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jjguy

1,757 karma · joined April 4, 2008

ex-fed hacker turned startup guy. Co-founder & CEO at Sevco Security, previously CTO/COO at JASK, founding team of Carbon Black. San Antonio, TX.

@jjguy jeffrey.guy@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/jjguy

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jjguy··on “When you get right down to it, most security is based on the honor system.”
No network of any reasonable size/complexity can keep out a focused attacker. If you think yours can, you are wrong.

Today's threat models are dominated by the criminal, opportunistic attackers looking for user information or computing power. Real discussion and countermeasures for focused attacks are severely lacking.

Governments know this. CISOs know this. They speak of it privately to each other, but rarely in public because the issues are so sensitive. Messaging from industry is dominated by the vendors who both have significant equities in the "we're secure!" message and speak very narrowly about the security of their applications, but rarely/never about the collection of those applications into these beasts we call networks.

Posts like this are becoming more commonplace, but neither industry nor academia are making tangible strides to solutions. If you want a startup idea, focus on security and go disrupt.

jjguy··on DARPA's Cyber Fast Track: How to get your security idea funded
It only seems odd because from the outside it's a big, faceless, scary bureaucracy. The Valley and that ecosystem seems that way to most folks outside it, too. There's serious cash to be had from USG and arguably fewer strings than you get on most term sheets.

Once you get past the scary outside, you realize it's normal people on the inside. Submit a proposal and you'll find they're delighted to help you. And they'll give you funding.

jjguy··on Security researcher Charlie Miller booted from Apple Developer Program
From Miller's twitter stream last night:

For the record, without a real app in the AppStore, people would say Apple wouldn't approve an app that took advantage of this flaw.

https://twitter.com/#!/0xcharlie/status/133739410662494208

jjguy··on Security researcher Charlie Miller booted from Apple Developer Program
It's a bad move for apple. A good relationship with the community of security researchers is crucial - they're talented folks and their research results grab headlines. It takes just a tiny amount of corporate humility and public thanks to win their respect, and in return get goodwill. Treating the community badly will get ensure the next guy won't even try to cooperate.

Over the last several years, Microsoft's MSRC has balanced this very well. Google has done well recently, too. Lots of clued-in people in both places.

jjguy··on The Number One Trait of a Great Developer
I find the volume of defensive comments a little amusing, since three times a day we all vote up and universally agree ideas are cheap and execution is king. The author is drawing the same parallel to characteristics of individuals.

Unlike most of you, I read that and found myself saying "yes!" It's the tortoise and hare argument: good dev teams are disciplined, focused and stable. I suspect the backlash is because it stung a bit, since many here saw themselves in flighty Jack, versus measured Diane. I was there too, but have learned from a few failed projects and disappointed clients. I encourage you to reflect upon yourself a little more carefully; good execution is decidedly unsexy and needs more Diane than Jack.

jjguy··on Pivoting: Why We're Bringing Unsexy Back
Sexy captures the imagination, but good execution is decidedly unsexy. The hyperbole of the valley and it's entourage is a siren's song; don't let it suck you in.
jjguy··on PE - the Portable Executable Format on Windows
Channel 9 did a great interview with him a few years ago. It was a good chance for us non-Microsofties to see the man behind the MZ.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Behind+The+Code/Mark-Zbikowsk...

jjguy··on Smallest x86 ELF Hello World
same for win32 PEs: http://www.phreedom.org/solar/code/tinype/
jjguy··on Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read
Link dead for me. Found the list republished here: http://thenextbigtechthing.com/10-books-every-entrepreneur-s...

"The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law" -- LLC vs C-corp vs S-Corp? Founder’s vesting? Liquidation Preferences? Equity vs Debt financing? This book will educate you enough to be able to answer these and many other important questions.

"Bootstrapping Your Business" -- From the founder of RightNow. The amazing story of how a geographically-challenged (Montana) entrepreneur built a world class business.

