Tag: cyberwar

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Weekly Wrap 126: Wattle, sniffle and SCADAgeddon

Monday 29 October to Sunday 4 November 2012 was a busy week, made slightly less busy by the need to recover from the throat infection identified last week and then, because I was run down, fatigue that was probably a mix of a cold and hay fever.

Hence the photograph of the wattle I’ve posted here. It is to blame.

Dear Plant Kingdom, if I spread my genetic material all over you the way you do over me, I’d be arrested! Please behave yourself.

[Update 1545 AEDT: I am reliably informed that the hay fever is unlikely to be caused by wattle pollen.]

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Also, the Sydney Opera House has posted the video of my Festival of Dangerous Ideas panel, I Share Therefore I Am. I’ll write more about that in due course.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday evening I had a few beers with Michael McKinnon from AVG Australia and New Zealand, which they paid for.
  • On Tuesday morning I attended the breakfast launch of Windows Phone 8 at the Blue Bar,level 36 of the Shangri-La Hotel, overlooking Sydney Harbour. Microsoft paid for that, obviously.

The Week Ahead

Next week is pretty much all about Singapore. On Monday I’ll head down to Sydney and get some writing out of the way. Then on Tuesday it’s Singapore Airlines flight SQ212 departing Sydney at 0905 AEDT and arriving in Singapore mid-afternoon local time.

Wednesday is Verizon Business’ APAC Media Day, a five-hour meeting followed by cocktails. On Thursday I’m visiting the hospitality tent at the Barclays Singapore Open golf tournament as Verizon’s guest. Friday through Sunday has yet to be finalised, but there’ll be at least two articles to write and a podcast to produce.

Oh, and a social life.

My flight back to Sydney SQ231 leaves Singapore at 45 minutes past midnight Sunday night — so technically that’s Monday morning.

[Photo: Wattle near Railway Parade, near Wentworth Falls, one of the causes of my hay fever this week.]

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Talking spear phishing on Balls Radio

My regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio returned this week after a wee break, and the topic was spear phishing.

Most of what we discussed was based on newly-released research from Websense and my as-yet-unreported conversations with their guys.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, have a listen to the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:00 — 6.3MB)

The program is no longer broadcast on FM99.3 Northside Radio, it’s purely a podcast. You can subscribe over at the website.

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Weekly Wrap 112: Security, hacks, unexpected encounters

I was in Sydney for most of my week Monday 23 to Sunday 29 July 2012, and despite some minor annoyances I’m reasonably pleased with the results.

I also started a new gig on a SEKRIT project. It looks like it’ll be quite fun, but I won’t be able to tell you about it for ages.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 147, “Mid-2012 malware: new flavours, same ice cream”. Has 2012 turned out to be “the year of cyberwar” accompanied by an explosion of Android malware? Hear from Alex Kirk, senior research analyst with the Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team (VRT); David Hall, Symantec’s consumer spokesperson for Asia Pacific; and Bob Hansmann, senior product marketing manager at Websense.

Articles

If ever there was a week that illustrated my transition to grumpy-old-man writing, this is it.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

It looks like it’ll be a relatively easy week, but with most of it spent at Wentworth Falls — both because that’s the schedule and because it’s that end-of-the-month week where I really don’t have any money left.

[Photo: Diary of the Lost Crane being the view from level 12 of the Metro Sydney Central Hotel on a foggy Wednesday morning.]

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Talking malware and stuff on Balls Radio, FM 99.3

Here’s last night’s regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio from FM 99.3 Northside Radio in Sydney.

I waffled on disjointedly about stuff that was on my mind after this week’s Patch Monday podcast — that is, how midway through 2012 it looks like all this talk of cyberwar is rubbish — and something about dental floss.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:34 — 4.6MB)

I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.

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Flame gets me talking cyberwar worms on The Project

The Flame worm seems to have captured the imagination of the mainstream media this week — to the point where I ended up talking about it on the Channel TEN program The Project on Tuesday night.

If you’re not up to speed yet, try my day one piece for Crikey then my day two piece for CSO Online — the latter having been written after we’d all calmed down a bit.

As you can see, I’ve uploaded the relevant video clip to YouTube because I can’t seem to get the official embed code from The Project’s website to work properly. If that YouTube embed isn’t working either, you can view the segment on YouTube. Or watch the entire program segment on The Project’s website.

Yes, The Project team really did manage to turn a discussion of cyberwar into a joke about masturbating to internet pornography. It’s a talent.

Continue reading “Flame gets me talking cyberwar worms on The Project”

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Weekly Wrap 104: Worms, smartphones and television

My week from Monday 28 May to Sunday 3 June 2012 was complex, busy and stressful, yet there were also some memorable highlights.

I won’t be telling you anything about the latter.

I will say that spending the night in six different locations in one week is probably stress-inducing.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 140, “Cybercrime: it’s just too easy”, the second of two episodes based on material recorded at the AusCERT 2012 information security conference. AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram explains why cybercrime is here to stay, and F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen details a complex transnational criminal operation that saw goods bought fraudulently in Denmark being resold in Moscow, as well giving his views on hacktivism and the level to which antivirus companies should cooperate with governments.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I attended the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone at the Sydney’s Capitol Theatre, where I was given food and drink — and later a review unit of said smartphone.
  • Even though I didn’t go paintballing with Eugene Kaspersky last week, I still got the media pack from Kaspersky Lab. The army-style khaki satchel contained: a t-shirt emblazoned with my callsign “Seagull 17”; a packet of Austcam “Paint, face, camouflage NSN 6850-66-130-0172”; blank dog tags attacked to a Kaspersky-branded USB memory key, containing the media kit of course; a Mars Bar 2-pack; and a can of V, that terribly dangerous drink that should be banned, which I gave away.

The Week Ahead

Monday, as always, is a busy day of media production as well as the discussion I’m leading in Katoomba, Surviving and thriving as a freelancer in a globalised market. And it’s a Full Moon, so that’ll help.

The rest of the week will be easier, in theory — at least as far as work goes — and I even hope to spend Friday with a friend and then head to Sydney as an early start to the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.

I’d originally intended to be in Sydney on Tuesday evening. Intel has a launch event for their 3rd Generation Core processor chips. But to be honest I find it difficult to excited by new widgets — they’re faster and better that the previous widgets, right? — so I think I’ll give it a miss. Plus at the start of a new month no-one has yet paid for last month’s work, so it’s hard to justify the expense — especially since I’ll be paying for accommodation away from Bunjaree Cottages for the long weekend.

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) and via Instagram. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.

[Photo: Sydney’s Saturday night fashion. These young women were spotted alighting at Wynyard station, Sydney, around 11.30pm Saturday night. While I’m obviously no fashion guru, I think it’s fair to say that this look does not flatter them. What made it worse was that neither of the women were steady with their operation of those heels. As they walked down the platform there was considerable swaying and undulation. And it didn’t seem to be because they were drunk. Can someone explain to me when undergarments became acceptable Saturday night partywear? I want to say something about yellow and black being the colours of warning, but I’d better not.]