Well the penultimate TMA is off. So I'm, now, scanning the photocopy to spot my flaws. There's a bit of me that sees this as a metaphor for my failures—sensible after the event.
I've now got two weeks to complete the revision TMA. So am I revising? No.
I'm trying to work out what this means. [The basic problem is that I can [maybe] promise you that nobody else can eavesdrop on our conversation, but how do you know who I am?] So the web is broken when it comes to security? Perhaps, but secure is an odd concept; security features often make things less secure.
I expect that you are now saying that neil is a cretin but I'll give you some examples...
- The stronger the required password, the greater the temptation to write it down somewhere
- I work in a school where the doors are open, there are schools where you have to buzz in. What happens is that people piggy-back on a genuine in, and once in they must have a right to be there. They suffer many thefts.
- Most locks can be picked, but better and faster is to go round the lock. A lock is only as good as the container that it is locking [I had to put quite a good lock on a room recently, it would take me all of two seconds to kick my way through the plaster-board wall].
Security is about slowing people down so that the humans have time to get involved. If you think that things can ever ensure security, well, I'll have your stuff.
The important things to learn are:
- Put your money into a bank: hand-off security to others, and perhaps more importantly don't store stuff that you'd be embarrassed to lose. [This has bitten wikileaks recently, moronic to store this stuff behind any type of lock.]
- Don't tell people that you have a secret to keep. Once they know that you have a secret they will find it.
- No hiding place is safe
- Keep a watch on who is looking for your stuff, and move it if they get close
In short, there is no shortcut...