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What I Learned About Myself at DEF CON

I’m just back from Las Vegas, where I attended BSidesLV, Black Hat and DEF CON. I’m jet-lagged as hell and feel like toxic waste, but I’m also feeling pretty good about myself.

Mood music:

Here’s the thing about DEF CON: Attendance is huge, the lines are long and it’s easy to find yourself wedged between crowds of humanity moving in different directions. Like all of Vegas’ casinos, a thick cloud of cigarette smoke hangs in the air, and unhealthy food is easier to obtain than healthy food.

For someone given to fear and anxiety, the place is a nightmare — the trigger for every mental demon to come out.

As readers know by now, I have a history of fear and anxiety. I’ve written about how I’ve brought it under control in recent years, but the DEF CON experience really demonstrated how far I’ve come.

No matter what you tried to do at DEF CON, there were huge lines. Lines for coffee. Lines to get into talks. Lines for food. The kind of lines that snake around corners and continue into infinity.

A decade ago, I would have hidden in my hotel room the entire time. Actually, I would have just stayed home.

But I walked with the big crowds and stood in the lines. I kept calm and usually found a friend to talk to and pass the time.

Part of my success is having the ability to realize that the crowds aren’t there to torment me. Everyone’s trying to get somewhere. It’s not about me, ever. Knowing that makes me feel more secure in the crowd.

I’ve also learned to take breaks. Hiding in the room the whole time is bad; going there for one- or two-hour breathers is good. I did the latter a couple times a day, and it worked well.

I also made a point of getting to bed before midnight each day. I used to stay up all night, going from one party to the next. A couple years ago, I made peace with the fact that I’m getting too old for that. Prioritizing sleep allowed me to maximize the quality of my awake hours.

DEF CON did show me that I still have work to do on myself. Social awkwardness remains an issue. I have a lot of industry relationships on Facebook and Twitter, but I still get weirded out when I meet some of those people in person. People never look exactly the same as their Facebook pictures, including me.

I probably walked past people I know online a bunch of times. If you saw me and I didn’t come up and say hello, I apologize. In my awkwardness, I sometimes have trouble recognizing you.

So there you have it: Better with crowds and lines, still socially awkward. In the grand scheme of things, the journey in the right direction continues.

def con 22 logo

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Happy in My Discomfort

I’ve written about information security for more than a decade, but I’ve never pulled the levers, so to speak, until this past week. It’s both terrifying and awesome.

Mood music:

People in my industry assume I know how to conduct a penetration test, process software vulnerabilities and manage compliance operations. Truth is, I know how to write about this stuff, but I’ve never actually done these things. I never claimed that I had, but since my writing has veered unashamedly toward the side of security advocacy, I can see where people might make the assumption.

One reason I took my current job is because I felt the need to be part of a security operation rather than simply writing about it.

In recent weeks, I’ve started the training. I attended a session on how to be an threat incident response manager and processed my first three vulnerabilities. I still can’t say I know what I’m doing, and I expect to screw up plenty when my time comes to jump into the fire. But the mechanics aren’t so alien to me now, and that’s a quantum leap.

But there’s a much bigger point for me to make: Getting this type of training is a watershed moment.

A few years ago, the terror of the unknown and fear of failure would have kept me from doing any of this stuff. Training can seem like routine to some follks, but when you live with things like fear, anxiety, depression and OCD, the wall to climb looks much higher than it really is.

That’s not to say I’m going about all these things in a carefree manner. I still have my episodes of self-doubt. I still experience stress when thinking about how best to manage the new skills in tandem with the editorial and writing skills that encompass 90 percent of my job.

But unlike the old me, I know I can do it. I’m at peace with the mistakes I know I’ll make. I’m prepared to be the guy people talk about in meetings when the subject turns to who fucked what up during an incident. These days, I can show up.

All this training a gift. So is the fact that I can accept the gift. And even though mistakes are inevitable, I can accept that as part of the learning process.

Bill the Cat leaning on lever behind sign that says Don't Lean on Lever

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When Cops Do Bad Things: The Eric Garner Incident

This video of a man being choked to death by police is getting a lot of attention lately:

http://youtu.be/GhqHEgIgSGU

Even The New York Times covered the incident. This sort of thing is normally New York Post territory. Of course, the video does come from the Post.

You can hear people in the background talking about police bullying an innocent man whose only crime was trying to break up a fight. Police claim he was initially approached for “illegally” selling cigarettes, and that he resisted arrest. The video clearly shows the man, 43-year-old Eric Garner, dropping to the ground while complaining he can’t breath.

The video is being shared and re-shared all across Facebook. It’s appeared in my news feed four times in the last week, usually with comments welcoming viewers to the new police state — a place where no one is truly free and the cops get to kill whoever they want.

