Google's Next Big Thing

[A company owned by geeks - its obvious what is next: KITT]

I think, after spending quite a while putting all the information I have together and filling in the blanks what Google's next big aim is.

So, from what I can tell the original founding members of Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin put this list together as things to do with their lives:

1. Create cool geeky technology 
2. Create company to spread technology
3. Get rich, famous, powerful
4. Take over the world
5. Create a car as cool as KITT

I figure the above is any geek's list. It certainly would be my list. So, having completed points 1,2,3,4 already it is time to work on point 5.

So, sub-points for this are –

1. It must talk
2. It must take orders
3. It must drive itself
4. It must come when I talk to my watch
5. It must be bulletproof
6. Turboboost!

So, point 5 has been done so let’s see about the other points:

Point 1 and 2 are done by Android already but Apple has taken it to the next level. I guess Google will take it even further. Naturally you’d need an android device embedded into the car. Guess who owns android technology? Google. The first commercial car radio was made by Motorola Mobility – Google owns them. But watch Motorola Mobility for a talking “box” that can also listen, chat and take orders. (So, I’ll check off points 1 and 2...)

Point 3 has been done by Google – and is on the way to be legal in Nevada (thanks to Google). Check off point 3.

Finally… a smart watch –  check. It needs to be able to talk to the car – check. It needs to be able to pinpoint your position – check. (Actually, not sure if these have GPS but it is not unreasonable to expect that they do or will have soon). It also needs to be able to relay orders again – check.

So, put all this technology together and you have the ability to call your car via your watch and ask it to come to you and it will – all by itself. 

The technology is all done… it is just a matter of putting it together. Take the car and make it bulletproof. Put run-flat tyres on it. (And cool black paint. And a funky red LED on the front.)

Now all the Google guys have to do is perfect Turbo-boost. And get Hoff-worthy hairy chests.

I wonder if Google will go into making helicopters that can fly faster than sound…? Maybe that’s next on their list.

A great loss to the IT world. One of its great inventors dies.

[Dennis Ritchie died at the age of 70.]

He was one of the most influential computer engineers ever. I could go into details as to what he did but lets look only at how his work contributed to Steve Jobs becoming a household name.

Ritchie created the C programming language and with Ken Thompson, Ritchie created the Unix Operating System.

With out Unix, Jobs would not have had a basis for his NeXT language which Apple bought bringing Jobs back into Apple and ultimately back into the CEO position.

Without Unix, Pixar would never have had Linux (derived from Unix) to do massive and cheap rendering. This means there would have been no Toy Story and all the movies that followed and no buy out from Disney.

Without Unix there would have been no base OS for iOS so no Operating System for the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

C on the other hand is the base of almost every modern programming language from C (itself) to C++ to perl to java etc etc. No Java means no apps for the idevices. It also means no cross platform applications like itunes and no way to get Office to be on both Windows and iOS without having to write the entire program to work on each. Even worse - if programs like Office were written in Assembly (as was the norm before C) then you would have to get a totally new copy of the software for every device even if you upgraded your PC from one processor to another.

To be fair if Ritchie had not created Unix or C, someone would have probably jumped in and created something similar. Or one of the languages and operating systems around in the 70s may have been more successful and changed the world we live in like Unix has but this isn't the case. Ritchie's contributions to the world have radically changed it and we will miss the inventor of these tools. It may be that Jobs was tasked with making some genious idevices up in Heaven and he called up the one guy he needed to help him more than anyone else. A heaven without Unix.... doesn't make sense.

Ps. on the other hand... Jobs's biggest competition Android would also not have been possible without Linux (based on Unix) and Java (based on C).

What are your rights regarding personal email? [Extra Bit]

[Are Facebook Saints?]

Just adding an extra point to my recent Blog post.

The question I posed in my last post about email sharing was triggered by Facebook stating that it is wrong for a person to mass move private details such as email addresses and telephone number etc to a new service provider without the person knowing. It is an interesting (and perhaps valid) argument which covers up what they would rather say which is "please don't move your Facebook contacts to our competition and set up an ecosystem (there must be a better word) there."

The point is that Facebook, through its partnership with Skype is forcing its users to do just what it is telling them they should not do with Google Plus.

I haven't used the Skype functionality in Facebook as yet so I'm not sure exactly how it works but from what I've read, once you use it once to chat through voice or video to a contact, it creates them as a contact in Skype. Essentially, by you chatting to someone over Facebook Video, you are creating a link to someone in Skype where one didn't exist before.

This really is very similar to what Facebook is arguing you shouldn't do by using automated ways of exporting Facebook contacts to create contacts in Google Plus.

Facebook is a business so one shouldn't be surprised when they choose profit over strange ethics but then expecting their users to abide by these ethics is a bit hypocritical.

What are your rights regarding personal email?

