Schneier

Taking into account recent revelations with Edward Snowden and government surveillance programs I’ve started to thinking that maybe I should ditch my email provider and host it on my own server. It’s definitely not good when somebody is reading your emails, even if you’re innocent. Or maybe especially?

OK, so I would host my own email server and then what. Well, nothing. All my friends and family members are using Gmail or other email services from big companies. So I can be safe on my land, but once email would be sent it still would be readable by Google or others.

I value Bruce Schneier as security expert. I love his blog. I like that he’s not fast to make opinion and analyzes everything thoroughly. I’ve enjoyed his book Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World. And as he advertised his last book, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive, a lot, I’ve decided to give it a try. It was easier decision to me as it’s available on Safari Books Online.

I’ve read very interesting text about 3D movie projectors used by cinemas and how bad security design led to worse end-user (viewer) experience. You can find full text here. But I want to write about something I’ve recalled after reading this text.

Few years ago I was working at call center for major Polish telecom (TP SA). I was help-desk for ADSL service called Neostrada. We were divided into two groups:

Well, actually not. But as I’m a fan of Bruce Schneier and TED I’ve wanted to do something to support them. So I’ve translated subtitles for Schneier’s talk about Security Mirage into Polish. And reviewer needed to fix only few issues, mainly punctuation:)

Today I’ve read article by Bruce Schneier about conception of Internet Quarantines. Scott Charney from Microsoft gave an idea that computers in Internet should be quarantined if they’re infected by malicious software. This method is used by many companies when you want to connect via VPN to their networks. Bruce gave it deep and worth reading analysis so I wouldn’t rewrite what was written already.

Bruce Schneier is the person well known to everybody interested in IT security. Recently he published blog post about why two-factor authentication is not solving all security problems. For those who don’t know what this term means, two-factor authentication is basically system where first you’re giving your “constant” password (password which doesn’t change), then if you’ve provided correct password system is sending you another one which is generated for you just for this single use (this password can be generated also by some small device provided to you by system admin). When you’ll provide valid second password system would let you in. Mr. Schneier is writing that it’s not as safe as many people used to think, because it can be intercepted (for details read his post), so he suggest to use transaction based authentication, instead of session.