Jason Luttgens and I were interviewed by Bret Padres and Ovie Carroll over at the CyberSpeak podcast regarding our log analysis tool, Highlighter. Take some time to listen if you’re interested — the interview begins at 18m 10s, though I recommend listening to the whole podcast because those guys are fun and their content relevant.

I don’t really keep up with all the podcasts that I like, so this post is a little dated.

My buddy over at www.eightbits.org posted a great video showing the ignorance of those attending at least one Sarah Palin speech.

blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/12/january_2007_month_of_apple_bu.html

Coming in January: “Month of Apple Bugs”

A pair of security researchers has picked January 2007 as the starting point for a month-long project in which each passing day will feature a previously undocumented security hole in Apple‘s OS X operating system or in Apple applications that run on top of it.

The “Month of Apple Bugs” project, currently slated to begin on Jan. 1, is being orchestrated in part by a security researcher who asked to be identified only by his online alias “LMH.” This is the same researcher who in November ran the “Month of Kernel Bugs” project. LMH’s partner in this project is Kevin Finisterre, a researcher who has reported numerous bugs to Apple over the past few years.

The current craze for featuring a new bug each day for a specific time period began this summer with researcher HD Moore‘s “Month of Browser Bugs,” which highlighted unpatched security holes in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari browser, and even Opera. With most of the browser bugs, Moore alerted the affected software vendors prior to publishing his findings.

To the chagrin of some security experts, however, LMH declined to give affected vendors advance noticed before posting evidence of kernel bugs on his Web site last month. Eleven of those kernel bugs were related to Apple software and applications, including a serious security hole that prompted a software update from Apple just two weeks later. As with the kernel bugs project, Apple will be given no advance notice with the Month of Apple bugs, LMH said in an interview conducted over instant message.

LMH said that while his upcoming project had the potential to at least temporarily make security more tenuous for the average Mac user, he believes that in the long run the project will improve OS X security.

“Right now, many OS X users still think their system is bulletproof, and some people are interested on making it look that way,” LMH said.

It should be interesting to see whether Apple does anything to try and scuttle this pending project. In November, a researcher who focuses most of his attention on bugs in database giant Oracle‘s software announced his intention to launch a “Week of Oracle Database Bugs” project during the first week of December. The researcher abruptly canceled the project shortly after the initial announcement, without offering any explanation.

By Brian Krebs | December 19, 2006; 9:50 AM ET

The CyberSpeak podcast brought this little podcast to light: www.cerias.purdue.edu/news_and_events/events/security_seminar/details.php?uid=asjslmmhrrga76vu0ot8t76a3g@google.com

by: Marc Rogers

As I do whenever a new episode is released, I was watching the Hak.5 vidcast (www.hak5.org). Season 2, ep 05 was devoted to the online TV show called Pure Pwnage (www.purepwnage.com). I haven’t had an opportunity to watch any of Pure Pwnage yet, but from the Hak.5 show it was a sweet little look at the life of extreme gamers. It’s all fictional, but I have to check it out based purely on what I saw from the Hak.5 vidcast.

Hopefully there will be more to follow as I experience the sensation that is Pure Pwnage.

I was watching the Hak.5 vidcast today and they interviewed this guy who claims to be a Software Jedi. I’m not going to go into that claim, because he could cut me down with his anger, but the Jedi has a website: AnAppADay.com.

The guy writes an application every night, live with an IRC audience. It’s sweet because they audience is watching him code and they give input that he may integrate into his code.

I’ve been using the Google wallpaper app, which is fun for having your wallpaper update with odd Google images (based on keywords) every so often. I get bored…

I hate to promote a blatant abuse of public resources, but the Phone Losers of America (PLA) podcast is pretty hilarious when they abuse the relay operators that are intended to connect hearing- or speech-impaired people to other phone users.