The Rich Web Experience

ISC StormCast for Thursday, May 23rd 2013 http://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=3326, (Thu, May 23rd)

Johannes Ullrich — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:59:00 CDT

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I Swear This Blog Isn’t About Elections…

Alex Russell — Thu, 23 May 2013 09:09:00 CDT

…but if it were, there would be time to cover the W3C Advisory Board election. This is truly inside-baseball stuff, as most of the AB’s work happens in member-only areas of the W3C website and most of what they effect is W3C process.

So why care? Because spec licensing matters, sadly.

Let me first outline my view: in an ideal world, specification language for web standards would be in the public domain or dedicated to it. The body of intellectual property that is non-copyright is fought over via an independent process, and to the extent that it accumulates in a standards organization, it should also be possible for the group of members that have contributed to take their ball and start again somewhere else.

Why does this matter? Competition.

Standards bodies should not be insulated from the pressure to try to deliver better results. There are, of course, pathologies around this; some of which are common enough to have names: “pay for play”, “venue shopping”, etc. But in general, to the extent that many bodies can produce substitue goods, it gives them a reason to differentiate. The concrete example here is WHATWG vs. W3C. I don’t think it’s controversial to assert that without the WHATWG, the current W3C would be f’d. Competition makes everyone better, even for products that are “free” for consumers and are the product of community effort.

This, then, is why it’s such a terrible idea for the W3C’s Advisory Committee (the people who have some power) to elect representatives to the Advisory Board (who have even more power) that are willing to take the self-interested side of the W3C against liberal licensing of specs over the competition-enabling position that liberal licensing makes everyone better off (to a first approximation).

If you are an AC rep, the time is now to quiz candidates on this point. If you truly think that the W3C is a unique community, it’s important to realize that what makes it that special is a set of shared values, not a death-grip on legacy intellectual property rights. Fixating on that ownership is the fast-path to making everyone worse off; by the time it truly becomes important, it’s so likely that the organization that cares about it needs competition to right the ship or get out of the way.

MoVP II, (Thu, May 23rd)

Johannes Ullrich — Thu, 23 May 2013 09:00:00 CDT

Volatility is a Python framework for performing memory forensics. If you haven't tried it ...(more)...

Wireshark 1.10.0rc2 is now available http://www.wireshark.org/download.html, (Thu, May 23rd)

Johannes Ullrich — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:34:00 CDT

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Chrome 24.0.1312.52 has been updated for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame, (Wed, May 22nd)

Johannes Ullrich — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:52:00 CDT

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Apple QuickTime 7.7.4 for Windows updated, MANY security vulnerabilities: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222, (Wed, May 22nd)

Johannes Ullrich — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:51:00 CDT

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Wireshark 1.8.7 and 1.6.15 Released http://www.wireshark.org/news/20130517.html, (Wed, May 22nd)

Johannes Ullrich — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:01:00 CDT

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Privilege escalation, why should I care?, (Wed, May 22nd)

Johannes Ullrich — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:10:00 CDT

In my day job I spend about 90% of my time on the red team, performing vulnerability assessmen ...(more)...

ISC StormCast for Wednesday, May 22nd 2013 http://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=3323, (Wed, May 22nd)

Johannes Ullrich — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:19:00 CDT

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Moore, Oklahoma tornado charitable organization scams, malware, and phishing, (Tue, May 21st)

Johannes Ullrich — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:33:00 CDT

I find it sad that in times when people are facing disaster, many have died, others missing, a ...(more)...

Chrome 27 stable released http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.ca/ some security fixes, (Tue, May 21st)

Johannes Ullrich — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:14:00 CDT

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ISC StormCast for Tuesday, May 21st 2013 http://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=3320, (Tue, May 21st)

Johannes Ullrich — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:00:00 CDT

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Safe - Tools, Tactics and Techniques, (Mon, May 20th)

Johannes Ullrich — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:14:00 CDT

Trend Micro published a report last week on a spear-phishing emails campaign that contain a ma ...(more)...

Port 51616 - Got Packets?, (Sun, May 19th)

Johannes Ullrich — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:43:00 CDT

We're looking for any info or packets that target port 51616. After witnessing a sp ...(more)...

Ubuntu Package available to submit firewall logs to DShield, (Mon, May 20th)

Johannes Ullrich — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:16:00 CDT

I put together a simple .deb package to install our DShield iptables client on Ubuntu ...(more)...

