Bob Rudis has a nice post up “Off By One : The Importance Of Fact Checking Breach Reports,” in which he points out some apparent errors in the Massachusetts 2011 breach report, and also provides some graphs. Issues like this are why it’s important to release data. It enables independent error checking, but also allows [...]
I’ve never been a fan of checklists. Too often, checklists replace thinking and consideration. In the book, Andrew and I wrote: CardSystems had the required security certification, but its security was compromised, so where did things goo wrong? Frameworks such as PCI are built around checklists. Checklists compress complex issues into a list of simple [...]
Yesterday, DAn Kaminsky said “There should be a yearly award for Best Security Data, for the best collection and disbursement of hard data and cogent analysis in infosec.” I think it’s a fascinating idea, but think that a yearly award may be premature. However, what I think is sorta irrelevant, absent data. So I’m looking [...]
The security of modern password expiration: an algorithmic framework and empirical analysis, by Yingian Zhang, Fabian Monrose and Michael Reiter. (ACM DOI link) This paper presents the first large-scale study of the success of password expiration in meeting its intended purpose, namely revoking access to an account by an attacker who has captured the account’s [...]
I really like Gunnar Peterson’s post on “Top 5 Security Influencers:” Its December and so its the season for lists. Here is my list of Top 5 Security Influencers, this is the list with the people who have the biggest (good and/or bad) influence on your company and user’s security: My list is slightly different: [...]
In two recent blog posts (here and here), Chris Wysopal (CTO of Veracode) proposed a metric called “Application Security Debt”. I like the general idea, but I have found some problems in his method. In this post, I suggest corrections that will be both more credible and more accurate, at least for half of the [...]
Symantec’s new Norton Cybercrime Index looks like it is mostly a marketing tool. They present it as though there is solid science, data, and methods behind it, but an initial analysis shows that this is probably not the case. The only way to have confidence in this is if Symantec opens up about their algorthms and data.
Brian Krebs has an interesting article on “Java: A Gift to Exploit Pack Makers.” What makes it interesting is that since information security professionals share data so well, Brian was able to go to the top IDS makers and get practical advice on what really works to secure a system. Sorry, dreaming there for a [...]
Over at the Office of Inadequate Security, Dissent does excellent work digging into several perspectives on Discover Card breaches: Discover’s reports, and the (apparent) silence of breached entities. I’m concerned that for many of the breaches they report, we have never seen breach reports filed by the entities themselves nor media reports on the incidents. [...]
The Securosis 2010 Data Security Survey results are out! http://bit.ly/aR4MuY Go, go and be NewSchool! Seriously, don’t spend anymore time here, click the link!