Impossible Dream

Something that I’ll come back to later when I finally finish my half-written post about “security” questions, but for some reading while I get round to finishing that post, the NYT has a nice short article on how data mining can be used to remove the illusion that is online privacy.

Pangloss has an excellent description of the implications of the European E-Commerce Directive on the convictions of Google employees on privacy charges in Italy.

“Microsoft has won a court-issued take-down order against scores of domains associated with controlling the spam-spewing Waledac botnet….[the] order allows the temporary cut-off of traffic to 277 Internet domains that form command and control nodes”

It’s good to see the legal route being used in such a productive way. It may not be a permanent solution, but it’s still a good amount of disruption. Thanks Microsoft.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of Saltzer or Schroeder, but the security principles they list will be familiar to all Infosec people, and should be, but aren’t, familiar to all software developers).

EmergentChaos explains them all, with illustrative examples from StarWars (*)

(*) The original Star Wars of course.