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Category Archives for "Security"

“From Putin with Love” – a novel by the New York Times

In recent weeks, the New York Times has written many stories on Russia's hacking of the Trump election. This front page piece [*] alone takes up 9,000 words. Combined, the NYTimes coverage on this topic exceeds the length of a novel. Yet, for all this text, the number of verifiable facts also equals that of a novel, namely zero. There's no evidence this was anything other than an undirected, Anonymous-style op based on a phishing campaign.


The question that drives us

It's not that Russia isn't involved, it's that the exact nature of their involvement is complicated. Just because the hackers live in Russia doesn't automatically mean their attacks are directed by the government.

It's like the recent Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe and America. Despite ISIS claiming credit, and the perpetrators crediting ISIS, we are loathe to actually blame the attacks directly on ISIS. Overwhelmingly, it's individuals who finance and plan their attacks, with no ISIS organizational involvement other than inspiration.

The same goes for Russian hacks. The Russian hacker community is complicated. There are lots of actors with various affiliations with the government. They are almost always nationalistic, almost always pro-Putin. There are many individuals and Continue reading

That anti-Trump Recode article is terrible

Trump's a dangerous populist. However, the left-wing media's anti-Trump fetishism is doing nothing to stop Trump. It's no better than "fake news" -- it gets passed around a lot on social-media, but is intellectually bankrupt, unlikely to change anybody's mind. A good example is this op-ed on Re/Code [*] about Silicon Valley leaders visiting Trump.

The most important feature of that Re/code article is that it contains no criticism of Trump other than the fact that he's a Republican. Half the country voted for Trump. Half the country voted Republican. It's not just Trump that this piece imagines as being unreasonable, but half the country. It's a fashionable bigotry among some of Silicon Valley's leftist elite.

But CEOs live in a world where half their customers are Republican, where half their share holders are Republican. They cannot lightly take political positions that differ from their investors/customers. The Re/code piece claims CEOs said "we are duty-bound as American citizens to attend". No, what they said was "we are duty-bound as officers of our corporations to attend".

The word "officer", as in "Chief Operating Officer", isn't an arbitrary title like "Senior Software Engineer" that has no real meaning. Instead, "officer" Continue reading

Some notes on a Hamilton election

At least one elector for Trump has promised to switch his vote, becoming a "Hamilton Elector". Assuming 36 more electors (about 10% of Trump's total) do likewise, and Trump fails to get the 270 absolute majority, then what happens? Since all of the constitutional law scholars I follow haven't taken a stab at this, I thought I would write up some notes.


Foreign powers and populists

In Federalist #68, Alexander Hamilton laid out the reasons why electors should switch their vote. The founders feared bad candidates unduly influenced by foreign powers, and demagogues. Trump is unabashedly both. He criticizes our own CIA claiming what every American knows, that Russia interfered in our election. Trump is the worst sort of populist demagogue, offering no solution to problems other than he'll be a strong leader.

Therefore, electors have good reasons to change their votes. I'm not suggesting they should, only that doing so is consistent with our Constitutional principles and history.

So if 10% of Trump's electors defect, how would this actually work?

Failure to get 270 vote absolute majority (math)

Well, to start with, let's count up the number of electors. Each state gets one elector for every House Representative Continue reading

Tips for Troubleshooting Apps in Production with Docker Datacenter

If you have been using Docker for some time, after the initial phases of building Dockerfiles and running a container here and there, the real work begins in building, deploying and operating multi-container applications in a production environment.  Are you operationally ready to take your application to production? Docker Datacenter provides an integrated management framework for your Dockerized environment and applications and when coupled with clear strategies in approaching and resolving anomalies, IT ops teams can be assured in successfully operationalizing Docker.

Let’s use a sports metaphor to approach troubleshooting:

  • Pre-Game will cover the planning phase for your applications
  • Game Time will cover troubleshooting tools available in Docker Datacenter
  • Post-Game will discuss complementary tools to aid in ongoing insights

Pre-Game

Whether or not you are sports fan, you can appreciate the importance of the planning out any task. This is no different than what you would do for your applications. Health checks are a great way to provide a deeper level of insight into how your application is performing. Since Docker 1.12 there is a new HEALTHCHECK directive. We can use this directive to signal to the Docker Engine whether or not the application is healthy.

There are a two ways to implement the HEALTHCHECK Continue reading

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