Is that an accurate picture?

It’s easy to see how people feel that way when we see daily instances of government abusing its power and invading our liberties.

But I don’t think it’s entirely accurate.

I know a lot of people who work in law enforcement; they love liberty. Their first concern is public safety and they serve the public faithfully. I think the majority of police officers fit that description, albeit with variations in political belief.

When people see police brutality and cry about this becoming a brutal police state, they fail to see incidents like these for what they are: the actions of individuals rather than accepted police or government procedure. The police in this case acted like idiots, especially the cop who put Garner in a chokehold. As the NYT article noted, the chokehold was banned by the New York Police Department more than 20 years ago.

I feel for Eric Garner’s family and don’t blame his friends and neighbors for being outraged. These officers ought to be fired. Or, at the least, they need to be suspended and retrained as a condition for returning to the force.

But cops doing bad things and a police state taking hold are not the same thing. Trust me: If a police state begins to emerge, you’ll know it.

Eric-Garner

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Confronting Your Biggest Fear on “America’s Got Talent”

I don’t watch America’s Got Talent. I have nothing against the show; it’s just not my cup of tea.

But something happened on the show that recently caught my attention: A young lady who suffers from terrible fear and anxiety went on the show and performed in front of a huge crowd and a panel of judges that include Howard Stern, Howie Mandel and Heidi Klum.

You have some serious courage, Anna Clendening. I salute you.

America's Got Talent logo

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An Anxiety Attack

Friday afternoon I didn’t feel right. It was as if an anvil had been strapped to my chest. Breathing was labored. My face had that pins-and-needles sensation. I had to use the bathroom a couple times in short sequence. I’m pretty sure it was an anxiety attack.

Mood music:

I used to get them all the time, and overcoming them has been a central theme of this blog. I’ve largely controlled the attacks with Prozac and Wellbutrin.

Truth is, before Friday I can’t remember the last time I experienced one. That it came on with such force was more than a little distressing.

I don’t have to think too hard to figure out where it came from. I’ve been under a lot of stress. I’ve been doing a lot of driving the kids around. There are appointments everywhere on the calendar I look. My sleep is erratic. As great as work is going, I’m managing the endgame for a huge project I’ve been working on since early June and much is at stake.

All good things, but stressful nonetheless.

Friday the attack started while Erin and I were sitting in the accountant’s office, where we were getting our taxes done. The appointment was taking longer than expected, and we had to pick the kids up from school. I worried about the traffic and then fretted about having to go right back out to pick up trophies for a Cub Scout awards ceremony. I was thinking about things I wanted to do Saturday night, worrying about all the different ways those plans could be derailed.

It’s also February, when I start worrying about bad weather and family crises getting in the way of the biggest security conference of the year. Last year I was driven to distraction by that very worry, though that was more low-level anxiety, not an outright attack.

I have some work to do, untangling the various emotions and putting my coping tools to effective use. Back when these attacks were a twice-weekly problem I didn’t have the tools I have now. I’m also much better aware of the symptoms and at zeroing in on the triggers.

That’s something to be thankful for, and I am.

Like the rest of my demons, this is a life-long adversary to be kept in check. And so it will be.

punch

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Wherein I Run Afoul Of The U.S. Secret Service

My resolve against the inner demons is tested regularly.

Some are little tests, like being put in a room with all the food and alcohol I once binged on daily to see if I can resist the temptation.

Some are bigger tests, like getting lost en route to Washington D.C a few years ago with my wife and kids in the car. Getting lost in a car used to be the stuff my anxiety attacks were made of.

Then there are the huge tests, like the time I got an unexpected grilling from two U.S. Secret Service officers — incidentally, the day after getting lost on the interstate somewhere in New Jersey.

Mood music: 

[spotify:track:3ckQ5LMB0ORA45X0ozu9eR]

I wrote a full account of the encounter for CSOonline.com in “What it’s like to be grilled by the Secret Service,” so I won’t repeat it all here. That column captures it from a security perspective.

Here I’ll focus on the emotional part.

First, the gist of what happened: I was taking photos from my BlackBerry of Marine One (with President Obama aboard) taking off from the White House South Lawn. I guess I lingered there for too long, because the Secret Service thought I was taking surveillance photos. Two Android smartphones later, I’m amused they found BlackBerry-quality photos threatening.

One of them was pretty tough and didn’t believe my honest protests that I was just taking pictures and walking around there because I’m a White House history buff. One officer played bad cop, grilling me as if I were just caught red-handed robbing a bank. The other guy played the reassuring role. “We’re just going to get one of these for our records,” he cooed as he snapped a picture of my unshaven face.

