Network Security Blog

My friend Adrian Lane, over at Securosis, finds the best toys to play with.   This one, called Spokeo, lets you search on a name and see what sort of personal information is out there about that person.  Like Adrian, I always search on myself first, wanting to see what sort of information is out there about me.  And there’s a lot of it; even someone like myself who wishes they had some privacy leaks a lot of information, even if its just in public records.  Luckily I have a father with the same name, so our information is a little mixed up, with a sprinkling of misinformation added in.  If I can’t have privacy, having false information available to search engines is a good second.

The funniest part of looking up myself was finding my house in Streetview, which is offered directly in the Spokeo interface, then turning the camera around to see myself getting out of the car.  The picture’s about two years old, but it still jogged some memories of seeing the Google car drive by.  The picture is blurring and it’d be hard to recognize me from it, but there it is.  Being in a public place (the road), I’m not surprised to be photographed, but it does serve as a reminder of how often we’re being photographed in public, even if we are seldom aware of it.  That is to say that people who don’t live with a mild form of paranoia are seldom aware of. 

Just a quick post to let you know of an interesting event in the Bay area.

I don’t know much about this two day conference, BayThreat, it came up on my radar a few weeks ago and seeing as how it’s cheap ($45) and only a couple hour drive from home, I decided to check it out.  It helps that I know more than a few of the speakers from meeting them before, but to have a small conference pull in people like Dino Dai Zovi, Dan Kaminsky and Jeremiah Grossman is always a nice draw.  Personally, I plan on getting a room and staying overnight, since a two hour drive twice a day is beyond my tolerance level.

The RSA conference is fast approaching, and with it one of the biggest events on my personal calendar, the Security Bloggers Meetup.  We start meeting months ahead of time to plan for this event every year, and every year the people who do the work manage to come up with something just a little bit better.  Which doesn’t mean me, since my most important contribution is usually moral support and providing a strong back where it’s needed.

If you have never heard of the Security Bloggers Meetup, it started as an idea for some of the more notorious (or just loud) bloggers who were coming to RSAC to get together and share some food and drinks.  Five years later, it’s still basically the same thing, but we have more people, a nicer place to meet and lot more people.  The Meetup has become one of the smaller, more exclusive parties that people look forward to after the hectic day of the conference. 

And we do keep it exclusive; the event is invite only, no ‘+1′, no PR or marketing professionals.  Everyone who attends is an active part of the security blogging community and someone who’s willing to put a little bit of themselves out for everyone to see.  This is a chance for the people who write and think about security around the clock can get together, share a few drinks and talk about the online blowout they had the week before.  Then everyone wanders off to find the other great parties of the night.

Jen Leggio has some hints about how to get an invite to the party over on the RSAC blog.  If you’re a blogger, let us know, we’ll do what we can to get you on the list.  If you don’t make it for some reason, look for your favorite bloggers afterward at all the other parties going on the same nights.  But for a couple of hours, bloggers have a chance to talk to other bloggers and see what it is that makes the other tick.