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There are memes common to whole Stack Exchange. But after spending some time in The DMZ it becomes evident that IT Security has it's own memes (e.g. rory). I therefore propose that this space be used to document the memes endemic to IT Security's culture. One meme per answer please. |
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Meme: Don't roll your own. (AKA: The first rule of cryptography.) Originator: Unknown. One of the most infamous uses on IT Security is by D.W., here. This meme is also related to / a synonym of "Don't be a Dave!" Cultural Height: TBD Background: Everyone seems to want to write their own ciphers, or create their own security mechanisms. Unfortunately, this usually doesn't end well. As such, the phrase "don't roll your own" has become a frequent staple of IT Security advice, as well as on other boards (e.g. Crypto SE) and across the entire information security community.
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Meme: Don't be a Dave! Originator: @Polynomial, @LucasKauffman, others Cultural Height: December 2012 Background: One of our most popular questions of all time, with over 17 thousand views in the space of 3 weeks, had as its subject poor old Dave:
Dave got a bit of flack for this approach, which is a wonderful target for old hands at security, and the ensuing discussions have led to questions like these being called out as 'Dave' questions, eg: Lucas Kauffman: We've got a dave There's also Dave's false maxim, which states:
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Meme: Canonical Time Zone Originator: Unknown Cultural Height: Early 2011 Background: American hubris on the part of our East cost users resulted in blanket declarations that EDT/EST (UTC-4/5) would be considered the de facto timezone of The DMZ. This was brought upon by inconsistent time of day greetings such as this exchange on January 24th, 2011.
And also ambiguously generic greetings such as this one:
@this.josh recommended use of this politically correct greeting:
@Polynomial points out that "diurnal isomorphism" is much more fun if you misspell it as "diurinal isomorphism". The Security Stack Exchange moderators, all of whom are based quite far east of the US (UK, Germany and Israel), therefore delight in declaring other timezones arbitrarily and randomly when entering the DMZ. |
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RoryAs you've already mentioned, Rory has become a bit of a meme within the IT Security StackExchange community. Usage of this meme often takes the form of word substitution a-la "smurf". Usage Examples:
Of course, as tends to happen with such things, this would often get over used - sometimes to the point of making "rory'd" or "rory-fied" statements utterly incomprehensible. (Ab)usage Examples:
Further development of this meme led to an interesting time, when the chat room's topic was changed to really nothing but rory.
Later, some users decided to have even more fun with this and actually change their usernames for a time: Former Rorys: Origins: This meme came about primarily due to the seemingly abnormal dominance of the name "Rory" within the IT Security - particularly, the IT Security StackExchange - community. For a long time, and perhaps still to this day, the "original" Rorys were the only individuals in The DMZ who were known to share the same Given Name (or First Name) in real life. Since then, the IT Security StackExchange has seen a few other Rorys. Most Rorys are from Scotland or another part of the U.K., while another is from Ireland and a couple are unspecified. Original Rorys: Rory McCune (Scotland) Other Rorys: Rory Harvey (U.K.) Watch this page for more Rorys Interesting Facts:
Of the 7 speakers presenting at the Securi-Tay conference in January 2013, 3 are Rories. (Additionally, 4 of the 7 are Security.SE contributors!) @AndreyBotalov found this thread about Doctor Who's Rory Williams when googling for "All the Rorys": http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1507326 |
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Meme: Nuke it from orbit. Originator: Aliens Cultural Height: TBD Background: When a machine is infected, the only way to be sure that it's clean is to "nuke it from orbit", i.e. wipe the system to the fullest extent possible, or entirely replace the hardware. This has become the default advice for most questions related to malware infections, but it also applies to guaranteed secure destruction of hard disks.
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Meme: Sec.SE Originator: Rory Alsop Cultural Height: practically the official site name since July 2011 Background:
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Meme: @Iszi's Gender Originator: @Iszi, @ScottPack, @GrahamLee Cultural Height: Most of 2011 Background: Originally, @Graham made a snarky comment to @Iszi, and @Scott over-analyzed and ran downhill with it. @Iszi's protests of malehood notwithstanding.
From there, it just continued to hang around, like a cloud of gender-confusion hanging over @Iszi's gravatar, such as this assortment of comments:
Eventually, @Iszi had no choice but to meet with @Scott in person, and allow him in-person authentication - a gender-CAPTCHA, if you will. Results were first announced via Twitter:
Results were later shared broadly within the sec.se community via chat.
