risk
The Black Hat Tax
Auren Hoffman at Summation has an interesting post on the “black hat tax.” Essentially, how much do hackers and other online criminals actually cost us? He estimates it at 25% of time and resources, after taking into account not just hackers but also scammers, phishers, and responding to law enforcement requests. According to James Currier [...]
Surveillance and Ubiquity
HexView has an article about tracking vehicles with RFID tire pressure monitors. The devices are found in tires and transmit tire pressure to the engine control module, which sounds innocuous enough, but to prevent modules from reading neighboring cars’ tires by accident, they also transmit a unique ID. Thus, you can follow a car around [...]
Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone!
The Today Show has a cover story today entitled “Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone.” The controversy over this — that is, the fact that there is any — is a wonderful example of how poorly people assess risk in modern society. What this woman, Lenore Skenazy, has done to stir up trouble is [...]
Deterring the Internal Attacker
On January 21st, 2008, the major French bank Société Générale lost $7.09 billion attempting to unwind unauthorized trading positions taken by Jérôme Kerviel, a futures trader with the bank. Kerviel had taken positions worth $73.3 billion, far above not only his trading limits but the bank’s entire market capitalization. The loss taken by unwinding the [...]
The Resilient Society, and How Not To Build It
Today I found a link to an article by my least-favorite current presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. I was expecting a cavalcade of fear-mongering — his usual stock in trade — but discovered to my surprise an article entitled “The Resilient Society.” This gave me pause, as resilience is precisely what I believe must be the [...]
