Selil Blog

What can a user do that will obscure the path to analysis of a computer system so that minimal to no digital information may remain to be examined in a forensically sound method? What are the tools and methods to creating a system that a traitor to an organization could use to communicate virtually without tracing? These are the questions we going to answer in general. From a forensic standpoint we are not going to attempt to handle the evidence of fingerprint or other physical evidence of use. Our discussion will center on the aspects of a digital investigation. It is incredibly important to first responders and researchers to understand where the gaps in the investigative processes exist. I hope to provide a few well founded examples to show where the gap in scientific method and tools based discipline have grown to the point a conclusion is obvious. [Read more →]

The idea of nation state conflict and conflict of ideology becomes a descriptive problem when looking at the scope of history. How best to describe the antecedent conflicts and the methods utilized? A focus of the military establishment has been to suggest four generations of warfare. These are not fully accepted and there is a substantive if less than enthusiastic counter to generations of warfare authors. Issues include that generations are inherently temporal and that tactics ascribed in one generation can be found as analogs hundreds of years previous to the “generations” birth. [Read more →]

ITS450 is a course about software assurance. It is not a programming course and it is not a software engineering course. In fact, while all of the students had taken some programming classes, their general programming proficiency was low.

The goal of these projects was not to produce the next killer app. The goals actually were not primarily about programming. Instead, the goals included having the students create a fairly complex program that they could then take through the phases of software assurance. The scheduling meant that the groups were required to complete the first phase of programming -with a working, executable program before the class had learned about the more serious vulnerabilities like buffer overflows. This was intentional. [Read more →]

There was the .com bubble; there was the correction due to terrorism. There have been myriad fiascos and financial hooliganism on Wall Street. Some would say this is the eventual end of a super debt cycle started after World War 2. Perhaps the burgeoning chaos on Wall Street can be blamed on a few bad apples like Bernie Madoff, but I doubt it. The true threat from and to Wall Street has always been simple and utter greed.  Now exposed there is a rising bubble near popping and I am going to dub thee the government bubble. The likely cause of this bubble is a short vision horizon. [Read more →]

There is a fairly substantial body of work that looks at the difference between hierarchical organized groups and network organized groups. The relative merits of each argument fall into a few camps. The hierarchical organization allows for direction of action whereas the network organization requires more direction by intent. When considering networked organization it is important to think about how they are spawned, how they grow, how resilient are they, and what sustains the organization. This is important when thinking about terrorism, cyber warfare, or any conflict where non-state actors may be involved. [Read more →]

The Chicagoboyz are hosting the round table I’m looking forward to the adventure of bouncing some ideas off them. For the purposes of the round table I will be posting at Chicagoboys. I will post an abstract here and link to the Chicagoboyz post. The chancellor at Purdue University Calumet each year picks three faculty to lead a round table with students. The chancellors reading circle is a wonderful examination of literature where a variety of topics can be discussed between faculty and students. Last year I had the wonderful honor to be involved. This year I have taken on the challenge to examine “On War” by Clausewitz with the Chicagoboyz. 

Some key points to my perspective. I am interested in what Clausewitz had to say. There are a variety of other conflicting opinions that may be perfectly valid, but this is study of what his theories say. My crucible to test his ideas will vacillate between low intensity conflict and cyber warfare. I personally own four different translations of “On War”. So, yes I have read it a few times before. What will a long dead military theoretician have to tell us about the current day? History is the stream of consciousness that infests the mind with the rampant desire to move forward even as we live ever so momentously in the past. The words of Clausewitz floating forward through time is one of those thin threads of connection. 

Let the reading begin. Let the learning continue. Let the discussion flourish.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently released a report titled “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency: A report of the CSIS commission on cybersecurity for the 44th presidency”. This report is an in depth look at policy recommendations. Realizing that this an effort of many people and not to denigrate the work by those people this report unfortunately does not suggest anything revolutionary. To make matters worse it is both factually and procedurally filled with holes that would seem egregious. Some of the issues would be honest differences in opinion, but others are simply world view issues that are woefully overstated or failing miserably. [Read more →]

The fall 2008 semester ITS 470 Large Scale High Performance Systems course completed a project to produce a live distribution knoppix CD. Feedback from the public on these projects is highly sought after as the problems are real world. As this project is using extensively open source tools those original licenses are extended to any future use of this tool as per their licenses. The documentation package is covered under creative commons licenses. More after the jump. [Read more →]

The Anti-Library as suggested in Talebs book on Black Swans really interested me. There has been some work on this before by many other bloggers (Zenpundit, Soob, ComingAnarchy, Rethinking Security).

The Ecco story in Talebs book even spawned another blog called the Antilibrary.

[Read more →]

Today those of us living in the Northwest Indiana area (Porter, Chesterton, Michigan City) woke up to around a foot of snow. The following are a few pictures of the event.  Click more to see them.

Avalanche pun?

[Read more →]