Sysinternals Updates for Accesschk, Procdump, RAMMap and Strings http://blogs.technet.com/b/sysinternals/archive/2013/05/17/updates-accesschk-v5-11-procdump-v6-0-rammap-v1-22-strings-v2-51.aspx, (Mon, May 20th)

Johannes Ullrich — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:36:00 CDT

----------- Guy Bruneau

Unfolding brains at FITC Amsterdam

Denise Jacobs — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:00:00 CDT

There are some experiences that are so good that they set the bar for any other experience past or future to try to match or emulate. Facilitating my first full day workshop on creativity at FITC Amsterdam goes on record as being one of the best days of my life. Yes, it was that good. Seriously.

For starters, I was bolstered by the fact that I had been in contact with a few of the attendees beforehand. One woman emailed me in advance to tell me how excited she was about the workshop. Another gentleman flew in to Amsterdam for the day in from Madrid, Spain expressly to take the workshop (he further interviewed me afterwards to get Inside the Creativity), then left soon after it was over to catch his flight back home.

I was further encouraged by the number of attendees: 16, which was more than I thought would be there. Because the workshop focused on more “soft skills”, I figured that at a technical conference it would be the least well-attended out of all the workshops offered. Much to my surprise and delight, it turns out that The Unfolded Brain had the highest number of attendees of the four workshops that day.

There was minor hiccup to the day: my computer’s hard drive completely died at 6am, four hours before the workshop was about to start. However, my new method of preparation not only put me in good stead, but totally saved me. Having used the Post-it Big Pads to organize my ideas and work out the course flow, I was able to use them as my workshop notes with all of the reminders of the content that I wanted to cover, the exercises to do in class, and the practices for the attendees to work on at home.

The attendees were ready, eager to do some work, and eager for the content. In order to get an idea of what people were hoping to get out of the day, I had everyone write some of their goals for the workshop on post-it notes and put them at the front of their desks. Everyone had great ideas, and it was great for me to see them and know that my content was in alignment with what folks were looking to get out of the course.

After that, I intro-ed the content, and dove in with the first exercise. Despite not having any slides and doing the whole day “analog”, the information flowed and everyone delved into the assignments with gusto. Some of the exercises were individual, some required a partner, a few required small groups, and one exercise included everyone in the class at once.

For me, the experience was amazing. I felt very honored to be able to share my process for enhancing and expanding creative productivity. Workshops are truly my element, as it was through teaching a hands-on handmade herbal soapmaking workshop back in 1998 that showed me my gift for teaching and love for sharing practical information. And from the feedback, no slides was no problem:

“Nice job presenting ad-hoc (broken computer)”

“Great work solving the session without your computer.”

“Laptop was broke, so no slides could be shown, but I didnt miss them.”

At the end of the workshop, the students seemed buzzing with positivity and possibility, and many lingered past the end of the course to chat with each other and stay in the zone of the day. The blogger for the conference was one of the workshop participants, and he wrote up a really nice recap of the day for the conference site.

But that only partially explains why the day was so poignant for me. You know those moments when you have a vision of how your life could be better in the future than it is at the moment? Well, doing this work was part of a vision that came to me at the end of February 2010, when it became clear to me that I wanted to help people feel that incredible surge of energy that you get when you’ve created something amazing and have been in “the zone” creatively. This day and this workshop represented the culmination of three years of work in creating this experience, not just for myself, but for the people in the workshop as well. And seeing that I have the power to create something like this was phenomenal.

If you are wondering what happened to my computer, it turns out that had to spend all of the next day at the Apple Store working to get it fixed. But that did not impede on the great feelings that I had from the workshop the day before, which carried me through the rest of the week, right up to the next amazing experience that I had in Frankfurt, Germany the last week of February. That, however, is an entirely separate blog post.

Full disclaimer: This blog post is sponsored by Post-it Brand Big Pads.

Cisco TelePresence Supervisor MSE 8050 Denial of Service Vulnerability, (Thu, May 16th)

Johannes Ullrich — Thu, 16 May 2013 06:06:00 CDT

Cisco TelePresence Supervisor MSE 8050 contains a vulnerability that may allow an unauthentica ...(more)...

ISC StormCast for Thursday, May 16th 2013 http://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=3311, (Thu, May 16th)

Johannes Ullrich — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:48:00 CDT

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