Skyfail AKA CyberSkyfall

It's the end of 2012 and another Bond movie is still cyberstalking unwary theater-goers...

Top three funniest moments I've been witness to in person this year was going to the Skyfall showing with the BSides Delaware conference, after a Bond-themed tailgate party organized by @DeviantOllam, complete with Vesper Martinis! 

Imagine about thirty BSides attendees watching a Bond movie and trying to behave themselves.  That's bad enough, if it was Thunderball or Dr. No. or even A View To a Kill or Quantum of Solace. Those bad guys had their own silly plots but they were all, um, cyber-less, or at least a lot less cyber...

Not Skyfall, oh no.  Skyfall revolved around a Stuxnet-like theme of cyber terrorism/war/etc. that COULD have been well-executed, but just wasn't.  Anyone in the BSides conference could have earned a quarter million dollars as an expert consultant to the script-writers and made it better than it was.  Since the script-writers and producers deemed it absolutely un-lame to just write a bunch of cyber-sounding nonsense, hilarity ensued in that dark theater in Wilmington.  It was hard to keep a straight face and stay quiet.  It turned into a hacker version of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I happened to be sitting next to @SpaceRog, who knows a thing or two about hacking and defense.  Let's just say that as the show went into cyberdouchery territory, then further into FUDtaculariousness, I kept feeling twitches and hearing winces from my immediate right.  If it was possible to kill a person with "cyber," the Skyfall producers might have found it, and it involved zero pacemaker-hacking, just really, really terrible writing. 

The preview is available on the tubez here http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=skyfall+preview Check it out and imagine, if you haven't seen it already, the head of MI6 AKA M dealing with a very bad situation, revolving around theft of classified information as well as cyber-terrorism in the way of blowing things up and causing things to crash.  SCARY STUFF!!!  She's getting a lot of heat from her political masters and is pretty frustrated with her imploding career.  Cyber-badness caused this.  Mistakes were made, solutions to be found, and right quick...

As a tribute to the lazy ridiculosity that is the Skyfall cyberscript, I bring you a Twitter hashtag I've been working on for a few days.  Won't you be my cyber-neighbor and participate?

@Shpantzer

#Skyfail  (Originally #CyberSkyfall and #SkyfallCyberLines)

-"Don't mind me, I'm just inducing acute cirrhosis over here..." M, we'd really rather u didn't drink all da Jager b4 noon

-"So he's in AND out AND in, is that right?" Yes, M, I'm afraid so. "Gimme your weapon, I'm going to shoot him myself."

-"If he's already in AND out, what are we doing 2 make sure he doesn't come back?" M, he's still here, never really left.

-"Why can't we stop him from getting in?" M he's already IN. "Can we stop him from getting out?" He's out already. "WHAT?"

-"What's the SIEM telling us? We spent a bloody fortune on it, after all." M, the db types don't get along w GUI types...

-If only we'd listened to that guy from Gartner when he came 2do the benchmarking assessment. That Spider chart was cool

-Quick, Nigel, get me the hyperZ Purple Pill escape preventer, I think he's bypassed our Deep Header Locator!

-Maybe if we use the cross-over cable on the PwnPlug we can reroute the application-aware honeypot 2 active-defence mode!

-"How're we doing on the isolation phase of the incident?" M, the manual says we're still in the OMG WTF BBQ phase. "I C."

-"Why didn't we find this vulnerability before we got hacked?" M, we discarded all CVSS scores below 8.73... "I see"

-Hack ScarJo's email, you get 10 years prison. Hack MI6 & u get 2 molest 007. What's wrong with this pic?

-"Don't be such a wuss, it's just a .BAT file..." By @CaseyJohnEllis

-When this is all over and we're done with the SCADA/HVAC remediation, I'm going to EuroDisney...

-How come Dr. Evil gets a power swivel-chair and I don't, hmm? Can u tell me that? "Maam, we had 2 airgap the control..."

-Um, change request form for removing USB port control... Signed by one "Tupac H@x0r." In crayon. Really, guys? 

-Yes, I know South Carolina got a $700k bill from Mandiant, but they're the only ones we have who work weekends!

-We finally gave up on figuring this out by ourselves n called Mandiant. No, they're not technically cleared for this...

-Like Sting said in his song: "When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around!" AMIRITE?

