December 11, 2007 - Volume 2, #162

Good Morning:
Damn you Senator Larry Craig. Damn you, damn you, damn you. Yes, that's kind of harsh, but it's how I feel. You probably think this is about his politics or even his alleged lifestyle choices. It's not. This has everything to do with public bathrooms. You see, I was at an all day meeting south of Atlanta yesterday (which is why there was no Incite), and before I braved the afternoon rush traffic, I decided to take care of business. There is nothing worse than having to throw a deuce when you are in bumper to bumper traffic. Absolutely nothing.

So I find the restroom in the hotel and was pleased to have the room to myself. Even if it is a public bathroom, it's nice to have some privacy. But then, some other interloper settles into the next stall. 6 months ago, this is no problem at all. I'd bust out McPaper and get caught up on world events before I got into the car for the long ride home. I was blissfully unaware of public bathroom etiquette. 

But now I'm not. Damn you Senator. So I pull in my feet as close together as possible. I hardly breathe and finish up. I'm not taking any chances. I'm out of there. What used to be the mildly horrible public bathroom experience is now downright horrifying.

I guess I always knew that kind of stuff happened. After all George Michael got pinched for similar activities [1] back in 1998. But it certainly wasn't top of mind. Now all I can do is wish for the days when I could use a public bathroom and my biggest problem was whether there was enough toilet paper to properly cover the seat. The good days gone by.

Have a great day.

Public bathroom image originally uploaded by lrojas2cr [2]

Technorati: Information Security [3], CSO [4], Security Mike [5], Internet Security [6]

[7] The Pragmatic CSO: Available Now! Read the Intro and Get "5 Tips to be a Better CSO" www.pragmaticcso.com [8]

Get Your Special Report: 6 Easy Steps to Protect Your Identity and get access to Security Mike's Portal today www.securitymike.com [9] [10]

Top Security News

this article in NetworkWorld about network behavior analysis [11] is "There’s a new weapon in the security arsenal that monitors network traffic and issues real-time alerts when it spots unusual or suspicious behavior on the network." NEW?!?!? Oh that's right, we all got into that time machine and were transported back to 2000 when the NBA players were just getting going. I've been pretty positive on the idea of NBA and I still think the idea of pulling a baseline and monitoring your stuff relative to that baseline is one of the only ways you can REACT FASTER to all the bad stuff that is going on out there. But to paint this stuff as "new" is a disservice to everyone. NBA is not new. Though I guess if they wait long enough, all of the folks that would remember that the category used to be called "anomaly detection" will have gone on to their great reward. To be clear, NBA is actually a feature of a network security moving forward. Maybe network ops too, but those are different buyers with different problems.
Link to this [11]

F-Secure's signature database went from 250,000 to 500,000 in 2007 [12] must certainly mean something. Actually, all it means is that the bad guys are getting more effective at morphing their attacks to circumvent the signature-based detection of AV 1.0. Since the pace of new signatures is accelerating, I guess you don't need to be Einstein to see that at some point sooner rather than later the model just breaks. Is that 2008? Maybe, but in practice signature-based AV is bundled into an endpoint security suite with a lot of other goodies that will be marginally more effective at defeating malware. So I guess F-Secure is fighting yesterday's prediction battle because the number of signatures just doesn't matter anymore.
Link to this [12]

JetBlue, Yahoo and RIM are working together to introduce WiFi [13] to the friendly skies. That is the surest way to make sure the skies don't remain friendly. I can just imagine it now, a passenger runs Metasploit and pwns half the plane before you get to 25,000 feet. Sure the plane could log all the traffic, but with spoofed MAC addresses and some obfuscation, the odds of detection are pretty much nil. Maybe they'll train the air marshals to look for hackers as well. Just for giggles, I fire up my wireless card on most flights, just to see how many other laptops are searching for networks or broadcasting the popular "Free WiFi" SSID. I guess I could also rig up a battery to an access point and really create some havoc. It wouldn't run for long, but it wouldn't have to. Most of the plane would connect automatically to the network and then it would be trivial to pwn them too. Some days it's fun to speculate, and I'm not even good at this stuff. It boggles my mind to think about how a motivated and determined hacker could take advantage of these services. And help me understand how running WiFi through the plane is OK, but playing my iPod during take-off is a huge safety hazard. I love modern day hypocrisy. It just makes me smile.
Link to this [13]

The Laundry List

Top Blog Postings

http://www.buyerpersona.com/2007/12/bring-me-proble.html [17]
Link to this [17]

http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2007/12/full-disclosure-is-dead.html [18]
Link to this [18]

http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2007/12/consolidating-c.html [19]
Link to this [19]

http://sm-blog.securitymike.com [20]

Check out the latest on the Security Incite blog
http://blog.securityincite.com/ [21]

Read the most recent Daily Incite
http://securityincite.com/security-incite-rants/daily-incite [21]