YouTube, MySpace and Real Time Content Filtering

In my weekly reading I ran across this article by Pete Tenereillo. It's a very good article overall but I do have something else to add. He suggests that blocking YouTube and other video sites at the firewall would be a bit militaristic. I see his point but in the past I have been known to take such actions. My reasoning was two fold. (1)It was against policy and (2) it was more cost effective to block those sites then invest in a content management solution. Now days the systems/solutions are becoming more cost effective and there is one company that is doing just what he proposes. I have not investigated cost or effectiveness and I would like to see a real world false positive statistic. Either way if it's against policy it should be blocked not mitigated.

Current flight situation and robots

Being a student of security and its principles I have always found it amusing when people make odd security choices. We all have done it from time to time. I don't want to get off on a rant here but the method we are dealing with the current threat, somewhat, alarms me. I am speaking about the current flight restrictions. I do think the current measures are correct and I am glad to see that TSA is relaxing the list of banded items and I hope that it continues. However, I don't know what I would use a corkscrew or Toy Transformer Robot on a plane for. OK…maybe the robot.

There are several more qualified people in the industry that are have been writing about this same topic so I don't think I will bring anything new to the table. However the idea in security is that you make tradeoffs. Basically how much risk will you accept vs. how much inconvenience you are willing to endure. It was put best by Richard Bejtlich "Security is the process of maintaining an acceptable level of perceived risk".

The observation I have is that terrorists don't have to succeed in any act. Merely attempting an act of terror creates a reaction, that could be considered knee-jerk, to mitigate future attacks of the same type. These acts by terrorists can cause much more long-term damage and impact on our way of life. Such failed acts will case a nation state to create self imposed restrictions. So instead of the perceived intended terror we become a victim of our own laws and regulations. Tech savvy security professionals can relate it to auto-shunning on a perimeter device. As Dan Kaminsky said at DefCon13 "It's a bad IDEA to let outsiders decide your firewall rules." The point he was making is that if you spoof your IP as one of the DNS Root servers you can effectively cut the agency off the internet. It is completely possible that the planning of terror attacks are done two fold. (1)Plan to create terror and (2) if the plan fails make sure the mitigation methods will have significant impact. Don't get me wrong I do feel that the right thing is being done currently and we have made great strides in detection and awareness but there becomes a point when, as a society, we must accept the risk and move on. As many have stated "We can't secure everything all of the time."