The Illustrated Primer

Category: Cyber Security

No Russians Need Apply

In clear act of election interference, on October 19, 2020, more than 50 senior former US intel officials knowingly signed a false statement saying they believe the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian information operation.

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Oops He Did it Again

Evaluation Steve Scully’s Twitter melodrama, one can’t but recall the immortal words of the 4th century Roman poet Brittania Spearus

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The Maginot Line of Cyber Security

A fortress is an intuitive analogy for the enterprise but it is an overly hyped and misleading one. Beyond a few shared objectives such as parameter security, surveillance, and physical access to a facility, cyber security has little in common with traditional military fortifications.

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The Great Password Storage Survey

The evidence suggests that the widespread practice of users writing down passwords and keeping them in unsecured locations is a natural response to unrealistic security mandates. Users in general are concerned with productivity and view passwords and their management as unproductive and wasteful activity.

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Good day to you!

A few days ago, I got a phising email. I usually delete these emails promptly, but this one had an interesting component to it: it came with a password protected MS Word document. This is somewhat unusual because they typically expect you to just launch the attachment and activate the payload immediately.

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Capturing the Flag

Going through the meat grinder, you get to witness first hand the process of hot dog making. It’s not a pretty sight, but its an informative one. One of my most profound takeaways from this whole experience was answering the existential question of the spoon.

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Cyber Security Poetry

It was on starless March night,
The spear phishers went out for bite.

Through a zero day vulnerability,
They breached RSA’s network security…

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