The key message behind that principle is: "Don't deliver working software that has no more purpose for business". If you can deliver a well QA'd and developed software that is obsolete by the time it is shipped then that is money wasted. If the development overall objective is always slipping, but along the way useful software modules are delivered to the users and they make money, then it is a success.
I think it is important to make sure no trickery occurs - the system has to be reasonably secure even if all implementation details are known.
Encryption key could be stored in self-destructing HSM. And forgetting a passphrase/password or PIN is a common thing. You could try to perform trickery and say "I am confused and these are my likely guesses". Then watch as police type pin 3-5 times wrong and HSM self-destruct. Proving that you intentionaly misled police would be very difficult, I believe (IANAL).
Here's a simple option that might very well work. Design a simple challenge response device with LCD which requests PIN code and then provides the long password. Have one PIN that opens and another, say 0000 that unloads a lot of energy into the simple memory chip frying it. Then, when police come, let them guess the PIN or give thre incorrect attempts saying that all this stress caused me to forget exact combination.
In our office we use Polycom to patch in meeting rooms and then laptops running end-user software to bring in the lone warrior. The big problem, of course is jitter, so having right QoS is essential. I can recommend Polycom as good (but not cheap).
Seriously... I work with a WiFi lab at work... I have a Faraday Cage in our lab... One of the techs forgot to install an optical isolator on the network cables, so for a few days the ethernet cables went right into the cage... Well, first day I went to use it, I locked myself in the cage, and was surprised that my cellphone started ringing... Without the optical isolators on the network cable, the RF signals were able to find there way into the faraday cage through the ethernet cables.... with that being said, I highly doubt that simply painting your walls will keep RF signals at bay... Even when the grounding wire was simply loose on the door to the faraday cage, RF signals would leak in...</quote>
This is very interesting! Do You have some physics explanation behind it? Could there be some externalities, such as, door not fully closed, ventilation open, etc ?
Isn't this kind of the point? If You can spend 2 hours and have a domain deployment with all the features You need done by a average paid admin, why spend two weeks by a linux guru? IT on a basic level is not something that adds immense value so why spend a lot on it? P.S. I love hacking just as the next guy and linux on enteprise is my pet peevee.
I am an IT auditor working for a company that You would call if You would want to be certified.
Certification means that there is a work (audit) programme that states control objectives. Auditor follows this programme very closely and then, if the issues are within some zone of tolerance (which may be zero as well), auditor writes a statement that company XYZ is compliant with this and that.
What it does NOT mean is:
a) a certified company will follow its practice after certification (they may just have put a convincing show).
b) that there are no other issues with the company that are outside of work programme
c) that sysadmin will be dilligent in future to apply timely patches
A PCI-DSS compliance says "There are no critical issues on the surface". That's it.
3.3 mil is a lot of money for uncertain outcome. We already have microreboots in some toy systems, that should solve crashes and ensure that system continues to operate (though it will probably go through the crash-reboot-work-crash cycle endlessly.
We already have in-memory kernel patching from SUN and partially from linux.
Not to mention SELinux and Hurd and the rest of security ideas.
I think that the real purpose of the project is to suck funding.
Let me quote from Tannenbaum's project proposal:
"..but I should start out by
pointing out how ambitious and risky this research is."
In layman's terms it means: "I want to experiment, but no promises or even deliverables".
"... nearly all experience with actual security incidents shows that security problems almost always stem from actions that the design and rules forbid but which bugs in the code allow to happen anyway." and "The most serious reliability and security problems are those relating to the operating system"
I am a security consultant and most security incidents stem from misunderstanding the basics, like password management, not buffer overflows. Seriously, has he ever consulted a security practitioner?
Some classic proof by (broken) analogy:
"Banks lock their front doors at night and have strong safes even though there are laws forbidding bank robbery" What does this prove exactly?
"What I am proposing is a fundamental redesign of the operating system."
Dude, seriously, You mention known concepts and offer fundamental redesign? Is this just a rewrite project for minix?
I could go on and on like this. This is how funds are spent without any real gain, not even new concept evolution.
Andy, give the EU taxpayers money back!
There is an entire vertical industry called "Identity & Access Management" that deals with such problems decisively.
Let google and wikipedia be Your allies!
Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Disk Wipe) implements the DoD and other standards for disk wipe. A 80 GB disk takes about 18h to wipe in my tests.
Boot it from PXE or CDROM. Erase in batches, sell in batches on e-bay. Buy new toys:)
This is not a pro/contra argument. Just my $0.02.
