Washington state offices have some superstars in cybersecurity. A clear example is the Washington National Guard folks who bring their expertise to state agencies. State officials in the Secretary of State office keep elections secure with airgapped systems and redundant vote checking. Others do a...
Infected contact discovery is critical A key to stamping out COVID-19 will involve tracking contacts by those who are infected --If social distancing can be maintained and when patient testing is available. Tracking and testing can define the next group of infected people. The process repeats:...
The Seattle Times writes about Soviet maps In a very interesting recent article Eric Lacitis tells about maps he discovered in a Riga bookstore. They bring back real history of a country that was brutally occupied by the Soviet Union. Here is the rest of the...
Late last year on a Friday evening I discovered that logging into our Schwab.com account got lots easier. It was possible to log in without a username and password. Wow, what a vulnerability! Here is the story. Not expecting this labor-saving bonanza I hadn't recorded screen...
A Bluetooth attack just announced last month found vulnerabilities in most major operating systems: Windows, iOS, Android, Linux...
WannaCry news Over the last few days a WannaCry worm/ransomware attack has swept across the planet resulting in headlines. Forensics of the worm which spreads a ransomware payload is being meshed with political news. It's likely that the key worm concepts came from stolen and leaked...
A new accounts payable employee receives an spoofed email from the company president. Send a $20K direct deposit to this bank account...
The anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is always a time for reflection. [caption id="attachment_4737" class="center-inline-image-caption" align="aligncenter" width="343"] A US Navy photographer's view of the attack on Pearl Harbor, source: National Archives, archives.gov[/caption] Some reflections are personal. For baby-boomers it was common to know survivors...
In the current political focus it is not helpful to have another harangue from an opinion shaper. This blog includes just my personal experiences -- and the role of computer forensics. Remember the '70s? Seattle had become the bomb capital of the US. The government was...
Last week a long-time client called to ask for quick cyber risk assessment. No threat of violence -- but they wanted to know if their (very good) network security would effectively defend them against a known (very aggressive) cyber threat. An immediate opinion was needed....