Tenet Nosce

Builders vs Breakers

2011-08-29T21:13:00.002+02:00

The following text was originally submitted on 16 June 2011 as a part of an assignment I completed for my Masters degree coursework at Rhodes University. Thanks to Dr. Barry Irwin (@barryirwin) and Yusuf Motara for encouraging me to publish it. The question posed was: “The industry is divided between ‘builders’ and ‘breakers’, often with both groups not fully understanding each other’s jobs. If

To revitalise a blog you need something good to say.

2010-03-09T08:46:00.000+02:00

It is fair to say that since 2008 my blog has gone stale. In a sense Twitter subverted a lot of the potential blog traffic, a phenomenon not just limited to myself. Whereas in the past you had no other outlet you can now quickly blast out small messages to a core audience on Twitter, which is great if you do not have time to properly develop content for your blog.The blog still has its place.

OpenSource Project of the day

2009-04-22T14:16:00.002+02:00

Over the last couple of weeks I have tried to regularly send a tweet with my choice of Open Source or Free Software security project of the day.For those that missed some, here they are:FreeIPA http://www.freeipa.org/Lynis http://www.rootkit.nl/projects/lynis.htmlKismet https://www.kismetwireless.net/MailWatch http://mailwatch.sourceforge.netSOMAP.org : http://www.somap.org/OpenSC http://

m0n0wall plugin for OSSIM

2008-09-23T15:29:00.002+02:00

Just released a OSSIM plugin for m0n0wall. Just point your m0n0wall logging to an OSSIM sensor (via syslog) and have fun.Find it here: m0n0wall plugin

ipfw and OSSIM

2008-08-26T08:45:00.001+02:00

Saw in the CVS update mailing list that my ipfw plugin for OSSIM is now generally available.

OpenVAS released

2008-08-19T09:56:00.002+02:00

I just read that OpenVAS (http://www.openvas.org), a well-organised fork of Nessus has been released to the world. What really warms my heart is that I see familiar names from the Kolab (http://www.kolab.org) are behind the fork.This is combination with Alienvault's (http://www.alienvault.com) sponsored development of free (announcement) OpenVAS/Nessus plugins makes the whole arena quite exciting

Is FOSS secure by default?

2008-07-11T08:29:00.003+02:00

Unfortunately a lot of people equate a lack of software vulnerabilities with security. Here in South Africa we are trying to help institutions to make good choices around FOSS (Fee and Open Source Software) and security looking at policies, procedures, standards and guidelines and how they apply to FOSS.If you think tha FOSS is secure by default please read the following article which highlights

Mac OSX Hints double whammy

2008-05-01T13:46:00.002+02:00

Good day for me today :-)Mac OSX Hints have published two of my Mac hints! Quite pleased with that!http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080427091554310andhttp://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080427091327509

Getting Alex to read you to sleep (Make your own Audiobooks on a Mac)

2008-04-23T16:41:00.003+02:00

I have recently undertaken some training in which I have to cover a massive amount of material. Being the natural procrastinator that I am I immediately went on the prowl for better books, better methods and all other sorts of periphery that doesn't actually count as studying.One of these projects was to convert the text versions of my study guides to audio so that I could listen to the text in

Suffering and kids dont mix.

2008-04-23T16:16:00.001+02:00

So my four year old has pneumonia. I'm sitting here chilling with him in hospital while he watches DVDs. Luckily its not too serious - its more important that he just goes through the medication and rest.The bad part is the kids crying next door. Couple of babies in here - it truly isn't fair that they have to suffer when they are too young to understand.

Twittered

2008-04-23T11:16:00.001+02:00

For all my thousands (not!) of followers, I am also available on Twitter now. Just have a look at the side-pane for more information.

Getting Things Done with Leopard

2008-04-09T10:00:00.002+02:00

Stumbled across this post about how to setup a GTD system with Applications that ship with Leopard. Go check it out: http://dennisbest.org/simple_leopard_gtdI personally use OmniFocus and have found it to be a great productivity booster.

Time to test Firefox 3 on the Mac

2008-04-09T09:52:00.002+02:00

If you have not yet grabbed Firefox 3 Beta 5 from Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html) you should try it now. Up until Beta 4 plug-ins were pretty broken. I am happy to see that my Nopassword, Del.ico.us, Passwordmaker and other plugins work properly now.

