Hackers
Toorcamp
Sun Jun 28 2009
I'll be speaking at Toorcamp this coming week. It's a technical talk on a very Heidi-like topic - booby-trapping your network.
I know already I'll know already I'll see a few readers there. I'll try to bring along some Heidi swag.
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Worms
Sun Feb 01 2009
Yep, back from my little break. And what a special chapter this one is. In case you didn't read these notes before, maybe you didn't realize that I write out the entire story before drawing a single panel. So when I put together the concept of the Cxor worm, it was way back in early 2004. Strangely enough, I thought I had come up with a new kind of killer exploit that would be revolutionary and scary - an exploit that was delivered via image files. Well, a few months later, reality caught up with me.
Then I had to come up with a worm that was going to cripple the Internet... a massive bot-net. The FBI would be baffled as to how to stop it and who to blame. Sadly, this has already come true... a couple times already. This story was written before Storm and certainly before Conficker. At the time, over a million infected computers in a botnet was terrifying. Now we're up to what... 15 million?
There's one more crazy concept I came up with for this worm, which you'll see play out in chapter 12. But it too has already become reality since I wrote this.
Sigh, life in the Internet age really is murder. We just need a few more real world Heidis.
Security blog
Wed May 07 2008
To make sure I'm even further delayed in updating the comic and because I'm not spewing enough noise about security, I've started a security blog.
Unless you're a security geek, you probably want to steer clear. I plan to be voicing a lot of my true opinions, so maybe you want to steer clear anyway.
Anyway, it's here: Assume Breach
Unless you're a security geek, you probably want to steer clear. I plan to be voicing a lot of my true opinions, so maybe you want to steer clear anyway.
Anyway, it's here: Assume Breach
Some background material.
Sat Apr 14 2007
Redid the info page, adding a new link to a cyber-crime section. The cyber-crime page gives you some of the stories that have been made public that inspired this novel. Warning - there are spoilers on that page.
Botnet
Sat Feb 11 2006
It's a bit of a small news item but there's a good hacking story in the news here. The best part of it to me were the players involved. The victim, a hospital, could have had real casualties because of the hack. The perpetrator wasn't after thrills but profit. This is the new face of cybercrime. Lives at risk for profit to be made. Get used to it. There's going to be more.
Seattle Times: 3 accused of inducing ill effects on computers at local hospital
As part of my day job, I was involved in this case and I'm glad it's finally drawing to a successful conclusion. You'll get more of the inside story on the case in Heidi book 2 and book 3.