Perilocity

Publicity about Internal Fraud: Still an Issue after 30 Years

Adam quotes a 30 year old book about computer security and notes that the IRS then and now doesn't adequately protect taxpayers' information and promises to do better. His quote that I like best, though is:

Top management people in large corporations fear that publicity about internal fraud could well affect their companies' trading positions on the stock market, hold the corporation up to public ridicule, and cause all sorts of turmoil... (Computer Capers, page 72)

— Computer Capers: Tales of electronic thievery, embezzlement, and fraud, by Thomas Whiteside, Ty Crowell Co., 1978

That's why corporations fear a breach reporting reputation system. That's also why we need one.

-jsq ~

Antitrust and Microsoft: Still on the Table?

More time to determine whether Microsoft has a monopoly?

Microsoft, state prosecutors, and the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday said a federal judge needs more time to weigh whether Redmond should be subjected to a lengthier period of antitrust policing.

In a joint filing with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who has been overseeing Microsoft's antitrust compliance, they asked for a soon-to-expire oversight period to be temporarily extended until at latest January 31, 2008. That way, the judge will have more time to weigh the merits of last-minute pleas from a number of state prosecutors to add another five years to the oversight regime.

Right now, most of Microsoft's 2002 consent decree with the Bush administration is set to expire November 12. One small portion, related to a communications protocol licensing program that has encountered numerous delays since its inception, has already been extended through November 2009.

— U.S.-Microsoft antitrust deal to get temporary extension, by Anne Broache, C|Net News.com News blog, October 30, 2007 2:24 PM PDT

The story says the judge and Microsoft are expected to agree to the extension. Not surprisingly, there's an objection from a different quarter:

The Justice Department has already said it doesn't believe there's any need to extend the oversight period and that the agreement with Redmond has been working as designed.

It's state prosecutors from 10 states who are driving this extension.

These days we don't have Teddy Roosevelt to bust trusts, nor even William Howard Taft, whose Department of Justice started 80 antitrust lawsuits. Maybe the states can do it.

-jsq

Brooklyn Tornado

How soon they forget:

It wasn't just the tornado in Brooklyn -- the first in recorded history in the borough -- it was the huge quantities of rain that flooded basements and stranded rail and road commuters from Mineola to Midtown.

— End of the world as we know it? By Carl Macgowan, Newsday, 10:51 PM EDT, August 8, 2007

Sounds kind of like "who could have predicted it?"

Punching Hornets

What do science fiction writer William Gibson, global guerrilla theorist John Robb, libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and the late historian David Halberstam agree about?

Still, it is hard for me to believe that anyone who knew anything about Vietnam, or for that matter the Algerian war, which directly followed Indochina for the French, couldn't see that going into Iraq was, in effect, punching our fist into the largest hornet's nest in the world.

— The Late Halberstam's Final Verdict on Bush: "He's No Truman", by Adam Howard, alternet.org, 5:38 AM on July 5, 2007.

One could add Napoleon in Russia and the British in America. Funny how fighting in Russia in the winter wasn't like Italy in the summer.

WS-Anasazi

Gunnar usually says it better than I did:

Coordinated detection and response is the logical conclusion to defense in depth security architecture. I think the reason that we have standards for authentication, authorization, and encryption is because these are the things that people typically focus on at design time. Monitoring and auditing are seen as runtime operational acitivities, but if there were standards based ways to communicate security information and events, then there would be an opportunity for the tooling and processes to improve, which is ultimately what we need.

— Building Coordinated Response In - Learning from the Anasazis, Gunnar Peterson, 1 Raindrop, 14 June 2007

Security shouldn't be a bag of uncoordinated aftermarket tricks. It should be a process that starts with design and continues through operations.

-jsq

Liberty vs. Control

Bruce Schneier reviews a paper about data mining, which unfortunately includes the phrase "the Security-Liberty Debate" in its title. He reiterates that liberty is security.

It's a liberty vs. control debate.

— Data Mining and the Security-Liberty Debate, by Bruce Schneier, Schneier on Security, June 12, 2007

Remember, this opinion is backed up by research.

Smashing Hornets

Fox News discovers hammering wasps:

If you get stung by a hornet, it makes sense to see if there's a hornets' nest near your home and, if there is, to exterminate it. It doesn't make sense to forge out looking for hornets' nests anywhere you can find them, smacking them with sticks. You're bound to get stung again.

— Straight Talk: Paul Has a Point, By Radley Balko, FOXNEWS.COM, Monday, May 21, 2007

Well, in an online op-ed, at least.

Pirates of the Mediterranean

A couple of thousand years ago, pirates attacked Ostia, the port of Rome, and the Romans authorized Pompey to go wipe them out, regardless of the cost in money or power. He succeeded handily, which led some to wonder whether the pirates were ever much of a threat.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Pirates of the Mediterranean, By ROBERT HARRIS, New York Times, Published: September 30, 2006

What's this got to do with the modern world, the Internet, or anything?

Why Did the Titanic Sink?

Let's ask some people in different lines of work:

Reporters:

because it hit an iceberg.

Executives:

because it had the wrong captain.

Security professionals:

because its rivets were stressed from temperature changes.

Security managers:

because it didn't have radar to detect the iceberg.

Risk managers:

because it didn't have access to a distributed iceberg detection system.

The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city.

Today I'll defer to what Frederick Douglass said on the Fourth of July 154 years ago:

Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet.

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass, Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Rochester Hall, Rochester, N.Y., 4 July 1852.

Today telephone, television, and the Internet are the chartered agents of intelligence, not to mention agents and drivers of the commerce whose arm has borne away the gates of the strong city. Fortifying perimeters works even less these days, for nations or for companies. Cooperation is essential for survival, not to mention risk management.

-jsq