2015 Social Security Blogger Awards – Who are the Nominees?

If (and only if) you are a security blogger, you can vote HERE. Voting ends March 16. The following judges provided the nominations: Ericka Chickowski, George Hulme, Kelly Jackson-Higgins (Dark Reading), Illena Armstrong (SC Magazine) and Eleanor Dallaway (InfoSecurity Magazine) and Rich Mogull. 

The most exciting part is that AlienVault has been nominated for Best Corporate Security Blog! 

Here are the categories and nominees for each category:

Most Entertaining Security Blog

Graham Cluley Uncommon Sense Security krypt3ia Blog Naked Security Blog Security Uncorked Dave Shackleford Blog   Most Educational Security Blog SANS Internet StormCast Security Now EFF Deeplinks blog Avivah Litan's blog ThreatPost Troy Hunt The Security Ledger Branden Williams blog Imperial violet Errata Security/Rob Graham Best New Security Blog or Podcast Dave Waterson on Security Elastica blog: Zulfikar Ramazan Infospectives Blog Norse DarkMatters Best Security Podcast SANS StormCast Southern Fried Security Podcast Paul Dot Com/Paul’s Security Weekly ThreatPost Podcast Security Now Risky Biz Best Blog Post of the Year  Attack Attribution in Cyberspace - Bruce Schneier https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/01/attack_attribut.html More Data on Attributing the Sony Attack - Bruce Schneier https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/12/more_data_on_at.html A Hacker Looks at 40- Dave Shakleford http://daveshackleford.com/?p=1037 Future of the firewall series - Firemon Blog http://www.firemon.com/category/future-of-the-firewall/ Sony hack was the work of SPECTRE - Robert Graham http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/12/sony-hack-was-work-of-spectre.html#.VPFepPnF98F In the Beginning There was Full Disclosure - Space Rogue Blog http://www.spacerogue.net/wordpress/?p=536 We need to talk about attribution - Jack Daniels http://blog.uncommonsensesecurity.com/2015/02/we-need-to-talk-about-attribution.html Best Corporate Security Blog  TripWire State of Security Trend Micro ThreatPost Symantec Akamai Security Blog Sophos Naked Security Blog Crowdstrike Adversary Manifesto Threat Attack blog The Alien Vault Blogs    <- That's us! Recorded Future Blog

Mike Sconzo at OWASP Austin talking about Machine Learning

The video recording of Mike's talk is here https://vimeo.com/104466721

Mike Sconzo, (@sooshie) presented at the OWASP Austin chapter meeting on 8/26.  He showed how machine learning can be used to detect drive-by and SQL Injection attacks. Machine learning is interesting - it's tricky to do numeric-only analysis when log files contain words.

Mike showed a data frame he uses for logs, letting him parse them. He showed several cool technologies he uses in his process:

Here's his basic process:

Although the talk was not commercial, Mike works for Click Security http://clicksecurity.com
Here's a link to some of his goodies http://clicksecurity.github.io/data_hacking/
And, finally, here's an alternative picture of Mike in his natural habitat:

Railsgoat! July OWASP Austin Chapter with Ken Johnson - with link to recording

Ken Johnson travelled to Austin for the July OWASP meeting.  No thanks to US Airways! Remember, last meeting Ken and Mike McCabe were supposed to present, and US Airways deprived us of their presence. Vern Williams jumped in heroically to give a talk, but Ken and Mike spent most of a day trapped in Raleigh, subjected to several layers of lies from the airline.

Here's the recorded presentation http://vimeo.com/channels/owaspaustin

This month Ken made it!  Nice crowd on hand:

Ruby & Rails was an interesting topic - it seems like a lot of people using those technologies are startups trying to build apps as quick as they can, and Enterprises trying to pretend they're startups.  Both of these scenarios tend to "forget" about security and can lead to nasty problems.  It can be downright scary to security folks.

Given this state of security worries, chapter priorities included a Happy Hour, as usual:

We might have a recording of the presentation coming soon - if so I'll post it as a comment.

The slides are here http://prezi.com/5zo5lxs82lr7/railsgoat/

follow Ken @cktricky and Mike @mccabe615