Enjoyed this post over at Donal’s site, (as I do all his stuff). Well worth a read…click on:
Ockham’s Razor; Cavity Searches and Internet Filtering.
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | No Comments »
Some really concerning updates at News.com and the recent blog post on the Government site. It really is no wonder that there are some very worried and scared people out there. I don’t know what is scarier:
- That Conroy and co. are so determined to make this work even against expert advice.
- That they actually believe they can make it work (slight difference to the last point).
- Who is whispering in their ears? (Still no answers to this though I acknowledge they probably have thousands of questions to answer).
- That the ISPs themselves still seem to have little clue about what the hell is going on even though this is due to start!
- That questions about our freedoms are being brushed aside.
- That they actually believe they will protect the children. Guys, remember Bob Hawke protecting the children?
All Australian Internet Filtering/Censorship posts here.
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | No Comments »
Ah, lets just leave it to Anton Chuvakin who’s covering a lot of these “retarded” (his words) postings here at his blog.
Related post on “progress” (or rather lack of) in 2008. We can talk until the cows come home.
My prediction (more wishful thinking), I’ll go outside the industry. Shane Warne to do a Michael Jordan – return for the Ashes, smash the poms and then retire again. (Though this is dependent upon selectors, captain etc I suppose extending the “invitation”). Lets leave egos and any old grudges aside. Warne in 2009! 
Posted in Ford Falcon | No Comments »
I just wanted to take some time out from the usual rants here to thank all of our Securus Global clients for their support in 2008, and we’re looking forward to working with everyone in 2009. (Though I know with many of you, the projects haven’t stopped and we’re almost fully booked through the whole Christmas and New Year period, and well into February).
The re-branding to Securus Global at the start of the year went smoother than we could ever have expected and our growth has also exceeded our expectations. We didn’t enter any “Fastest” growing company competitions this year, but if we had, I am sure for our sector, we’d have been right up there.
It’s an honor for us to be the preferred security services provider to many of the region’s largest and most prestigious companies across most sectors. We’re also working with some good security conscious vendors who’ve seen there’s value in getting Securus Global to “test” their products/software/appliances etc before going into production release. (One of the reasons you haven’t seen many public released vulnerabilities from us this year). I wish more companies would start doing things like this. It would make the world a slightly more secure place.
Thank you also to all of our Beast or Buddha readers and contributors from around the world. I’ve met some awesome Information Security professionals through this blog and also now through Twitter. I know many still wonder what the hell Twitter is, but for me personally, I now have about 200 new contacts that I didn’t have at the start of the year – some awesomely brilliant people out there!
Securus Global plans to further expand in 2009 – new offices, new service offerings and a continued focus on providing the best security services in the region (and world), delivered by one of the best teams anywhere. (BTW, we do also work with International companies from all over the world so do contact us if you’re keen to talk about how we can help you. End marketing rant).
I’ll continue to rant, be opininated but as always, be open to your thoughts and criticisms of what I say. This isn’t a goodbye for the year as I am sure there’ll continue to be plenty of fodder to inspire rants throughout the next couple of weeks.
All the best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to our clients, industry friends, Beast or Buddha readers and my Twitters.
The Securus Global Team.
Posted in Securus Global | No Comments »
Securus Global’s Matthew Strahan interviewed here at BAN.THIS.URL on “….flaws in Aussie net filtering scheme”.
19 Dec 2008: Second part of Interview added here.
20 Dec 2008: Final installment of Interview added here.
Related posts:
http://beastorbuddha.com/category/internet-filtering/
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | 8 Comments »
With some “experts” suggesting you switch browsers to hide away from bad vulnerabilities in IE, you have to wonder what some of these people are thinking. It continues to highlight the IT industry’s obsession with band-aid solutions – rarely looking at, nor attacking, the root cause of the problems we face with insecure software.
David Rice in his latest post here at the Geekonomics website covers it well.
Posted in Bad Developers, Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Vulnerability Management, WTF | 2 Comments »
Threat: • noun 1 a stated intention to inflict injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone. 2 a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger. 3 the possibility of trouble or danger.
http://www.securityfocus.com/
http://www.kaspersky.com/
http://www.mcafee.com/us/
http://www.trendmicro.com.au/au/home/index.html
I’ve never paid to much attention to the various “Threat Levels” on the vendor sites. Surely the threat level is always “High”? If it’s ever not deemed that, are we assuming at that single point in time we’re secure and under no threat at all?
Warning…Warning…Warning…….
Posted in Dumb Security, WTF | 3 Comments »
Post on Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy new blog.
Interesting notes from “Tristan”, one of the recent posters:
“62 pages (at the time of writing), and not a supportive comment for the cleanfeed to be found. Comments on this blog were obviously opened to hear the public’s view on topics such as the proposed ISP level filtering. How many more pages of comments expressing their opposition with the policy to the extent that they will abandon voting for labor, will it take before Conroy takes notice?”
Another discussion has headed down a similar path. What did the department think would happen when asking questions about the digital economy on one had and Australia’s approach and on the other, they’re working on crippling the delivery mechanism?
What does the digital economy encompass?
There’s been a bit of this going on lately and you have to wonder if there is a strategy at all….hang on….”strategy”?! I should say “idea at all about any of this”! How backwards have we gone? Does anyone remember NOIE, the NOIE website and the strategies for e-business/e-commerce that NOIE was promoting? (Many years ago now). Did it all just get flushed away and forgotten? It seemed at the time NOIE was on the right track and we now sound like we’re back at the starting blocks trying to figure out what this Internet business thing is?!
