As a big zombie culture geek, I love seeing more zombie culture hitting the mainstream.
Navy Times has a great article about how to survive a zombie attack. h/t SayUncle
Back in May, the CDC posted Zombie Preparedness 101, in response to the hype about the predicted rapture.
The Colorado Springs Gazette has an article about the popularity of zombie culture.
In addition to the pop culture trend, zombies have fully infiltrated a segment of the RKBA community with companies offering zombie related stripped AR-15 lowers, zombie targets (h/t TFB), and tons of other gear.
I, for one, am excited to see zombies become big in pop culture!
Update: A good friend pointed me to this Wired article talking about reseach on the neuroscience of zombies and how to protect yourself with Science (cue Weird Science theme song from Oingo Boingo).
04 August 2011
Israel Security Coming Soon...
Saw it over at SayUncle first. The TSA seems to be completely out of touch with reality here in America.
As the article linked at SayUncle states, the first enormous problem is that Israel's only international airport handles approximately 10 million passengers per year. Bring that to America and any one big city airport handles twice that traffic each year on its own. That means longer waits in line while each individual person is "screened".
The second problem is that Americans, especially while travelling domestically, don't tolerate "invasive" questions quite the same as international travelers going to another country. Add in that if you get picked out of the line because you didn't respond just right to their questions, people will become even more defensive and intolerant of the process.
That brings me to the next issue, which is that the agents the TSA will be using for this $1 billion program (yes I said 1 BILLION DOLLARS) are receiving a whopping 4 DAY training to be able to detect people who have a "nefarious" agenda. Now, as an auditor you learn very early on in your career that you will NOT be conducting fraud interviews on your own for several years. Why? It takes a lot of interviewing experience to start to be able to detect actual "tells". People are diverse in behavior, and although certain types of behavior can be indicative of a lie, there are more false positive that there are actual true results.
Take, for example, an male agent asking a young woman, "where have you been?" (one of the standard questions apparently). She doesn't look the "agent" in the eyes when she answers clumsily "I have been visiting my grandmother". Now, in 4 days of training this will likely cause this "agent" to flag her as requiring a full pat down, body scan, and further interviews. In reality, she is originally from Japan where it is respectful to avoid prolonged eye contact with people in authority positions.
I think this whole thing is going to be a $1 billion waste of tax payer funds that will not make us any safer and will only cost this country in time and money. Hopefully it falls flat on its face and someone is held accountable for wasting $1 billion in taxpayer money.
As the article linked at SayUncle states, the first enormous problem is that Israel's only international airport handles approximately 10 million passengers per year. Bring that to America and any one big city airport handles twice that traffic each year on its own. That means longer waits in line while each individual person is "screened".
The second problem is that Americans, especially while travelling domestically, don't tolerate "invasive" questions quite the same as international travelers going to another country. Add in that if you get picked out of the line because you didn't respond just right to their questions, people will become even more defensive and intolerant of the process.
That brings me to the next issue, which is that the agents the TSA will be using for this $1 billion program (yes I said 1 BILLION DOLLARS) are receiving a whopping 4 DAY training to be able to detect people who have a "nefarious" agenda. Now, as an auditor you learn very early on in your career that you will NOT be conducting fraud interviews on your own for several years. Why? It takes a lot of interviewing experience to start to be able to detect actual "tells". People are diverse in behavior, and although certain types of behavior can be indicative of a lie, there are more false positive that there are actual true results.
Take, for example, an male agent asking a young woman, "where have you been?" (one of the standard questions apparently). She doesn't look the "agent" in the eyes when she answers clumsily "I have been visiting my grandmother". Now, in 4 days of training this will likely cause this "agent" to flag her as requiring a full pat down, body scan, and further interviews. In reality, she is originally from Japan where it is respectful to avoid prolonged eye contact with people in authority positions.
I think this whole thing is going to be a $1 billion waste of tax payer funds that will not make us any safer and will only cost this country in time and money. Hopefully it falls flat on its face and someone is held accountable for wasting $1 billion in taxpayer money.
03 August 2011
Massive Security Breaches
From Dmitri Alperovitch, VP of Threat Research over at McAfee: Operation Shady RAT.
Also, and article from the BBC.
I am almost shocked at the sheer scope of the attacks and successful intrusions (after all, IT security is still not a priority on many people's list). Not only were several US government (Fed and local) entities successfully breached, but so were several US companies. Defense contractors, a real-state firm, an accounting firm, an electronics company, several IT companies, and a construction company were among the known targets that were breached. Some of these breaches lasted for over a year!
