Blog
SensePost Ten Years Old
After ten fascinating years, during which many people have contributed in so many ways to the place that is SensePost, by strange coincidence it falls on me to pen the words that mark our first decade in existence. To quote Robert Hunter: “What a long strange trip it’s been”. SensePost was officially founded on February 14, 2000. Of everyone who was involved at that time, I’m the only one still working here, which earns me the dubious honor of ‘oldest employee’. Do I get a gold watch? I meant to think much more over the last few weeks and months about how we should celebrate this day, or what I would write in a letter like this, but in the end (business being business) I’m writing this in a rush on a Sunday evening, with another three big things to complete before I allow myself to go to bed. Then again much of our success (in so far as we’ve been a success) happened in hurry on a Sunday night, so let’s not write this little piece off too soon, shall we?
Removing registration requirements
Over the years we’ve offered almost all our tools, papers, presentations and other materials for free, albeit with a “registration required” proviso. The registration wall has been in place for some time now, and was used to track unique users as well as permit users to opt into SensePost mailruns. What we found though, is that registration is more of a hindrance than a benefit; it creates an artificial barrier with little reward. The data isn’t that useful to us and the added steps just an extra annoyance for users, and we wanted to streamline things a little.
Is the writing on the wall for general purpose computing ?
The Apple iPad announcement set the interwebs alight, and there is no shortage of people blogging or tweeting about how it will or wont change their lives. I’m going to ignore those topics almost completely to make one of those predictions that serve mainly to let people laugh at me later for being so totally wrong..
Heres my vision..
Its not just the Hipsters and college kids who get iPads, its the execs and CEO’s. They are happy for a short while using it just as an E-Reader, movie watcher and couch based web browser, but the app store keeps growing to support the new form factor. Apps like iWork for iPad (at only $10) means that sooner or later they are relatively comfortable spreadsheeting or document pushing on their iPad.. It doesn’t take too long for them to realize that they don’t have much heavier computing requirements anyway and besides.. the instant on experience is what they always wanted..
80 minutes to Apples Tablet..
In 80 minutes Apple will announce the tablet, and the interwebs is almost bursting with excitement and anticipation..
You absolutely have to give shouts to Apple for being able to create a following like this, anticipation like this, without once ever having officially stated that they were launching the tablet today..
I know lots of people are quick to point out the fan-boyism, but it has to be said, that generating and maintaining that kind of cultish following is near impossible to get right, and AAPL manage to pull it off awesomely..[1]
Administristrivia: dead HDD
Our web server lost a drive yesterday, however things seems to be back to normal.
If you notice broken links or scripts, we’d appreciate a mail to info at sensepost.com.
Happy New Year! (No predictions.. promise..)
It’s the last few hours of 2009 here in South Africa so i wanted to take the opportunity really quickly to wish the 2 readers of this blog all the best for new year..
Most security “pundits” are currently doing their 2010 predictions. (although in truth few of them so far have been particularly surprising or out-there.. “Adobe will be brutalized” ? really? hows that different to 08 or 09)(One really has to question how the current whipping boy for exploit writers managed to be a key contributor to Gary McGraws BSIM Model, but i digress)
26th Chaos Communication Congress..
is currently on in Berlin.
As usual [it] looks like a blast, and as usual, media [is online] before the speaker shuts down his presentation machine..
SensePosters can grab a local copy of the EN-vids [here]
/mh
We are famous (almost!)
Last week had two “cloud-security” related articles hit the inter-webs.. After our Vegas09 talk on “clobbering the cloud” we had a brief chat to Rob Lemos, who called us up again, so we ended up adding the soundbyte to his piece in Technology review along with guys like Moxie Marlinspike and Danny MacPherson [here]
We also showed up on Read/Write Web, where we were called “security nerds” and “black hats”
Ahhh.. roll on 2010!
Criticism, Cheerleading, and Negativity
[Alex Payne] has an excellent post up titled “Criticism, Cheerleading, and Negativity“. It’s a 2 minute read, but its worth it:
”
We understand well the idea of being in favor or something, or against something, but we don’t particularly understand how criticism fits into this dichotomy.
..
The reason a person is critical of a thing is because he is passionate about that thing. In order to have a critical opinion, you have to love something enough to understand it, and then love it so much more that you want it to be better. Passion breeds critical thinking.
ZaCon – A con in need of a better tagline…
ZaCon came and went, “and a fun time was had by all!”
The first run was a semi-cosy affair held at the University of Johannesburg, with 16 speakers holding the crowd from 08h00 till 18h00. ZaCon had many SensePost faces, but is not expressly an SP initiative.. It’s a community based con aimed at growing the next gen of South African hax0rs..
My brief ~12 minute intro: “Why Zacon” explains some of the organizers thinking.. You can watch me blab [here] and you can watch the rest of the videos [here]