Welcome to zcobb.com a.k.a. CobbsBlog

by Stephen Cobb on January 7, 2013

Stephen CobbI’m Stephen (@zcobb) Cobb and this is my blog. I’m the author of thousands of blog posts and a couple dozen books. I blog for myself here, and for my employer ESET here. I mainly write about cyber security and data privacy, but also about a genetic killer, hereditary hemochromatosis, on the Celtic Curse blog and the Facebook hemochromatosis page. Of course, all views expressed here are mine, not my employer’s. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @zcobb.

Cobb’s blog is back, after dealing with WordPress and Linux server hacks

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If you have missed this blog lately, that’s because it was offline for several weeks while I rebuilt it after a nasty case of criminal hacking forced it off the ‘net. What’s that you say? You’re shocked that a server belonging to security expert Stephen Cobb got hacked. Well, I’m not. Not surprised that is…because [...]

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So Long 2012: Year of multiple infosec anniversaries

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30 years ago this month, December 1982, I sat down at my first personal computer, a KayPro II, and started learning word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and something called an operating system (in this case CP/M). I got my first book contract 5 years later, in other words, 25 years ago this year. Within 5 years [...]

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Boxing Day: The DIY play time holiday

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One of the great perks offered by my employer, ESET North America, is two days off for Christmas. Not that the days are called Christmas vacation, they are called December 25 and 26. But to me, based on my upbringing, in a protestant church family in England, those days will always be Christmas Day and [...]

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Facial recognition technology and the Right of Publicity: Could this hot tech trend violate state laws?

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If someone uses a photograph of your face for commercial purposes they could be breaking the law. In an odd way, this statement connects two areas of my life, information security and movie making. Photographs of faces are used in some security systems and lots of movies. When you make a movie it is standard [...]

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Paying Forward: Giving a little back while we do the paperwork

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Why so quiet here on Cobbsblog? To be honest I took the month of July to recover from our medical nightmare in June. But now I’m back and working on paying back a little if I can. My decision to document my wife’s atrocious treatment had mixed results but many of them were favorable. We [...]

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And on the seventh day: Relief, rest, and ruminations on responsibility

If my wife’s pain relief nightmare began on Wednesday of last week, then the seventh day of that nightmare was yesterday. I am thankful to report that the day went well and the nightmare may now be over, although it wasn’t actually a nightmare, it was a reality, one we had to live through, and [...]

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Why day 6 is really day 3355 in Chey Cobb’s chronic pain management nightmare

Day 6 and we are keeping hope alive (despite day one, day two, day three, day four, and day five). In a moment I will explain why day 6 this is more like day 3355, but first an update. As the saying goes: My wife is resting uncomfortably. She has an appointment with a new [...]

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Day 5: Why not palpate and evaluate?

Chey is feeling slightly better today as the Ativan they gave her in the psych ward wears off. Still lots of pain and some slurred speech. As of 4PM nobody from Sharp HealthCare has been in touch. AFAIK, their patient advocate delivered his report at 1PM today in the full knowledge of how badly Chey [...]

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Day 4 of our medical nightmare: Observations and FAQ

We spent Sunday, June 10, at home in our new apartment surrounded by boxes that have not been unpacked. Spending 3 days in any kind of medical facility will blow a hole in the best laid moving plans. Coming out of the facility in a heap of pain will only make the hole bigger. Chey [...]

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Day 3 of our San Diego healthcare nightmare

The sad saga of an epic #fail in healthcare continued today. Chey Cobb, the disabled 50-something IT professional, former Senior Technical Security Officer at the NRO and author of Network Security for Dummies, is now home and resting after being placed in a psych ward for 3 days. Her pain is still not managed. She [...]

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Day 2 of painful detention in San Diego, the new Cuckoo’s Nest nightmare scenario?

As I start writing this, at 3PM Pacific, my wife is still detained in a secure psychiatric facility where they are not only withholding medical treatment, but alternating between ignoring her pleas for help and harassing her with requests to sit up and get out of her room and participate in activities with others. What [...]

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Locked Up in San Diego: Doctors opt for painful detention over treatment of pain

Right now a tale of pain and suffering is unfolding that involves my wife, Chey Cobb, pictured below in happier days. This is a tale so bizarre and unsettling it is hard to believe where it is taking place, not some distant land ruled by cruel forces of oppression and exploitation, but in San Diego [...]

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Seeing Red: Thoughts on selling movies without making money

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I recently read the latest accounting statement for Dare Not Walk Alone, the documentary for which I was both a producer and executive producer. You could say I saw red. Let’s put it like this: The project remains in debt and there are no indications  that it will ever get out of debt. I’m not [...]

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2,500 Blog Posts and Counting

Prolific Blogger and Social Media Maven Stephen Cobb Tops 2,500 Posts: Covers everything from DNA and 23andMe to hemochromatosis and conversion rate optimization.

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The Google-SOPA-PIPA-DNS-Copyright-Oil-and-Gas Link

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What does copyright infringement have to do with scraping oil from the bottom of a barrel and an acronym soup like SOPA, PIPA, DNS and DNSSEC? The answer lies with Google, not the search engine but the company. More specifically, the answer lies with Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, who said the following at the [...]

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Security and Privacy Links: Marketing cybersecurity

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As some of you know, I hit the ground running when I landed in San Diego at the beginning of September, happy to be back in California, wrestling with my first love, information security. Okay, so that prose was a trifle purple–not to be confused with a delicious purple trifle–and information security is not, strictly [...]

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