Protecting a Macbook (Pro) against harddrive encryption loophole

2008-02-27T09:22:00.004+02:00

In the last couple of days a lot of attention has been given to the paper "Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys". The attack outlines how laptop disk encryption is vulnerable due to the properties of RAM and its retention of the encryption keys. Its a pretty sophisticated attack and one can assume that the kind of subject that will perpetrate this attack is pretty serious about

FOSS and Security experience in South Africa? Who are you?

2008-02-14T10:35:00.002+02:00

Dear Lazyweb,The company that I work for, Exponant, is currently looking for skills in Information Security and FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).If you are an experienced professional in the above areas I would love to hear from you.On the security side we are looking for senior engineers and architects.On the FOSS side we are looking for individuals with experience with FOSS in the

Microsoft and Yahoo!

2008-02-01T14:41:00.000+02:00

Wow! By far the biggest news of the year is that Microsoft has put in a bid to buy Yahoo!Amazing news on so many levels, Yahoo! has been languishing for years and neither Microsoft or Yahoo! have been able to really respond to Google's dominance in the search market. This hot on the heals of Google's missed earnings...

Open Season for Open Source

2008-01-28T11:24:00.000+02:00

Nokia has acquired Trolltech. This hot on the heals of Sun's acquisition of MySQL. It truly is an exciting time and really gratifying for those of us that have been saying for years that Open Source Software is viable and that it makes sense to businesses.I've always had a soft spot for KDE and Trolltech and it really seems like a great opportunity for them to truly become serious players. Webkit

Want to share your Wi-Fi like Bruce Scheier? Here's how (and no, its not by leaving it open).

2008-01-16T08:59:00.000+02:00

I have been giving Bruce Schneier's article about leaving his wireless network open a lot of thought lately. Although I agree that its great to help out your neighbours there are just too many risks to leaving your Wi-Fi open. Paul from Pauldotcom raises very good points to which I wholeheartedly agree. Why risk leaving it open? It is analogous to leaving your sugar on the curb in-case a

Steal This Wi-Fi

2008-01-11T09:50:00.000+02:00

A very interesting, thought provoking, article by Bruce Schneier.Security is all about tradeoffs, you can choose never to participate in dangerous activities like flying or driving a motorcar but most of us choose to assume the risk.

Mac OSS roundup

2008-01-10T15:17:00.000+02:00

Thanks for KMF for some of these.Looking for OSS software for Mac OS X?Here is a list of very useful Open Source Software/Free Software directories for the Mac. I have used a couple of these with great success. There inevitably is some duplication, so be warned.Here they are:Open Source Mac (http://www.opensourcemac.org/)FreeSMUG (http://www.freesmug.org/)iUseThis (http://osx.iusethis.com/search?

Apple Address Book and Microsoft Exchange (LDAP)

2008-01-10T13:52:00.000+02:00

I had a short discussion this afternoon with a fellow Mac fanatic (KMF) discussing the problem we both share and that is: Accessing Microsoft Exchange from Mac OS X.There are three elements that you would mostly be interested in: email, calendar and contacts. This quick howto deals with getting Address Book to work with LDAP (Microsoft Active Directory in our case).Step 1: Determine the default

w00t

2008-01-03T07:51:00.000+02:00

I am very pleased to report that some feedback I sent was featured on the Security Now! podcast.There are some podcasts that I make a genuine effort to keep up with and a lot of those come from Leo Laporte's brilliant TWiT network.Just search the shownotes of show 124 for "Stephan Buys" to read my suggestion regarding private browsing by manually managing cookies in Firefox, alternatively listen

Mac OS X Open Source and Security

2007-12-20T13:43:00.000+02:00

Previously I blogged about my regularly used Open Source applications on the Mac. Today I am dealing with some applications that deal with security on the Mac. In my career I wear two hats, one of Open Source advocate/developer/consultant and then also a security consultant hat.I also have a keen interest in keeping my Mac secure when using it from day to day - thus the tools I am about to

Mac OS X Open Source Roundup

2007-12-19T09:10:00.000+02:00

As we approach the end of the year, here is a list of really usefull Open Source utilities and applications that I use regularly on my Mac.I run Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), but most of the applications should work on Tiger (10.4) as well.Freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/)Indispensable mind-mapping application written in Java. I have been using Freemind for years on Linux, Windows and of

How to FLOSS

2007-11-28T14:58:00.000+02:00

In my never ending quest to discover good up-to-date resources about Open Source Software I stumbled across the following."This guide (developed in the context of the FLOSSMETRICS and OpenTTT projects) present a set of guidelines and suggestions for the adoption of open source software within SMEs, using a ladder model that will guide companies from the initial selection and adoption of FLOSS