Monsanto creates higher yield per acre by making the plant grow more grains and make it more resilient.
With higher yield, all other costs being constant, monsanto farmers can sell their crop at a lower price. Or, alternatively if there is shortage of crop, they can sell more at the same price.
IIRC there is an actual grain shortage in the world, so at the moment it seems to be a win-win situation.
Traditional farm management methods can not stay the same, when the world around them changes. Accept the new facts of life and make a profit or perish!
Why everybody assumes that human power is "green"? As we all know, eneregy is not created or destroyed, it merely changes its "shape" (pardon for awkwardness). To lift the weights, I need to spend energy, this energy comes from me eating a steak or pizza or bunch of vegetables. In order for me to get that bit of food in my mouth, I have to go to the cafeteria (maybe releasing methane in process or even *gasp* driving a car to it!!). Then the food itself is first prepared (boiled or cooked), consuming power and energy again. Add more energy consumption ad nausea. Perhaps, with all that accounted, it would be greener to just flip an electricity switch (not to mention, more convenient)?
Don't forget to use passphrase that is longer than 8 characters, prefreably lower,upper alphanumerics and some special chars.
That will effectively prevent it from brute force, as rainbow tables of 8 chars approach 100G already.
As with Carr's previous article, he apparently his only experience is with a SMB style setup, where there are a few basic service - file sharing, e-mail and maybe an hosted CRM/ERP with a CMS for homepagee (acronym bingo!). What is often missed is value of competent advice, which is most often found in-house where somebody sees the operations daily and knows of frustrations by users.
I have found from time to time that users use work-arounds for problems and share those with everybody that completely violate either the purpose of the software or security aspects. Outsourced IT only obligation is to ensure that contracted services are running as defined in the agreement and nothing more. Internal IT departments often try to improve processes and solutions.
I myself favor a hybrid approach - outsource that which is routine maintenance - e.g. Groupware administration, server up-keep, network infrastructure, but have a competent CIO or sysadmin locally who sees the entire picture and can add value to the users by proposing and implementing such solutions that aid the core business.
That said, for an IT company everything above is almost irrelevant - an IT company that does not have skills to maintain their own infrastructure is often ill-guided.
Amen Brother! Just recently, I ran into a bug where load testing scripts were not recognized as current by the console, so it would complain. While I did not fix the algorithm for freshness, i was able to replace the "Bad: ", into "Bad. Continue " in a matter of 10 minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree,
it is a horrible article - regurgitates a press release without providing any details. Even the sole picture is not described.
This is done in medicine - tools are RFID tagged and before patient is sewed back together, they do a sweep.
[10/Oct/2012:13:55:36 -0700] "CONNECT https://www.hydemyass.com/ HTTP/1.0" 200 2326
unittests also serve as documentation - show how stuff is used.
The key message behind that principle is: "Don't deliver working software that has no more purpose for business". If you can deliver a well QA'd and developed software that is obsolete by the time it is shipped then that is money wasted. If the development overall objective is always slipping, but along the way useful software modules are delivered to the users and they make money, then it is a success.
I think it is important to make sure no trickery occurs - the system has to be reasonably secure even if all implementation details are known.
Encryption key could be stored in self-destructing HSM. And forgetting a passphrase/password or PIN is a common thing. You could try to perform trickery and say "I am confused and these are my likely guesses". Then watch as police type pin 3-5 times wrong and HSM self-destruct. Proving that you intentionaly misled police would be very difficult, I believe (IANAL).
Here's a simple option that might very well work. Design a simple challenge response device with LCD which requests PIN code and then provides the long password. Have one PIN that opens and another, say 0000 that unloads a lot of energy into the simple memory chip frying it. Then, when police come, let them guess the PIN or give thre incorrect attempts saying that all this stress caused me to forget exact combination.
I think it should be mandatory reading for any DB designer. One thing I miss not taking from my last job was Celko's books I had ordered.
In our office we use Polycom to patch in meeting rooms and then laptops running end-user software to bring in the lone warrior. The big problem, of course is jitter, so having right QoS is essential. I can recommend Polycom as good (but not cheap).
Seriously... I work with a WiFi lab at work... I have a Faraday Cage in our lab... One of the techs forgot to install an optical isolator on the network cables, so for a few days the ethernet cables went right into the cage... Well, first day I went to use it, I locked myself in the cage, and was surprised that my cellphone started ringing... Without the optical isolators on the network cable, the RF signals were able to find there way into the faraday cage through the ethernet cables....
with that being said, I highly doubt that simply painting your walls will keep RF signals at bay... Even when the grounding wire was simply loose on the door to the faraday cage, RF signals would leak in...</quote>
This is very interesting! Do You have some physics explanation behind it? Could there be some externalities, such as, door not fully closed, ventilation open, etc ?
