“This isn’t the end game; there is something bigger coming down the pipe and what we are seeing right now is a prelude to that.”

...and let's not forget that obsolete fucking blacklist technology is sure to be of great help in defending against APT. ...and everyone should absolutely listen to the man at the helm of that sinking ship, because the bottom of the sea is the new place to be!

The gov't should pay McAfee anyway because then they'll have paid someone a lot of money, and that's just as good as actually doing something useful. Receipts protect against everything. There's also the matter of eventually people are going to realize that a blacklist scanner is a fucking stupid idea whose time has long past, and if McAfee hasn't secured some really big government contracts by then, they will be well and truly fucked.

Ladies and gentlemen, that shit right there is terrorism.

* * *

Honestly, it's bad enough that these fuckers sell useless shit to half of America and tell them it will protect their computers against viruses (provided they're at least three months old, and not particularly agile) that my attitude towards them can generally be considered "furious", but if they gov't starts handing these jokers a single tax dollar while "APT" is mentioned anywhere within a 200 yard radius of the deal, I may just spontaneously combust.

THE COMMIES ARE COMING FOR US! BE AFRAID! GIVE US MONEY!

This is a pretty interesting article. Apparently some guys from MIT realized that you might be able to exploit network latency on the markets by picking and choosing where you connected to, assisted a bit by geography.

This is pretty much the exact same thing that was being done in the IRC wars of the 90's, with clonebot connections and nick collisions instead of money.

I wonder, does ChAoS count as prior art? ;)

Turning network latency directly into money?

Finally, there is a company who knows that even if you don't like guns in your home, it pays to be prepared, Just In Case [zombies attack]--the new JIC M500 Cruiser, and the JIC M500 Mariner.

Both kits come in a watertight sealed tube containing a 12-gauge Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun, packed sealed in a watertight bag, just to be safe, and include various accessories like a multi-tool and a survival kit in a can (which oddly, contains not a single hand-grenade).

The new Mossberg JIC M500 line

Well, damn. Just damn.

Even after presenting this information in front of a few thousand highly skilled and trusted security professionals (let's face it, if you can get your office to shell out $1,500 to attend BlackHat Briefings, they pretty much must trust you) Cisco's lawyers are _still_ trying to spin this as if Abaddon's exploit technique were not "mature enough" and that he "did not follow proper industry disclosure rules".

Oh yes, and the link mentions that the settlement of the suit they slapped him with (in bloody record time!) requires him to _never_ repeat what he spoke of at BlackHat. So much for the tradition of having PDFs of everyone's presentations available, and so much for anyone outside of that conference room being able get straightforward details on what is a _very_ serious matter that IT professionals should damn well know about.

That, in a word, is _bullshit_. Abaddon has been doing his due diligence and then some on this issue for _months_. There is absolutely nothing that they could possibly say he didn't do. He talked with the FBI, the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), Cisco themselves (he even went to San Jose personally to tell them about it) and did his damnedest to make sure absolutely everyone involved knew the exact scope of the problem.

Abaddon and the Lawyers of Cisco (spoiler)

Apparently, someone needs to tell Iain that no matter how funny it seems at the time, the things you come up with after fifteen or sixteen really superlative bong hits should probably not be posted to one's professional blog.

Iain Thompson of vnunet.net gets really, high.

If you want to increase your security in a heavy-handed, vicious manner that upper management can't fault, krfilter is for you. :) This tool comes with a canned list of netblocks assigned to Korea, China, Hong-Kong, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, so getting rid of 3/4 of your script kiddie problem is just a few more mouse-clicks away!

Krfilter - Across the board increase in security!