Succinctly put!

Just read a presentation that very succinctly put why I'm so pessimistic about security. Way too much press goes to the trivial, easy attacks with little to no sophistication. Ofcourse this by design as the professionals simply don't indulge in the type of behavior that makes script kiddies famous. About the only caveat I have to the presentation is that in most cases their success is predicated on one of two things, either having the talent in house to be able to break in, or access to specialized attack tool chains. It is possible, albeit not probable, that in some cases the in house talent might refuse (if they knew!) to break in on behalf of a nefarious entity. That's about the only hope you have against the real pro's.

Industrial Malware

I just read an article over at cnet about malware that is targeted at major industrial infrastructure. In summary there are now virii / malware that is automating attacks against specific things like Oil drilling platforms and the like. I wonder if governments (and major companies) will get to the state that the benefits of having major infrastructure on the net are outweighed by the negatives.

Train Announcements

Living in the UK for 8 years, specifically London, opened my eyes to train announcements. In fact Londoners take great pride in the nature of the quirky announcements that happen on the Underground ( Living in Ealing we had a particular announcer that loved the sound of his own voice and used to regularly entertain the entire station with his antics.) and there are many sites around that list some of the antics. For the sake of those with some interest here's a link that contain a few amusing ones.
Now I'm back in Australia and I'm wondering how Cityrail can have mismanaged the trains infrastructure such that it is impossible to even hear the announcements. I'm currently catching trains for ~2 hours a day and so each day I'm in a position to hear various announcements, some of them important (it seems fairly commonplace for trains in Sydney to have their destinations changed mid-route so that if you don't hear the announcement you can often be caught out!) and yet without fail, I've been unable to hear any announcements clearly. It seems that there are a few problems. Firstly the speaker volume on most of the trains is set so low that you'd need a bionic ear to hear a thing. Secondly, there aren't enough speakers around, and so unless you're near one of the few that is in working order, you're just SOL. Finally it would appear that Cityrail need to invest some money in public speaking classes for their train drivers as the majority of them seem to be intimidated by using the speaker and invariably mumble, rush and shorten what they are trying to say in an effort to have it done as quickly as possible. In 2010, surrounded by technology with technology playing an ever increasing role in our lives it's a little disconcerting to see that in some area's we still can't even get the ~60 year old technology implementation right.