I’m finishing up Bruce Schneier’s ‘Secrets And Lies.’ Got about 20 pages to go, it’s been a good read. I’ve always had an interest in computer security/hacking, how systems could be taken apart and messed with. I never went beyond watching a couple of DefCon talks though and reading news articles on popular attacks.

“Secrets And Lies” is nice in that it doesn’t get overtly technical, and covers a huge amount of material in computer security concepts. Schneier is good at putting together common sense analogies for the more obscure ideas he presents. Something I’ve been struck by is how unprotected DNS is from malicious actors - at the time of the book’s publication anyways, year 2000. More research and reading to do.

Some related material that I’ve enjoyed:

• Schneier’s Q&A at DefCon
• Explanation of how AES works
• Paper on timing attack of AES encryption
• DefCon talk on DNS