Security Saturday!
A reminder that this week I will be gone, doing some other things out of town. Some of you might be aware of what it is, but I have no desire to share much about that.
What I do desire is to notify all y'all that this security Saturday and the next might be very short. For this weeks security Saturday I would like to muse on practicalities in password managers.
Password managers are useful tools that remember your passwords for you, and assist in generating strong passwords with optional constraints (to comply with the password demands of a site).
For a few years I had been using KeePass, since it has been audited by the German government as well as being subjected to bug bounty programs. My father uses LastPass, which should be fine too (although I never looked too closely at it). However, last month I switched over to 1Password.
Arguably 1Password is less secure than KeePass and LastPass when considering attack surface. 1Password synchronizes your passwords online. I trust them to be sensible about it, since I had some twitter run-ins with their main security guy (Goldberg) and he strikes me as the non-compromise type of guy that would not allow internet synchronization unless he was sure it would be SECURE.
That being said, online synchronization by default means more attack surface by default. As such from a confidentiality standpoint this is horrible.
However, now that I am going to perform some tasks out in the boonies for (just under) a week, I realized something. From an availability standpoint, and having access to infrequently used passwords immediately because your phone synchronized with the up-to-date 1Password server over a mobile data plan is the best thing ever.
In that sense 1Password is really the password manager for dummies and other people that hate complications and actual manual management of password databases. Their family pack is not that expensive either!
But I digress a little. I am just glad I switched to 1Password when I did, so that I can perform some actions when not home. Although personally I will keep an up to date evacuation procedure to move back to KeePass at any time, because caution is always advised.
Stay safe out there!
There is so much more to this one chapter, but it is so good already!
I had to cut it short because guests arrived, but this should get you started on your own study :)
@calvinrempel Thank you once again for the Theology Tuesday you did, I refer back to it in this one :)
@JamesDerian Congratulations with your Marriage :)
Next time there might (almost certainly) not be a Theology Tuesday, so the official next one will be February 22nd! I have a marriage to attend. As the groom. Our home is still half a project.
Fun times!
Alc and I talk about my book that is now officially finished. This is part 1 of 2. Parts have not been neatly cut. Part two will air 5 minutes after part 1 for coninuity!
Hope you enjoy :)
This is the third corner to have persistent discussions and talks in. I love tech, but especially once it transcends hardware a little. I have two degrees; a bachelor's in Software Engineering and a master's in Information Security Technology. My graduation thesis focused on assembly-level optimizations (that is, one level above the hardware level) and my free subjects were in formal verification. This is why I love programming in the security corner, or maybe it is the other way around.
I started going down the Security path because I early on saw that the world around us would become a dangerous cesspool of badly-implemented and hostile tech. Now I am one of the people that understands the field around that mess :)
So in here you can discuss secure phones, weird programming languages, sad truths about internet-connected fridges. Also about malware, adblockers, and so on and so fort!
A lot of tech talk I do over at the @Lunduke community, where a lot of nerds hang out and it is ...
Much like the reading corner, let's have a music corner! A few rules for this one, since some music can be provocative. I don't mind much but let's keep youtube links with risque thumbnails out of here.
Other music I might also mind. "Do you find that offensive?" might someone ask. Yes, there is some music I choose not to listen on principle, and I walk a thin line there sometimes. But do not worry, I have a wide taste otherwise so feel free to share almost anything :)
Either way, here is the music corner!
Many times when we talk about security, we mean to say "Digital security". In essence we mean to say that our hardware and software that we use stays safe no matter what we do. And even though the ISO27001 standard (and by extension, for example, the NEN7510 standard) make it abundantly clear that security is a people-domain problem, we usually take that as a process-like truth. Meaning, we think that being secure is a matter of regulating people.
The truth is very different. For example, while writing this I am pretty shot. I slept five hours and I an under influence of a bunch of painkillers and some alcohol. Before you ask what I was thinking, let me mention that I have a genetic defect in my spine that I am dealing with right now by taking measured doses of all three (and yes, to get the Bible into this conversation, there is even a biblical ground for the inebriation with alcohol - see proverbs and the letters to Timothy - , although I did not use red wine. But hey, I am still on top of ...
