Tag: botnet

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Weekly Wrap 150: Hiatus with hip flask

Danger, at Sydney's Central station: click to embiggenMy week Monday 15 to Sunday 21 April 2013 was demolished by illness, one involving plenty of trips to the bathroom and the need to keep up my fluid intake. I will not be providing photographs.

So a solid week of writing was turned into a week not noted for solidity (sorry), and just one article emerged. I’m told it’s not all that good.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday I had lunch at Wildfire Restaurant at Circular Quay, Sydney, which was a media briefing by Adaptive Planning. So I assume they paid. I know I didn’t. I can’t afford to eat at places like that. I took a photograph of the menu.
  • Later on Monday I had coffee with some folks from Bitdefender. They also gave me a gift pack containing a t-shirt, a novelty USB stick and a hip flask containing something that I suspect has alcohol in it. Very practical. I approve.

The Week Ahead

I’ll figure it out on Monday morning. I know I have lots of writing to catch up on, and there’s a bunch of email asking me to do things I’m sure. But it’s also a public holiday on Thursday for Anzac Day, and I feel quite strongly that public holidays are there for a reason — especially given that Easter failed to be a long weekend for me.

[Photo: Danger, at Sydney’s Central railway station, photographed on 15 April 2013. I asked the workers, and there wasn’t really any danger.]

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Weekly Wrap 97: Facebook, Instagram and emergency duck

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 April 2012 — another short week in terms of writing and media production, thanks to the 4-day work week after Easter.

There’s no photo this week because I lost my camera — though it has since been found in the Blue Mountains taxi where I dropped it. I’ll be collecting it on Sunday, probably.

There was also quite a bit of disruption thanks to the need to perform some emergency geekery. I may or may not write about that another time.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 133, “OS X botnet: disaster or speed bump?”. A chat about the Flashback botnet with Chris Gatford, director of penetration testing firm Hacklabs, and applications architect Benno Rice.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

I’m in Sydney all this week too, before returning to Wentworth Falls on Sunday afternoon. My main task is to complete a feature story for ZDNet Australia and an opinion piece for CSO Online. I’m also attending two launch events for new “smart TVs”, one for Samsung and one for LG. And apart from that I’ll be attempting to avoid the seasonal affective disorder that usually strikes at this time of the year.

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.

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Weekly Wrap 73: The Mysteries of the Desert

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — finally posted on Sunday like it’s meant to be.

On a personal note, it was great to finally get the dental work done so that my jaw is no longer infected. Now, to wait for my shoulder to heal…

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 111, “Cybercrime 2016: a view of the future”. Recorded in Las Vegas, it’s mainly Michael Fey’s view of 2016. He’s McAfee’s worldwide senior vice president of advanced technologies and field engineering. Also, an explanation of how advanced persistent threats are a three-stage attack, and a chat with the bloke who taught me how to create malware and construct botnets in just one hour.

Articles

I wrote another two stories apart from these, one for CSO and one for ZDNet Australia, but they won’t be published until Monday.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I covered the ISACA conference in Sydney, so of course I got free food and drink.
  • On Friday I went to the launch of Intel’s Ultrabook standard for laptops at BAR100, The Rocks in Sydney, so naturally there was more free food and drink. They also gave me an Air-Tech Turbo Blimp radio-controlled indoor airship, which I gave away — to someone who then discovered that the blimp itself wasn’t in the box.

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: A mysterious oval-shaped object in the desert somewhere between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. This might be in Death Valley, but more likely somewhere else. I wasn’t paying much attention until I saw this. Any idea what it is? You can click to embiggen. Oh, and yes this photo was taken last week, not this week, but I’m sure you can live with that.]

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Weekly Wrap 20

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, for those suffering from early-onset dementia.

Articles

  • Is Brisbane’s sewer broadband a crock of …?, for Crikey. Believing that the National Broadband Network will take too long to solve Brisbane’s internet problems, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman has signed a deal with the i3 Group to run fibre through the city’s sewers. As you do.
  • Cloud security? Better get a lawyer, Son!, a 2000-word feature for ZDNet.com.au. As the intro says, “Moving your data into the cloud creates a raft of security challenges, but according to information security specialists, those challenges are less about hackers and more about data availability and signing the right contracts.”

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 61, “Microsoft exposes the botnet threat”. My guest is Microsoft Australia’s chief security advisor, Stuart Strathdee.
  • A Series of Tubes episode 117. Richard Chirgwin’s podcast returns after a bit of a break. Apart from my usual natter about stuff, we hear from i3 Group’s CEO Elfed Thomas about that Brisbane sewer-based fibre project.

Media Appearances

  • Again it’s not strictly “media”, but on Tuesday I took part in a lunchtime discussion about the future of book publishing, hosted by Blurb. I haven’t had time to write it up yet, but here’s Ross Dawson’s summary.

Geekery

  • Wait for it…

Corporate Largesse

  • Blurb paid for Tuesday’s lunch at History House on Macquarie Street. And very pleasant it was.
  • I was invited to a few other things this week, but I was a tad crook and didn’t go. Ethics are restored, or something.

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: Staff of The Duke, Enmore, dress up for The Village People concert at the Enmore Theatre. I won’t link to a higher-resolution version. We have suffered enough.]