In 2002, Microsoft security researcher Peter Biddle (previously) published The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution, a paper that argued that DRM would always fail and that traditional forms of censorship would be harder and harder to execute online (it also coined the term "Darknet"); today, in honor of America's mass freakout over 3D printed guns, he's published an updated version, which mostly consists of adding "this applies to guns, too" over and over again, for people who are unclear on the concept.
Peter Biddle writes, "I get I myself into trouble. I don't claim that bad stuff happens to me more often than others – it's more that I find more ways to happen to bad stuff. I actually found a way to get severe hypothermia in 105°F heat."
Peter writes, "We spent the summer doing user-centered design (researching, designing, prototyping and building) around fire-fighting – specifically rural and volunteer first-responder fire fighters."
Peter Biddle recounts the stories of his migrant ancestors and their journey to America, making the point that you can't escape your fate by staying put.
The abrupt announcement that the widely used, anonymously authored disk-encryption tool Truecrypt is insecure and will no longer be maintained shocked the crypto world--after all, this was the tool Edward Snowden himself lectured on at a Cryptoparty in Hawai'i. Cory Doctorow tries to make sense of it all.
As the astonishing news that the NSA spent $250M/year on a sabotage program directed against commercial security systems spreads, more details keep emerging. A long and interesting story on Mashable includes an interview with Peter Biddle, an ex-Microsoft security engineer who worked extensively on BitLocker, a full-disk encryption tool with a good reputation that was called into question by the latest leaks. — Read the rest
Peter Biddle, who helped invent trusted computing when he was at Microsoft, discusses the serious Android security bug that was just reported. It's a good, short read, and most alarming is the news that Google's had information on this critical bug since February: "The entire value of a chain of trust is that you are limiting the surface area of vulnerability to the code-signing and hashing itself. — Read the rest
Some friends of mine are up and running on a web startup called PokitDok. I'm on their tech board and the Facebook, blog and Twitter posts I did while I was dealing with my father's illness and death over the past year became part of their VC pitch materials.
Today, Friday, Sept. 23rd (12:00 p.m. PT), MashUp Radio explores "Life Logging – the Self-Quantification Phenomenon."
This week's show will explore the rapidly expanding movement in which people track various personal metrics with the goal of making better educated decisions for their healthiest and most fruitful lives.
Remember when they gave pilots guns to increase airplane security? On Saturday, a US Airways pilot accidentally fired his gun in the cockpit while trying to stow it, blowing a hole in the plane. Security expert Peter Biddle uses this as an object lesson to explain why "trust isn't transitive." — Read the rest
