Your word for today: "exuviae"
Anyone who already knows what that means is welcome to leave now, or write out 20 times: "Nobody likes a smart-arse" ;^)
It was only when I got close enough to this to photograph it that I realised (with some relief) that it was already empty. It is the exuviae of a dragonfly nymph (or late larval stage). The whole thing is a little over 2 inches long.
The larva lives under water until almost mature, then (as the evidence would suggest) it shins up a convenient leaf, sloughs off its last immature outer skin, unfurls its wings to dry, and then it's off. What looks like a moth hitching a piggyback is, I am guessing, where the pre-mature wings are before this last emergence.
And you thought nymphs were sexy little faeries who flirt with shepherds...
Posted by racingsnake
@ 03:58 PM GMT+00:00
Outsider coercion, insider attack
This has to be one of the most potent combinations of security risk: an insider, with appropriate access, who has been coerced (through threat, bribery or whatever) by a malicious outsider.
I don't have the rest of this pay-per-view article, but you probably know the original story from previous bloggings and press coverage (here's one example, from ComputerWeekly).
I'll be interested to see what the DWP report says, if it becomes public. In the meantime, let's have another go at distilling some principles from this:
1 - If something is perceived as having enough value, it will generate criminal activity: a 'UK identity' clearly falls into this category;
2 - The point of data compromise and the point of exploitation may very well be different: the means by which your identity is stolen may well not be the means by which fraud is committed;
3 - Prevention has to involve non-technical as well as technical means;
4 - If you cannot prevent fraudulent behaviour, you need to think about how you will be able to detect it - especially given (2) above. This corresponds to what I've said before about detecting the "parallel lives" variety of identity theft.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 10:08 AM GMT+00:00
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