Schneier on Security

A book on GCHQ, and two reviews. EDITED TO ADD (7/26): Another review....

Interesting journal article evaluating the EU's counterterrorism efforts....

Two interesting research papers on website password policies. "Where Do Security Policies Come From?": Abstract: We examine the password policies of 75 different websites. Our goal is understand the enormous diversity of requirements: some will accept simple six-character passwords, while others impose rules of great complexity on their users. We compare different features of the sites to find which characteristics...

From the U.S. Government Accountability Office: "Cybersecurity: Key Challenges Need to Be Addressed to Improve Research and Development." Thirty-six pages; I haven't read it....

From Wired News: The four Wiseguy defendants, who also operated other ticket-reselling businesses, allegedly used sophisticated programming and inside information to bypass technological measures -- including CAPTCHA -- at Ticketmaster and other sites that were intended to prevent such bulk automated purchases. This violated the sites' terms of service, and according to prosecutors constituted unauthorized computer access under the anti-hacking...

This is excellent. And it's been cracked already....

Symbiotic relationship between the Hawaiian bobtail squid and bioluminescent bacteria, with bonus security implications....

Someone claims to have reverse-engineered Skype's proprietary encryption protocols, and has published pieces of it. If the crypto is good, this is less of a big deal than you might think. Good cryptography is designed to be made public; it's only for business reasons that it remains secret....

In what creepy back room do they come up with these names? The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program. The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government's...

How to spot a CIA officer, at least in the mid-1970s. The reason the CIA office was located in the embassy -- as it is in most of the other countries in the world -- is that by presidential order the State Department is responsible for hiding and housing the CIA. Like the intelligence services of most other countries, the...

A book. Also, read this....

Interesting: In the throes of intense fear, we suddenly find ourselves operating in a different and unexpected way. The psychological tools that we normally use to navigate the world­reasoning and planning before we act­get progressively shut down. In the grip of the brain’s subconscious fear centers, we behave in ways that to our rational mind seem nonsensical or worse. We...

The OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual from 1944....

Go read this article -- "Setting impossible standards on intelligence" -- on laying blame for the intelligence "failure" that allowed the Underwear Bomber to board an airplane on Christmas Day. Although the CIA, FBI, and Defense, State, Treasury and Homeland Security departments have counterterrorism analytic units -- some even with information-gathering operations -- the assumption is that all of the...

What could possibly be the point of this? Cars heading to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will see random, voluntary inspections Monday. The searches are part of an increase in security at the airport. It's a joint operation between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Austin Police, and airport security. The enhancements are not a response to specific threats, and the security...

Who needs actual terrorists? How’s this for an ill-conceived emergency preparedness drill? An off-duty cop pretending to be a terrorist stormed into a hospital intensive care unit brandishing a handgun, which he pointed at nurses while herding them down a corridor and into a room. There, after harrowing moments, he explained that the whole caper was a training exercise. [...]...

Amazing: The Canadian government disclosed Tuesday that the total price tag to police the elite Group of Eight meeting in Muskoka, as well as the bigger-tent Group of 20 summit starting a day later in downtown Toronto, has already climbed to more than $833-million. It said it’s preparing to spend up to $930-million for the three days of meetings that...

Early squid: New Canadian research into 500 million-year-old carnivore fossils has revealed an early ancestor of modern-day squids and octopuses, solving the mystery surrounding a previously unclassifiable creature. "This is significant because it means that primitive cephalopods were around much earlier than we thought, and offers a reinterpretation of the long-held origins of this important group of marine animals," Martin...

Not that interesting, really. Preliminarily, I can tell you that within my sample, cannibalism seems to be on the rise, myctophid consumption is falling, and a lot more squid may be dying hungry....

I've gotten to the front of the security line at a different airport, and handed a different TSA officer my ID and ticket. TSA Officer: (Looks everything over. Reads the name on my passport.) The Bruce Schneier? Me: (Nods, managing not to say: "No no, just a Bruce Schneier; didn't you hear I come in six-packs?") TSA Officer: The security...