In the Science Fiction novel "The Puppet Masters" by Robert A. Heinlein, alien creatures with the ability to connect to humans nervous systems invade the Earth. This novel was made into a terrible, horrible movie so if you have seen the movie but not read the book, please go read the book. And burn any copies of the movie you can get to.

But back to the book. It's a pretty typical "alien possession" novel by current standards, but it was actually a significant publication in 1951. The aliens themselves are relatively small things with limited mobility (they are dubbed slugs), but can attach themselves to a victims neck and hang down the back. The "slug" can then control the human and tap into their memories, while remaining hidden under the clothing. As the novel progresses, the protagonists (Sam and Mary, who both work for a secret intelligence agency of the US) withdraw to the mountains. After being attacked by an alien slug, they return to the city to discover a law has been passed requiring full nudity.

Correct, the only way to tell if a human was possessed was to require full nudity. Heinlein established that even a naked woman carrying a purse was suspect because she kept her hand in her purse which allowed her to remain connected to the slug. Now, part of the reason Heinlein wrote this solution into his novel is because he was a big fan of nakedness (hardly any of his novels don't mention it). But also because it's the obvious, simple solution to the question "How do I know if you are really you?". The slugs were too big to not be visible and obvious when attached to a victim.

Now, the $1.69 question: Is this a reactive security measure, or a proactive one?

Thanks to Richard Reid, we now have to take our shoes off at many airports. And most likely, we'll have much more invasive body scans to look for hidden explosives (even though there's no evidence such a scan would have caught Nigerian Abdulmutallab's hidden explosives). These are reactive security measures. Why? Because even looking at a person stark naked, you cannot tell if he or she is a terrorist. "The Puppet Masters" has a specific threat that can be visually identified and is known to be hostile to humanity. So the nudity solution is actually rational, if socially awkward. No such test exists for humans that intend harm to other humans.

This does not stop the TSA and law enforcement to follow profiling methodologies, unfortunately. Many innocent citizens are taken aside because of their religious beliefs, skin color or "atitude". Timothy McVeighs', Richard Reids' and Umar Farouk Abdumutallab's lesson have not stuck: Terrorism is an action, not a kind of person, a belief system or a clothing style. Most of the security measures taken in airports and on airplanes since 9/11/2001 have been reactive, "security theatre" then actually proactively useful.

So what proactive security measures should be taken in the wake of the failed Christmas Bombing? Move security screening back to boarding gates. Improve the intelligence gathering and sharing community. Train more air marshals and put them on more flights. And most importantly, stop wasting resources on reactive measures.

Almost a year after I first wrote about my idea for DeepMac, I can finally show something actually functional for the world to point and stare at!

DeepMac ALPHA is available at http://deepmac.jedimercer.com/ and includes the full MySQL dump of the database contents.I'm licensing the database under the Open Database License.

At this point, there's only a few hundred OUI's tied to a device of some sort. This is because I've had to focus on developing the skeletal framework to actually store the information, and have not yet put together tools for automating any part of the process of submitting data. Still, there's a good breakdown of virtual computers, network-attached cameras, the major Smartphone models and a few videogame systems.

For DeepMac to become truely useful though, it needs a lot more raw data, and not just the easy pickings. That means there needs to be better ways to get data into DeepMac. A primitive search interface is just a baby-step. Ideally, we need to have a standard format for submitting new DeepMac data for analysis and inclusion. Mostly this is about sitting down and figuring out what would work best.

The other thing DeepMac needs to be useful is of course a real-world application that everyone can benefit from. I'd love to see DeepMac data integrated with great security tools like Wireshark, nMap, Kismet and others. There's also a ton of commercial security software that could benefit from DeepMac such as SIMs, asset management tools and anything else that does network discovery. Alas, I don't see that happening anytime soon. A side-project of mine is developing a tool for tracking IP<->MAC pairings for network surveillance. I'll be integrating DeepMac data into that tool, and hopefully releasing it as an Open Source project sometime next year.

In the meantime, I'm still very much interested in feedback about the DeepMac project! What I've gotten so far has been small but very useful and greatly appreciated. And if you have any intelligence to offer the DeepMac project (as in OUI Device mapping), please e-mail me!