Greg Conti published a book last October!

Information overload. If you're responsible for maintaining your network's security, you're living with it every day. Logs, alerts, packet captures, and even binary files take time and effort to analyze using text-based tools - and once your analysis is complete, the picture isn't always clear, or timely. And time is of the essence.

Information visualization is a branch of computer science concerned with modeling complex data using interactive images. When applied to network data, these interactive graphics allow administrators to quickly analyze, understand, and respond to emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

Security Data Visualization is a well-researched and richly illustrated introduction to the field. Greg Conti, creator of the network and security visualization tool RUMINT, shows you how to graph and display network data using a variety of tools so that you can understand complex datasets at a glance. And once you've seen what a network attack looks like, you'll have a better understanding of its low-level behavior - like how vulnerabilities are exploited and how worms and viruses propagate.

You'll learn how to use visualization techniques to:

# Audit your network for vulnerabilities using free visualization tools, such as AfterGlow and RUMINT
# See the underlying structure of a text file and explore the faulty security behavior of a Microsoft Word document
# Gain insight into large amounts of low-level packet data
# Identify and dissect port scans, Nessus vulnerability assessments, and Metasploit attacks
# View the global spread of the Sony rootkit, analyze antivirus effectiveness, and monitor widespread network attacks
# View and analyze firewall and intrusion detection system (IDS) logs

Security visualization systems display data in ways that are illuminating to both professionals and amateurs. Once you've finished reading this book, you'll understand how visualization can make your response to security threats faster and more effective

You can download Chapter 5, "One Night on my ISP", from the publisher.

Security Data Visualization: Graphical Techniques for Network Analysis

You can now preview your posts before submitting them. Please let us know if you run into any problems with this.

Preview added to MemeStreams!

Reminder time...

The 3 crazy 2500 miles, 14 days, 3 people, 1 rickshaw, 0 preparation, 1 BIG adventure.

Raising $5000 for Mercy Corps.

Adam is doing this right now...

Go Adam!

Quake City Madcaps - Racing India in a tuk tuk

More on the recent search update from the man who implemented it..

Tom posted some quick enhancements I made to Memestreams today. If you are running IE 7 or Firefox 2+ you you might notice your search bar is glowing while browsing Memestreams. You can install MemeStreams as a search provider with one click now in both those browsers as shown below:
Firefox

Internet Explorer

Of course, those of you who regularly search MemeStreams may have a complaint or two about the performance. We're fixing that soon. Its entirely a disk I/O problem and we'll be buying a new server with better storage performance when the new machine comes online in February.

Memestreams supports Firefox/IE's Search bar

I've posted two updates to the site tonight that Acidus wrote a few weeks ago. I'm sorry they didn't make it out sooner but I've been busy with the Christmas holidays and the like.

The first is an updated set of MemeStreams Bookmarklets. You do not have to upgrade to these if you don't want to, but good testers who report problems are always valuable to us. They should work a bit better than the old ones, particularly when selecting text on a page with a bunch of iframes, and we're now back to one peice of cross browser javascript code, which is nice.

The second is that if you're running IE or Safari you might notice your search bar is glowing. You can install MemeStreams as a search provider with one click now in both those browsers.

Of course, those of you who regularly search MemeStreams may have a complaint or two about the performance. We're fixing that soon. Its entirely a disk I/O problem and we'll be buying a new server with better storage performance in a few weeks. Unfortunately I am going out of the country for two weeks so I won't be able to get that done until I return, but the new machine should be online sometime in February.

Thanks Acidus for the nice bits of code!

Yeah! Thanks Billy!

MemeStreams Update: Acidus Badassness

The 3 crazy 2500 miles, 14 days, 3 people, 1 rickshaw, 0 preparation, 1 BIG adventure.

Raising $5000 for Mercy Corps.

A friend of mine is racing a rickshaw across India to raise money....

Quake City Madcaps

We posted a significant update to MemeStreams today. There are two primary aspects. The first is that posting is now much more free reigned. You can reply to your own posts. You can reply multiple times. You can post the same url to your blog multiple times. If you do the later, it will not result in the repeated promotion of that url on the main page.

The other aspect is anti-spam. New user registration is now open again. New users will not show up on the main page or in the "recent posters" section of the weblogs page. They are relegated to the "new users" section of the weblogs page until one of the admins blesses them, or someone who already has a good reputation recommends a link from them. So, those of you who can, please watch the new users for interesting people who you might want to bring into the fold.

This is a big update so please, as always, let us know if anything is not working properly.

Tom worked very hard to get this update done in time for Blogworld. Over the course of the next two days, we are all heading out to Vegas. It should be an interesting week.

MemeStreams Update

The first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media.

Industrial Memetics will have a booth at BlogWorldExpo next week in Las Vegas. If you are near the area come by and pay us a visit!

Blog World Expo

MemeStreams is an early social networking website, online community, and blog host that was established in 2001 by Industrial Memetics,[1] and particularly prominent among computer professionals.[2][3] It was cowritten by Tom Cross and Nick Levay.[3][4] The site employs a reputation system.[5]

Someone finally made a Wikipedia article about MemeStreams. If you're bored, give it an edit...

MemeStreams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

School: Did you really name your son Robert'); Drop Table Students;--?
Mom: Oh. Yes. Little Bobby Tables we call him
School: Well, we've lost this year's student records. I hope your happy.
Mom: and I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs.

HAHAHA! Sweet.

To be fair, you shouldn't sanitize user input, you should validate it.

And you thought O'Hare was a bad name...