Speculation focuses on China as the most likely source of the attacks, which means there would be a high likelihood of State involvement. If this is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if several firearms manufacturers were also breached and don't know it yet. China's military has been searching for ways to gain a strategic advantage, other than the sheer size of their military, for years. Being able to obtain new gun designs and schematics that are being engineered for the US military would be a huge competitive advantage, both to the Chinese military, as well as any Chinese arms manufacturers.
Just some food for thought.
Also, and article from the BBC.
I am almost shocked at the sheer scope of the attacks and successful intrusions (after all, IT security is still not a priority on many people's list). Not only were several US government (Fed and local) entities successfully breached, but so were several US companies. Defense contractors, a real-state firm, an accounting firm, an electronics company, several IT companies, and a construction company were among the known targets that were breached. Some of these breaches lasted for over a year!
Speculation focuses on China as the most likely source of the attacks, which means there would be a high likelihood of State involvement. If this is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if several firearms manufacturers were also breached and don't know it yet. China's military has been searching for ways to gain a strategic advantage, other than the sheer size of their military, for years. Being able to obtain new gun designs and schematics that are being engineered for the US military would be a huge competitive advantage, both to the Chinese military, as well as any Chinese arms manufacturers.
Just some food for thought.
29 July 2011
RFID and Guns
So there has been a lot of talk about Chiappa Firearms of Italy announcing that they will start using RFID tags in their firearms to improve manufacturing and distribution accuracy and efficiency. (See TFB, SayUncle, Weerd). This seems like a perfect topic for me to write since I consider myself an Information Security/Assurance nerd as well as a gun enthusiast.
I am not going to address Chiappa's underlying business reasons for deciding to use RFID during the manufacturing an distributing process. The realizable benefits of using a system like this in an environment such as manufacturing firearms is questionable, but is an entirely different conversation.
I want to address the security/privacy concerns that has the blogosphere on fire. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Radio Frequency IDendification (RFID), they come in two basic forms: Passive, and "Active".
Passive tags work in a similar fashion to the old idea of a crystal radio. There is no internal power source so the tag does not actively broadcast anything. The power comes from radio signals that a RFID Reader sends outs. The reader must send a radio signal at the specific frequency that the tag is designed for. Radio signals at the correct frequency cause the tag to react and respond with a feedback signal that contains the stored information. The best examples of these tags in every day life are in the retail industry where they are affixed to DVD and CD cases, high-end clothing, and electronics. They are used less for inventory control than they are for loss prevention.
Active tags, unlike passive tags, have an internal power source, often in the form of a battery. Active tags are often used for things like remote sensors or tracking. They are not as prolific and are rarely used for manufacturing or inventory control because they are much more expense. The best example I can think of for the use of active tags are in animal research where a certain animal is tagged in order to understand migration patterns or other behavior. Over time the battery will run out and the tag will no longer broadcast its information.
The type of tag that will most likely be used in Chiappa's guns are passive tags. These tags will likely contain a product number, manufacture date, and serial number ( more on this later). They will use RFID readers at various points in the manufacturing and distributing process to track individual products to strengthen their quality controls and increase the speed at which they are able to produce and ship guns.
So what's the big deal?
Computer and tech geeks have been considering the privacy and security concerns of RFID tags for nearly 10 years. The concerns range from the government being able to track your purchasing habits and movements to people finding out that you went to the local adult video store because your girlfriend was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks visiting her parents.
So what is the risk of any of the above situations actually happening. RFID readers and scanners generally have to be withing a few feet to be able to have enough power to read the information off of an RFID tag. That is why you have to walk through the little "gates" at Target or Wal-mart after making a purchase. Most RFID readers are designed to have an effective range of 4-6 feet (some more expensive tags are designed to be read out to 30 feet with the proper reader). This means that someone with an RFID scanner would most likely have to be within 6 feet of you for an extended period of time while the reader scanned through all the available RFID frequencies and searched for a tag. It isn't all that unlikely to be that close to someone for an extended time at a restaurant, library, concert or other event where people will be sitting in close proximity to each other for extended periods of time.
If someone is able to sit next to you for an extended period of time, and if they have an RFID scanner, what kind of information would they get? Well that is where some of the gun community's concern lies. What if you have a concealed carry permit and the gun your are currently carrying has an RFID tag in it. A person with a scanner and enough time could potentially discover that you are carrying concealed.
One aspect I didn't address is that RFID scanners are generally "directional", meaning that the radio waves that it emits are usually sent in one general direction, but they are not able to pinpoint an RFID tags exact location ( you would need to triangulate the position using at least 3 strategically placed RFID scanners.... and... give me a break!). Take the concert example. If someone sitting two seats to your righthas a scanner and pulls it out and points it to his left and gets results back that indicate someone is carrying a Chiappa revolver. The person carrying could be any of the three or four directly to his left, or even a few people sitting to his left in the rows behind and in front of him. All he knows is that someone in the half dozen people sitting near him are carrying a revolver. All in all I don't find that to be an overly threatening situation.
