In The Weeds: Weekly InfoSec Round-Up 7-26-17

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Just a little under a year ago I started my InfoSec journey. Still going. Had a few blips in my progress, but it’s a journey towards a destination. There’s no ETA. My plan this time last year was to be able to attend DefCon 25, maybe even under a tech journalist category. It didn’t happen. I sent The Viking off this morning as he heads there and I’m handling things in the homestead as we juggle family responsibilities, home renno projects, and the like. But, next year, I’ll be there, with an extra year of learning, researching, and writing under my belt. In the interim, you mighty minions of InfoSec, here’s the things that I was exploring this last week:

Oh, and for those of you headed to Black Hat & Def Con, keep your social engineering defenses up:  https://info.wombatsecurity.com/blog/phishing-social-engineering-black-hat-2017

*Office 365 users, heads up:  https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/widespread-bruteforce-office-365/

*G-suite users, you need to pay attention, too:  http://www.securityweek.com/google-takes-second-swing-oauth-worm

*Banking Trojan Hacker Gets Busted:  https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/07/how-a-citadel-trojan-developer-got-busted/

*Got a Roomba? Who knows the map of your home? https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/07/26/privacy-dust-up-as-roomba-maker-mulls-selling-maps-of-users-homes/

*InfoSec Hell:  https://securityledger.com/2017/07/at-blackhat-hell-is-other-peoples-machine-learning/

As in weeks past, feel free to leave a comment here about any of those articles. Let’s learn from one another. Okay, have pity on the noob and let me learn from you.

Have another great week InfoSec geeks. See you next week.

 

 

In The Weeds: InfoSec Round-Up 7-12-17

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Today’s round-up is all about action. The action to save net neutrality. If you’re in #InfoSec you know how important this is.

Want to know more about it. Here’s a few links, many of which include who you need to bitch at about not rolling back the net neutrality rules of 2015. We only have until July 17 to try to save net neutrality. So, won’t you help us battle?

https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality

https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15957800/day-of-action-protest-net-neutrality

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15958030/net-neutrality-day-of-action-internet-companies-list

https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now

Go send your comments to the FCC, call your senators and representatives, scream into the internet, the phone, hell, send some snail mail (express…remember 7-17 deadline).

See you next week, hopefully with net neutrality saved.

 

One Minute of Zen: The Bees Have It

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Hello moments of peace seekers. First off our apologies for being away for so long. When you’re ill it’s hard to get out and get the video coverage we’d like. But health is coming ’round the bend and we should be posting regular again. We also encourage you to revisit your favorite One Minute of Zen posts here. There is a few to choose from, so don’t be shy. Just click the “one minute of zen” keyword and you’ll see all the relevant posts. We’ll put up a page special just for getting to those posts quickly very soon. In the meantime, have a little buzz-filled moment here:

Harvest Creations: Greenie Eggs

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Healthy, fresh and delicious: Greenie Eggs.

Hello all. Coming to you after the first full day of summer. Wow! Here in the Pacific Northwest it’s been one hell of a winter and very wet and gloomy spring. The warmer temps and sunshine are very welcomed following the dark and gray. So, here we’re still enjoying spring crops and the explosion of egg laying from our feathered stock.

Everything you need for a yummy breakfast or anytime meal!

Today’s recipe is Greenie Eggs. So named because they tend to look a bit green when you’re all done cooking. Also, because they are easy to make and the ingredients plentiful even in the most modest of gardens or households. I would rate this recipe very easy. The biggest tip is to have all your ingredients ready to go before you start cooking — that’s a good tip any time, but especially for a fast cooking meal like this one.

I’m fortunate in that I can step out my back door and gather the eggs, spinach, green onions, and chives. I look to my local cheese maker for the parmesan (oh so good). And the peppers and onions are frozen — having been procured in summer from my own land or from a farmer’s market (last year peppers were a bust here at Thrasher Studios & MicroFarm, so grateful for other farmers).  But you can just make your shopping list from the ingredient list below and gather as you normally would your weekly provisions.

I prefer a cast iron pan. Great-Granny and even modern nutritionists understand that cooking in cast iron is very healthy. I highly recommend it. Cast iron cookware requires different maintenance from say stainless steel cookware, but it’s not hard. Anyone who tells you it’s hard has never had to clean burned off cook from ‘non-stick’ ware. Cast iron cooks beautifully and the ware lasts forever. We have two pans that have been in our family for generations.

