Announcing – The ‘Kaspersky Exploring Russia’ tourism accelerator.

There are plenty of reasons I love my company, but perhaps the most… refreshing – is that our K-folks often come up with all sorts of different, original ideas of things to do and at the right times and in the right places. Thus, some of our brightest K-sparks came up with this here idea:

// The other day, during an online conference with Latin America, the following – I believe, Brazilian – phrase (can’t recall the exact wording) was uttered: 

If the fisherman can’t go out to sea, he just gets on with fixing his nets!

The perfect anecdote for our current situation, no? I hope you’re fixing your nets. Meanwhile here at K – here’s how we’re fixing ours, among a few other ways…

Sat at home, many of us are dreaming of future vacations, I’m sure – but when will they be possible? And of course there’ll be those who’ve had to cancel trips, vacations, expeditions, weddings…  Me personally I had to call off more than a dozen trips or postpone them indefinitely. But imagine how things are for the tourism industry – airlines, hotels, agencies. No one could have expected, and thus made contingencies for, the force majeure of this year. But perhaps hardest hit will have been newcomers to the tourism business with a great startup idea, a business plan, and little else, and then… boom. All plans torpedoed.

Well we’ve decided to lend a helping hand to those newbies and their budding projects. So here’s introducing… our Kaspersky Exploring Russia tourism accelerator! This is a project designed to help cool, promising startups use their lockdown-at-home time usefully: to learn something new, to fine-tune their business ideas, to find investors, or simply to PR themselves. And after the pandemic, they’ll be able to go to the – by-then hungry famished?! – market with their new, turbo-charged projects (maybe they’ll be able to take care of a few of my exotic expeditions too)…

So, why ‘Exploring Russia’?

Read on…

ILOVEYOU – 20 years ago – to the day!

Ancient cybersecurity folks with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry will of course remember the infamous ILOVEYOU Love Letter email worm from the early 2000s. What they may not recall is that it was exactly 20 years ago when it first reared its ugly head.

20 years? What?! Yep: Two decades ago to the day this cyber-maggot paralyzed practically the whole world. Wanna know what the guy responsible for this global cyber-tragedy is doing now, and where? I’ll get to that a bit later…

But I’ll start with a summary of the events of 20 years ago, in case you missed them. First up: why ‘Love Letter’?

This cyber-vermin crawled into millions of folks’ email inboxes. The receiver got a ‘love letter’ from what looked to be a friend or acquaintance.

source

Curiosity killed the… email recipient: after the attached VBS was clicked, the malware basically took control and sent itself on behalf of the recipient to everyone in his/her address book. And in some kinda totally mental mega-exponential way managed to infect – in a matter of hours!! – practically the whole email-using planet!

This caused colossal damages (yes, the worm also damaged certain files) (damages: to the tune of several BILLION dollars!)). Curious fact: the code for e-mail distribution was swiped from another worm – Melissa – which a year earlier ran amok around the whole world too (Microsoft had to switch off its corporate email (in current terminology – self-isolated) in order to stop the spread of the worm).

There’s another interesting element of Love Letter: the worm would download from the internet a Trojan that stole the infected computers’ internet-access logins and passwords (this is back when access was mostly dial-up, costing a lot – using per-hour tariffs), and sent them to a given address.

Read on…

Tasmania’s devilish prison history.

NB: With this post, about a place I visited before the lockdown, I want to bring you some positivism, beauty, and also reassurance that we’ll all get the chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile, I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead, I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

And now for a bit about Tasmanian… prison history!

Since Britain would send its convicts to Australia, Tasmania received quite a few too. And it just so happens that here, on the Tasman Peninsula, the prisons were among the most strict, high-security and harsh – where the most hardened, twisted criminals of the evilest kind were sent. Eek.

Not that the peninsula was chosen randomly. It is attached to the mainland via two narrow necks of land (surrounded by endless ocean) – much easier to guard and keep jailbreaks in check. One of the necks – Eaglehawk Neck – even had a ‘Dog Line‘ across it: two dozen vicious dogs tethered up in a line across the Neck from shore to shore, and out above the sea on platforms (so escaping convicts couldn’t try dodge the dogs via the sea). Of course – as per the custom in Tasmania – it’s now a tourist attraction.

Old wooden buildings from the prison era are carefully maintained. Of course keeping them in a reasonable condition is helped out by the customary clement weather here.

