Marcus J. Ranum is a world-renowned expert on security system design and implementation. He is recognized as an early innovator in firewall technology, and the implementor of the first commercial firewall product. Since the late 1980’s, he has designed a number of groundbreaking security products including the DEC SEAL, the TIS firewall toolkit, the Gauntlet firewall, and NFR’s Network Flight Recorder intrusion detection system. He has been involved in every level of operations of a security product business, from developer, to founder and CEO of NFR. Marcus has served as a consultant to many FORTUNE 500 firms and national governments, as well as serving as a guest lecturer and instructor at numerous high-tech conferences. In 2001, he was awarded the TISC “Clue” award for service to the security community, and the ISSA Lifetime Achievement Award. Marcus is Chief Of Security for Tenable Security, Inc., where he is responsible for research in open source logging tools, and product training. He serves as a technology advisor to a number of start-ups, established concerns, and venture capital groups.
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Marcus gave me some time today to ask him a few questions about his takes on the industry. You won’t die wondering as to what MjR’s true thoughts are:
November 19, 2007
Comments (6)
November 17, 2007
This is no BS….I don’t think anyone could make stuff up that would be this funny!
These are actual and real links to “the source”.
Start here: http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/ and then go link by link……as I said, even if you were trying to be funny, you could not make this shit up….
Link 1: Map of Australia - just so we know what the scope is….ie; “Australians….this is Australia!” 
Link 2: Not really sure what this link means but it talks about replacing something else that no one else has ever heard about and knows what it means. Here it is.
Link 3: “World-Leading Computer Program to Protect Critical Infrastructure” : WTF?!?! Since when? What? How? I must have missed something.
Check out the one on plastic explosives.….What?!?!
The ref has pushed me away and called the TKO…….he should have called it after the first link but then again, you have to give them a go………my fingers are tired……I skip now to this one about APEC. If you have not seen this video, please click here..it is well worth it!: http://beastorbuddha.com/2007/09/14/156/
To prove how serious the government is, click here; http://www.ag.gov.au/agd/WWW/MinisterRuddockHome.nsf/Page/Gallery
I can’t type anymore….each link could be a whole post to itself so I will leave it with you. You just could not make this stuff up!
November 16, 2007
“An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Internet Miscreants” is Produced by Jason Franklin (CMU), Adrian Perrig (CMU), Vern Paxon (ICSI) and Stefan Savage (UCSD).
This is a good read on many levels. Take the findings and information presented how you will, but it can’t be denied that this is happening. This is one of the more detailed research reports I have seen.
Paper Abstract:
“This paper studies an active underground economy which specializes in the commoditization of activities such as credit card fraud, identity theft, spamming, phishing, online credential theft, and the sale of compromised hosts. Using a seven month trace of logs collected from an active underground market operating on public Internet chat networks, we measure how the shift from “hacking for fun” to “hacking for profit” has given birth to a societal substrate mature enough to steal wealth into the millions of dollars in less than one year.”
Thanks to Donal for passing this one through to me.
November 14, 2007
Every so often you come across a good story.
This ZDNet Australia interview with Cesare Tizi, CIO of AGL, by Munir Kotadia and Alex Serpo proves there are some good CIOs out there who seem to understand security and their role in protecting an organisation’s Information and Technology assets. Unfortunately, Cesare is a rare beauty but hopefully others [CIOs] will learn from the likes of him.
I’m taking the story at face value and I have noted the response/comment to the story on the ZDNet site.
November 13, 2007
The rantings of Craig Chapman, Computer Forensics Geek.
Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your seats while I tell you this. A technology ‘evangelist’ has arrived down under – to save you and I – the apparently hopeless and needy technology sinners of the world, at long last.
An invitation arrived in my inbox to a presentation by a bloke from the States whose title was “Lead IT Security Consultant, Information Security and Risk Management Evangelist”…….That’s right – “Evangelist”. To which you would be well entitled to ask as I did, “WTF”?
Now call me old-fashioned, but when I think of the word ‘evangelist’, I don’t usually imagine anything remotely IT related. And, I certainly don’t feel an overwhelming need to be saved from myself by anyone brave enough to describe themselves a technology risk management “Evangelist”. Oh my Lordy, no.
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November 10, 2007
I won’t start by saying that implementing a strong framework is going to solve all business IT security problems. It won’t, but with one, at least you have one big advantage over now – you have a better picture and understanding of where your problems may lie and you’re less likely to be taken by surprise.
At present, most organisations have little understanding of the risks they face – where they are exposed, what they are exposed to and how these exposures could impact the business! So what are the problems?
I like these stories that come out every so often from the anti-badware vendors to remind us that they are on top of the fight against the bad guys. From ZDNet; More malware means good news in the security fight.
Somehow, while attacks are on the rise, it seems that the good guys are making it hard on the bad guys:
“While the volume of malware threats has spiked recently, one expert believes that this is a good sign, with cybercriminals having to resort to increasingly desperate measures to get a result.”
WTF? Really?
“For one thing this means that they’ve had to cast their nets wider and pump out a vast amount more than they once had to,” said Ducklin.
The bad guys are on the backfoot:
“Secondly, it means they’ve had to employ increasingly complicated tactics to expose people, such as this PDF Trojan……………the fact that it sounds complicated can be taken as a sign that we’re beginning to do very well.”
This is on the back of Kaspersky reporting upper hand on the fight.
November 7, 2007
Last reminder that Kiwicon 2007 is approaching –> https://www.kiwicon.org
Current Presentations and Speaker List: https://kiwicon.org/presentations
Schedule: https://kiwicon.org/schedule
Reminder also for CH’s “Pre – Kiwicon 2K7″ EurekaStockadeSEC Gathering for Aussies going over:
Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Time: From 5:00PM
Venue: “The Establishment”, 252 George Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia
CH, let us know if anything has changed.
November 6, 2007
Matt Jonkman is a frequent speaker and author, as well as founder of Bleeding Edge Threats, (formerly Bleeding Snort). He’s worked in security in the financial and telecommunications sectors for the last 10+ years, and now consults doing vulnerability assessment, threat research and signature writing. Matt’s recent writing projects include a regular article in Hakin9 Magazine, the Snort IDS and IPS Toolkit and How to Cheat at Configuring Open Source Security Tools.
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Matt was recently generous enough to give us some time to talk about his time in Australia, the IT Security industry here, his thoughts on the industry in general, business and some good products……