October in security

Today, the New York Times has an homage to Peter G. Neumann.

Many people cite Albert Einstein’s aphorism “Everything should be made as simple as possible but no simpler.” Only a handful however have had the opportunity to discuss the concept with the physicist over breakfast. One of those is Peter G. Neumann now an 80-year-old computer scientist at SRI International […]

For many of those years Dr. Neumann (pronounced NOY-man) has remained a voice in the wilderness tirelessly pointing out that the computer industry has a penchant for repeating the mistakes of the past. He has long been one of the nation’s leading specialists in computer security and early on he predicted that the security flaws that have accompanied the pell-mell explosion of the computer and Internet industries would have disastrous consequences.

In other news it appears that South Carolina's Department of Revenue has seen its computers hacked with 3.6 million social security numbers and 387 000 payment cards details leaked.