Category Archives: Security

History, Security

The decline and fall of practically everybody

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That was the title of one of my favorite books a long time ago, written by Will Cuppy. I was reminded of this kind of lighthearted zen theory of the world after I recently read a 2005 interview with Linus Torvalds:

I just don’t believe in dynasties. Things erode over time. Successes start to take themselves for granted, and the successful companies aren’t nimble and hungry enough any more.

In the tech market in particular, companies just don’t tend to stay on top forever — they become irrelevant either because of their own missteps or because their market just isn’t the “happening thing” any more. You can only skate the cutting edge for so long.

So the question is how the decline happens, and in what timeframe. Will open source be a factor? Almost certainly. Will it be the factor? I don’t know.

I understand this from a monolithic perspective, like how the human body ages, but what about rebirth or regeneration? Humans have certainly managed to extend their life expectancy, and the rate of successful birth is higher as well. So in the context of dynasties that use descent to survive, does open source accelerate the decline of a tech company, or alternatively does it allow it to extend its life through facilitating a less risky rebirth?

Tough questions, but Cuppy had some historical pointers in his book on how dynasties go awry:

Agrippina had long been a problem to Nero, always interfering as she did and quarreling about who should be murdered and who shouldn’t. (Ed. Note: Agrippina was Nero’s mother.) Since he owed her everything for murdering Claudius, he had hoped to kill her as gently as possible. He did not want her to suffer, and he went to some lengths to prevent it. He gave her quick poison three times without result, then fixed the ceiling of her bedroom so it would fall and crush her as she slept. Of course that didn’t work. It never does. Either the ceiling doesn’t fall or the victim sleeps on the sofa that night.

Next, he attempted to drown her by means of a boat with a collapsible bottom, but the vessel sank too slowly and she swam away like a mink. Nero then lost his head completely, as who wouldn’t, and told his freedman, Anicetus, to try anything. Anicetus, a rude but sensible fellow, went and got a club and beat her to death. Maybe the Cave Men knew best.

We cannot be sure how many others Nero murdered, since some of the stories are probably mere gossip. You know how it is. Once you kill a few people, you get a bad name. You’re blamed for every corpse that turns up for miles around and anything else that goes wrong.

Ah, Nero. Fiddling while Rome burned also probably hurt his legacy and chances to remain competitive, at least compared with those upstart civilizations who believed in lower margins for the ruling-class.

Security

3-Iron

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This is the kind of movie chock full of security easter-eggs. Consider the synopsis, for example:

Tae-suk is homeless and lives like a phantom. His daily routine involves temporarily staying in houses and apartments he knows to be vacant. He never steals from, nor damages, his unknowing hosts’ homes; rather, he is like a kind ghost, sleeping in other people’s beds, eating a little food out of strangers’ refrigerators and repaying their unintended hospitality by doing the laundry or making small repairs. Once a beautiful model, Sun-hwa has become withered living under the shadow of her abusive husband who keeps her imprisoned in their affluent, expensively decorated house. Tae-suk and Sun-hwa are bound by fate to cross paths though their invisible existences.

Right away I noticed several important modern security problems:

  1. Identity in terms of self/other
  2. Presence and nonrepudiation
  3. Rights to use/borrow/own

And that’s just the beginning. The movie starts with Tae-suk on a fine late-model BMW motorcycle riding to neighborhoods and applying flyers to door keyholes. I think the director goes out of his way to show a man not desperate or reactionary, but rather a crafty and curious outsider who does not really ever want to be “in”. Incidentally I could not help but notice he never wears protective gear other than a helmet, which he does not fasten properly. Detail or foreshadowing? Anyway, as the day grows long, he returns to see which flyers have not moved in order to determine which house to enter and spruce up while its owners are away. He not only shows several habits of methodical precision but he clearly believes in the age-old fantasy of ninja-like invisibility, and yet he seems to remain grounded like a balloon that can not or does not want to release its weights.

Ghost and spiritual scenes are always amusing, but the blend of Korean culture with the humor in Tae-suk’s search for presence without being present, or non-identifiable identity (if you know what I mean) is really the soul (pun intended) of this movie.

There are some rough spots, but overall an excellent movie for security discussion and thought. Highly recommended. Five flyingpenguins (out of five).

History, Security

The Lives of Others

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I noticed that several of the films vying for awards in Europe right now are about terrorism, detention and secret police:

But The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen ) managed to come on strong, winning the top prize and capturing two others: best actor for Ulrich Muehe and best screenwriter for director Florian Henckle von Donnersmark.

“It means a lot to me to get this award here, since my father was born in this country,” said von Donnersmarck.

The Lives of Others, set in 1984, explores the system of control imposed by the East German secret police, the Stasi, and the lives it destroyed. It follows a policeman who becomes immersed in the lives of a playwright and his girlfriend whom he is spying on.

Other films in contention included the British movie Road to Guantanamo directed by Michael Winterbottom and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film about the IRA directed by Ken Loach.

But will they play in the US?

Food, Security

California urged to regulate sanitation on farms

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The Center for Science in the Public Interest CSPI released a memo in October that apparently urged the State of California to find a way to use regulation to prevent another E.coli outbreak:

In a legal petition filed with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Department of Health Services Director Sandra Shewry, CSPI food safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal said that mandatory regulations governing manure, water and sanitation on farms could help reduce the number of produce-borne food outbreaks.

[…]

In addition to the recent spinach outbreak, tomatoes, lettuces, melons, sprouts, carrot juice and other foods contaminated with E. coli, Salmonella or other pathogens have caused outbreaks. Those pathogens are usually—though not always—linked back to animal agriculture, which CSPI says warrants a particular regulatory focus on manure and water.

[…]

CSPI says that the use of raw manure as fertilizer should be prohibited during the growing season, and that composting practices should be monitored to ensure pathogens are destroyed. Water used for irrigation must be tested and found suitable and only drinkable water should be used in produce processing facilities, according to the group.

CSPI’s petition also urges better hygiene and sanitation on farms, and for improved package markings that can be used to track back produce to the farm of origin.

Crazy. That almost sounds like they want food to be clean. Wonder if they can find a way to not only convince consumers but foreign countries that American food is safe.

And if you think it’s getting hard to trust food that comes from some remote farm (that you will never step foot on), it turns out you even can’t trust pesticides anymore:

In February this year, a counterfeit herbicide used in Italy was found to contain quantities of a potentially dangerous insecticide. In 2004, hundreds of hectares of wheat were wiped out in France, Italy and Spain because of a fake herbicide. And a 2002 study of supermarket produce in the UK found traces of eight illegal and potentially dangerous compounds.

Not that pesticides should have ever been trusted, but the fear of “terrorism” certainly highlights the flaws in a web of trust surrounding modern agriculture. Wonder if China will be facing some similar urgings after events like this one:

China has arrested the manager of a factory which used grease from swill, sewage and recycled industrial oil to make edible lard, a Chinese newspaper said on Monday in the latest health scare to hit the country.

Health officials also detected “toxic pesticide” in lard produced by the Fanchang Grease Factory in Taizhou, in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, the Shanghai Daily said.

Yuck. It is even harder to control something when people believe it to be the key to their health. I’ve met many Americans who are convinced that pesticides are what keeps their food safe for consumption. But I find that about as ironic as the last part of the AP story on Chinese lard:

Authorities in several cities last month found Sudan IV, a cancer-causing industrial dye, in “red-yolk” duck eggs sold to poultry farmers who had mixed it with feed.

Red yolks are regarded as a sign of extra nutrition, thus making them more expensive.

So you pay more for the colorful appearance of nutrition, even though the color is cancer-causing — sounds familiar.