On ICT law, politics and other digital stuff
An independent researcher compiled a list of known Apple OSX-related vulnerabilities, including one that affects the Sparkle Updater Framework.
I’ve just checked my Mac with this command
find /Applications -name Sparkle.framework
and found that DikeX, the old version of the digital-signature tool released by Infocert S.p.a., uses Sparkle. I don’t know if the software is plagued by the bug, but this is exactly the point: nobody from Infocert just warned users with a single word about.
If you book the Alitalia’s cheapest fare on a flight it might happens (twice in two weeks, to me) that you aren’t entitled to get a decent quantity of miles for the Mille Miglia frequent flyer programme and mandatory given an (often) uncomfortable seat.
This Ryanair-like attitude (everything is an optional) might make sense for long hauls or mid-distance travels, where the passengers are available to pay a surcharge to board first or get some other goodie. But is completely useless for one-hour, taxi-like flights, were people go for the cheapest fare, and either don’t actually care about being good seated or earning a few miles.
Of course, Alitalia must justify the different fares for exactly the same thing (moving people from A to B), but this should be done by adding something more to the standard, and not by lowering the quality of the service first, and ask for more money to get something that was always been taken for granted until yesterday.
To put it short, letting a few “privileges” for the short-distance travelers wouldn’t have done any harm to Alitalia’s pocket, while it would have made people’s day better. Instead, the company chose to worsen its customers’ travel experience, without getting an actual benefit. This affects the passengers’ loyalty to such a company, and as soon as people is offered alternatives, they will surely catch it.
A classical application of Carlo Cipolla’s Third Law of Human Stupidity.
The appointment made by Italian PM Matteo Renzi of Marco Carrai as head of the Italian cybersecurity raised a storm of criticism and concern among the IT Security “professionals” that started complaining about his lack of competence, conflict of interest and so on.
Many of the complaints (a few of them I’ve heard privately, from people that called me for that purpose), though look more like a “why him and not me?” or “what does he have more than me?” instead of a serious analysis of Carrai’s adequacy-for-the-job.
He might not be the right person for such a role, but he is trusted by the prime minister and that is all that matters.
Not the first time, not the last time but – above all – not the first critical sector where such things happens.
Blog and Social Networks are very different tools of expression (and, for what it worth, online marketing.)
A blog gives you absolute freedom and exposes your thoughts to potentially a huge quantity of people. People, on the other end, can enjoy the things you do without necessarily disclose their identity, unless they actually want to do.
A Social Network page/profile, instead, implies that the majority of your audience is made by those you already know or, at least, you are acquainted with. Yes, I either know about the existence of “public” pages or the possibility of “following” somebody else, but this doesn’t change the point.
To blog is more like living into the wild, where you can meet other peers, predators or none at all (and in this case ask yourself why are you still blogging if nobody cares.) While “living” in a social network is fairly safer but actually less challenging because of its “Walled Garden” design.
While is obviously possible to use a blog to stay in touch with people and a social network to publish contents aimed at a (personally) unknown audience, it would be more efficient to use the proper tool designed for the specific task.
Unless you are left without options, why should you use a hammer to cut a wire and a screwdriver to hammer in a nail?
Become a legal IT security expert doesn’t need a lot of effort and, with the due care, you can build your legend in a short time-frame following ten easy steps:
By following these steps you start a loop where your legend become more and more solid up to a moment when you will be considered a “guru” and nobody will ever check your actual background.
And don’t worry, if you ever get a client, as soon as you stay stick to these ten commandments you’re safe: nobody will ever challenge the outcome (if any) of your work, because nobody will ever admit to having being fooled into hiring a fake…