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | 2 Comments »
With a new security survey being released almost daily, usually by a product vendor whose goal is to promote their wares, I thought I would do my own little survey (if you could call it that). Securus Global works with businesses of all sizes and across most industry sectors. We randomly selected a sample of 20 CSOs and IT Security Managers and asked them a few basic questions.
How do you compare? Keen on your comments….Read on….
Posted in Research, Risk Management | 2 Comments »
From Mike Dahn’s PCI Blog:
http://pcianswers.com/2008/12/09/pci-already-addresses-virtualization/
Well worth a read.
Posted in PCI, PCI DSS | 2 Comments »
You may have already read about this in MIS (and yes, the “spokesman” comments were mine representing the opinions of AISA – not Securus Global or Beast or Buddha), but here is the full press release that people have been asking to see:
http://www.aisa.org.au/index.php?page=175
About AISA: http://www.aisa.org.au/
Posted in Bad Developers, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | No Comments »
This is too cool.
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, Too cool, WTF | 1 Comment »
http://www.f-secure.com/2008/2/index.html
The data shows predictions by some vendors earlier this year were a bit premature (read: silly) – and if anyone believed they were “on top of it” (as some claimed they were), I’d say those people were extreme optimists. We can only hope.
Easy predictions for 2009 – it’ll get even worse. No great amount of genius required to make a statement like that from me. New technologies, surprises when we start publishing stuff on existing technologies and the ongoing threats will be the gist of it for 2009. Anyway, the F-Secure report is worth the read as it always is.
Reading through some of the proposed plans by governments and other bodies to attack the problems leaves me somewhat perplexed at times.
Posted in Applications, Bad Stuff, Research, Risk Management, Vulnerability Management, Web Application Security, cyber crime, news | No Comments »
While Australia has led the way in many world first achievements…and we know we are good….look at our Olympic stats pound for pound….we’re up there…numero Uno most times! Yeah….we’re good….we know that.
In the last 10 years or so (under the Howard government), we’ve decided to become stooges to the Bush administration…we all know that….no need for referencing here. Trust me, most aussies don’t support that but our previous PM got his rocks off being photographed next to the numb nuts [about to leave the US presidency]. (Aside: smart people may judge that as the “dark ages” of US history).
Anyway, back to the point. Did we as a country decide, out of the blue, to start censorship of the Internet on our own and on behalf of our people? I can’t recall anything like this being the “Ausssie” thing to do?!
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | 7 Comments »
Thanks D.
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering | 2 Comments »
Very few people outside of our industry are actually aware of the government’s plans for censorship of the Internet in Australia. This is quite scary because when it kicks off (and the clock is ticking), the government spin/marketing will go all out to get “mainstream” Australia onside with them.
I urge you all to spread the truth about what this means to Australia. Talk to your family and friends and ask them the following:
1. Are you aware that the Australian Government is currently trialling censorship of the Internet, similar to that in place in China?
2. Do you believe that politicians should decide on your behalf what you should be allowed to access and view on the Internet?
3. Do you support Internet censorship?
4. Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Once deployed, every Internet user in Australia will be subjected. There is no opt-out. After hearing this, do you support the Australian Government’s plans for Internet censorship?
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | 3 Comments »
It’s not just a bad dream is it? It’s scary to think that this “idea” is still on the cards and sanity has yet to prevail. It’s even harder to believe that we have people sitting in Canberra believing they are leading some revolutionary crusade against the evils of the Internet. And thus the reason for another post on this topic! There’s so much wrong here on so many levels but the scariest thing to me is that once you head down a path like this, as I have mentioned before, it can only get worse.
straxd talked here about this a couple of months ago. We linked some stuff from D’s site here and included an article from overseas ridiculing this and we just keep thinking, it’ll all end soon…….but it doesn’t.
We can’t become complacent and expect it will [end soon]. It’s good to see people out there continuing to keep this protest going:
- BG’s link in the Forums
- Chris Berg opinion piece from The Age.
- No Clean Feed
- BAN.THIS.URL
Happy to get responses with more links to good sites. I know there is quite a few.
I wonder if sites that cover Information Security topics will also be filtered eventually!? Why would that be a dumb question? Hey, who would have thought a few years back we’d be talking about Australia becoming like China in terms of Internet censorship?!
Posted in Bad Stuff, Dumb Security, Internet Filtering, WTF | 8 Comments »
Cred to Darren Pauli for analysing and questioning press release. Hey, I’m a cynic at the best of times as you know and while I acknowledge that information can and is useful, we’re so inundated with blatant marketing wrapped up as journalism a lot of the time, that the good gets tainted with the bad. (Old story I know as I write about this regularly). While interesting data/information was produced, the theme of the press release being discussed came back to marketing and how a product will now protect “Australians” from this specific threat – thus my statement/challenge that Darren quoted. If only it was that simple marketing dudes.
Posted in Research, Vulnerability Management, Web Application Security, cyber crime, news | No Comments »
We’ve just had our best IT Security conference in Australia, Ruxcon, and not one hint of it in any of the IT press sites. Do link me stuff if I have missed it. (I couldn’t get there myself sadly).
No doubts Patrick Gray will cover it in his Risky Business podcasts. Cred to Pat as usual for his support of the industry here. For some of you others, I assume you’re waiting on the next vendor survey to update us with the latest from the IT Security world.
Posted in Research, news | 2 Comments »
