Tag: security
The naked cloud: insecure by design (or, how you can’t push a rope)
An evolution is well underway in IT architectures. In the early days, the number of computers were small (and they were in special rooms with physical security). As applications moved out to smaller servers, they stayed in these data centres, and complex network rules (firewalls etc) were deployed to control access to the *machine*. Sets…
Et tu Redis? Another spear in the ‘trusted environment’ ideal
It pains me to say this, but trust is over-rated. You see I grew up in an era of Internet trust. Where you could just expect people would not sniff your telnet password, that port-25 wouldn’t be abused to send spam. I just wrote about etcd, and how its ideal deployment model (trust everyone who…
Authoritarianism, Globalism, and my gadget shipments
OK, I have a problem. I’ll admit it. I order gadgets and components from Aliexpress. And then they arrive some random time in the future (1 week to 3 months!). And usually the sellers give you a quick email “your thing is on the way, give me good feedback please, shipping speed is not in…
More hacking to secure the gadget army: The KanKun SP3
So a couple of years ago I bought some KK-SP3 (from ikonke). They are ‘wireless smart plugs’, and despite their pretty-sketch appearance, work. Its a tiny little white box that plus into your electrical outlet, and contains a relay and small linux board. The only real issue that i had initially was that it came…
The power of (your) invisible hands: could we create a security and efficiency incentive that works?
I’m a big fan of “the invisible hand“, an economics concept coined by Adam Smith. The concept is that your individual selfish action can cause (good) social benefits elsewhere. An example would be putting a $0.05 tax on a plastic grocery bag. You being the cheapskate you are now reuse bags, and that causes a…
