cyberwar

You are currently browsing articles tagged cyberwar.

Talking AusCERT 2012 and cyberwar on ABC Local Radio

19 May 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

My full output from the AusCERT 2012 information security conference has yet to appear. Stand by. But last night I did a half-hour conference wrap with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio.

We spoke about the conference atmosphere itself, cybercrime, cyberwar, the risk of Cybergeddon (yes, I know), and the claim by Eugene Kaspersky that Apple is ten years behind Microsoft when it comes to security.

Not that Mr Kaspersky would ever, like, troll the entire planet.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:41 — 15.5MB)

What we didn’t talk about, really, was the two stories that have been published so far:

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

Security and the Cloud: Hype versus Reality

11 May 2012 in Business, Internet by Stilgherrian | No comments

My presentation from the Saasu Cloud Conference 2012, which I told you about previously, is now online: Security and the Cloud: Hype versus Reality.

I’ll leave the article to explain itself once you click through, but to provide some Googlejuice here are the words hacking, infosec, cybercrime, cyberwar, information security, malware and cows.

Weekly Wrap 96: Plenty of chaos and a mysterious pump

08 April 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 2 to Sunday 8 April 2012.

T’was a short week in terms of writing and media production because it was the 4-day work week prior to Easter, I spend about 10 hours judging entries in the Lizzies, the Australian IT journalism awards — the finalists have now been announced, and the awards night is on 20 April — three and a half hours troubleshooting the ADSL connection at Bunjaree Cottages, and two hours restoring a website that a new developer had accidentally taken offline.

There was also a mysterious pump.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 132, “Cyberwar: don’t believe the hype”. Thomas Rid, reader in war studies at King’s College London, destroys some myths. I found this to be one of the more fascinating podcasts I’ve ever done.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday I was quoted in Harrison Polites’ story at Technology Spectator, A storm in a postbox, on the Australia Post’s new Digital Mail service and a similar product from Computershare. “I already have a ‘digital mailbox’. It’s called email,” was one of the things I said. “Why on earth would I want yet another information silo to check for so-called ‘important’ mail — by which they seem to mean bills and bank statements?” Plus some stuff about encrypted email.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

I’m in Sydney all this week, and the main blocks of work are a Patch Monday podcast to be posted on Tuesday and a 2000-word feature for ZDNet Australia. I daresay other stuff will turn up as well, but let’s focus on one stressor at a time.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: New Holland Honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae), a daily visitor to Rosella Cottage but a bugger to photograph because they move so fast.]

Weeky Wrap 84: Rosellas, cyberwar and lots of radio

26 January 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 January 2012, posted way late because I’ve been incredibly busy.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 120, “Anonymous vs. Stratfor: the real issues”, being a nice long interview with Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT-Harvest, a privately-held IT security research firm based in Detroit, Michigan. He also edits and publishes the newsletter Cyber Defence Weekly, and is author of the book Surviving Cyberwar.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. I thought things might start picking up this week, but apparently not.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Rosellas neat Wentworth Falls, photographed near Railway Parade on 17 January 2012.]

Talking cybersecurity on ABC Radio National Breakfast

12 January 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Actually, this message about cybersecurity being a serious emerging theme for 2012 seems to be getting more mainstream coverage than I thought it would. I was part of a cybersecurity panel discussion that was broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Breakfast this morning.

Also taking part were Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at IT-Harvest in Detroit (I spoke with him about Anonymous and Stratfor on this week’s Patch Monday podcast), and Sean Kopelke, director of security and compliance solutions at Symantec Australia. The host was Jonathan Green, who is usually editor of ABC The Drum.

Over at the ABC’s website you can find the program audio and (perhaps, eventually) transcript. But I’m also including the audio below, just in case their systems fail.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:35 — 9.5MB)

This audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, of course. Even though we don’t get paid.

Weekly Wrap 69: Teeth and little productivity

03 October 2011 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — and a remarkably unproductive week it was. I’m even posting this summary late!

