Tag: patrick gray

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Finalist in the Optus IT Journalism Awards

Lizzies logoI am somewhat pleased to be a finalist in two categories of the Optus IT Journalism Awards, often called “The Lizzies” because the awards take the form of a lizard — or at least they used to.

Mind you, I’m not all that hopeful of winning.

In the category “Best Columnist”, I’m up against the redoubtable David Braue, who’s won before — as well as Adam Turner, Alex Kidman, Angus Kidman, Ashton Mills, Brett Winterford, John Davidson, Josh Taylor and Luke Hopewell.

My entry had to include four written pieces, so I chose these, all from my ZDNet Australia column, The Full Tilt:

And in the category “Best Audio Program”, my podcast Corrupted Nerds is up against Marc Fennell’s Download This Show, which won last year, and Patrick Gray’s Risky Business, which has won several times before that — as well as ABC Radio National’s Future Tense, Gadget Grill, Naked Geeks, Tech Daily with Andy Wells, and Technology Tuesday with Angus Kidman (which I’ve had to link to with a Google search because there doesn’t seem to be a separate feed for it).

My entry had to include one episode, so I chose Conversations 4: Will the cloud run out of steam?

Click through for the full list of finalists. The winners will be announced at a booze-addled event next Friday night, 9 May 2014.

[Update 11 May 2014: I didn’t win either of these categories. As expected, Marc Fennell’s Download This Show won Best Audio Program, and ZDNet Australia senior journalist Josh Taylor won best columnist. I’ll post the full list of winners once the official version becomes available, but until then here’s Angus Kidman’s unofficial list.]

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Talking about DDoS attacks on ABC TV’s “The Business”

Screenshot from ABC TV's The BusinessA strange thing happened yesterday. A distributed denial service (DDoS) attack, a big one, got reported in the mainstream media as having somehow all but crippled the internet — despite all the journalists presumably continuing to use the internet as usual.

“The internet around the world has been slowed down,” reported the BBC. Um, no.

Now I won’t go through all the details here, because eventually they were properly reported elsewhere and I’m writing it up for Technology Spectator in a piece to be published Tuesday morning. The short version is that a nuanced report on Kaspersky Lab’s Threatpost lost its nuance in the mainstream media, a process helped along by a data-plotting error in early reports. People like Gizmodo hosed down the bulldust.

However I was interviewed by ABC TV’s The Business yesterday, along with Patrick Gray of the Risky Business information security podcast and Ty Miller from penetration testing firm Pure Hacking.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.0MB)

If the embedded video doesn’t work, try the version at the ABC’s website. In both cases the video is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

I’ll also be talking about this DDoS attack on ABC News24 tomorrow morning at 1010 AEDT — and after both of those I’ll ponder the way the media handled this whole thing.

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Talking hacker arrests on ABC’s “The World Today”

While I was busy writing an op-ed on the LulzSec vs Murdoch saga this morning — and I’ll post more about that momentarily — I got a phone call from ABC Radio’s lunchtime current affairs program The World Today to comment on the FBI’s arrest of alleged Anonymous-connected hackers overnight.

The story is TransAtlantic arrests target hackers, and if you click through you’ll get both transcript and audio. You’ll hear me, as well as Patrick Gray, presenter of the Risky Business podcast on information security. The reporter is Sarah Dingle.

I’d be interested to know what you think of these arrests.

Patrick reckons they arrested nobodies.

This current batch of arrests will “bring to justice” a bunch of people who made no attempt to conceal their actions because they’re either technically useless or just didn’t care.

They’re “low hanging anons”.

But that won’t stop the mainstream media from portraying this as the establishment striking back at online troublemakers.

I reckon that while that may or may not be true, the computers the FBI has just seized will be handy evidence when it comes to tracking down other culprits. After all, their operational security has hardly been world class.

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Talking war reporting, in Newcastle this Saturday

I’m making an unexpected trip to Newcastle this Saturday for the National Young Writers Festival, where I’m part of a free panel called No Man’s Land discussing war reportage.

War correspondence is undertaken by all parties involved in conflict. The NGO’s [sic], the military groups, and hopefully the civilians via a free press. This panel is an introduction to how these stories find their way to us.

The other panellists include people with some first-hand experience. Freelance photojournalist Ed Giles, who’s worked across the Middle East and Asia since 2006. Sierra Leonian journalist Olivia Boateng, who fled with her children. One child killed, and her family scattered, Olivia spent 5 years in a refugee camp before being granted refugee status. And there’s author and academic Debra Adelaide, who currently teaches the Creative Writing program at UTS.

I’m replacing Patrick Gray, producer of the Risky Business podcast on information security. Supposedly I’ll be talking about how all this changes in this new high-bandwidth networked age. Or how it doesn’t change.

No Man’s Land is this Saturday 2 October 2010 at the Elderly Citizens Centre [shoosh!], Laing Street, Newcastle, from 2.30pm to 4pm. It’s free, and you don’t have to register. Just rock up. And you can buy me a drink afterwards.

The National Young Writers Festival is all part of the grand This Is Not Art festival. It’s a great time to visit Newcastle. I went last year and wrote this Letter from Newcastle.