It is easy to say how bad things are going to be, or to cry foul at the rough treatment by bad guys. The victim mentality of the western world is literally boring me to tears. Whining about how big bad Chinese hackers whack on your system. Crying about nations state spy agencies.. Well spying on you. Come on and help me out. Let’s make bad hackers and worse spy agencies work for the lunch money. The following is my information assurance and security wish list. In the age of want let us do.
Pareto Principle. The 80-20 rule. Fix the easy (20 percent of the work) that fixes the majority of problems (80 percent) before you worry about the horrible (hard 20 percent) that is going to take the vast majority (long 80 percent) of your time.
1) Wanted. A script to secure Microsoft Windows against most known hacker attacks while leaving the core system stable. The application needs one button and then it will update the computing system as needed. Must have a fail back mode. If you say it isn’t possible you need not apply. Continue whining rather than fixing. We’re talking about fixing 80 percent of the problems not all of them.
2) Wouldn’t it be nice? If most hacker conference speakers who break some piece of garbage software wrote a patch or had a security guide to layer security on the vulnerability they just disclosed? Breaking garbage software is easy. Breaking stuff and then coming up with ways to fix garbage software beyond don’t use it is hard. Take an oath as a hacker to offer real world solutions for people that aren’t hackers to make the real world a better place. Otherwise you’re just helping the bad guys which makes you a bad guy.
3) Advocacy is good. I want to see a dozen beautiful people (blockbuster movie stars) talking for 60 seconds with ugly people (technonerd billionaires) about how to be safe online. I’m not an advertising executive so I don’t know how to form the narrative of that kind of advertising campaign. It needs to be done in such a way as somebody who actually listens to Justin Bieber will be just a little bit safer. If you do that in such a way as you reach Joe the farmer and Sue the realtor a bunch of issues will go away. Is it perfect? Heck no. Will it make things a little better? Research suggests yes and no. Is it something you can build a foundation upon? Perhaps.
4) Let’s just secure one technology this year. Whether it is a phone, a desktop, or a laptop I don’t care. It would be nice if somebody secured Android and they could even fork the release for all I care. I’m not sure how to do this, but I’m sure that enough people working on one major project could have a big effect.
I have a few other things I’d like to see happen like stopping the youth worship, and perhaps killing out some of the he-man-woman-haters-club members. It would really be nice to see people just get along, but knowing that is an impossibility I will still do my best to not spend time around idiots.