Apparently nobody ever showed them the picture of the Brenners visiting the West Wing three months earlier. They did note that I was texting a lot as I walked, and they wanted to know who I was texting. When I told them it was Howard Schmidt, President Obama’s then-cybersecurity advisor, it knocked them off stride. I told them I was making dinner plans with Howard, that I was buying him dinner to thank him for giving me, the wife and kids the West Wing tour.

“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” the meaner of the two cops asked.

As I told Howard what happened over burgers that evening, he had a good laugh.

I didn’t fault the Secret Service cops at the time. It’s not their job to know these things. It’s their job to nail terrorist activity when they see it. Could he have been a bit nicer to me, given that I was doing nothing wrong and all? Sure. But I try not to hold grudges.

It does say something about how much of a police state we’ve become in the decade-plus since 9-11, though. I also admit that if I could do it again, I’d be more belligerent. Government’s excessive reach into our lives has been laid bare since then. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been far more outraged.

Truth be told, the experience did freak me out. My back went into spasms and my hands shook for hours after. As they were in my face accusing me of running a terrorist surveillance mission, I was thinking to myself, “If these assholes haul me in, it’s really going to screw up the work I had planned for this afternoon.” I’m a typical OCD case, worrying that getting arrested will screw up the work day.

But it’s all good.

I didn’t go back to my hotel room and order $80 worth of food and a bottle of wine to comfort myself. A few years ago, a friendly encounter with Secret Service would have made me do that.

My mind wasn’t paralyzed, either. I got a lot of work done back at the hotel, even with the headache.

And hell, I got a pretty good column out of the experience.

Secret-Service-agents-death-investigated

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Fear of Déjà Vu

Déjà vu, literally “already seen,” is the strong sensation that a current event has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not.

When my OCD, anxiety and depression were at their worst, I used to constantly have bad thoughts. It usually involved people close to me dying. I forgot about it until it started happening again recently.

Mood music:

My mind used to spin so fast with worry that I would barely recognize the wonderful things in front of me, including my kids.

In fact, I was often looking at the miracle in front of me and, instead of enjoying it, would work myself into an anxiety attack. Because there was always the chance I could lose it all.

As the dark thoughts whirled around, I’d start to worry about the possibility that something bad would happen and that when it did, it would come at me as a déjà vu. My mind would start flashing images of accidents and disease involving my kids, and I would repeatedly beg God to not let it become a déjà vu.

The absurd thing about fear and anxiety is that you get thoughts that have no basis in reality. Yet when the images come, it feels as real as the ground beneath you. For the victim of OCD, it becomes a living beast of flesh, bone, teeth and overall terror.

Last week, after several nights of poor sleep and a particularly stressful afternoon, I had one of those moments — the first in several years. I saw it for what it was this time, and the fear dissipated pretty quickly.

But it served as an important reminder: You can learn to manage your demons, but you’re never fully free of them. You always have to be on guard.

That’s not a terrible thing. It’s a simple fact of life really, and I’m grateful that today I can put those moments in the proper perspective.

Depression 1

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The Power of Admitting Ignorance

I’ve often gone through my career feeling like an impostor.

I work with some ridiculously smart people and know many more in my industry. They seem interested in my opinion on things, and I try to deliver. But many times I don’t know the answer. So I sit wondering how the hell I got here. I know people who can bullshit their way through the answer to a question, but I lack that special talent. So I usually just admit that I don’t know.

Mood music:

That answer has only led to more good fortune. We think we’ll be dismissed if we admit ignorance, but the smarter folks among us actually appreciate the honesty. When I write about complex security issues in my work blogs, I often admit my befuddlement and open the floor for discussion in an effort to make readers — and myself — more aware of the given topic. In this blog, my frequent admission of ignorance clicks with readers, who find comfort in knowing they’re not the only clueless people on Earth.

The benefits of admitting you don’t know is the focus of a new book, simply titled I Don’t Know by Leah Hager Cohen. I haven’t read it yet, but I have read the essay it’s based on and have listened to her on WBUR, the Boston NPR affiliate.

It’s a refreshing, comforting, even, take on learning to honor one’s doubt. In the essay that started the project, Cohen writes:

Fear engenders lying. If we want our colleges and universities to be bastions of academic integrity, we need to look honestly at the ways they might encourage fakery by stoking fear. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Émile: Or, Treatise on Education,” the philosopher writes, “’I do not know’ is a phrase which becomes us.” Too often we fear uttering these words, convinced that doing so will diminish us, will undermine our status and block our advancement.

In fact these words liberate and empower. So much of the condition of being human involves not knowing. The more comfortable we become with this truth, the more fully and unabashedly we may inhabit our skins, our souls, and — speaking of learning — the more able we become to grow.

