trolling tech support scammers

here's some pure comedy genius from @paperghost (aka chris boyd). i can't help but laugh at how they're apparently oblivious to the fact that the person they called knows they're up to no good.

storified here

(i opted to not embed the storify code because when i previewed it it gave me a service unavailable error)

surveillance mascots are watching you

from here (source image)

thanks to @mikko for drawing my attention to this. where else but in london would they try to make CCTV cameras cute and friendly looking. what better way to normalize the surveillance state than to turn it's quintessential element into a cute and cuddly cartoon character?

security isn't my job, it's my lifestyle

security isn't my job, it's my lifestyle

i considered this as a possible catch phrase some time ago as the result of a deductive exercise, because security really isn't part of my job description at all, and my interest in it dates back to primary school. that didn't seem like something a lot of people would be able to relate to, though, so i filed this away until i could find a way to use it.

but @chort came up with an excellent analogy to making healthy lifestyle choices, and the commitment and willingness to change behaviour (as well as our tendency to look for easy fixes that don't require work and consequently don't work) is a great fit for security and gives this phrase a meaning a lot more people can grab hold of.

for the really good security professionals, security isn't just their job, it is part of their lifestyle - and for the ordinary people who haven't made that lifestyle choice yet, framing it this way gives them a more realistic idea of what it takes to be secure.

of online backups and online attacks

from here

inspired by the sad story of mat honan who lost "more than a year’s worth of photos, emails, documents, and more". this isn't even really a cautionary tale about remote wiping as much as it is about the need to have local backups that you control. online backups are convenient, but they're as susceptible to remote compromize as anything else you put online.

for backups to be useful in restoring from an attack, the backups themselves must be impervious to attack.

facebook police

while facebook may not actually have people in body armour driving around beating up suspected spammers, reporting something as spam when it isn't can have negative consequences for people. this applies outside of facebook (or even the internet) too. misreporting badness to authorities can seem harmless, but if they're people they have better things to do than chase down false threats, and if they're automated processes you could be teaching them bad habits that will come back to bite you later.

nature's own security system

found on very demotivational

i suspect if there's one thing a bike thief would probably not want to deal with, it's a swarm of bees. shame  no one else would want to deal with them either.

if you had to choose...

from here (source image one and two)

the american symbol of police abuse of power is a man spraying a (supposedly) non-lethal dose of a toxin in kids faces. the canadian symbol of police abuse of power is a man who's afraid of soap bubbles.

i think if one of them had to be terminated, i'm glad it was lt. pike. officer bubbles may have been a dick, but no system of authority is perfect, there will always be those who abuse their power, and lt. pike makes me appreciate how lucky we canadians are to have officer bubbles instead.

say hello to my little friend

who doesn't love a feel good security camera video of a bunch of thugs having a brown-trouser moment as one of their would-be victims pulls out a gun and starts firing?

i just stored files for you, and this is crazy

from here (source image)

if you expose the personal details of millions of people...

if you expose the personal details of millions of people by not following your own encryption policies, and then go on to continue not following your own encryption policies, you might be a security idiot.

(inspiration)