"Purple Cow" -- Dead simple premise, the key to marketing is to build something remarkable.

"The Art of the Start" -- The Art of Pitching, Marketing and Funding your Startup.

"The Innovator’s Dilemma" -- If your startup beats all the odds and becomes hugely successful prepare yourself for the innovator’s dilemma, cannibalize your product before someone else does.

"The E-Myth Revisited" -- How-to create a business not a job.

"Permission Marketing" -- The greatest marketing asset your startup can build is the permission to market to your customers and prospects.

"Growing a Business" -- Sincere advice for creating a company culture that your team and customers will love.

"The Cluetrain Manifesto" -- Successful marketing is a conversation.

"Bottom-up Marketing" -- Pure bottoms-up execution. Marketing tactics to grow your business.

jjguy··on DoD: $42,000,000 to influence Social Media
"Strategic Communication" is a phrase with very precise meaning to those in the DOD.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_communication

jjguy··on Geohot Chimes In
I have a colleague who uses the term 'digital thaumaturge.'

    Thaumaturgy is the capability of a saint
    or magician to work miracles. A practitioner 
    of thaumaturgy is a thaumaturge or miracle worker. 
I like the spirit, but it doesn't quite have the cachet of 'hacker.'
jjguy··on What Should You Do with Your Crappy Little Services Business?
Amazon is a product: Bezos built a website and logistics tail to be the world's largest bookstore. When you give Amazon $$, you are paying for a book.

In a services business, when you give someone $$, you are paying for a person's time.

jjguy··on [dead]
I find it ironic he refers to grc.com for security advice. Birds of a feather...
jjguy··on RSA Discusses How Flash Owned Them
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2398520

and that was the original, without a useless packetstorm frameset a la 1994.

jjguy··on Your IP. In JSON
That's clever and useful. Thanks. I've used http://checkip.dyndns.org for this problem for years, but this is an improvement. Checkip:

    >>> url = urllib2.urlopen("http://checkip.dyndns.org")
    >>> url.read()
    '<html><head><title>Current IP Check</title></head><body>Current IP Address: 192.168.0.1</body></html>\r\n'
Details here: http://www.dyndns.com/developers/checkip.html

It's not as easy to parse as JSON, but nor is it very difficult. The format has not changed in years; I've got a regex running I haven't needed to adjust since day 1.

jjguy··on Netflix Performance on Top ISP Networks
Welcome to the opening salvos of the Age Of Preferred Internet. By publishing the streaming performance metrics of consumer ISPs, Netflix is making sure providers know they can influence the ISP choice of their customers. This as a warning, pure and simple.

p.s., in case you missed it -- 21 Dec FCC ruling: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-21/ne...

jjguy··on A Comfy Helvetica frontpage for Hacker News
your proposed layout isn't bad, but I'm an engineer so change is tough. hackernews as it is feels like home, a new layout will take some to settle. btu thanks for the topcolor=ffffff suggestion. I like that topcolor change a lot, and the homepage still feels like home.
jjguy··on Bayesian stats book banned in China
lightoverhead,

I agree with the sentiment of your post - there is no reasonable way to censor a fundamental technical topic such as Bayesian statistics. I find myself wondering what the author did not post from his book that was questionable.

However, the tone of your post makes me wonder if you are a shill paid by the Chinese government to counter commentary critical of China on the Internet.

If I am mistaken, you have my sincerest apologies. The actions of your government have caused me to become a skeptic.

HackerNews,

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JH14Ad01.html

In action, in relation to the underage Chinese gymnast in 2008 Olympics: http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2008/09/yang-yun-speaks-out.ht...

jjguy··on How secure is my password?
Is it April 1st?

http://web.archive.org/web/20060412183431/http://www.nethash...

jjguy··on Leaked cables suggest China Access to Microsoft source used for cyber attacks
Everything's open source, it's just written in assembly.
jjguy··on Visualization of your svn logs in xkcd 657 style
clicky: http://xkcd.com/657/
jjguy··on OK, here's the thing: this is only the entrance of the rabbit hole.
can we recruit that cat from reddit to HN? I want that guy around here.
jjguy··on Ask HN: How do you decide which idea to start on?
Careful with subjective measures. Measure interest.

