Andrew Tanenbaum on Security vs Fun-Loving Students

... "some modicum of security was required to prevent fun-loving students from spoofing routers by sending them false routing information."

- Andrew S. Tanenbaum regarding OSPF in Computer Networks (4th ed.)

On the Subject of Privacy and Pants...

I was proofreading a privacy paper this afternoon and came across the funniest typo. I feel it is funnier if I illustrate it so that you too can see what popped into my head when I read it:

(Photo by cnewtoncom. For geek points, guess whose famous pants those are without clicking the link!)

Privacy breeches are much funnier than privacy breaches.

I'm not going to be able to get dressed tomorrow without laughing at my privacy-preserving pants. One could argue, perhaps, that the function of many pants is to provide basic privacy... but I leave the finding of non privacy-preserving pants as an exercise to the reader. And though it is a bit tempting to run a contest for the best illustration of a privacy breech breach, I imagine it would get not safe for work very quickly!

I admit, I laughed: LulzSec as popular as orgasms?

Unless you've been ignoring the news for the past few weeks, you've probably seen mention of LulzSec, and if you're a security person you've probably seen this article about Why [security folk] secretly love LulzSec. The short version is that they're the latest hacker gang, and rather than profit or social justice, they're just in it for the lulz. They're really making the state of computer security more obvious to the layperson:

LulzSec is running around pummelling some of the world's most powerful organisations into the ground... for laughs! For lulz! For shits and giggles! Surely that tells you what you need to know about computer security: there isn't any.

While I often joke that web security is an oxymoron, they demonstrate it in the funniest ways they can find. As a web security researcher, I have to admit that their antics often make me laugh... and kinda make me wish I was allowed to use stolen data for research -- all those passwords! Data was always hard to come by when I did my spam immune system work so that much just makes me salivate a little, even if I'm pretty sure our ethics committee wouldn't let me touch it. And it's not like I do authentication research. But still! Data! I hope someone's doing cool things with it.

But here's a bit of meta-lulz: LulzSec scam discovered on Facebook - but it's not what you think. The excellent Graham Cluley discovers a Facebook scam that purports to have a picture of a LulzSec suspect, and then he sleuths out that the pixelated bait picture is, in fact, of another hacker arrested in 2008.

This means that LulzSec is apparently now so newsworthy that potential pictures of them can be used as bait for Facebook scams. They're up there with Obama, celebrity sex tapes and the ever-popular dislike button.

I don't know about you, but I got a great chuckle out of the thought that LulzSec might be as popular as orgasms... at least when it comes to scam bait.

And to end with more lulz, here's my favourite LulzSec tweet of today, which came in the midst of explaining what they had and hadn't actually hacked as the media attributes everything and anything to them:

Zuckerberg... hacked?

There's an amusing story up on TechCrunch suggesting that Mark Zuckerberg's fan page may have been hacked.

Obviously, Zuckerberg didn’t actually write it. Or at least, we’re pretty sure he didn’t. Instead, it would appear that his fan page was hacked. Facebook has now taken down the page — but not before we grabbed a screenshot.

Honestly, these things happen. But what made the story actually funny to me was this tweet:

@snipeyhead Hah. FB is flagging the Tech Crunch article reporting on Zuckerberg's fan page hack as "abusive or spammy" http://twitpic.com/3thf68 #classy

Edit: More news on what happened according to Facebook: Facebook blames bug for Zuckerberg page hack

Ethical hacking? How about some ethical writing?

Now, I haven't verified this at all, but here's an interesting link for you: Ankit Fadia / Manu Zacharia - "Network Intrusion Alert" Heavily Plagiarized.

An extremely detailed analysis has been performed for the first chapter (10 pages) to show the scope and method of plagiarism. Our analysis shows that roughly 90% of the first chapter, including the six graphics used, has been taken from other sources. Due to time constraints, notes are used for brevity for the rest of the material.

Given my experiences with plagiarism among my undergraduate students and the recent Cooks Source plagarism story (which attracted quite a lot of attention)... I'm sadly inclined to believe that this entire book may be plagiarized.

What's funny about this story is that the book in contention here is titled "Network Intrusion Alert: An Ethical Hacking Guide to Intrusion Detection." Emphasis mine.

A brutally honest privacy policy

Dan Tynan has decided to cut through the legalease and confusion inherent in many privacy policies and produced a "real" privacy policy which is open-sourced for anyone to adopt. What results is hilarious and sad at once because it reflects a lot of how "private" data may be used. Here's an excerpt:

"At COMPANY _______ we value your privacy a great deal. Almost as much as we value the ability to take the data you give us and slice, dice, julienne, mash, puree and serve it to our business partners, which may include third-party advertising networks, data brokers, networks of affiliate sites, parent companies, subsidiaries, and other entities, none of which we’ll bother to list here because they can change from week to week and, besides, we know you’re not really paying attention.

We’ll also share all of this information with the government. We’re just suckers for guys with crew cuts carrying subpoenas.

Remember, when you visit our Web site, our Web site is also visiting you. And we’ve brought a dozen or more friends with us, depending on how many ad networks and third-party data services we use. We’re not going to tell which ones, though you could probably figure this out by carefully watching the different URLs that flash across the bottom of your browser as each page loads or when you mouse over various bits. It’s not like you’ve got better things to do.

...

So just to recap: Your information is extremely valuable to us. Our business model would totally collapse without it. No IPO, no stock options; all those 80-hour weeks and bupkis to show for it. So we’ll do our very best to use it in as many potentially profitable ways as we can conjure, over and over, while attempting to convince you there’s nothing to worry about.

Read the rest along with commentary on Dan's blog. He notes that it’s 5,085 words shorter than Facebook’s policy, just for comparison.