Generally the risk that people will know you are carrying a firearm, or like to buy expensive shoes, or went to your local adult video store, are low and don't pose any significant threats. That being said, I do no like the idea of wearing or carrying ANYTHING that can aid in identifying me from a distance (yet I still carry a GPS enabled cell phone with WiFi and Bluetooth...). Chiappa did the right thing by disclosing the fact that they will be including RFID tags. And despite the fact that I don't believe they will realize any significant gains in efficiency or quality control, it is their right to use them. Their next step should be to provide instruction on how to safely remove the RFID tags should the consumer not want it after purchase.
So what went wrong in this situation? Quite honestly I think the biggest mistake made here was on the part of the Chiappa distributor here in the US, MKS Supply. Their response to customer concerns over the RFID tags was to mock and make fun of people who would like to protect their privacy. Instead of chuckling in private but being professional in their response, they chose to call people with privacy concerns conspiracy theorists and overly paranoid.
MKS will not see any of my business because of the sheer arrogance and disregard for their customers that they showed in their handling of this situation. No loss for them or me really. I thought Chiappa's Rhino was a novelty that might be worth owning, but overall it is not a gun I must have. And MKS also distributes Hi-Points, which I have absolutely no desire to own.
In summary, RFID tags can present privacy issues, but I will not be purchasing an RFID reader to scan every good that I purchase to determine if it has a hidden RFID tag. And finally, don't buy from MKS Supply. If they handled this PR situation so poorly and have such contempt for a large section of their customer base, imaging what kind of customer service you would get out of them after making a purchase.
I am not going to address Chiappa's underlying business reasons for deciding to use RFID during the manufacturing an distributing process. The realizable benefits of using a system like this in an environment such as manufacturing firearms is questionable, but is an entirely different conversation.
I want to address the security/privacy concerns that has the blogosphere on fire. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Radio Frequency IDendification (RFID), they come in two basic forms: Passive, and "Active".
Passive tags work in a similar fashion to the old idea of a crystal radio. There is no internal power source so the tag does not actively broadcast anything. The power comes from radio signals that a RFID Reader sends outs. The reader must send a radio signal at the specific frequency that the tag is designed for. Radio signals at the correct frequency cause the tag to react and respond with a feedback signal that contains the stored information. The best examples of these tags in every day life are in the retail industry where they are affixed to DVD and CD cases, high-end clothing, and electronics. They are used less for inventory control than they are for loss prevention.
Active tags, unlike passive tags, have an internal power source, often in the form of a battery. Active tags are often used for things like remote sensors or tracking. They are not as prolific and are rarely used for manufacturing or inventory control because they are much more expense. The best example I can think of for the use of active tags are in animal research where a certain animal is tagged in order to understand migration patterns or other behavior. Over time the battery will run out and the tag will no longer broadcast its information.
The type of tag that will most likely be used in Chiappa's guns are passive tags. These tags will likely contain a product number, manufacture date, and serial number ( more on this later). They will use RFID readers at various points in the manufacturing and distributing process to track individual products to strengthen their quality controls and increase the speed at which they are able to produce and ship guns.
So what's the big deal?
Computer and tech geeks have been considering the privacy and security concerns of RFID tags for nearly 10 years. The concerns range from the government being able to track your purchasing habits and movements to people finding out that you went to the local adult video store because your girlfriend was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks visiting her parents.
So what is the risk of any of the above situations actually happening. RFID readers and scanners generally have to be withing a few feet to be able to have enough power to read the information off of an RFID tag. That is why you have to walk through the little "gates" at Target or Wal-mart after making a purchase. Most RFID readers are designed to have an effective range of 4-6 feet (some more expensive tags are designed to be read out to 30 feet with the proper reader). This means that someone with an RFID scanner would most likely have to be within 6 feet of you for an extended period of time while the reader scanned through all the available RFID frequencies and searched for a tag. It isn't all that unlikely to be that close to someone for an extended time at a restaurant, library, concert or other event where people will be sitting in close proximity to each other for extended periods of time.
If someone is able to sit next to you for an extended period of time, and if they have an RFID scanner, what kind of information would they get? Well that is where some of the gun community's concern lies. What if you have a concealed carry permit and the gun your are currently carrying has an RFID tag in it. A person with a scanner and enough time could potentially discover that you are carrying concealed.