In part that’s because the Tooth and Shoulder Situation lingered, but also because I reacted poorly to some negative comments on some of my writing. I’ll write more about that soon.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 107, “Cyberwar: back to basics”. A conversation with Nigel Phair, a director of the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I had lunch at Wildfire Restaurant, Circular Quay, courtesy of Bass PR. The event was a security roundtable presented by some of their clients, including Websense, WatchGuard and VMinformer, and analysts Frost & Sullivan. I’ll write something about this in due course.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: My first beer after nearly three weeks of illness and heavy-duty antibiotics. Much deserved. It's a Coopers Pale Ale at The Grand View Hotel, Wentworth Falls. This event actually happened the previous week, but I'm slow.]

No Canberra for cyberwar after all

18 September 2011 in Defence, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

As it happens, I didn’t end up going to the 2nd National Cyber Warfare Conference in Canberra this week. The conference sessions weren’t open to the media, and I decided that it wasn’t worth the trip if we’d have to rely on second-hand information.

That said, we did manage to get a recording of the over-dinner speech by David Irvine, the director-general of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which Liam Tung turned into the story “Insidious” cyber chaos too fast for ASIO. It also served as part of the inspiration for my story Yet another free pass for Aussie spooks.

Who wants to go to Canberra anyway?

However SC Magazine did send Darren Pauli and John Hilvert, and their stories were:

Covering the 2nd National Cyber Warfare Conference

28 August 2011 in Defence, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

As soon as I arrive back from my trip to Kuala Lumpur on 13 September, I’m off to Canberra for the 2nd National Cyber Warfare Conference on 14 and 15 September. No I won’t be. See the comments.

I’m covering it for CSO Online, and for the moment I’m assuming that’ll be in the form of written material. I’d also like to cover it for the Patch Monday podcast, but I don’t think that’ll be possible due to the contractual arrangements.

The event itself runs for a day and a half. An afternoon of presentations followed by a day of roundtable discussions. I’m looking forward to it.

If there’s anything else happening in Canberra either side of this event, please let me know so I can plan to attend,

Patch Monday: Cybersecurity: past, present and future

09 August 2011 in Internet by Stilgherrian | No comments

Last week I had the very great pleasure of interviewing Dr Paul Nielsen, director and chief executive officer of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburg. This week’s Patch Monday podcast is that entire interview.

SEI is the parent organisation of CERT, the original computer emergency response team set up with US Department of Defense funding after the Morris Worm scared the bejesus out of everyone.

Before joining SEI, Dr Nielsen had a 32-year career in the military, reaching the rank of Major General. For a time he commanded the US Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he managed an annual research and development budget of more than US$3 billion. We got on rather well.

For Patch Monday we talked about everything from worms and hacking to password management, the problems that local police face when prosecuting online crime, why Apple has so far had a better security experience than Android and dealing with security issues when the internet is populated with so many different kinds of devices.

We even talked about the evolution of hacking, and I’ve pulled out that part of the conversation for a story at CSO Online, LulzSec, WikiLeaks, Murdoch: hacking’s fourth wave.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

Wanted: Your infosec war stories, anonymity preserved

30 June 2011 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

Information security has an image problem, I reckon. No-one apart from the infosec geeks themselves know what’s really involved in hacking or fighting hackers. So the public thinks it’s all like the bullshit in movies.

Like Hugh Jackman creating a virus in Swordfish, pictured.

Does anyone remember the episode of Spooks where the office lights went out when the hacker breached the firewall?

Let’s fix that.

Let’s hear more about the real war stories. OK, everything has always gotta be so goddam SEKRIT! No-one wants to admit to an embarrassing problem. But I reckon we can tell some of these stories while leaving out the identifying details.

We don’t need to reveal which bank nearly had its data centre pwned by a 14-year-old Ukrainian, nor which vendor’s product provided the bloody great hole he came through. But we can certainly talk about the processes, the time pressures and the paranoia.

This week I’ve started writing for a certain as-yet-undisclosed masthead. I reckon we could do regular stories from the front line of cybersecurity. I’ve been told to go for it. And I reckon it’d be fun to write in a stronger narrative style for a change.

If you are, or know of, someone that I should meet for a few drinks in a quiet place while I take notes, please contact me.

« Older entries