Dominic White

Entries from November 2006

 

Why Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and TRIPS+ are harmful to libraries

This is a copy of an e-mail I was forwarded by iCommons (the international arm of Creative Commons) by Teresa Hackett of Electronic Information for Libraries. It very neatly lays out the problems with the TRIPS+ FTA Australia caved in to and America is trying to push on the rest of the world (South Africa only narrowly avoided it in our negotiations earlier this year). Even though it applies to libraries, it is well worth a read if you don't know what TRIPS+ is or why it is the devil.

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Thursday, November 16. 2006
Posted by Dominic White in Politics
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Predicting Microsoft's Patch Cycle

Kevin Liston at the ISC has an entry up about predicting when Microsoft will release an out of cycle patch and when they will release it on patch Tuesday. His conclusions are:

  • Microsoft will release an out-of-band patch only if a third party has released an unofficial patch, and that patch involves a change more involved than a kill-bit.
  • Microsoft will release a patch on the next release date if the fix involves only a kill-bit.
This is an interesting bit on analysis, although I think you can take his analysis one step deeper. When I wrote my paper on optimal vendor patch release cycles I spent time analysing exactly this point: What criteria should be used when deciding to release a patch in or out of cycle to minimise risk to the people applying patches? Microsoft's current practise as pointed out by Kevin is highly flawed, but you don't need to research this to know that. However, I believe Kevin misses the root of what Microsoft's actual decision making criteria is. It is the same logic that applied in the case of their DRM being cracked; they released a patch out of band before anyone even asked; that of the impact on Microsoft directly.

Continue reading "Predicting Microsoft's Patch Cycle"

Tuesday, November 14. 2006
Posted by Dominic White in Security
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Workloads as a Security Measure

Johannes Ullrich at the ISC, just demonstrated a very nice way to reduce the amount of automated comment SPAM they recieve. What I really like about this is the principle behind it:

Increase the work required to use something for attackers

http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1836&isc=81b10e50ac18524a6834977e74c9325e

Wednesday, November 8. 2006
Posted by Dominic White in Security
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