Category Archives: Security

Sailing, Security

Lake Michigan Storm at U20 Championships

Leave a comment

U20Macatawa Bay Yacht Club has posted a video of the Ultimate 20 North American Championship racers caught yesterday in a squall on Lake Michigan. A race was shortened and boats sent to shore but not in time to avoid the challenge of rough seas, rain, lightning and heavy winds from the West.

Within minutes this storm came in on Lake Michigan, endangering many boaters…. Wind gusts of up to 53 miles an hour quickly made it impossible to even see all the boaters. Fortunately no boaters were lost, although there was damage done to some boats including a broken mast and rudder.

One of the competitors captured a first-person view. Sailors headed for shore safety who were able to keep their 20 ft boat under way saw 14 knts of speed with mainsail alone (205 sq ft):

And here is the view from shore posted by the yacht club, which shows visibility drop to near zero as the rain and wind roll in.

History, Poetry, Security

Gonder (አስቴር አወቀ – ጎንደር)

Leave a comment

A song from a former capital city (the 4th) of Ethiopia, as performed by Aster Aweke on her new album Checheho.

Gonder is known for preserving tradition and custom like the iskista dance, as opposed to the more diverse and modern capital city Addis Ababa.

Gonder also was the city where Italian forces made their last stand. The British 12th (African) Division led by Major-General “Fluffy”, along with the Kenya Armoured Car Regiment and Emperor Haile Selassie’s patriots, ended the occupation of Ethiopia when they seized Gonder in 1941.

Security

Visa brings EMV to US; PCI DSS Waived for Merchants

Leave a comment

From the Visa media center:

Visa’s plan includes merchant incentives to upgrade to EMV chip-enabled terminals, requirements for acquirer processors to support chip acceptance and the introduction of U.S. liability shift policies.

Specifically, Visa will waive Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance validation requirements to encourage merchant investment in contact and contactless chip payment terminals. Visa will also require acquirer processors to ensure that their systems support dynamic data acceptance (i.e., chip) and will institute a domestic and cross-border counterfeit liability shift.

This comes not long after Operation Night Clone, which pointed out ongoing weaknesses and loopholes of EMV. I also wrote about it earlier.

Update: Hat tip to Christofer Hoff for pointing to the InversePath presentation on EMV implementation flaws and recommendations.

History, Security

IDLELO 5 Conference to be in Nigeria

Leave a comment

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa is planning their 5th African Conference on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) to be held in Abuja, Nigeria

IDLELO 5 will consist of hackathons, awards, tutorials, hands-on trainings, demos, field visits and presentations on key FOSS and information technology areas. It will welcome a diverse number of parallel events, an exhibition and a business round table. The conference will welcome FOSS and IT keynote speakers, project, companies, solutions and innovations, not just in Africa, but across the global FOSS community. IDLELO 5 will mark the 10 years of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA)

[…]

IDLELO is a Southern African word meaning “Common Grazing Ground”.

The maddog keynote from IDLELO 4 is reprinted in Linux magazine

People sometimes have a problem understanding “software freedom”, so I use the term “software slavery” to show the opposite:

Software slaves are told:

  • when to upgrade their software
  • how many computers they can put their software on
  • how many users can use the software
  • how the software will or will not work
  • what languages the software will support
  • when they will receive needed bug fixes or enhancements

Ironically only the richest peoples can afford software slavery. Poor people are persecuted as “software pirates”.

This is obviously far too broad a definition. Maybe it’s meant to be provocative rather than useful. After all, it’s a keynote speech in Africa.

The first thing that comes to mind is software as a service (SaaS) could easily be defined as slavery even if it runs on FOSS. Even FOSS users in their own environment are told what to do and when (e.g. ubuntu-security-announce).

The difference between freedom and slavery does not seem to be just about being given instructions. It is about a user becoming a property of the software company — penalized for any attempts at liberty.