For this meal, also, if you add a side of bacon, some fruit, and a mimosa, you have a lovely weekend brunch. Just the Greenie Eggs is often my weekday meal all on its own.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

Greenie Eggs –

Ingredients: 

Three eggs (my photo shows two chicken and one duck, but three eggs of your choosing will do), whisked as if to scramble

Two cups full of loose baby spinach (you can get fancy and use any baby greens)

1/4 cup of green onions, chopped

1/4 cup of shallots, chopped fine (or a mixture of finely chopped onions and green peppers. If you want to get fancy, use all three to make up 1/4 cup)

1 tblspn of fresh chives

1/4 cup of shredded parmesan

Non-Stick spray & Olive oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

(Coffee pictured is to fuel the chef!)

Instructions:

  1. Spray your pan with the non-stick spray and swirl about 1 tsp of oil around it, heat on medium until the oil is clear on the pan.
  2. Once the pan is warmed, add your shallots, onions, green peppers, and green onions.
  3. Saute at least two minutes until soft.
  4. Add the Spinach with salt and pepper to taste and saute until leaves are wilted. Then stir.
  5. Pour the eggs on top, let cook about half a minute and then begin to scramble.
  6. Before the eggs get too hard, add the parmesan. Turn off the heat, add the chives and cover pan for about a minute.
  7. Plate and eat immediately. So yummy.
Saute shallots, onions, peppers, and green onions until soft.
Add the spinach and salt and pepper to taste and cook until spinach is wilted. Careful this part doesn’t take long.

 

Pour the whisked eggs onto the sauteed veggies.
Before eggs harden too much, add the parmesan cheese and chives. Turn off heat, cover for one minute. Then plate and eat immediately!

In The Weeds: Infosec Roundup 6-14-17

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Another week, another Microsoft security update, right?

Before I get into the meat of the round-up I wanted to publicly address some emails I’ve received recently about these posts. Clearly, I’m not the end all be all expert in security. I provide these links because they are things I discovered or learned as I’m immersing myself in this InfoSec world. Also, I’ll be doing more in-depth posts soon; but, they aren’t necessarily regular like these posts. I have lots to learn and some of it isn’t necessarily “post worthy.”

Hot off the presses and filing under the “duh” category is this revelation that most aren’t happy with end-point security. http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/infosec-pros-have-shaky-confidence-in-endpoint-security-survey/393902

Remember the simultaneous power outages in several U.S. cities a few weeks back? Well more research is revealing that Malware is out there and it may have caused outages in Ukraine last year and is primed for Europe, and with a few changes could affect U.S. Power Grid. Got a Generator handy? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/malware-power-grid_us_593fa144e4b0b13f2c6d9285

Need some evidence for your employer to take digital security seriously? These are just the tip of the iceberg:  http://www.pymnts.com/today-in-data/2017/today-in-data-true-digital-security-may-not-happen-because-of-cyber-crime/

Under our democracy has been hacked, further evidence to Russian hacker influence in the United States’ election process. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/russian-hacking-prompted-obama-officials-emergency-call-article-1.3244245

As a noob in this world, Linux is like the Holy Grail of operating systems yet has a seeming ancient Sumerian key code as its instruction manual. Yet, this week I learned like any system designed by humans, even Linux is vulnerable. Remember, nerds, nothing is foolproof:  http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/sambacry-hundreds-thousands-linux-systems-exposed-campaign-delivers-cryptocurrency-miner/

Bonus this week is my vested interest in creating more opportunities for women in InfoSec. Here’s a scholarship that might help a woman wanting to break into InfoSec (seriously the amount of white dudes in the room at any InfoSec gathering is disproportionate). http://cra.org/cra-w/scholarships-and-awards/scholarships/swsis/

Someone reached out to me recently regarding my “tech journalist” status. In response, I had to do some research and stumbled upon this article which made me raise an eyebrow and got my blood pressure up just a bit:  https://boingboing.net/2017/06/13/opsec-in-newsrooms.html

As in weeks past, feel free to leave a comment here about any of those articles. Let’s learn from one another. Okay, have pity on the noob and let me learn from you.

Have another great week InfoSec lovers. See you next time.*

 

 

*We’re going on vacation here for a couple of weeks. Be back as soon as things are back to routine.