So listening to Dan Gear on the Risky Business podcast talk about the possible future of computing today while flicking through my RSS feed. I came to a realisation.
The future of computing is going to be bleak. But maybe good for our security.
Dan was talking about the new iPad and existing single purpose devices as being the new wave of computers. Think about it a device that is so locked down and vendor locked in that it is inherently secure due to that. Devices that are single purpose, they don't and can't do everything your previous computer could, think about it a light and switch doesn't require updates or security patches. Its purpose is singular, provide light or not.
These computers would do this as well, provide a game, information, or what have you. We are already here to some extent, single purpose computers plugged into or inside televisions, locked down to the way the vendor wants, not necessarily locked down enough but regardless. They still have bugs, ways to circumvent the original intended operation, but generally speaking these bugs require the inclined to be in front of the device, not miles away in their parents basement.
Then while listening to this and pondering I read another article about "Cloud computing".
So the future will be these big provided clouds, some to play games in, some for businesses, others for research and development. Single purpose environments abstracted away from even the technical users. Who will use a single purpose thin client to access these clouds.
So on one front it sounds good, security and technicalities are abstracted away to an extent. On another front it means tinkering will be harder, with everything, technical people will actually be less technical than they are now, it will be a dumbing down all around.
I have played with Amazon's elastic compute cloud, Google app engine, and run a personal virtual server on my laptop and media centre as well as running several different ones in production so I can see the advantage for the moment, but they can pry my multi-purpose machines from cold dead hands when the time comes.

Labels: apple, cloud, ESX, future

Oh my, read this; http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/12/malware-found-in-screensaver-for-ubuntu.html
Of course this is just the beginning, I saw this in the early days of windows, popularity means people want flashy yet lame screensavers so they go a hunting, see a banner ad that is flashing epileptically at the user that tells them their search is over, they click it and install a new theme for their cursor (I hate these), a day of the month screen saver, or a fancy toolbar which will let you know who is browsing your MyFaceTwitLinked page at any given time, and also automatically installs thousands of other applications you may like, hiding in these are some nice little bots. Of course on install it asks them for their password as it has to make system changes, it then puts a helper in roots cron and makes a new init.d daemon to keep it memory resident and its privledges elevated, heck maybe it even recompiles some binary that is used frequently with elevated privledges that checks all that other stuff is still good to go, something like the logserver or init
Then we Linux will have reached the popularity of windows, the weakest link will again be the user.
So in my humourous little story above I am trying to point out just cause it is safe now won't mean it will be forever. Windows is less and less about Worms that automatically get in without user intervention. Conficker was the last big one and MS had a patch out before it hit, so it was only slow patching that really let it spread. The rest of the viruses that are seen are delivered along with innocuous looking software, or at worst a drive by download that means a page is running something in the background that takes advantage of a hole in internet explorer to install something, these drive by downloads won't happen. But have a look at the top 15 http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=8597 most common attacks and you will see Linux and Macs are susceptable to the lot, through misconfiguration or user error.
Don't get me wrong I am a big Linux fan-boi. If I had it my way Windows would be the struggling niche, Linux would have 96% market share, BSD 2% and macs wouldn't exist :P I think the ideal behind linux is very admirrable and scientific. Linux builds on what has come before it (usually) and because what has come before is open and readable this is fairly easy. "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton. To not build on what has come before is to repeat your predecessors mistakes.
There will always be flaws, till we write code that can write its own code it may eventually create something almost flawless, or one of its children will.
I think Linux allows for greater security, but also greater insecurity. Security is not were open sources power lies, it is its flexability.

Labels: linux, malware, rant, virus

Now this story interests me on so many levels.
It has put Wollongong on the map again people. I'll admit I was raised in the Gong, so it is good to see someone even making notoriety that is from Wollongong. The last renowned intelligent export we had was Evelyn Owen or Sir Lawrence Hargrave (1939 and 1915 respectively) so it has been some time between.
I also dislike apple, there practices annoy me; there practice of dumbing down everything even the extremely technical is the same as dropping superfluous words from the English language to make it easier for speakers, we only need one word for cold right? They also stand on the shoulders of giants, yet give little recognition to those. Yes they made Unix "usable" (so did Linux without the pompousness), but try and find their references of gratitude to all their stolen code, or stolen ideas, nope. Apple have fallen down in the security world repeatedly, and this is a glaring example who sets the same password on every device when you can assume with pretty high certainty that people are going to attack it and find out your password, hence the unlocking.
The other reasons this is interesting is it is a virus that Rickrolls people, hilarious. Rickrolling is something I have done, and had done to me a fair few times, it almost always makes me smile. The other humorous point of this is the author is Ashley Towns, so the meme of Rick Astley is almost made for him.
Well if you own an iphone (hisss) then you can secure it against this virus here(a simple passwd to fix it), bear in mind that this virus will probably hang around for a few years like code red and slammer, funny stuff.

Labels: apple, funny, iphone, virus