My travel companion, OA, read up on the prison theme, and this is what he found out:

—8<—

The first prison on Van Diemen’s Land (the original name given – until 1856 – to what is today Tasmania) appeared in 1803, and in the following 50 years the British sent some 76,000 convicts there, which is nearly half of all those the British sent to Australia (~165,000).

The most famous prison of the island is the one in Port Arthur, which held only the most hardened of repeat offenders, and which became known as the prison it was impossible to escape from. The rugged lie of the land here was deemed ideal for a prison – there was practically nowhere to run away to, there was the Dog Line you mentioned, and there were plenty of guards too, placed well apart – who employed a somewhat advanced-for-the-times flag semaphore to communicate among themselves.

Nevertheless, a few escapes did occur. Perhaps the most audacious was the one in 1839, when a group of convicts took advantage of a thick fog to steal the ship of the prison commandant, Charles O’Hara Booth, and sail off! Passing the guards while already out to sea, one of the convicts even struck the usual proud, shoulders-back pose of Booth up on the bow of the ship – Booth often would use his vessel to inspect his prison from the sea.

The convicts remained on the run successfully for several weeks, sailing along the shores, stopping only to burgle farms. At one point they were stopped by law enforcement, but they made up a story that they were the search party looking for – themselves! More audaciousness! However, their luck was soon to run out: eventually they were caught – and later executed.

// Our guide told us a version in which they made it as far as Australia – 700km away, and that they weren’t executed but sent to other prisons; if they had been hanged they’d have become heroic martyrs.

Luckier was the fate of Martin Cash – a career criminal known best as the first man to ever swim the Eaglehawk Neck bay, despite it being rumored to contain sharks; and he did so twice! All his attempts at escape ended by his being eventually caught, but by some miracle he escaped the hangman’s noose. He even went on to dictate his autobiography, which became a bestseller in 1870.

But perhaps ‘the most infamous incident, simply for its bizarreness, was the escape attempt of one George ‘Billy’ Hunt. Hunt disguised himself using a kangaroo hide and tried to flee across the Neck, but the half-starved guards on duty tried to shoot him to supplement their meager rations. When he noticed them sighting him up, Hunt threw off his disguise and surrendered, receiving 150 lashes”! – Wikipedia.

Perhaps the most disturbing place in Port Arthur was the so-called Separate Prison – a panopticon modeled as per the theory of philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham. Living in a single cell, each prisoner was deprived of all interaction with others and had to remain silent… always! Instead of their names they were given a number to go by. And they had to wear sack-masks over their heads the few times they were allowed out of their cells. Such a ‘humane’ system promised full repentance; in fact it just made the inmates physiologically very ill indeed. Rumor has it it was so unbearable they committed murders in order to be sentenced to death. Oh my ghastly.

These days Port Arthur and a few other Australian prison settlements have UNESCO World Heritage status!

—8<—

That’s all on the Tasmanian prison theme. But there’s still more to come on the Tasmanian general-theme; in fact – the most interesting bits of our Tasmanian tour. Stay tuned!…

All the pics from Tasmania are here.

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Remarkable Cave and Tessellated Pavement.

NB: With this post, about a place I visited before the lockdown, I want to bring you some positivism, beauty, and also reassurance that we’ll all get the chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile, I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead, I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

We finally make it to the Tasman Peninsula. First on the tourism menu here – a remarkable cave. A remarkable cave that’s so remarkable it’s called… Remarkable Cave!

Indeed: remarkable. ‘The cave itself is a long tunnel eroded from the base of a collapsed gully’. Probably some 100 meters long.

Read on…

Hole > arch > kitchen. A million-year process, viewed in one hour.

NB: with this post – about a place I visited before the lockdown – I want to bring you some positivism, beauty, and reassurance that we’ll all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile, I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead, I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

Back behind the wheel and back on the road, off we sped on our round-the-island tour of Tasmania en route to our final destinations – the Tasman Peninsula and the town of Port Arthur. And this is where the tourisms took off in terms of quality – or should I say, KKKKwality? )…

Here’s Tasmans Arch. Hmmm. Rather grandiose, I’d say. Accordingly, 3Ks awarded! A natural bridge formed by sedimentary rock having been washed away over the millennia leading eventually to a collapsing cave:

Read on…

Orange rocks, Wineglass Bay, but all a bit low-K…

NB: with this post – about a place I visited before the lockdown – I want to bring you some positivism, beauty, and reassurance that we’ll all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile, I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead, I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

Next up on our Tasmanian tour – red rocks. Actually, regular gray-colored rocks, but with an orangey coating. Like this:

These pics were taken at the Bay of Fires, named, curiously, not after the fire-colored rocks…

Read on…

The natural (and not-so natural) landscapes of Tasmania.

