-
Caine in One Frame
A private parody and appreciation · 1964–2023 Thirty-two Michael Caine films, each reduced to one image and one line he never actually said, but absolutely ought to have. The theory: one frame, one sentence, the entire film. Apparently. All captions are invented except the famous line from The Italian Job. The Zulu line remains spiritually…
-
Sophie’s Great Cable Menagerie™️
Inspiration comes from unexpected directions. Newton got a pomaceous prompt leading him to some startling insights into gravity. Archimedes’ bath overflowed just prior to (and indeed leading to) his embarrassing “Eureka!” incident in Syracuse. Percy Spencer’s partially melted chocolate bar helped lead to the development of the domestic microwave. George de Mestral’s burr-covered dog led…
-
CyberSea 2026: Cybersecurity, Community and the Black Sea
Sophie loitering casually by some CyberSea Festival branding in the roasting sunshine. Soare, Mare, Securitate Cibernetică: Sun, Sea, Cybersecurity Reflections from the first two days in Constanța Cybersecurity conferences are often held in anonymous hotel function rooms, apparently designed to ensure that nothing distracts delegates from the PowerPoint slides or the coffee of uncertain legal…
-
𝐎𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝟏𝟕𝟕𝟔: John Wilkes Loses, and Naturally Blames Corruption
On this day in 1776, 250 years ago, a declaration was made that would echo through history. Not that one. At Guildhall in the City of London, the poll was declared for the office of Chamberlain of the City of London. The Chamberlain was a serious civic post, concerned with the City’s finances and administration,…
-
30 Years Ago: The Manchester Bombing, 15 June 1996
On the morning of Saturday 15 June 1996, I was living on the tenth floor above the UMIST student union building (the Barnes Wallis Building), very close to Manchester Piccadilly railway station, and close enough to Manchester city centre to notice when its normal rhythms were interrupted. I was deputy warden of a student hall…
-
Why Your Document Vanishes but Your Secrets Won’t Die
The Asymmetry of Digital Loss & The Tyranny of Tiny Secrets There is a familiar little cruelty in computing: the thing you need is always easy to lose, while the thing you desperately need to delete seems almost impossible to destroy with certainty. The document you were working on yesterday has vanished into some folder,…
-
Resilient Assurance: A Failure-Assumed Approach to Confidence and Control
“Mature assurance is not the pursuit of perfect prevention. It is the disciplined management of inevitable failures” Limits of Classical Assurance Traditional or classical Assurance tends to make assumptions; that controls are implemented, that controls operate correctly, and thus that risk is reduced. In practice, things are not generally so simple. Controls decay. Environments change…
-
I Was Attacked, Linux Was Rooted, and GPT Emitted Too Many Goblins
A mixed week, overshadowed by the fact that I was the target of a violent hatecrime on Wednesday evening. Bruised, bloodied, and quite badly shaken. Not an ideal week overall for me. Linux Local Pwnage: Copy-Fail CVE-2026-31431 “Copy-Fail” is powerful & remarkably reliable local privilege escalation to UID 0. It was found using a specialised…
-
Strong Ciphers, Weak Assumptions
The best laid plans of mice and men… A lot of attention has been paid to the design and implementation of messaging apps. Signal usually comes out as being considered the most trustworthy of the bunch by people who worry about detail, but there are other apps with real end-to-end encryption too. Of course, subverting…
-
Reacting to a pandemic
More reports from the UK Government Covid-19 Inquiry today, and lamentable reading too, if you can make it through all 800 pages across two reports released today 2025-11-20. You can find all the reports here. My Own Timeline My elderly parents had already gone into isolation in February. Having lived through the 1957-8 H2N2 Influenza…
-
“Left of Bang”
The term “Left of Bang” may be familiar to those with military background or experience, especially if that includes experience of the US military. But the concept is simple enough. There’s even a decade-old book all about it with the same title (ISBN-13: 978-1936891306, published June 2014, easily obtainable). What is “Left of Bang”? Once…
-
How will Quantum Vulnerable Encryption (QVE) unravel?
I’ve written a little recently (and less recently!) about Post Quantum Encryption and how action is needed NOW. How the timeline of QVE’s unravelling and collapse will take place is almost impossible to say. But we might usefully draw some lessons from the collapse in confidence of the MD5 hashing algorithm. Let’s look at the…
-
UK Online Safety Act – A Lesson in “Taking Back Control”
UK readers: do you see Edmund Blackadder below? Or just a message about the image being unavailable in your region? If you are in the UK and see Blackadder, then the chances are you are either using a foreign SIM in a cellular device (causing your browsing traffic to be back-hauled to originate from your…
-
Film Reviews: Hounds of the Baskervilles
With a name like mine, it’s only natural that I’d be interested in The Hounds of the Baskervilles. Yes, Hounds plural – there have been many over the last years decades century+. And part of me that hates incomplete sets naturally wants to experience them all – the good, the bad, and even the thoroughly…
-
[***NOT REDACTED***]
Or “Redaction Failures”. There have been many high-profile redaction failures over the years[1]. So it may help to briefly classify[2] them into some different types. Context & Inference That last category is rarely talked about. After all, techies love technical failures or clever technical workarounds. Context & Inference is terribly boring in comparison – but…
-
Don’t Stop Me Now
Seven weeks of full-time girl-mode and it’s going great. How I feel is simple… I’m burnin’ through the sky, yeahTwo hundred degrees, that’s why they call me [Sister] FahrenheitI’m travellin’ at the speed of lightI wanna make a supersonic woman of you After Queen, “Don’t Stop Me Now” It has been a very busy few…
-
Aaand it’s Amateur Phishing Night on LinkedIn!