As someone who used to suffer from crippling fear and anxiety, I get that now. Fear of being diminished in the minds of those you respect makes the lies pour from your mouth before you have time to process what you’re actually saying. Then you’ve made matters worse.

By admitting ignorance from the outset and saying “I don’t know,” you’ll have spared yourself a lot of future pain and indignity and instead set yourself up to become wiser. It’s good to see that point has been articulated in a book.

I Don't Know book cover

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Hope and Happiness Amid a Government Shutdown

Forget about the effect the government shutdown has on mental health services; government mental health services suck anyway.

Instead, let’s focus on keeping ours head on straight when political horror stories send our fear and anxiety into orbit.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/lpRzYEHwnUo

I mentioned last week how I used to latch onto world events as if my life depended on it. TV media reports political squabbles as it would report about war: loud graphics, chilling music. Coverage of the government shutting down at midnight was no different.

I don’t want to minimize the impact. A lot of good people get screwed when the government shuts down. Family trips to national parks are ruined. If you need a passport renewed in time for, say, a honeymoon abroad, you’re likely throwing things across a room about now. Some of my conservative friends are making comments about how nobody will notice the shutdown and how, as a result, they’ll have proof that we don’t need government. Some of that is true. But some of that is hyperbole, too.

All that is beside the point. Here’s why I’m not quaking in my boots right now.

I realized a long time ago that I can’t tie my happiness to the success or failure of government. I used to believe that electing the right people would lead to a sunny future for me and everyone else.

But our leaders disappoint us again and again. Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t matter. Politicians are far more interested in keeping their jobs than standing for the greater good. To some extent that’s always been the case, yet it seems worse today. A few years ago, I realized I’d have to find my hope and happiness someplace else.

In the process, I found that the main components of that happiness were in front of me all along: loving family members, loyal friends and work I could take satisfaction in. I also realized it was completely in my power to be loving and loyal to others as well. That support system keeps the world spinning, and no folly of government could ruin that.

We’re all imperfect individuals. While I try to be a good father, husband and friend, I’ve done a lousy job getting along with some family members. And while I’ve exercised my absolute power to have a healthy, fit body and mind, I’ve also done my fair share of abusing both, consequences be damned. The government hasn’t played much of a role in either of those things.

Realizing that elected officials could only have a minimal role in my day-to-day life set me free in a lot of ways, for better or worse. The government shutdown isn’t bothering me in the slightest.

But that’s just my personal experience. If you do depend on government services, I’m sorry you have to go through this.

Super Broken Government

Image source: CNN.com

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9-11-01 Jumpers: A Suicidal Mystery

I remember the photo well. It was a man falling to his death in a zen-like pose that haunted me for a long, long time. It haunted us all.

Mood music:

Yesterday, I came across an entire documentary based on that one photo. The program, like the photo, is called “The Falling Man.” Associated Press photographer Richard Drew snapped a series of pictures of a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:41:15 a.m. during 9-11-01. He was one of about 200 people who jumped from the upper floors, presumably choosing to die this way because it was better than a slower death by smoke and fire.

The program includes all the haunting footage you would expect. But there was something more, something that shook me to the core:

The family of Norberto Hernandez, the man initially identified as the man in the photo, couldn’t accept that it was him, because as Christians, they believe suicide in any circumstance is a mortal sin — a ticket straight to hell.

Though the identity is still not 100 percent certain, it is now widely accepted that the falling man was Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old employee of the Windows on the World restaurant.

The stigma around suicide is something I’ve wrestled with for nearly 15 years, since my best friend took his life. As a devout Catholic, I’m well aware of what the church says about suicide.

But I’m also a firm believer that when you’re in the grip of an out-of-control mental illness, you lose all sense of right and wrong. I think you enter a sort of dementia. Not in every case, but a lot of cases.

Then there’s the matter of people who know they are going to die and decide to go out there own way, as many 9-11 victims apparently chose to do.

Were they suicides, fitting the criteria of that mortal sin?

I would say no. I’m sure most of them didn’t wake up that morning with plans to die, especially by their own hand.

Terrorists sealed their fate, and, knowing they were going to die, made a choice on how to end it.

The episode:

We’ve heard a lot about courage that day, and there was plenty of it all around the world. Obviously, there were the firefighters, police officers and civilians who kept climbing the towers knowing they would probably die. They got other people out before thinking of themselves.

But there’s another kind of courage people often don’t think about. It’s the courage of accepting your fate and and dying with your dignity intact.

In the program, one survivor recalled looking up at the people hanging out the windows of the upper floors. She looked up, made the sign of The Cross, then lifted her arms and let go.

That’s not someone giving up and choosing suicide.

That’s someone with enough Faith to decide it’s ok to let go and let God.