Surreal Saturday: Oil Navigates Maze; Rats, Mice Consider Forming Union (New Scientist)

According to a recently published paper with the unlikely title: "Maze Solving by Chemotactic Droplets", by the equally unlikely research group called the Grzybowski Group, oil droplets can, like rats trying to find cheese or wizards trying to find the Goblet of Fire, solve mazes all on their own. See the video below:

Chinese, Russian, Turkish Hackers Almost Certainly Targeting, Penetrating US Energy Provider Networks (Project Grey Goose)

Jeff Carr, author of Inside Cyber Warfare and IntelFusion, along with Sanjay Goel at the State University of New York, Albany and other contributors, has recently completed another of the Grey Goose reports, this time on hacker attacks on the power grid, both domestically and internationally.

The report's key findings are chilling:

• "State and/or Non-state actors from the Peoples Republic of China, the Russian Federation/Commonwealth of Independent States, and Turkey are almost certainly targeting and penetrating the networks of energy providers and other critical infrastructures in the U.S., Brazil, the Russian Federation, and the European Union."

• "Network attacks against the bulk power grid will almost certainly escalate steadily in frequency and sophistication over the next 12 months due in part to international emphasis among the G20 nations on Smart Grid research, collaborative development projects and the rich environment that creates for acts of cyber espionage"

• "The appeal of network intrusions against the U.S. Grid is enhanced by two key factors:"

• "90% of the U.S. Department of Defense's most critical assets are entirely dependent on the bulk power grid."
• "Most Grid asset owners and operators have been historically resistant to report cyber attacks against their networks as well as make the necessary investments to upgrade and secure their networks."

Grey Goose reports are volunteer efforts to analyze various cyber threats through the use of open source information. Previous reports have analyzed the Russia-Georgia cyber war and the evolution of cyber warfare.

In the interest of full disclosure: Jeff kindly listed me as a "reviewer" in the recent report but my input was limited to a little light editing. I don't consider myself a cyber war expert. I do think, however, that Jeff's record and the records of his co-contributors' speak for themselves and believe that those interested in this area (and those who should be interested in this area) need to read this report carefully (whether you ultimately agree with its conclusions or not).

How To Spot An ATM "Skimmer" And Why You Should Care (KrebsOnSecurity)

Skimming is the theft of ATM or credit card information during the course of what appears to be an otherwise legal transaction. ATM skimmers are designed, for example, to acquire the ATM card number and then, through a variety of different devices also acquire the PIN. This allows the thief to collect the data and then use it to get access to the account.

KrebsOnSecurity (via Boing Boing) had a very interesting example of one such skimming device (see picture) with links to pictures of other such devices. A casual search of the internet yielded many, many other examples (including this YouTube video). Lifehacker also linked to a very good PDF by an Australian firm with some detailed info on both the skimmer and the PIN capturing devices.

This type of fraud has been around for some time now and the tricks used by the bad guys continue to get more sophisticated. Despite this, it seems that many people are not aware of the risks. It is worth taking a look at Krebs and the YouTube video simply to be armed with a little bit of info.

PowerPoint Templates? PowerPoint Alternatives? (Link List)

One of my students (Thanks, Jeff!) asked me this morning if I knew of any place to find high quality, free PowerPoint templates.

He had already looked at the MS Office template repository and had done the standard Google search and found the MS templates to be good but over-used by his classmates, the truly free offerings to be of fairly poor quality and the good quality templates to be out of his "poor college student's" price range.

I suggested that he use either Google's advanced search feature to look for .PPT files that were "free to use or share" or use one of the several PowerPoint specific search engines to help him find additional templates or backgrounds he could use.

Another alternative , of course, is simply not to use PowerPoint. There are a number of alternatives including, for example, Impress, which comes bundled with the OpenOffice Suite of software. OpenOffice is free and open source software which mimics (and in some cases improves) on MS Office's functionality. It works with most operating systems (including Windows and Mac).

Ever since I started using Ubuntu (a Linux distribution) on my laptop, I have been impressed with OpenOffice (which comes bundled automatically with Ubuntu). I have not had a chance to use Impress other than as a tool to view .PPT presentations but it has worked flawlessly. I also noticed that there were a number of free (and fairly attractive) template sites dedicated to Impress (an example of one is here).

If you look to online presentation applications, the alternatives seem even more robust. Rotorblog lists a number of options worth exploring. Two of these I have seen in action, Sliderocket and Prezi, and I think they could both be used to make a very interesting presentation.

Of course, the final option is to dramatically change your presentation style. We tend to focus on a "standard professional" style here at Mercyhurst that minimizes the flash and focuses more on substance.

There are a wide variety of other styles out there, however. Presentation Zen has captured some of them including the "Lessig Method", the "Godin Method", The "Kawasaki Method" and the "Takahashi Method". Not all of these methods are appropriate for intelligence briefings but there may well be some elements which can transfer effectively.

Have your own favorite tool, template source or presentation style? Leave a comment!

Sunday Funnies: What Do You Do With Your Old Christmas Tree? Shoot It Into Space!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...!