[I'm not talking legally...just ethically]

So, someone gives you their business card with all their details. Can you load it on Outlook to make it easier for you to contact them. Can you add them to you phonebook on your phone? What if your phone gets stolen? Can you give it to a colleague? What if the colleague has some work for the person? What if the colleague is an annoying git? Can you give it to a salesperson who is selling selling something you think the person would want? Can you give it to a salesperson just to get them off your back?

Taking things further... Facebook argues that you do not have the right to take your 'friend's details off their network and use it on another network. Obviously Facebook have a vested interest in you not being able to move information off their network and tying you down but do they have a point?

Of course, they've never had an issue before with apps sharing users' details and downloading friends' information.

But this is not to judge Facebook on their new awareness of privacy, it is to ask the question. Should someone be confident to move your personal information including you email address to any system that they want to? Or should they ask first? Or should they just not do it at all?

Discuss. :)

ITWeb Security Summit - Wrap Up [Part One]

[Some good stuff from the conference]

I really wanted to write something longer but this will do for now. I just want to get something out there that is not a tag-cloud.

Stuxnet and Spy Wars
Patrick Gray from Risky Business Podcast and Tony Olivier both spoke about a world that we are only starting to understand now where Governments are playing with Information and changing the world with their own Malware and hidden online activities. Stuxnet, Anonymous, and HBGarry are all the catchwords that made each of these presentations fascinating. Richard Thieme continued and asked the big question - what side are you on? Tony urged the attendees to spread the word about what is happening as it is the Information Security community that is best equipped to understand what the implications are. Very interesting stuff.

Online Auctions
Glenn Wilkinson did some interesting research into how online auctions can be gamed. It was very interesting and well done to him. However, I think he missed out on an important point which I would like to take further. On my way home on the first day, my head was buzzing thinking about this talk and it hit me while I was battling some traffic along Sandton Drive - our corporate information is on the Internet and is up for Auction. "Cyber-criminals" have an amount that they are willing to spend to get our information. Information Security is really just one big auction of information. APT was a term that was thrown around loosely at the conference but I think that Glenn's talk is the only talk where it wasn't mentioned (even in jest) and yet his talk would have had the best definition of APT - it is where Information Security and Cyber-Crime are locked in a "war of attrition".

Fig Leaves and Haroon's Hammer
Haroon Meer is a great talker and I enjoyed his Lessig style presentation at the end of the conference. It was great that both of the closing talks both had calls to action which makes sense. I agree wholeheartedly with the problem that Haroon builds in his talk. The one question he asked which was along the lines of: Hands up all those here who are willing to put $1000 down on the table that they can protect their CEO's Information. No hands were raised. He then went through some excuses that InfoSec professionals use and rips them apart. His one quote "Your management is one 0-day from the worst day of their lives" was re-tweeted across the world and was the most popular quote from the conference. The next bit was more important though - "... and they don't know it and you (Information Security Professionals) have a duty to inform them". The bit of the presentation that I didn't agree with was the answer that Haroon provided. Haroon is a researcher so by the law of the instrument (or Maslow's Hammer) his answer is more research. I disagree. I believe that two things are necessary to get us out of where Haroon correctly paints us - 1. A fundamental change of the Internet and 2. a realisation that Information Security is rapidly becoming less and less about technology and more about Business. More technical research is also needed but I think that it is not everything we need.

Strange Trends and New Networks
My talk was very heavily based on Information I pulled off the Internet from Blogs. If you are passionate about anything at all then you should be looking for Blogs about that subject and Information Security is no exception - there are some amazing sources out there. The talk itself went off well and I had some very positive feedback from delegates as well as some comments which is always appreciated and allows the conversation to be taken further. I started off my talk by saying that if I had all the answers I wouldn't be doing Information Security because I'd be bored. Due to time constraints, I did skip some parts of my talk that I would like to pick up in my Blog so watch out for that soon.

And so...
Another amazing conference - one that was very worthwhile and I look forward to ITWeb Security Summit 2012.

Disclaimer - you may think that because I spoke at this conference, I am biased toward liking it. The opposite it true - because I am biased to liking it, I spoke at it.

ITWebSec Tag Cloud part 2

This is an updated to the previous post. I have cleaned up the data a bit. Again I left out the words "HTTP", "ITWebSec" and "RT" as these added nothing to the cloud and common English words such as "The" and "And". Including these words, there are 2307 different words. The top names (chosen by "@" in front) are: @itwebsec, @haroonmeer, @MushiD, @mattdoterasmus, @abaranov and @DeepPurple77.

The biggest ReTweeted phrase (by far) was: '@itwebsec: "Management don't know what security knows; that we're one 0day away from the worst day of their lives." #itwebsec' which is a quote from Haroon Meer's presentation.

As always - E&OE.

Previous tag made with TagCrowd and this one made with Wordle.

ITWebSec tag cloud

There was too much information at ITWeb Security Summit for me to make a sensible post of all of it just yet.

So, I thought I would hack something together. I ran a search against the latest 100 twitter comments: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23itwebsec&rpp=100 ,got the feed as XML. Grepped for "title", popped that into tagcrowd.com , fiddled the results a bit and: