the malware invasion game

if you've got a long enough memory you'll probably notice that i posted about this video last year. however, what i failed to realize at the time was that that was just the introductory sequence to a web-based video game made by panda called the malware invasion.

the game has 2 levels. the first involves intercepting various threats from various vectors before they get into your PC, but as the volume of incoming materials increase you'll probably find you rely more and more on the magic anti-virus button rather than being able to intercept the threats on your own.

the second level is more of a timed quiz where you're asked whether a variety of scenarios are safe or not - prompting you to think about when and how much you should trust during your day to day computer use.

at the end of the day/game, of course, they're still trying to move product. panda is a security vendor, that's what they do. that doesn't mean this little bit of edu-tainment can't still be an interesting and enlightening diversion, though.

on your knees!

from here

so, that email really happened. hard to imagine what that security company was thinking sending me unsolicited marketing material. harder still to imagine why they would address me as master. even if they had me in their database as "web master", shouldn't they have addressed it to "web"?

i can haz bag ... ?

from here (story)

being prepared is important, both if you're doing bad things AND if you're trying to prevent bad things. if your adversary is as unprepared as this guy, you might find your preparations weren't really necessary, but better that then to not be prepared and have an adversary who is.

prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

"critical" infrastructure

from here (image source one and two)

power plants, water treatment plants, etc. seemed to work perfectly well without an internet connection. plugging them into an inherently unsecurable network really seems like a homer simpson sort of move.

duqu: too many dollars, not enough sense

from here

as sophisticated as duqu may be, and as fascinating as other people may find it, i still see one great big fail parade.

in soviet russia...

from here (the story)

doing bad things has consequences. you can't always predict what those consequences will be. but even so, WTF?

at least it requests permission

from fredo & pid'jin

so it turns out that comic from this morning that i found on one of the cheezburger sites was actually originally from a regular webcomic called fredo & pid'jin. pretty funny stuff, and some of the comics there even deal with security/privacy issues - like this one that pokes fun at devices that are being designed to share things that have no business being shared.

work with their strengths

found on comixed

all security tools have their individual strengths and weaknesses. it's important to work with those strengths and not try to make something do what it was never intended to do (even if the marketing says it was).

redefining system crash

from here (image source)

a term you sometimes here in security (and perhaps elsewhere) is "situational awareness". it refers to being aware of what's going on around you so that you can act appropriately as conditions change. if you're distracted by other things, your situational awareness is not going to be at it's best and you'll make bad decisions, so the person responsible for the above setup is either going to make a mess of their car or their computer or both.

good advice no matter the source

found on failbook

someone obviously has a good sense of irony, presenting good advice about avoiding a number of fraudulent facebook posts as still another type of fraudulent facebook post. it makes a certain amount of sense, too, because clearly these formulas work.

i'm waiting for abraham lincoln to tell us that when we're older we're going to look like this dad who walked in on his daughter and there will be 100,000 people viewing our facebook profiles and they're all like us except they don't have this free ipad we could get just by clicking...