INFOSEC IS NOT A RELIGION

OK, ENOUGH of the BULLSHIT, Lets not make a RELIGION out of this 

Lately I have been inundated with tweets (not at me, just in my feed) of people using the “E” word. Blog posts about “Being an Evangelist” or “Are you one too?” I have to say that this post has been building in my lower intestine like a backup of putrescent bile resulting from a clogged sphincter, and that sphincter has been blocked by the word “Evangelist” My issue primarily is that you all (and you know who you are) are perpetuating a heaping pile of steaming bullshit by using this ecclesiastical term improperly to suit your needs of being center stage and telling everyone from the fucking mount what “they” should be doing.

Wake up people, you are falling into the same old theistic behavior that we all as evolved sentient beings should eschew, neigh, …loathe. INFOSEC is not a religion and YOU are not the FUCKING POPE ok? There are no cardinals, there are no Bishops, there are only a bunch of people who want their opinion to be heard and listened to AD NAUSEUM. It’s as simple as that, and if you start clothing it in the robes of ecclesiastical rhetoric you FAIL. “But this isn’t the meaning of the word evangelist now! It’ really means in modern times to profess a point of view!” They will all cry out as they read this diatribe.

My answer shall be a swift and sure “No, look at the dictionary and the latin root of the word you morons”

You all are clothing this in terms of religion and it’s inappropriate. It’s only leading to the predilections that some of these people have toward messiah complexes and we certainly don’t need that in this arena that has been fraught with enough ego and hubris to choke a horse.

Posers, Priests, Acolytes, and Charlatans

So, you wanna be the guy with the biggest hat? (yeah, going there with so many hats gray/black/white/dirty) Well what better way than to elevate yourselves above all others than to use the lingo of the ages to make yourselves the divine conduit to INFOSEC GOD’s right hand status eh? What’s next? Are you all gonna start your own revivalist conferences? Oh, wait.. That’s already going on. Con’s are popping up everywhere and the acolytes are flocking aren’t they? Holy Geebus, even as I rhuminate on this I see more parallels! The vendor rooms are the tents where you see geeks and freaks, clowns and circuses! Best part of all, you get to see the “blow off” by the booth babes!

Look, I’m not saying everyone is like this but it’s begun to feel like a carni to me that has taken itself too seriously. This use of the religious terms and the awe with which some are held is just silly. What’s worse, you are allowing all of this to be used by the likes of LIGATT and others to have their own “evangelism sideshow’s” hawking their particular brands of security snake oil. There are of course people like Jericho and Attrition out there to call people on this, but as a whole, the industry, once again I find myself saying this, is an “Industry” and to make yourselves out to be the clergy of some great and grand security church, even by just using the nomenclature is wrong whether your buy into it or not.

Frankly, the bandying about of the term by people on my feed makes me dry heave. See, as far as I am concerned, this job is an “Avocation” and should not be elevated to religiosity as it seems to be lately by those within as well as those selling it. You do it because you love it, otherwise, you are just in it for the money. If you love it, sure you can be passionate about it, but you are not by any stretch of the imagination a “evangelist” unless you have a book you are professing and selling with bone fragments in the back of the tent for only a sawbuck a piece! *wink wink*

There is so much more fail in this arena that we do not need to go muddying the water with all this claptrap.

So, Mr. Evangelist, Am I Going to Heaven or INFOSEC Hell?

As I started tweeting about this people started coming back with “Then that makes you the INFOSEC HERETIC” and, yep, I guess I am. Or perhaps I am the INFOSEC Redheaded Stepchild. I am sure both apply equally as well as “That BASTARD” I sit back and watch all of you and sometimes I just feel like what’s the point? I look at our current situation with APT and the EPIC-ness of every other EPIC tweet about EPIC-ness at the latest EPIC con and I want to EPIC-ALLY shoot myself. Are we all just teenagers here looking for that much attention as a group? As a business? Perhaps the people who are quietly doing the work in the background should speak up now and then (as I am told they exist by Ali) I do know they are out there, and perhaps they quietly watch and shake their heads now and again.

So do you?

It’s sad really that it has devolved in so many ways to the same ol same ol that we are seeing now in our election cycle. “I’m cooler!” “No no, I AM COOLEST” It’s really what I touched upon in the last “Fear and Loathing” series post on DC. Some people wrote back and asked if I thought it was that dystopian.

I have to say, kinda, yeah… Though I embellished as the “GONZO” journalist playbook implies.. (it’s written in crayon by the way) So am I going to INFOSEC Hell? Am I a heretic? I will leave that to all of you out there in INFOSEC-land who deign read this rant. Either way, once again, we use the language of the ecclesiastical to elevate or denigrate someone’s views eh? Perhaps this is all we know, we people who still follow a book so closely that now has the masses up in arms about the issue of people of the same gender wanting equality.

Holy fucking shit.

A book mind you, written by people barely able to understand nature around them so they made stories up to fill in the gaps. Really? 21st century? Yeah.. Right.

Monkeys with digital guns.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

As I wind down from this verging on Tourettes induced screed, I have to just say that I really do mean to take aim at this culture we have here. I think its too full of shit and it is no wonder we are unable to cogently deal with the problems en mass that we have with digital security. It’s because the culture sets itself up to be not listened to by the old guard. Wasn’t it back in the 90’s that L0pht told the congress that they could shut the net down? So, what happened to all the mitigations? What happened to the “Oh my God! This security shit is important!” it all just left their heads as we went on in our pedantry, that’s what happened.

We’ve been too busy being cool and showing that we can do cool shit while not actually focusing on the issue at hand, that of protecting the things that should be protected.

Sure there are many solid people out there taken seriously by those in power, but if you look at the general term “hacker” and the odiousness it has now, why would anyone take us seriously? Thus we have the new terminology of cracker and others? Trying to buy legitimacy even as we go from con to con being “evangelists” ???

I don’t know folks.. Seems like we all have enough trouble getting through to the straights here, we don’t need to make it worse by our own self defeating antics right?

We are not evangelists, barely most of us are professionals… Stop and take a long look in the collective mirror….

K.