A black cloud over Black Hat?

-
'Bout time a huge controversy erupted at the Black Hat and DEFCON hacker conferences in Las Vegas. I've covered several but declined to attend this one, which yesterday had the IT security community abuzz over a security researcher that quit his job and risked his freedom to disclose without details how he could break into Cisco routing software. To non-techies, this equipment routes traffic moving along the Internet and is embedded in the backbone of a vast majority of U.S. networks. Those networks operate almost all of the nation's critical infrastructure (transportation, water supplies, electric power grids, etc.), so you can imagine the impact of this announcement. Mike Lynn essentially showed how hackers could take down the Internet and sabotage the systems that we all rely on for basic needs. He says after four months of working with Cisco through his former employer ISS, it was time to warn the public.

There was plenty of high drama too. Cisco dispatched its troops on Cesaer's Palace to rip the 10-page presentation from thousands of bounded proceedings books; someone secretly videotaped it; cease and desist orders came down; conference organizers weighed who to stand behind; Lynn landed in front of a judge this morning...

A fine correspondent of ours, Bob Garza, wrote an excellent piece for our site today.

Security researcher causes furor by releasing flaw in Cisco IOS software

Popular posts from this blog

Music to My Ears

-
I'm listening less and less to music these days and more to the spoken contributions of journalists, authors and plain ol' folk on podcasts and the public airwaves. I'm lucky. I have both an iPod with plenty of playlists and my old Rio Cali that has an excellent antennae to pick up radio stations while I run. This morning I was so engrossed in this personal essay from the "This I Believe" series on NPR, that I failed to notice the flashing red lights on the fire engines heading out of a station in front of me. It made me think of home, and it made me think of hard times. It also made the five miles of hills fly by. From NPR. org: The Art of Being a Neighbor P.S. Even though I'm not a big fan of hockey, I gotta give it up for my alma mater, Boston University, for winning last night's come-from-behind, Disney-movie-like national championship victory over Miami (Ohio).
Read more

I Leave You With This

-
Image
There's this social media post some guy put up on Instagram. I almost scrolled past it, but I'm glad I didn't. It asked what question we should ask ourselves when we die. In retrospect, ChatGPT's response was basically pulling from Eastern philosophy, but, still, I couldn't stop thinking about it in the hours and days since I first heard it. Here's a partial transcript I cribbed using -- what else? -- AI. Some guy set up the prompt, which was long and convoluted. The following picks it up from there.  Some guy : I'm assuming most people would ask, 'Where am I going? What's next?' Something like that. Is that a good question?  ChatGPT : No, because they don't matter. Some guy : W hy don't they matter?  ChatGPT : If there's a heaven or hell or some next phase, you're likely already heading there. Asking won't change your destination. It's a wasted question.  Some guy : That's a good point. Um, what about 'Did I do en...
Read more

Return to Bay 2 Breakers

-
Image
In the end, I ended up running about half of the 12k Bay 2 Breakers course. Of the roughly 4 miles we ran, I’d trained for to do just .25 of them. My race entry predated my farewell to  running . And despite landing in a fast corral, I was told there are plenty who choose it to avoid all the naked people and start walking after a very short spurt. In my mind, we’d show up a little before the race start, run at a good clip for a quarter mile and then walk it off.    That didn’t happen.   A long wait while hurling tortillas Parking can be hard to come by in downtown San Francisco. And public transportation can be cumbersome if traveling from another part of the Bay Area, though a ferry will get you within easy reach of starting corrals.  We opted to take a shuttle from a Mill Valley Park ‘n Ride to the start. (“We” being me, my daughter and son-in-law, who are B2B regulars.) Similar shuttles operated from Emeryville in East Bay and Millbrae to the south. This...
Read more