One aspect I didn't address is that RFID scanners are generally "directional", meaning that the radio waves that it emits are usually sent in one general direction, but they are not able to pinpoint an RFID tags exact location ( you would need to triangulate the position using at least 3 strategically placed RFID scanners.... and... give me a break!). Take the concert example. If someone sitting two seats to your righthas a scanner and pulls it out and points it to his left and gets results back that indicate someone is carrying a Chiappa revolver. The person carrying could be any of the three or four directly to his left, or even a few people sitting to his left in the rows behind and in front of him. All he knows is that someone in the half dozen people sitting near him are carrying a revolver. All in all I don't find that to be an overly threatening situation.
Generally the risk that people will know you are carrying a firearm, or like to buy expensive shoes, or went to your local adult video store, are low and don't pose any significant threats. That being said, I do no like the idea of wearing or carrying ANYTHING that can aid in identifying me from a distance (yet I still carry a GPS enabled cell phone with WiFi and Bluetooth...). Chiappa did the right thing by disclosing the fact that they will be including RFID tags. And despite the fact that I don't believe they will realize any significant gains in efficiency or quality control, it is their right to use them. Their next step should be to provide instruction on how to safely remove the RFID tags should the consumer not want it after purchase.
So what went wrong in this situation? Quite honestly I think the biggest mistake made here was on the part of the Chiappa distributor here in the US, MKS Supply. Their response to customer concerns over the RFID tags was to mock and make fun of people who would like to protect their privacy. Instead of chuckling in private but being professional in their response, they chose to call people with privacy concerns conspiracy theorists and overly paranoid.
MKS will not see any of my business because of the sheer arrogance and disregard for their customers that they showed in their handling of this situation. No loss for them or me really. I thought Chiappa's Rhino was a novelty that might be worth owning, but overall it is not a gun I must have. And MKS also distributes Hi-Points, which I have absolutely no desire to own.
In summary, RFID tags can present privacy issues, but I will not be purchasing an RFID reader to scan every good that I purchase to determine if it has a hidden RFID tag. And finally, don't buy from MKS Supply. If they handled this PR situation so poorly and have such contempt for a large section of their customer base, imaging what kind of customer service you would get out of them after making a purchase.
14 July 2011
Wild Bunch
I was watching the Outdoor channel last night and the episode of Shooting Gallery was covering a SASS national championship. Now I haven't really been interested in SASS before, but the championship was for the relatively new Wild Bunch matches.
Wild bunch is much more appealing to me because of the 3 gun aspect using a mil-spec (or close to mil-spec) 1911, a lever action rifle chambered in a big bore pistol caliber, and a Winchester model 1897 shotgun.
It wont be cheap considering I don't currently own any of the above firearms. I am guessing an initial investment of about $2,500. But it's a goal I can start saving for.
Now if I can just get over the requirement to be in period dress during matches...
They are out there
Met some more firearms fans today at work. Looks like my initial apprehension about sharing my passion in a work setting was not necessary. Looking forward to getting out to the range with them and having more gun related discussions in the future!
12 July 2011
And we're back
Ok, so two months, one job, and lots of other events later and I'm posting again. In the past 2 months I have left my job at a public accounting firm to join an internal audit team for a large publicly traded health care company. I also got the news that my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. And of course I have been busy with baby girl and my amazing wife whenever I haven't been working.
All I can say is I need to get to the range, it is LONG over due and if I plan on pursuing my concealed carry permit soon, I need to start getting in some practice regularly. As a birthday treat, my mother-in-law gave me some cash for my upcoming birthday to spend on ammo or other range supplies to I can make it out to the range on Saturday. I ended up at my local big-box sporting goods store thinking it would be easy to pick up some ammo. But when I arrived and started looking at the selection, I realized I had forgotten what I already had "in stock" at home. Lo and behold, this is what I found when I decided to take inventory before making any more purchases:
Not all of the boxes are full, but I think I'm good for this Saturday!
I'm going with my wife's step-father and step-brother so I will try to get some pictures taken to post. I'm looking forward to some fun!
All I can say is I need to get to the range, it is LONG over due and if I plan on pursuing my concealed carry permit soon, I need to start getting in some practice regularly. As a birthday treat, my mother-in-law gave me some cash for my upcoming birthday to spend on ammo or other range supplies to I can make it out to the range on Saturday. I ended up at my local big-box sporting goods store thinking it would be easy to pick up some ammo. But when I arrived and started looking at the selection, I realized I had forgotten what I already had "in stock" at home. Lo and behold, this is what I found when I decided to take inventory before making any more purchases:
Not all of the boxes are full, but I think I'm good for this Saturday!
I'm going with my wife's step-father and step-brother so I will try to get some pictures taken to post. I'm looking forward to some fun!
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