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This week I stayed some days in Zurich, to give a workshop and to meet both clients and fellow researchers (kudos again to C. for the awesome office tour @Google). In the course of one of those dinners somehow Troopers was mentioned and a guy asked: “I’ve heard of the conference. What’s so special about it?”

Funnily enough I didn’t even have to respond myself as a 2011 attendee coincidentally present at the table jumped in and started praising the event (“best con ever. great spirit, great talks”). Obviously this gave me a big grin… but it reminded as well me that some of you might ask themselves the very same question.

Today I feel like Stansfield

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

… the corrupt DEA agent in Luc Besson’s great movie “Léon (The Professional)”. I’m sure quite some of you, dear readers, know the plot…
Just before the final shootout, when sending the first men of the NYPD ESU team into Léon’s apartment, he tells them to “Be careful!”. After learning those men got killed he just comments: “I told you”.
[btw: before yelling to bring “EEEEEEEVERYONE!!!!”, as those familiar with the piece will certainly remember ;-)].