Wanted: Incident Handler in Michigan

Do you know how to detect and respond to intruders in a multinational organization? Do you want to join a team with that mission? Are you an experienced information security professional who is looking for a challenge? If your answer to these three questions is yes, please consider applying for the last open Incident Handler role in GE-CIRT. In this role you will mentor intermediate and junior CIRT members and work with some of the best detection...

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Seven Cool Open Source Projects for Defenders

Long-time blog readers should know that I don't rely on tools to defend my enterprise. I rely on people first, followed by tools, then processes. However, today I took a moment to consider the myriad of really cool work happening (mainly) in the open source tool community. When I started counting, I found about seven projects that are likely to help you defend your enterprise. Most of these require some commitment of brainpower and willingness...

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More on Chinese Stealth Fighter and APT

Since my 27 December post Courtesy of APT, featuring the new Chinese stealth fighter, Aviation Week writer Bill Sweetman wrote more about the development of this aircraft and the support from APT:One question that may go unanswered for a long time concerns the degree to which cyberespionage has aided the development of the J-20. U.S. defense industry cybersecurity experts have cited 2006—close to the date when the J-20 program would have started—as...

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Happy 8th Birthday TaoSecurity Blog

Today, 8 January 2011, is the 8th birthday of TaoSecurity Blog. I wrote my first post on 8 January 2003 while working as an incident response consultant for Foundstone. 2739 posts (averaging 342 per year) later, I am still blogging. I don't have any changes planned here. I plan to continue blogging, especially with respect to network security monitoring, incident detection and response, network forensics, threat-centric security, and FreeBSD...

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The "IT as a Business" Train Wreck

I just read this year-old article by InfoWorld's Bob Lewis titled Run IT as a business -- why that's a train wreck waiting to happen. It reminded me of comments on a CIO article I posted in 2008 as The Limits of Running IT Like a Business. Here I would like to emphasize a few of Bob's points via excerpts from the 2010 article.When IT is a business, selling to its internal customers, its principal product is software that "meets requirements." This...

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To Those Who Want Tim Thomas Books

I continue to be bombarded by questions from readers looking to buy the books by Timothy L Thomas, mentioned in my posts Review of Dragon Bytes Posted, Review of Decoding the Virtual Dragon Posted, and Review of The Dragon's Quantum Leap Posted. As you can see at Amazon.com, they are not available. I hope that the spotlight I'm shining on these books helps Mr Thomas either 1) reprint the books or 2) secure a different publisher who will reprint...

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TaoSecurity Lab

In a recent blog comment one of you asked about TaoSecurity lab. This is a collection of my own gear -- nothing associated with my corporate employer. I decided to post the diagram at left in case someone found it useful. To summarize the color scheme: 1) blue (and the blue squiggle) means "wireless access," regardless of the nature of the device (phone, appliance, laptop, etc.); 2) green means Cisco; 3) gray means "appliance"; 4) peach (?) means...

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VizSec 2011 Call for Papers Open

The call for papers for VizSec 2011 is open. VizSec2011 will be held on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, on 20 July. Full paper submissions are due 1 April and panel abstract submissions are due 15 April. This is the conference to attend if you're interested in graphical depiction and analysis of security data! I was pleased to provide the keynote last year, but I will not be able to attend this year.Tw...

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Starting the New Year Right

Today's a company holiday (odd, but ok), so I figured what better way to start the New Year than to see if my Commodore 64 still works? I bought it in mid-1986, so it's almost 25 years old, and it's been over seven years since I posted My C-64 Rides Again. Since then the monitor I used with my C-64 died, but my dad shipped me his old RBG monitor.Would everything work? Could I access the Internet with it? The answer: YES. As you can see above,...

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