No Canberra for cyberwar after all

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:

Weekly Wrap 66: Kuala Lumpur: haze, hackers, food aplenty

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Most of the week was spent in Kuala Lumpur, my first visit. I’ll write more about that anon.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 104, “Can security ever beat PEBKAC?”. A conversation with Paul Ducklin, head of technology for the Asia-Pacific region with Sophos, and Chris Gatford, proprietor of Hack Labs, a specialist in penetration testing.

Articles

Further material from the Kaspersky Lab event is appearing from today.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I had lunch at Ocean Restaurant, Cockle Bay Wharf, thanks to Check Point. There’s some material from the conversations there that will appear in the next few days.
  • On Tuesday night I travelled to Kuala Lumpur thanks to Kasperky Lab. Their largesse included flights and airport transfers; meals and accommodation at Le Meridien; an evening sightseeing trip to Putrajaya including dinner on a cruise boat; a Kaspersky-branded leather document case, rather nice actually; Kaspersky-branded USB-powered speakers; and a t-shirt. I declined the offer of an all-day sightseeing tour on Friday because I had work to do.

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: Kuala Lumpur skyline, shrouded in haze, photographed with my battered HTC Desire from the 14th floor of Le Meridien, KL Sentral. It’s like this pretty much all day, what with the Indonesians burning down the rainforests and all. The photo doesn’t do the scene justice. I have since obtained a decent camera.]

Weekly Wrap 65: Better late than never, perhaps

A supposedly-weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers Monday 29 August to Sunday 4 September 2011, a week during which I was so mentally exhausted I needed to take a bit of a break — hence the relatively low level of media output.

I also did about a day’s worth of geek-for-hire stuff for some long-standing clients. That was primarily web development, not the sort of thing I detail here unless there’s something interesting to show you.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 103, “Google’s real names a real disaster”. A conversation with Kirrily “Skud” Robert, about which I have already written stuff.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None.

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.

Recording in the streets of Kuala Lumpur

I decided to record this week’s Patch Monday podcast in the streets of Kuala Lumpur, so I chose Jalan Alor in Bukit Bintang, a street lined with hawker food stalls.

This is a frame grab from a Flip TV video camera, so it’s a bit rough. But I hope it conveys some of the flavour of the moment.

I’m speaking into my Zoom H4n recorder and its Rode Dead Kitten windscreen, reading the script from my battered old MacBook Pro. The nearby family seems bemused.

The finished podcast will be posted on Monday is Crims come to the net: expert and patient.

[Update 12 September 2011: And here’s a video.]

Metronidazole and Kuala Lumpur

OK, so I haven’t even posted a Weekly Wrap and it’s already Tuesday night. However the abscess on my left jaw flared up again on the weekend, and I’ve been put on more serious antibiotics, including the rather nasty metronidazole (pictured).

So, as I write this, I’m about to board Malaysia Airlines flight MH140 to Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days of Kaspersky Lab’s reportedly-generous hospitality — and I can’t have a single drop of alcohol lest I become immediately and seriously ill. Look it up. It’s true.

Bugger, eh?

More news once I touch down in KL…