The kernel of my home office

I'm not a computer security expert, but it's been part of my work for many years, in different forms.  A very long time ago, a friend hired me to write up a primer for internet security, and ever since then it's been a theme that's sat in the background and pops up every now and then . But lately, it's started to feel like more than a theme, and but indeed a passion. You may consider computer and internet security to be a dry subject, or maybe you imagine feelings of smugness or righteousness, but "passion" is the right word for what I'm feeling. Here's google's definition: Passion: 1. a strong and barely controllable emotion. 2. the suffering and death of Jesus. Okay, let's just go with number 1. for now. If you followed my link above to other posts about security, you'll notice one from eight years ago where I mused on the possibility of the discovery of a flaw in how https works. Weirdly enough, a flaw in https was discovered shortly...

Do you trust your service provider? What does that even mean? For an individual with a relationship with a corporation, trust is not the same as trust with a person. Particularly with a complex service model, you have to have some trust in your service provider, even if you are reluctant about that, because you don't have a choice. For example, you don't have a much of a choice about what kind of service plan you get for your mobile phone in Canada, and those plans are constantly being changed by the providers, so trying to keep up with what the best plan for you is, is difficult. But aside from the aspect of "buyer beware" that covers all consumer relationships in Canada, mobile phone service is complicated by the fact that those mobile phone providers are using public resources that they make use of within a regulated system. In other words, they're selling us a package that includes resources that are only leased to them (i.e. the radio spectrum) from us, under...