Personal

CISSP exam and new home for blog

Sergey Simakov — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 22:08:00 GMT

Sorry for lack of posts last month. I was really busy at work with different projects (PKI, SC, security reviews) and tried to learn new CBK domains at home, so I basically didn't have a time to blog at all. Again, sorry.

Today I had an CISSP exam (you know - 6 hours is hard ;-) after week of CBK review seminars (by Dennis Griffin) with some of Microsoft EMEA guys and other attendees at Rotenburg a.d. Fulda (and you know - it was a good choice after all, because this hotel is so far away from town and there're even no any people at reception or on my floor right now, so I could concentrate on learning). I hope that I passed it - because sometimes it looked like a very complicated exam in English language ;-)

Well, it seems that Vista is ready now and will be available to customers in near feature, so it's time to check Windows Vista Security Guide and other Vista's security features. I'm living with it for 5 months now and it's really good (especially from security point of view - ASLR, BitLocker, etc)

Some news on blog changes - in near feature (begining next year) I'm going to post at http://blogs.technet.com/ssimakov - mostly in Russian and for russian ITSec community. But I'll keep this blog as personal and continue to cross-post here in English.

And now it's time to prepare for flight back to Moscow and following vacations in Phan Thiet,Vietnam.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Red pill

Sergey Simakov — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 17:16:00 GMT

Well, it's time to announce some changes in my professional life:

Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time [by David Bowie]

So, I've taken a red pill (it's just our way of saying "we've taken a job at Microsoft." ;-) and now I'm working with great people in Microsoft Consulting Services Russia team and I'm very excited about new opportunities.

New Year in Sri Lanka

Sergey Simakov — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:37:00 GMT

Better late than never.

I spent this New Year and russian Orhodox Christmas at beautiful Sri Lanka (Ceylon) island. Some photos from this travel are posted on my Flickr account. Weather was really great (but unsually rainy for this time of year on the south-west side of island) - especially if you compare it with Moscow weather in January (60 degrees difference ;-).

This time we visit nearly every part of this wonderful country - from Nuware Eliya to ex-capital Kandy, to Dambula, to the 8th wonder of the World in Sigiriya (btw the famous The Bridge on The River Kwai that Anton Antich visited this year is actually was filmed at this place ;-).

But the real motive for this post is the difference that free education and medical help have for ordinary people. May be you didn't know, but Sri Lanka is Democratic Socialist Republic and for this matter they have free of charge education (inc. and medical help for all people. And it works - I'm comparing impressions with our travel to Goa (the richest state in India after all) and from my point of view ordinary people are much happier, there're no such obvious diversity and economic growth is visible. And even after terrible tsunami that happened last year (down this railroad) they didn't give up and are building their small businesses - and I wish them good luck.

Humans

Sergey Simakov — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 08:14:00 GMT

Valery shared that wonderful quote from Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World last week:

Humans are incapable of securely storing high-quality cryptographic keys, and they have unacceptable speed and accuracy when performing cryptographic operations. (They are also large, expensive to maintain, difficult to manage, and they pollute environment. It is astonishing that these devices continue to be manufactured and deployed. But they are sufficiently pervasive that we must design our protocols around their limitations.)

And today this comic by Scott Adams =):

Good old days

Sergey Simakov — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 14:59:00 GMT

This post by Daniel Woolston reminded me about my first (well, actually second after some Soviet MC-? clone, but the first I actually work with) computer - ZX Spectrum:

It didn't look like this one because it was self-made from parts available in USSR after Perestroika begins, but it shared ideas and operating system with Spectrum (it was very popular in USSR). So it was possible to play in my favourite Saboteur or Renegade games shared on cassettes =))

Those were the days =)!

Vacation round trip

Sergey Simakov — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 11:57:00 GMT

Finally, after two weeks of hard work (the main reason behind my silence on this blog), I'm leaving for vacation travel to Scandinavian countries. So, here is our itenary:

Monday, arrive to Helsinki (presumably customs officials strike at Finnish border would not hurt our travel) and move to Turku

Tuesday, arrive to Stockholm by Silja Europe and move to Oslo, Norway in the evening

Wednesday, Sognefjord and Flaamsbana

Thursday, Neroyfjord and Bergen

Friday, Stavanger and Lysefjord (with fabulous Pulpit Rock/Preikestolen)

Saturday, arrive to Hirtshals by ColorLine M/S Ragnhild and move to Ringsted (via Aarhus and Odense)

Sunday, Copenhagen and move to Helsingborg, Sweden by ferry

Monday, move to Stockholm (via Jonkoping)

Tuesday, back to Finland by Viking ferry

And finally arrive home at Thursday (probably will take off until next Monday) and will upload some photos to Flicr.

(Update from Sweden) Norway fjords are really beautiful - I'll post some photos then return to Moscow =)

Spencer F. Katt blogging

Sergey Simakov — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 10:12:00 GMT

eWeek have finally allowed Spencer Katt to have a blog [subsribed] =))) [via Rich Burridge]

Exploiting Software: How to Break Code in Russian

Sergey Simakov — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:26:00 GMT

Exploiting Software: How to Break Code by Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw is now available in Russian. Great news for developers in Russia. Dana Epp reviewed this book last year.

And one personal thing: Courier system - one of our (Validata) security products to secure email exchange systems passed Windows Client and Office platform test.

Identity management blogs

Sergey Simakov — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 17:35:00 GMT

I've found interesting blogs about identity management today: Kim Cameron's [rss] blog with 'The Laws of Identity' post and Stefan Brands's The Identity Corner blog [rss] with 'An elaboration on the first Design Principle of Identity' (via Archie Reed).

Mark Lucovsky joined Google

Sergey Simakov — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 09:45:00 GMT

May be the way how software is shipped today is flawed...

Mark Lucovsky (markl), Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, one of the Windows NT kernel developers and architect of the largest source code control and build system moved to Google and desribes his reasons in blog [subscribed].