DVD of the weekend - The Lone Gunmen

The Lone Gunmen on two double-sided discs, pure classic! In one of my chats with Roman Polesek, from Hakin9, he was wise enough to state the you cannot be a prophet in your own industry, simple, but powerful statement you should take into consideration.

Initiatives such as The Lone Gunmen, the X-files, and The Outer Limits have already proven useful, given someone listens! For instance :



"In a foreshadowing of the September 11, 2001 attacks, subsequent conspiracy theories, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the plot of the March 4, 2001 pilot episode of the series depicts a secret U.S. government agency plotting to crash a Boeing 727 into the World Trade Center via remote control for the purpose of increasing the military defence budget and blaming the attack on foreign "tin-pot dictators" who are "begging to be smart-bombed." This episode aired in Australia less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, on August 30."



Conspiracy theorists do have a lot to say, so don't ignore them, find the balance, and enjoy the series :)



You can also browse through some transcripts as well.



Technorati tags :
conspiracy

Smoking emails

I just came across this, "Morgan Stanley offers $15M fine for e-mail violations" - from the article :





"US investment bank Morgan Stanley will offer a settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), agreeing in principle to pay a $15 million fine for failing to preserve e-mail messages. The e-mail messages could have provided useful evidence in several cases brought against the company. In one case, resulting in a $1.58 billion judgement against the bank, a judge turned the burden of proof on Morgan Stanley after learning they had deleted e-mails related to the case. However, Morgan Stanley has not yet presented the offer to the SEC nor is there a guarantee the SEC will accept. The investment bank says it is fixing the problems that led to the erasure and is pleading for leniency."



He, He, He!





You see, the email archiving market is about to top $310M for 2005 according to the IDC, still one of the world's most powerful investment banks cannot seem to be able to comply with the requirements.




Lack of financial power - nope, lack of incentives - yep! The case reminds me of KPMG's tax shelters, McAfee's fine for accounting scam between 1998-2000, and the "Smoking Emails" Admissible In $1 Billion Enron-Related Chase Case".





Quit smoking emails, and take advantage of MailArchiva - Open Source Email Archiving and Compliance.





Techorati tags :
smoking gun, investment banking, compliance, mailarchiva

How to win 10,000 bucks until the end of March?

I feel that, in response to the recent event of how the WMF vulnerability got purchased/sold for $4000 (an interesting timeframe as well), iDefense are actively working on strengthening their market positioning - that is the maintain their pioneering position as a perhaps the first company to start paying vulnerability researchers for their discoveries.


The company recently offered $10,000 for the submission or a vulnerability that gets categorized as critical in any of Microsoft's Security Bulletins. In the long-term, would vulnerability researchers be able to handle the pressure put on them through such financial incentives, and keep their clear vision instead of sell their souls/skills? What if someone naturally offers more, would money be the incentive that can truly close the deal, and is it just me realizing how bad is it to commercialize the not so mature vuln research market, namely how this would leak all of its current weaknesses?



Consider going through some of my previous thoughts on the emerging market for software/0day vulnerabilities as well and stay tuned for another recent discovery a dude tipped me on, thanks as a matter of fact!



Technorati tags:
idefense, vulnerabilities