Security cats and dogs, living together

This was so full of win that it is in danger of collapsing into a Black Hole of win.

But let me give you some background about why.  Longtime readers know how I enjoy Christmas light displays that people put up at their houses.  As it turns out, Rob Joyce (they guy who led the NSA's attack team, TAO) is one of these people.  OK, cool - the Fed.Gov's chief h4X0r dude likes his light show.  So what?

Well, he went out to ShmooCon and gave a preso about how he did it. For those not in The Biz, ShmooCon is a very long running hacker convention - it's not at all corporate button-down.  Still has a whiff of the old school to it.

And so Joyce gave a talk about his Christmas lights there.

El Reg has an interview with him about this, which is a great read.  Here are my two favorite bits:

[Driving around looking at other people's displays] It was over the top and gaudy, and just really made me happy. I said "I think I could do that," meaning I have the technical chops to achieve it. And [Joyce's wife] said, "yes you can," and I took that as license to mean, "yes, you can do it." And so when boxes started arriving in the mail in February and March, she's like, "what the hell is this?"

I can totally hear The Queen Of The World saying those very same words to me ...

The Register: A senior person in the NSA ordering huge amounts of electronic equipment from China didn't set off any red flags?

Joyce: None of the compute comes from China, just the LED strings themselves. I would applaud somebody if they could supply chain that.

I do take a little more care in the control system itself. It's not connected to the internet and is a standalone network – because I do have friends who have interesting hobbies and would love to change my display and make it say some interesting things.

In this business you don't last very long - or rise very high - if you're not paranoid.

Highly, highly recommended - both the interview and the video.