-It's M, she's gone over the edge. Finally discovered the depth of our incompetence. She really can't handle the truth

-More coming in Skyfail Part Deux.

Professionalism in the Security Community, Part Deux (Clever Talkers)

In this post, I will try to be clever and use the word 'clever' and its variations as much as reasonably possible. It might make me seem clever, or just obviously annoyed at the would-be clever cynics, you decide... As I've posted before, in the first installment of Professionalism, there are people (Marcus Ranum being one) who are both clever AND have a framework in which they discuss and enumerate specific arguments, definitions, etc.

This post is aimed not at them, as I don't have an issue with being clever, in fact I love to laugh and humor gets me through the day. I just have an issue with being clever as a complete substitute for real thinking. I mention no names and link to no specific articles, to avoid flame wars and to protect the guilty. :-) Here goes...

Rant Mode ON:

Dear Readers, Cyberwarriors, Those-Who-Follow-The-Cyberwar-on-"What-Is-Cyberwar," and of course Those-Who-Just-Like-Clever-Articles-About-Cyberwar:

There is a lot of discussion about cyberwar these days, which is probably a good thing, because we STILL need to figure out exactly what it is and isn't. Perhaps parallel to that effort (sigh...) we might be able to formulate a (reasonably) realistic strategy that will mitigate the effects of cyberwar on our side, allow our cyberwar practitioners to exploit the other side's networked weaknesses (war is about sides at some point, sorry) and be nimble enough to change with the speed of the network.

Cyberwar discussions are difficult for many reasons. One of them is the notion that we must not only prosecute said cyberwar properly on the strategic and tactical levels, to achieve certain results and avoid others, we must also strictly adhere, of course, to the laws of war (which ones again?) and we must be highly pundit-and-lawyer aware.


According to some, the tools and rules of cyberwar must be approved by multiple and conflicting interests, including, but not limited to: The Red Cross, John Yoo, the ACLU, Karl Rove, Katrina vanden Heuvel, EFF, current DoJ lawyers, EPIC, former DoJ lawyers (did I mention Yoo yet?), Pat Buchanan, Arianna Huffington, Ms. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX, General Jack D. Ripper, the ghost of General Curtis LeMay (via the Ouija board) and of course, the highly esteemed and indefatigable cyberwarrior, Dr. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.


See, I wasn't being TOO clever in that last paragraph, was I? OK, maybe too clever, but perhaps, and sadly so, not clever enough to qualify for the bevy of (cleverly) sarcastic and cynical articles about the supposed exploitation of the cyberwar issue by the various powers that be (are these powers 'the gummint' or 'the mainstream media' or are they think-tank thinker types?)

Apparently, some people think it's good enough to just be clever (or better yet, cynically clever), about the "cynical exploitation" alleged in their articles. These cynical mentions of cynical exploitation of cyberwar as a topic are sometimes explicit and sometimes more implicit (which is always more clever than actually being explicit).

For some people, being clever seems to be the main thing to strive for. Interestingly, some of these same people are the ones who deride FUD in the vendor space and yet fail to see the irony of their wayward ways. Are they falling into that trap of logical fallacy, you know the one that makes people think that making fun of someone or something (or both) is in and of itself the argument, or boosts the argument? Sorry folks, you can't just be clever and create an argument that's that implicit, not well articulated, or at times not even mentioned at all, strictly by means of making fun of people and concepts.



Argue by argument, not just cleverness. Derision is not discussion.


Are we trying to audition for the Daily Show correspondent position or are we talking about strategic warfare in cyberspace? Oh, both, I see...


Allow me to throw this thought-grenade onto the tinderbox of the cyberwar ABOUT cyberwar:

Being clever is great, and perhaps necessary, when discussing such amorphous topics. It is not helpful, however, to stop at being clever, to fail to continue with what you actually think cyberwar is, what it is not, and what you think is a good way to advance the discussion.

I will cleverly, but not cynically, stop now, having pointed out the clever fact that being clever about cyberwar is necessary but not sufficient to advance the discussion about cyberwar.


It is just the beginning. It might even be good to end with being clever. It is not, however, the end and should not even be the sole means to that end.

Read that as a promise that I'll discuss it further, and not rest on my clever laurels.



Rant Mode Off. Clever hammer back in toolbox. For now.