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A New Hope…

December 24, 2013 by Nick Selby

Dave Aitel has graciously allowed us to run his commentaries before – see Hackers May Help Choose The Next US President and Aitel On Cyberwar. Dave is the founder and Chief [Security|technology|executive][1] Officer of Immunity, Inc, and runs the Daily Dave mailing list, where this article was originally published. It is re-published here with his kind permission. So […]

Banning Feds From DefCon Is Self Defeating. Here’s Why.

July 11, 2013 by Nick Selby

If you’re not familiar with DefCon, the hacker confab that has been meeting in Vegas for more than 20 years, you’re not paying attention to hacking. DefCon (and the accompanying conferences like BlackHat and BSides) makes Vegas the nerdiest place in the universe during July. You don’t want to use an ATM, connect to a […]

Big Ears, Little Ears: One article, three layers of blown secrecy, and how Edward Snowden proves my point

June 18, 2013 by Nick Selby

Today’s guest post is from Eric Olson, author of the Digital Water blog and a previous contributor to PLI. Well, I haven’t had much time to write here for quite a while, but the Edward Snowden affair – and more specifically this piece in the Guardian – were such a terrific display of the Digital […]

To Whom the 4th Amendment Doesn’t Apply

June 9, 2013 by Nick Selby

Guest blogger Chris Swan contributed this from the UK. Chris is Chief Technology Officer of CohesiveFT, where he focuses on product development and product delivery. After a decade as a Combat Systems Officer in the Royal Navy, Chris moved to the financial services industry where over the last 12 years he was an engineer, architect, […]

Strikeback! Commission on IP Theft Report Gets All Ronin On China

May 23, 2013 by Nick Selby

A bipartisan group that studies the effects and impacts of IP theft in the US, The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, has released a report outlining their findings on the scope of the issue and making policy recommendations to combat it. The most interesting proposal among several: strikeback to re-capture stolen IP […]

Boston Bombing Investigation: Intel Failure? No. Bad Expectation-Setting? Oh, yeah.

April 24, 2013 by Nick Selby

This is a long post. As either Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain, Voltaire or my Uncle Sid said, I didn’t have time to make a shorter post. It ran today in CSO Magazine and will run in other outlets this week (though this version here has some footnotes). In a hurry? Here’s a summary: My conclusion is […]

The City That Became … [How Much] Safer?

November 12, 2012 by Nick Selby

I just picked up a copy of the most racy book available to crime analysts this month, The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation (Advances in Police Theory and Practice) by John A. Eterno and Eli B. Silverman. Eterno was a NYPD officer who rose through the ranks and retired a captain; he and Silverman, […]

Creating A Law Enforcement Farm Team: A Rozzer Back-Bench

November 5, 2012 by Nick Selby

In law enforcement, there are two factions: sworn or non-sworn, and for many things (with the notable exception of crime and intelligence analysis) never the twain shall meet. This is as much about cops as it is about human nature, and I’m not trying to change it. But I’ve noticed that, in things like arrest […]

II: Reports You Need To Read Now

October 24, 2012 by Nick Selby

Three reports you should be aware of – and not just because Dave and I are so busy with warrant work that we’ve had no time to do anything except point to the analysis of others – are covered in this report, and all are worth reading. The first big report, which we were in […]

Federal Court: Location Tracking via Cell-Phone Pinging is Kosher

August 15, 2012 by Nick Selby

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that police may track the signals eminating from wireless devices, such as cell phones, owned by a person. In United States v Skinner, the court found that a drug dealer whose position was being tracked by the DEA as he and his son […]

When Stupid Strikes: Social Media Policy and Training

January 31, 2012 by Nick Selby

A Bay-area police agency has found itself at the center of a firestorm which began with comments on Twitter apparently by one of its officers. The officer apparently posted to a Twitter account the comment, “Get those fucking hackers. I’m a cop in the Bay Area CA. I’d go after them with both guns.” Awesome. […]

Dave Aitel: Hackers May Help Choose The Next President of the United States

January 29, 2012 by Nick Selby

Dave Aitel is the founder and Chief [Security|technology|executive][1] Officer of Immunity, Inc, and runs the Daily Dave mailing list, where this article was originally published. It is re-published here with his kind permission. At age 18, Aitel started spending his summers working at the National Security Agency (NSA) while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; three years […]

“With That Revealing Shirt? He Was Just Begging to be Hacked.” Blaming The Victim in the STRATFOR Hack

January 3, 2012 by Nick Selby

In the days since the STRATFOR breach, I initially gave the firm high marks in communicating with its user base after idiotically allowing all their data go bye-bye. I’m going to modify that stance a bit in another post – I now see that they have in fact fallen very short of what they could […]

EPIC sues DHS over Social Media

December 22, 2011 by Nick Selby

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over what EPIC states is DHS’ failure to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests by EPIC regarding DHS programs to monitor social media. Say that ten times fast. The lawsuit stems from one of several […]

Were the London “Riots” Merely Cover for Organized Looting?

August 23, 2011 by Nick Selby

I was speaking the other day to my friend Chris Swan, who’s always several years ahead in his thinking about matters of information security. I mentioned some of the silliness from the London Riots (my friend David spotted, in the midst of a group of about 200 masked and marauding ‘yoofs,’ a Pizza Hut delivery […]