Invest some $$ in google ads, have a purty-looking landing page that says "coming soon!" Build a site and ads for each of your ideas and chase the one that has most interest.

jjguy··on Google Security Team: Rebooting Responsible Disclosure
and sometimes it takes a while to understand the true nature of a bug.

and sometimes the "right way" to fix something is unclear.

and sometimes the fix straddles multiple components, managed by different teams.

and sometimes "that guy" who knows the subsystem is off at Disneyland for two weeks.

60 days can pass very quickly, especially as the project and vulnerability complexity grows. It's a short enough window to put the vendor under time pressures from day one.

jjguy··on Google Security Team: Rebooting Responsible Disclosure
An "0-day" is generally any "non-public" vulnerability. Any "0-day attack" is an any attack that uses an 0-day. If only the security researcher and vendor know of the vulnerability details, it is still an 0-day. Once the vendor releases a patch, bindiff will (usually) point very rapidly to the root cause. Thus, the details are considered public, regardless of previous disclosure details.

These capture the imagination and frustrate system administrators because 0-day -- due to their unknown nature and nearly infinite possibility -- cannot be simply "fixed."

This has been a core frustration of mine in the network defense community for years: our procedures are too narrowly focused on protection -- keeping bad guys out. This is necessary but insufficient. We must assume bad guys will get in and focus on how we detect, respond and recover. Unfortunately, these last three steps get ignored too often -- resulting in bad guys never being detected once they're inside the gates.

jjguy··on Google Security Team: Rebooting Responsible Disclosure
"First post" and it's relevant and useful. 3 hours old and -zero- noise. This is why I love HN.

You avoided commenting on the substance of their position, though. From your role as a security researcher, I suspect you're in the google camp. I'm close enough to a security researcher to agree, too -- but I also know my perspective is fairly clouded. How will the vendors respond?

I suspect Microsoft will be reasonable, although they'll pushback at the proposed default window of 60 days. Microsoft is in the singularly unique position of having a reasonably agile security team, matrixed across the product teams. The majority of other vendors (Adobe?) are still struggling to put even basic processes into place; they won't have a choice but to push back with vigor and fill the discussion with FUD.

I second your "congrats google" -- it is a clueful corporate move and inspires confidence in their corporate bureaucracy. But I'm skeptical on it's effectiveness.

jjguy··on I want to compile a C program so simple I can explain all of the assembly
The same project with Win32 PEs: http://www.phreedom.org/solar/code/tinype/

I've used that page as a reference several times over the years.

jjguy··on A new approach to China
oh! That's even more interesting. The security community spins lots of FUD talking about the "insider threat," but there's very little real data to back up the threat.

"Credible data describing the scope and impact of unwelcome insider actions are hard to come by..."

Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Salvatore J. Stolfo, "Addressing the Insider Threat," IEEE Security and Privacy, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 10-13, Nov./Dec. 2009, doi:10.1109/MSP.2009.146 http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MSP.2009...

jjguy··on A new approach to China
10 bucks on 0day.
jjguy··on Ask HN: Favorite encrypted VPN provider?
I pay $8/mo for a VPS and run OpenVPN [1]. There's a nicely-done OS X client [2], and OpenVPN will run on whatever port/protocol combination you need. You also get the benefit of a shell account on your own little corner of the internet, a lightweight server to toy with and full ssh access to play all sorts of games with ssh port forwarding [3].

1 - http://openvpn.net/

2 - http://viscosityvpn.com

3 - http://www.ssh.com/support/documentation/online/ssh/admingui...

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