By The Angry Drunk
So, CanSecWest ran another one of their “crack shit and we give you prizes” contests and surprise, surprise, the MacBook got cracked.
Ok, before we get this ball rolling let me make something clear. I’m not a security expert. I’m not looking at this as a security expert. I’ll leave that to people much smarter than me. So, having said that, anyone who attempts to question my security expertise in way of rebuttal will be shot.
I hate these sort of competitions, because they are just theater. And, while one could make the argument that competitions like this help spread awareness about computer security, I’d argue that they don’t. Here’s why.
The problem with competitions like this is that the tech media, and the hordes of mouth breathing commenters / forum retards never seem to take away the important message. Instead we usually get breathless hyperbole (note, I’m specifically not accusing Macworld of that. I linked to them because they were the first story about this that I had open).
Whenever one of these stories breaks, you can be assured that the bulk of the responses will generally fall into one of two buckets.
The MacMacs will inevitably come out
Continue reading Jimmy Crack Mac and I Don’t Care
By The Angry Drunk
This is sure to bring out the trolls and zealots; but what the hell. It seems that Microsoft has issued a warning advising that Windows users not use Safari for Windows. I’m not going to bother to go over the background on this, you can read the advisory yourself here. And I’m not going to dwell on the irony of Microsoft lecturing anyone on “‘security.” My point is that this is the new face of FUD. Users have been so cowed with breathless reporting about all the evil hackers out there in the dangerous back alleys of the intertubes that the most efficient way of sabotaging your competition is to throw out some vague warnings about “exploits,” or “hacks.”
Now, before the usual douchebags sally forth to accuse me of defending Apple or some such shit, that’s not what this is about. What I’m commenting on here is a practice that is as retarded when Apple does is as it is when Microsoft, or Mozilla, or PayPal does it. Computer security is a real issue, and needs a real conversation that isn’t just one company using it as a marketing trick to discredit the competition, or a vendor stirring
Continue reading Security: The Most Powerful FUD of All.
