Terry Zink: Security Talk

Discussing Internet security in (mostly) plain English

Out of the office for a while

I’m out of the office for a while so there won’t be many updates to this blog in January, 2013. See...

Author: tzink Date: 12/31/2012

Practical Cybersecurity, Part 6 – Bringing it all together

How young to start? Where should we teach cyber security? Should it be something that people learn...

Author: tzink Date: 12/30/2012

Practical Cybersecurity, Part 5 – What should we teach?

What concepts should we teach? What topics are the most important ones for users to learn? There are...

Author: tzink Date: 12/30/2012

Practical Cybersecurity, part 4 – Metacognition

Metacognition A third technique that supports transfer is teaching methods that incorporate...

Author: tzink Date: 12/30/2012

Practical Cybersecurity, Part 2 – Expertise

Expertise If we want to teach people to be cyber aware, they need expertise. But how much is enough?...

Author: tzink Date: 12/30/2012

Practical Cybersecurity, Part 1 – The problem of Education

I thought I’d close out the year by presenting my 2011 Virus Bulletin presentation. It builds...

Author: tzink Date: 12/30/2012

My behavior has changed when answering my phone due to my suspicious nature of unsolicited email

Nowadays, whenever I get email from someone I don’t recognize, I am instantly suspicious of it. To...

Author: tzink Date: 12/22/2012

IT Gangnam Style parody from F5 networks

I found this Gangnam Style parody from F5 networks yesterday entitled “IT Style.” I found it...

Author: tzink Date: 12/21/2012

Another day, another phish campaign

Today we are seeing another high volume spam campaign. It is very similar to the one I wrote about...

Author: tzink Date: 12/18/2012

Large scale spoofing campaign

Over the past week or so we have seen a lot of spoofing going on with campaigns that look like the...

Author: tzink Date: 12/17/2012

Google, Apple, Microsoft… why is there such fanboy-ism in tech?

I’m going to depart from my typical security related topics to discuss another issue: fanboy-ism....

Author: tzink Date: 12/09/2012

A whole slew of security reports

If you’re looking for something to read, say, the latest trends on Internet threats, I have a...

Author: tzink Date: 12/07/2012

Do you know this guy? The troll? Internet Explorer fights back.

For years, Internet Explorer has been maligned as the browser that trails the others (Firefox and...

Author: tzink Date: 11/30/2012

Oh, Microsoft, where art thou?

In its recent Q3 2012 Threat Evolution, Kaspersky reported on the Top Ten Threats that it saw during...

Author: tzink Date: 11/21/2012

A promising new antispam technique – does it deliver what it promises?

I’m always skeptical when I read about new antispam techniques, especially those ones coming out of...

Author: tzink Date: 11/21/2012

How to measure False Positive rates

As someone who is in charge of our spam filtering here in Microsoft Forefront (i.e., I’m on the spam...

Author: tzink Date: 10/31/2012

Is the term “cyberwarfare” overstating the case?

At the Virus Bulletin conference last month, Andrew Lee from ESET gave a talk entitled “Cyberwar:...

Author: tzink Date: 10/26/2012

The modern face of mobile malware

At the Virus Bulletin Conference last month in Dallas, Grayson Milbourne and Armando Orozco...

Author: tzink Date: 10/25/2012

A couple of unsurprising tidbits on passwords

Digital Trends published an article yesterday entitled What’s the Worst Password of 2012? Retaining...

Author: tzink Date: 10/24/2012

Evaluating anti-virus products with field studies

Did you ever wonder how people get malware onto their computer? Or how effective real life A/V...

Author: tzink Date: 10/19/2012

How should large financial institutions use hosted filtering?

This post is an opinion piece that reflects what I think are best practices. Should large financial...

Author: tzink Date: 10/18/2012

Will cyberwar create new rules of engagement? And will there be a draft?

I read an interesting article on ReadWriteWeb yesterday entitled New Cyberwar Rules Of Engagement:...

Author: tzink Date: 10/16/2012

The pros and cons of Bring Your Own D(evice|estruction)

At the Virus Bulletin conference this past September in Dallas, Righard Zwienenberg from ESET gave a...

Author: tzink Date: 10/09/2012

Do tech-savvy readers practice what they preach?

While at the Virus Bulletin conference in Dallas last week, Sabina Raluca Datcu and Ioana Jelea of...

Author: tzink Date: 10/04/2012

A Plan for Email over IPv6, part 5 – Removals, Key differences and standards

What happens if spammers get on the whitelists? The question arises – what happens if a...

Author: tzink Date: 10/01/2012

A Plan for Email over IPv6, part 4 – Population of the whitelists

Population of the whitelists How do email receivers go about populating whitelists? The whole...

Author: tzink Date: 10/01/2012

A Plan for Email over IPv6, part 3 – A solution

A solution How do we deal with it? Eventually, the Internet community will come up with a permanent...

Author: tzink Date: 10/01/2012

A Plan for Email over IPv6, part 2 – Why we use IP blocklists in IPv4, and why we can’t in IPv6

IP Blocklists Blocklists are populated in a number of different ways. Some use spam traps to capture...

Author: tzink Date: 10/01/2012

A Plan for Email over IPv6, part 1 – Introduction, and How Filters Work in IPv4

Last week, myself and a colleague from work did a presentation at the Virus Bulletin conference...

Author: tzink Date: 10/01/2012

What do consumers know about Antivirus?

I’ve been at the Virus Bulletin 2012 conference in Dallas, Texas this week and there have been a lot...

Author: tzink Date: 09/28/2012

Mail from legitimate webmail sources

For many years, I have tracked spam from botnets and reported on it on this blog. I have analyzed...

Author: tzink Date: 09/18/2012

The Psychology of Spamming, part 5 - Solutions

Solutions So how do we get people to stop falling for scams? Will Cognition Save Us? Thinking about...

Author: tzink Date: 09/15/2012

The Psychology of Spamming, part 4 - Why we fall for scams

Impact We humans had Stone Age ancestors for a long time and our limbic systems kept us alive; when...

Author: tzink Date: 09/15/2012

The Psychology of Spamming, part 3 - External factors that influence our decisions

Spam, Emotion and Decision Researchers distinguish between two types of emotions – expected...

Author: tzink Date: 09/14/2012

The psychology of spamming, part 1 - How our brains work

In honor of the Virus Bulletin conference next week in Dallas, at which I am presenting my ideas for...

Author: tzink Date: 09/13/2012

Combating phishing

From time to time, customers call in and ask us what we are doing to combat phishing attacks. My...

Author: tzink Date: 08/30/2012

How rainbow tables work

This year, I heard the term “rainbow tables” in regards to passwords and how hackers use them to...

Author: tzink Date: 08/29/2012

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