NB: with this post – about a place I visited before the lockdown – I want to bring you some positivism, beauty and some reassurance that we’ll all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile, I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead, I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

Onward we drive on our tour of Tasmania. Our next stop – the city of Launceston, whose Cataract Gorge came highly recommended:

Very picturesque! Great for walkies too…

Read on…

Tasmania – Day 2: dunes, whisky and Linux penguins.

NB: with this post about the place I visited before the lockdown I want to bring you some positivism, beauty and the reassurance that we will all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

The western Tasmanian coastal town of Strahan is pretty and cozy, but besides fishing and the nearby disused mine, plus a for-tourists railroad, there’s nothing to do here. It is the very definition of a ‘sleepy’ backwater town.

However, a little to the west of the town there’s an awesome sandy beach, of a length of… wait for it… 30 kilometers! It’s called, appropriately, Roaring Beach, but it’s not just for sunbathing on. You can race along stretches of it. Which we did. Which I recommend!

Read on…

Security Analyst Summit – start watching tonight – from your sofa!

As many of you will know, every year we organize the mega security conference called Security Analyst Summit in an interesting (at least sunny, often sandy) location. The event is something different for the industry – never dull, never boring, never format-following. We bring together big-name speakers and guests in an exclusive invite-only format to discuss the very latest – loudest – cybersecurity news, investigations, stories, curiosities and so on. No politics! Only professional discussion of cybersecurity – but lightly, relaxed, friendly… awesomely! And we do it so well SAS is becoming one of the most important conferences in the industry. By way of example, here’s my write-up on last year’s event – in Singapore.

Now, this year’s event – our 12th! – should have opened today, April 28, in sunny Barcelona. But of course – for obvious reasons, that’s just not happening (.

However, we felt that to cancel SAS would be giving in; we couldn’t just drop it this year: how would world cybersecurity cope?! Accordingly, we decided to premiere this year’s SAS online; and not only that but… – for free (!), and for everyone and anyone who wants a taste! Soooo – here’s introducing: SAS@Home, and it’s starting later today (11am Eastern; 8am PST, 4pm London, 6pm Moscow), so hurry up and register! More than a thousand folks have already registered, so it looks like the new format isn’t putting people off. We’ll just have to see how this first online SAS goes; maybe in the future we’ll have two running parallel – online and offline!

Here’s a quick overview of the schedule:

Read on…

Empty, but with a heart that’s still beating.

It’s been a month now since my last flight – Sydney-Doha-Moscow – after my travel companion, OA, and I completed our drive around Tasmania. Since we’d been traveling far and wide, we hunkered down for a two-week self-isolation stint as per recommendations at the time. But before those two weeks were up, as you all know, full-on lockdown kicked-in. Ouch!

As I’ve already mentioned on this blog, by early April practically our whole company switched to working remotely. Everyone at home working at full-speed-ahead with the help of the cutting edge technology. Incredible really. Even more incredible: it turns out that, according to a report on our usage of corporate video-conferencing tech, we’ve been having ~2,500 online meetings every day!

But just recently I needed to get myself to the office (taking all the necessary distancing and hygiene precautions, of course). I needed to be there in person for something: alas, not everything can be done remotely it seems (but perhaps it will soon if things carry on like they are now for much longer). Anyway, after completing the few formalities that needed to be done, I decided to have a stroll around the office. I was planning on all floors of all three buildings. But I only managed a few floors of building 2 before things got too repetitive – there was absolutely no one anywhere. Empty. Bare Vacant. Desolate. 45,000 square meters of office space deserted!…

It was all a bit eerie really. As if everyone had just gotten up and left without taking anything with them. And you can read into the ‘signs’ left as much as you like and how you like: whatever you seek, be it post-apocalyptical hints or romantic connotations – you’ll find it! Me personally I rather thought of the thousands of K-folks efficiently working from home remotely, safely – thank goodness.

Read on…