Lmst

My gargantuan presentation about Cold War attacks and intrusions into our intelligence apparatus has now been published. If you didn't catch it at #ShmooCon or #CackalackyCon now you can view it here...

https://youtu.be/-Z_Jv7vuiqg

Enjoy! 👍😁👍

My friend Kali Fencl did a very interesting, 10 minute, talk about what content marketing is, and how working with the marketing team can be kinda awesome. I wish I had known a lot of this stuff when I started marking content. #shmoocon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YHcw-qj094&t=22703s

Video of my #shmoocon 2025 talk is up!

Building and Hacking USB with FPGAs

https://archive.org/details/shmoocon2025/ShmooCon2025-Michael+Ossmann-Building+and+Hacking+USB+with+FPGAs.mp4

The video from my #ShmooCon talk, The Cost of an Incident, is now live!

https://archive.org/details/shmoocon2025/ShmooCon2025-Amanda+Draeger-The+Cost+of+an+Incident.mp4

It covers some of the lessons we've learned at from cyber insurance claims about why some incidents are more expensive than others, and what organizations can do about it.

(my apologies that I keep disappearing, the A/V crew isn't used to keeping up with someone wandering around the stage)

OK, this is one of the most fun pieces I've written in a long time, partially because of the boffo #shmoocon talk that Russ Hanford gave, which inspired me to write it.

Thanks not only to @Dntlookbehindu, but also @ThomLangford of @rapid7 and Deepen Desai of @threatlabz for their insights.

Tricking the bad guys: realism and robustness are crucial to deception operations
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3808813/tricking-the-bad-guys-realism-and-robustness-are-crucial-to-deception-operations.html

Excited for a new side quest - invited to join stellar SME advisors working w/ researchers + students at Penn State PILOT Lab. Building better #Privacy + Security begins w/ the research phase.

Learn more #PSUPILOTLab & watch our #ShmooCon presentation - https://www.pilotlab.org/projects

Weekly output: Arc Boats, data brokers, Mark Vena podcast, New Glenn, Starship, TikTok

Ideally, the week after CES would be a relaxing time with at least one day spent entirely disconnected from work. Because we don’t live in an ideal world, my week instead featured the Supreme Court blowing up TikTok and SpaceX blowing up the second stage of its giant Starship rocket.

And on top of that, I wrote a post Wednesday for Patreon readers sharing further observations from CES.

1/13/2025: This Speedy Electric Sport Boat Leaves Internal Combustion in Its Wake, PCMag

My CES coverage almost wrapped up with this report of a fun outing on Lake Mead on a battery-electric boat–“almost” as in I have a couple of other stories that began with notes and quotes from that trade show, but which can’t be finished without additional reporting.

1/13/2025: Even the Experts Have Trouble Getting Data Brokers to Stop Tracking Them, PCMag

After covering ShmooCon Saturday, I spent part of Sunday watching that hacker conference’s closing panels remotely and part of it writing a recap of Yael Grauer’s talk about the futility of trying to opt out of data brokers without any help from the federal privacy law that Congress keeps failing to pass.

1/15/2026: Ep 106 SmartTechCheck Podcast — CES recap, TikTok, Zoox, TSMC, Apple, Mark Vena

I joined my industry analyst friend Mark and my fellow tech journalists Stewart Wolpin and John Quain for this CES recap.

1/16/2025: Blue Origin’s Giant New Glenn Rocket Reaches Orbit on Its First Try, PCMag

The 1 to 4 a.m. launch window that Blue Origin apparently picked to minimize interference with air traffic maximized interference with my sleep–especially when the first attempt on Monday morning saw five resets of the countdown clock before finally getting scrubbed a little after 3 a.m. The second one resulted in a successful launch at 2:03 a.m., but then writing the post (and eyeing my bleary-eyed copy carefully before pasting it into the CMS) had me up until after 3 a.m. anyway.

1/16/2025: SpaceX Catches a Booster But Loses an Upper Stage on Starship’s Seventh Flight, PCMag

About 17 hours after watching one rocket launch Thursday, I watched a second one that was not so successful–and not in the way that I’d thought Starship’s seventh test might go awry, a failed booster catch.

1/17/2025: Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban, Finds No First Amendment Violations, PCMag

I wrote more than 500 words of background material in advance, plus ledes and closing sentences that would go with a court opinion against TikTok or for it. That let me get a completed story filed within half an hour of the court’s mercifully brief opinion getting posted at 10 a.m. Friday. That afternoon, I added another section with reactions from various parties, including two of my favorite tech-policy experts who also happen to be among two of the fastest sources I know to answer an e-mail request for comment.

#ArcBoats #BlueOrigin #ces #dataBrokers #electricBoat #FirstAmendment #LasVegas #MarkVena #NewGlenn #Shmoocon #SpaceX #Starship #SupremeCourt #TikTok #YaelGrauer

Been pretty hectic since last weekend … the whole last #ShmooCon thing is sinking in. :(

I was looking forward to attending #PyConUS this year after hearing about the success of their masked event last year, but now I see that they have dropped their masking requirement. #ShmooCon was great. What other masked events should I make plans to attend?

New video is up and it's all about the small, supplementary hardware item that #ShmooCon hotel installed on all of their doors to prevent room break-ins. Neat! 👍😁👍

(With bonus cameos by @InclusiveLittleUnicorn
@pronto and others in the lobby as well as @Weld in a screenshot!) 😉

https://youtu.be/ONmix_70McA

The final #ShmooCon did not disappoint and neither did the fantastic talk @deviantollam gave Saturday! You'll definitely want to catch the YouTube upload of it if you missed it and consider coming to Cackalackycon for the extended version in the works!

A photo of a handsome man on stage behind a podium with a moose next to him on one side and a table with locks and other items on it on the other side. He is speaking into a microphone animatedly.

I made logo covers for my and @llorenzin's masks for #ShmooCon this past weekend.

We added SIPmask airtight drinking valves to our masks so we can safely drink with a straw while wearing our masks, and I thought it would be neat to display the ShmooCon logo rather than the SIPmask logo.

I had initially planned to 3D print a replacement valve cover - either with two colors of filament, or just coloring/painting it when it was done - but as I ran out of time, I scaled back my expectations and plan.

I ended up printing out the logo on the laser printer, cutting it out, and gluing it onto the existing valve cover. (And I'm proud of myself for getting something done, rather than giving up when I couldn't do it the way I initially planned!)

As we say around our house: "Anything worth doing is worth doing at the last minute..." 😁

#MakeShitMonday
@cannibal

Predictably, I wasn't able to talk to (or even wave to) everyone I would have liked to see at the last #shmoocon, but I did talk to some, and it was wonderful to reconnect with folks after five years! It was great to get back on stage after so long, but I needed a lot of recovery time afterward. I look forward to seeing y'all again at the next masked event!

Thanks to everyone who has ever been a part of #ShmooCon - attendees, speakers, staff, sponsors. I thought I’d share a collage of my set of staff badges, now complete!