Isn't this kind of the point? If You can spend 2 hours and have a domain deployment with all the features You need done by a average paid admin, why spend two weeks by a linux guru? IT on a basic level is not something that adds immense value so why spend a lot on it?
P.S. I love hacking just as the next guy and linux on enteprise is my pet peevee.
I wonder if the Tornado authors set forth to re-implemented Twisted Python just for kicks or out of not knowning about its existence.
Twisted supports epoll kqueue, win32 iocp, select, etc.
I am an IT auditor working for a company that You would call if You would want to be certified.
Certification means that there is a work (audit) programme that states control objectives. Auditor follows this programme very closely and then, if the issues are within some zone of tolerance (which may be zero as well), auditor writes a statement that company XYZ is compliant with this and that.
What it does NOT mean is:
a) a certified company will follow its practice after certification (they may just have put a convincing show).
b) that there are no other issues with the company that are outside of work programme
c) that sysadmin will be dilligent in future to apply timely patches
A PCI-DSS compliance says "There are no critical issues on the surface". That's it.
That's not what he illustrated, he said that selinux doesn't work because there are buffer overflows.
I could go on and on like this. This is how funds are spent without any real gain, not even new concept evolution. Andy, give the EU taxpayers money back!
But it keeps You from doing sudo.
There is an entire vertical industry called "Identity & Access Management" that deals with such problems decisively. Let google and wikipedia be Your allies!
There is always encryption available. Just add a filter to Your favourite mail system that encrypts contents of mails before sending.
Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Disk Wipe) implements the DoD and other standards for disk wipe. A 80 GB disk takes about 18h to wipe in my tests. Boot it from PXE or CDROM. Erase in batches, sell in batches on e-bay. Buy new toys :)
This is not a pro/contra argument. Just my $0.02. Monsanto creates higher yield per acre by making the plant grow more grains and make it more resilient. With higher yield, all other costs being constant, monsanto farmers can sell their crop at a lower price. Or, alternatively if there is shortage of crop, they can sell more at the same price. IIRC there is an actual grain shortage in the world, so at the moment it seems to be a win-win situation. Traditional farm management methods can not stay the same, when the world around them changes. Accept the new facts of life and make a profit or perish!
Why everybody assumes that human power is "green"? As we all know, eneregy is not created or destroyed, it merely changes its "shape" (pardon for awkwardness). To lift the weights, I need to spend energy, this energy comes from me eating a steak or pizza or bunch of vegetables. In order for me to get that bit of food in my mouth, I have to go to the cafeteria (maybe releasing methane in process or even *gasp* driving a car to it!!). Then the food itself is first prepared (boiled or cooked), consuming power and energy again. Add more energy consumption ad nausea.
Perhaps, with all that accounted, it would be greener to just flip an electricity switch (not to mention, more convenient)?
Probably because MySQL is a company and PostgreSQL is not?
Don't forget to use passphrase that is longer than 8 characters, prefreably lower,upper alphanumerics and some special chars. That will effectively prevent it from brute force, as rainbow tables of 8 chars approach 100G already.
As with Carr's previous article, he apparently his only experience is with a SMB style setup, where there are a few basic service - file sharing, e-mail and maybe an hosted CRM/ERP with a CMS for homepagee (acronym bingo!). What is often missed is value of competent advice, which is most often found in-house where somebody sees the operations daily and knows of frustrations by users.
I have found from time to time that users use work-arounds for problems and share those with everybody that completely violate either the purpose of the software or security aspects. Outsourced IT only obligation is to ensure that contracted services are running as defined in the agreement and nothing more. Internal IT departments often try to improve processes and solutions.
I myself favor a hybrid approach - outsource that which is routine maintenance - e.g. Groupware administration, server up-keep, network infrastructure, but have a competent CIO or sysadmin locally who sees the entire picture and can add value to the users by proposing and implementing such solutions that aid the core business.
That said, for an IT company everything above is almost irrelevant - an IT company that does not have skills to maintain their own infrastructure is often ill-guided.
Amen Brother!
Just recently, I ran into a bug where load testing scripts were not recognized as current by the console, so it would complain.
While I did not fix the algorithm for freshness, i was able to replace the "Bad: ", into "Bad. Continue " in a matter of 10 minutes.