This short interview with Vint Cert, by Dark Reading, gives an inside look at Vint’s daily life. He talks a lot about his role at Google, as well as his many other responsibilities. I’m always amazed at how someone can be actively and productively involved in several organizations, all at once. He also mentions some of his personal hobbies and aspirations beyond work, as well as his opinion on improving Internet security. For example, the one person Vint says he would love to meet is Richard Dawkins. That alone should give you some insight into his beliefs.
On March 4, 2007, In networking, security, By eugenekogan
There are many interesting little bits of data your computer broadcasts to the network, especially when it first starts up. Putting some of these bits together can reveal information about what WiFi access points you’ve connected to in the past, the last IP address you had from DHCP, your default network shares that you connect to, and so on. This phenomenon is called data seepage, and is difficult to prevent – especially while taking advantage of public wireless hot spots. A new tool, called Ferret, is designed to listen for this broadcast information and correlate it together, to paint a picture of a particular system or user. In some cases it can even determine such details as who is on your buddy list. Ferret was recently presented at Black Hat by its creators (Errata Security), and it’s still in a proof of concept stage… but quite interesting.
On February 24, 2007, In networking, security, By eugenekogan
The Internet Architecture Board has published a draft report, detailing the findings from the workshop on Unwanted Internet Traffic, held last year. The workshop was intended to bring together all the relevant Internet communities who could help deal with problems like DDoS attacks, spam, phishing, and other sources of undesirable network activity. Several hard questions were brought up during the workshop, none of which have easy answers.
For example, how much are we willing to sacrifice in terms of online freedom and openness while adding protection for users? What role should cryptography play in the overall architecture of the Internet? Hopefully this report will get more people thinking about these issues, and working towards solutions. Any comments prior to the final publication can be sent to the IAB through March 23, 2007.