From a sign in the security inspection station at the What The Hack conference:

The world is an increasingly dangerous place. Research has shown that people need to get inspected to feel secure, even if the actual inspection is a complete farce. Yet as a society, we cannot hire half the population to perform bogus inspections on the other half in order to keep up with market demand for perceived security.

The sign on the metal detector was an even better statement on the effectiveness of these devices, which are appearing in more places all the time:

Of course, this doesn’t really address the security needs of the general population who feel secure if they’re not inspected, but need to see others around them inspected in order to feel secure, regardless of how effective the inspection is. Perhaps the next conference will have a DIY security booth where patrons can bring in others for inspection so that they feel safe.

Tonight my server started making the now familiar chik-chik-chik sound that signals yet another of the daily brute force password guessing attempts being logged. Given the repeating pattern of user names being guessed, they are the work of of people with spare computing power and without the brains to write their own tools. The chance of success is pretty slim here; the root account can’t log in, and none of other users exist.

I decided to install a dynamic firewalling tool anyhow to drop connects from attacking hosts. I downloaded daemonshield, a python script that monitors log files and creates iptables rules as needed. The install was simple - taking about 2 minutes from the download completing to the first rules being created to drop connections from 74.67-18-68.reverse.theplanet.com, tonight’s unwanted guest.

That should extend the log disk’s life a bit.

The crew and passengers on the Air France jet that crashed yesterday should be praised for performing a textbook evacuation of the aircraft. The fact that no one was seriously injured in the accident says a lot about the safety of the plane, the training of the crew, and the passengers ability to remain cool headed enough to get off the plane safely. They all deserve the praise their getting today.

On the other hand, the local media coverage has been poor. At least two of the local papers called the event a miracle, which I think diminishes somewhat the efforts of the people involved. This wasn’t a miracle, it was the perfect execution of a plan to ensure an aircraft can be evacuated in 90 seconds. The ABC News expert last night summed it up perfectly when he stated that the least surprising part of the whole incident was the evacuation and emergency response - these are planned for.

During the news coverage last night, local commentators couldn’t seem to get their fact straight either. One host didn’t seem to grasp the fact that the “red alert” status at Pearson yesterday was a GTAA alert that affected only ground operations (i.e., fuelling, loading, and unlaoding) - this despite Mr. Shaw clarifying this several times in the press converence. Initial reports of “minor injuries” - defined as treatable on site - were reported immediately after by the same host as “14 people sent to hospital”.

Nitpicking it may be, but surely these professionals can at least listen to the press conference if they plan to summarize. I can understand missing small details, but misreporting facts that are explained multiple times is shoddy.

Of course, no disaster coverage would be complete now without at least one journalist making a reference to 9/11. The smell of the burning plane reminded someone of 9/11 according to one correspondent. There’s been plenty of other plane crashes that are much more similar than those terrorist attacks.

Kudos to the crew, passengers, and rescue workers, who performed their job well. The media could learn something from that.