There is quite a lot going on over on LinkedIn. Some of it is even validly business-related and useful, but a significant amount is not. This has worsened with its continued slide towards becoming more & more like facebørk, a deliberate strategem by its owner. There is phishing, impersonation, social engineering… If you are female…
-
Here comes the Sun, and I say “It’s all right”
It’s three weeks since I wrote about “Stepping into the light”. Since then, I have been having a great time, and introducing Sophie to just about everyone; I’m not hiding her any more, that’s the whole point, and indeed I am actively introducing her to people who know me as Robert but have been as-yet…
-
Croatia Update
Somewhat to my surprise, Sophie feels very relaxed here after all. I’ve had a few genuinely curious glances but nothing offensive or overtly unfriendly. Very pleasantly surprised by this. Maybe this is what it is like in a society where there has not yet been effort expended by populist politicians, the far right, and hostile…
-
BCC2025 Diary – Part 5
Day 3, Wednesday Everyone in București has accepted me just as I am, which is all that I could ever have asked for. Also in Peleș, and even further afield in Alba Iulia, I’ve been treated respectfully across a significant swathe of the country. Slightly more confident outfit for Wednesday, as a result. Two things…
-
BCC2025 Diary – Part 4
Day 2, Tuesday Tuesday began with an early start to get ready. Up at 05:30, taxi booked for 7am, and SO much to do between the two. It’s difficult when separated from one’s full wardrobe for many days and with limited luggage space. All part of the learning experience though. Tuesday’s programme began with a…
-
Supporting Future Leaders and Players in Cybersecurity
There is a significant shortfall in the number of cybersecurity practitioners required across the world, and specifically of concern to me, in Europe[1]. It’s not merely numbers either – we need both greater numbers but also highly skilled and experienced practitioners. These do not grow on trees… they must be encouraged and nurtured, and I…
-
BCC2025 Diary – Part 3
Day 1 – Monday Slightly more business-oriented attire today. A little nervous, but also feeling quite confident; a curious combination – like Marmite flavoured Toothpaste (pastă de dinți cu aromă de pastă de drojdie, best I can describe it if unfamiliar with this rather peculiar British delicacy! The Marmite, that is. Not the toothpaste.) The…
-
BCC2025 Diary – Part 2
Day 0 – Sunday Sunday is insanely busy. It’s going to be an approximately 760km round trip of over 10 hours driving. But I like a challenge. We’re heading outside the capital into less cosmopolitan territory. And one of the stops is a Catholic Cathedral (for historical rather than religious interest). So a significantly more…
-
BCC2025 Diary – Part 1
Day -1, Saturday Early Start A long day. 0300 alarm, an hour earlier than needed for boy-mode, 0500 depart for Liverpool John Lennon Airport „Above us only sky”™️, arrive in booked parking area 0615, walk a whole 25 metres to the terminal. Luggage check-in opens shortly after, suitcase a whole 1.5 kg less than the…
-
Do you think ransomware is scary? It will be.
Ransomware attacks have been in the news a lot recently; M&S, Co-op, Jaguar Land Rover, Heathrow Airport & other airports. But compared with what I’m expecting to come these are all relatively harmless. Don’t misunderstand me; they all cause harm, and real harm to real people, but this is caused indirectly. My fear is that…
-
Stepping into the light
I’m now in my third week, after packing away my boy-clothes for a while. And I’m absolutely loving it, despite the extra hour each morning getting ready. This is already the longest stretch I’ve ever tried, and it feels sustainable despite some bits of routine that need improvement. Aside from a short visit to a…
-
Happy Sophie-Day
Five years ago today, on New Year’s Eve 2019, was the first time that Sophie emerged for a proper night out. Accompanied and supported by my amazing friend Indie, without whom Sophie might never have been more than an idea never realised because of fear and lack of confidence. Fear doesn’t even really convey it;…
-
“Interesting Times”
Interesting Times are indeed upon us, specifically upon The US, although the fallout is going to affect many elsewhere too. This is a difficult, and scary, time for many minorities, and the non-binary are under particular threat: right now, increasingly so as we enter 2025, and in ways difficult to predict but unlikely to be…
-
Snowflakes, Snowflakes, Everywhere
Many strange conspiracies gain traction on (anti-) social media. 5G phone masts controlling the microchips we were all injected with in our Covid vaccines is my favourite for sheer brainless non-scientific idiocy. But there are plenty of others. And in these fertile, generally right- to far-right- breeding grounds, the followers mindlessly swallow and regurgitate their…
-
Review: Will & Harper
TL;DR: Absolutely fascinating. Joy & pain. Humour & reflection. I found this moving, joyful, and very uncomfortable in places. Much the same range of feelings that I frequently experience in girl-mode, especially when venturing outside of places that I know for sure will be welcoming. Will Ferrell takes a road trip with an old friend…
-
60 Sec Read: Washing My Hair
Sometimes it might be an excuse. But, you know, sometimes she really is washing her hair – and it might take a lot longer than you expect, because there might be more of it by far than you expect. Remember, it’s not only tgirls; there are some undergoing chemotherapy, some with alopecia, and others with…
Cybersecurity, assurance, technology, identity, and life in my increasingly full-time girl-mode.
Major New Publication Series: Sophie Baskerville’s History of Cybersecurity
sophie @ baskerville.net ©️1977-2026 Sophie Baskerville
Sophie Baskerville
©️1977-2026 Sophie Baskerville 