Securosis Blog

Getting Logstalgic

Mike Rothman · May 2, 2013

Good tip here in a post from the Chief Monkey about a new open source log visualization tool called Logstalgia. It basically shows web access logs visualized as a pong game. So all of you folks in my age bracket will really appreciate it. Here is the description from the project page:

From Macworld: iOS app contains potential malware:

The app Simply Find It, a $2 game from Simply Game, seems harmless enough. But if you run Bitdefender Virus Scanner–a free app in the Mac App Store–it will warn you about the presence of a Trojan horse within the app. A reader tipped Macworld off to the presence of the malware, and we confirmed it.

From the Economist:

TRADITIONALLY, business associates would get to know each other over a round of golf. But road cycling is fast catching up as the preferred way of networking for the modern professional. A growing number of corporate-sponsored charity bike rides and city cycle clubs are providing an ideal opportunity to talk shop with like-minded colleagues and clients while discussing different bike frames and tricky headwinds. Many believe cycling is better than golf for building lasting…

Deployment and topology options

The first thing to consider is how you want deploy external key management. There are four options:

Incite 5/1/2013: Trailblazing Equality

Mike Rothman · May 1, 2013

I recently took the Boy to see “42,” which I highly recommend for everyone. It’s truly a great (though presumably dramatized) story about Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey as they tore down the color line in major league baseball. My stepfather knew Jackie Robinson pretty well and always says great things about him. It seems the movie downplayed the abuse he took, alone, as he worked to overcome stereotypes, bigotry, and intolerance to move toward the ideal of the US founding fathers that “all…

Why do we use big data for security analytics? Aside from big data hype in the press, what motivates customers to look for new solutions? On the other side of the coin, why are vendors altering their products to use – or at least integrate with – big data? In our discussions with customers they cite performance and scalability, particularly for security event analysis. In fact this research project was originally outlined as a broad examination of the potential for big data for security…

As we mentioned in our last post, there are three options for encrypting entire storage volumes:

  • Instance-managed

  • Externally-managed

  • Proxy

We will start with the first two today, then cover proxy encryption and some deeper details on cloud key managers (including SaaS options) next.

Gaming the pirates—literally

Rich · April 29, 2013

This is too good not to share, albeit only tangentially related to our usual SMB and enterprise focus:

A software development company posted a cracked version of their new game to pirate sites, but with a twist:

Courtesy of Forbes:

Freeman, who goes by the hacker handle “Saurik” and created the widely-used app store for jailbroken iOS devices known as Cydia, told me in a phone interview that he discovered yesterday that Glass runs Android 4.0.4, and immediately began testing previously-known exploits that worked on that version of Google’s mobile operating system. Within hours, he found that he could use an exploit released by a hacker who goes by the name B1nary last year to gain full control of…

Security Funding via Tin Cup

Mike Rothman · April 29, 2013

Folks struggling to get funding to implement security programs are a hot button of mine. I know it’s hard. I know we are expected to protect stuff with tighter budgets and fewer resources. A cornerstone of our research is effective prioritization so you can focus on the things most important to your organization. I get all that. But most folks aren’t a lot more sophisticated than passing around a tin cup during the budgeting process and hoping they get sufficient funding.