Tag: espionage

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Weekly Wrap 405: Too much hospitality in Tasmania

Crossing the DerwentMy week of Monday 26 February to Sunday 4 March 2018 began in Launceston, passed through Hobart and Sydney, and returned to Wentworth Falls.

Many thanks to my Pozible supporters, as well as my generous hosts and guides in Tasmania. I think I’ve put on about 35kg thanks to you.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday afternoon, or Tuesday morning their time, I spoke about the futility of trying to “recall” an email on ABC South-West WA. I won’t be posting the recording.
  • Also on Tuesday afternoon, I spoke about goats and read goat poetry on ABC Hobart. I won’t post that recording either.
  • On Wednesday, I spoke about goats and crowdfunding on Tasmania Talks across northern Tasmania. You can listen at Psychic goat predicts hung parliament in state election.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

This week is primarily a writing and editing week, apart from a scheduled day trip to Sydney on Wednesday. I won’t schedule it any more tightly than that. The weekend is unplanned.

Further Ahead

I’m travelling to a few cities to present at a commercial event. Details TBA, but I’ll be in Melbourne on Tue 20 Mar, Brisbane on Wed 21, Adelaide on Thu 22 (and staying there through the weekend, I hope), and Sydney on Tue 27.

I’ve launched another Pozible campaign, The 9pm Hometown Forum, which aims to fund a Public House Forum episode of the Edict on Saturday 24 March.

Looking way further ahead:

  • Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Conference, Canberra, 10–12 April.
  • Australian Cyber Conference, formerly the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) National Conference, Melbourne, 9–11 October.

[Photo: Crossing the Derwent. Two seabirds skim the wetlands as I cross the Derwent River at Bridgewater, Tasmania, on 26 February 2018.]

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Weekly Wrap 338: A triple cyber and a long walk

Smith's Hall, RozelleMy week of Monday 14 to Sunday 20 November 2016 was less productive than I’d hoped, but hey that seems to be the theme, right?

I have, however, started doing some of the things that my doctor recommended a couple of months back. Starting an exercise regime with some walking, for instance, and a few things that’ll help reduce my stress and anxiety levels.

Articles

Podcasts, Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I covered the Fortinet Security 361° Symposium at the Hilton Hotel Sydney. There was food and drink.

[Photo: Smith’s Hall, Rozelle, photographed 20 November 2016. All I know about this building is that it was built in 1908 and it’s in the inner west Sydney suburb of Rozelle.]

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Talking RATs and webcams on The Project

Screenshot from The Project, 28 February 2014It’s been a while since I got to talk directly to The Project presenters, but I did so last night. And I was captioned as a “Cyber Security Commentator”, which is obviously a bit special.

The story was about the security risks of webcams. Presenter Gorgi Coglan introduced it thusly:

What if I told you that the webcam in your computer could be under the control of someone on the other side of the planet, and watching everything you do right now?

I was pleased that The Project introduced the Channel TEN audience to RATs, or remote administration (or access) tools, and managed — as they nearly always do — to strike the right balance between scary and funny.

Over the fold you’ll find the video of the entire four-minute segment — starting off with a “package”, as they’re called, featuring Hacklabs director Chris Gatford, followed by the panel interviewing me.

It was the Friday team, so that panel consisted of presenter Gorgi Coglan, comedian Lehmo, the inimitable Waleed Aly and, just to be different, Richie Sambora, guitarist of Bon Jovi fame.

Continue reading “Talking RATs and webcams on The Project”

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Weekly Wrap 179: A very Kaspersky Canberra, with stress

Canberra sunrise: click to embiggenMy week Monday 4 to Sunday 10 November 2013 was another busy one, but I survived.

Once more the Weekly Wrap has been hideously delayed, so it’ll just be the facts.

A key part of the week was my trip to Canberra, mainly to cover the speech by Eugene Kaspersky to the National Press Club, but also to squeeze in some meetings with other people while I was there. Kaspersky seems to have dominated my media output for the week.

Podcasts

  • Corrupted Nerds: Conversations 8, being a chat about electronic voting with Dr Vanessa Teague from the University of Melbourne. If you think e-voting is the cure for electoral fraud and mistakes, you’d better listen.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I went to the National Press Cub in Canberra to hear Eugene Kaspersky’s address. I was a guest at the Kaspersky Lab table, and they paid for my flights from Sydney. I paid for my own accommodation because the Kaspersky thing itself could have been a day trip.

[Photo: Canberra sunrise, photographed from Rydges Lakeside Canberra hotel on 7 November 2013.]

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Do McAfee’s new cyberstats really represent a shift?

Composite image of ZDNet column headline and McAfee report title: click for ZDNet columnAs brokers of reliable information about the scale of online crime and espionage, most information security vendors would make great used car salesmen — but McAfee’s latest research finally seems to be taking the right path.

In my column at ZDNet Australia this week, I give McAfee some praise for the most recent research they’ve funded, a preliminary report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies titled The Economic Impact of Cybercrime and Cyber Espionage that dismantles the daft idea that cyberstuff costs the global economy a trillion dollars a year.

McAfee now admits that you can’t run a small-N survey in a couple dozen large, wealthy nations — often a self-selected sample of known crime victims at that — and extrapolate the data globally.

Their new figure is “probably measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars”, although they never quite commit to one specific number…

“In the context of a $70 trillion global economy, these losses are small, but that does not mean it is not in the national interest to try to reduce the loss, and the theft of sensitive military technology creates damage whose full cost is not easily quantifiable in monetary terms,” McAfee writes.

True, but as McAfee themselves point out, this supposed cybercrime explosion is really down at the level of shoplifting. Retailers generally budget between 0.5% and 2% for pilferage and other such “shrinkage”.

I also mention my previous critical comments about various infosec vendors’ dodgy statistics — but I don’t link to them, because they were mostly published at non-CBS mastheads. So here’s a selection of stories I’ve written on this subject over the last couple of years.

Continue reading “Do McAfee’s new cyberstats really represent a shift?”

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Talking NSA and spying on The Project

Screenshot from The Project, 8 July 2013The revelation that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was engaged in such comprehensive spying of American citizens and their allies, some of it possibly unconstitutional, continues to make headlines.

The focus has not narrowed to the manhunt for Edward Snowden as I’d feared. Instead, there’s a steady stream of mainstream news stories as new details emerge — including my third appearance on Channel TEN’s The Project on Monday night.

On the previous two occasions, when I was talking about cyberwar and crimefighting smartphones respectively, I was chatting with the presenters. Since they’re in Melbourne, that involved sitting in front of a green screen and looking down the barrel of a camera as if it’s your best friend.

But this time my comments were to be included in a stand-alone “package”, as they’re called, along with comments from Fairfax journalist Philip Dorling and others. So a videographer came to my hotel room on Friday afternoon to shoot me at my desk, while the Melbourne-based journalist asked me questions via speakerphone — and I looked toward a yellow piece of paper that indicated where the journalist might have been standing had he actually been there.

Ah, the magic of television!

The video of the three-and-a-half minute segment, including comments fore and aft by the presenters, is over the fold.

Continue reading “Talking NSA and spying on The Project”