And thus the mystery was put to rest.
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Meme: Law #x of Security. (Or Law #x of Security Administration) Originator: Scott Culp (Microsoft TechNet Contributor) Background: In November of 2000, Scott Culp published two articles on Microsoft TechNet regarding what he saw to be "Immutable Laws" of Security and Security Administration. Since then, these guidelines have generally held to be true and are occasionally referred to when someone is blatantly oblivious, deliberately ignorant, or just in violation of them.
10 Immutable Laws of Security Administration
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Meme: Security Monkeys Synonyms: Chimpanzees, Chimps Originator: @ThomasPornin, @TomLeek (for Security Monkeys), @TomWijsman, @CharlesDarwin (for Monkeys) Date of conception: March-April 2013 Cultural height: TBD Purpose: TBD (see below) Background: Thomas' answer to a question What technical reasons are there to have low maximum password lengths? presents a scenario in which original reasoning behind a security feature is lost, yet blindly maintained for no apparent reason by security monkeys not daring to change it.
Needles to say, this answer received hundreds of up-votes within days, and appears to indicate what level of understanding popular answers should cater the most, if fast reputation gaining is desirable. This purpose of the meme was later reinforced by using security monkeys of chimpanzees by @ThomasPornin (and others) in IT Security's DMZ (chat room):
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At the time of writing, the answer is at 451 up-votes. Instead of conclusion: Thus, it is still not decided whether this meme serves in a self-reflective way, mocking our very own aspirations to help the less savvy of the IT security world, their beyond belief generous support for such answers, or if it's meant to represent the ludicrous notions on security as presented and inquiring about by the latter.
Status: In process of determination. |
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Meme: Bears Originator: @ThomasPornin, @ScottPack, @AviD Cultural Height: July 2011 Background: Our highest rep user, cryptographer Thomas Pornin created a couple of distinct accounts with bear avatars.
Being a rather prominent and respected member of the community, this has earned him some nicknames:
With his rapid rep gain, the bear icon appeared regularly, so a winged bear with lasers was proposed as a site logo when we graduated.
@ScottPack then introduced us to the ServerFault Paddington Bear Choppertar, so the theme grew. Later the bear theme came to include references from the LGBT community in the form of these gentlemen:
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Meme: Security is Hard™ Originator: Unknown. More recently proliferated by James Arlen on the Liquid Matrix Security Podcast. Cultural height: Late 2012 Background: Security is Hard™ has been used by a lot of people, to (often condescendingly) remark on the apparent difficulty many people have with security. Its use ranges from genuine cases of difficult security, where work is actually required, to cases where a vendor / manager is lazy, unwilling to fund basic security, or just flat-out incompetent.
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Meme: Tinfoil Hattery Originator: Some say @Rook invented tinfoil hattery, but that's just a coverup. It was really invented by the Illuminati, in an attempt to make us all look crazy. Cultural Height: TBD Background: Tinfoil hattery is a term used to describe any behaviour that is paranoid beyond normal levels, which describes pretty much everyone on here. Some take it further than others. Infamous examples within Sec.SE include Rook and Andrew Smith.
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Meme: S&M Originator: Unknown Cultural Height: Unknown - nearly as old as Sec.SE itself. Background: Prior to being renamed to "Not Constructive", the close option that described questions that would "likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion" was called "Subjective and Argumentative". This was often casually referred to as "S&A". One day, someone (deliberately or accidentally) mis-typed this as "S&M". "Sadism" and "Masochism" are forms of culturally deviant sexual behavior which usually go hand-in-hand with one another and therefore are often referred to jointly as "S&M". Since "S&A" and "S&M" are both "culturally deviant" in their respective subjects, or (more likely) perhaps just because the typo itself is fairly amusing, the association stuck. |
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Meme: FAW (Frequently/Funny Attacking Wildebeest) Originator: @RoryAlsop Cultural Height: Early 2011 Background: Best explained by the originator, shortly after its inception:
In other words, our fearless leafer made a silly typo, and we made fun of him mercilessly, and kinda ran with it. Just cuz, that's kinda what we do. At some point, after interrogation, we were searching for a backronym, to explain the Interesting aside: Wildebeest also continued on as a spam collection account @AviD:
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Meme: Eat everything Originator: @AviD Cultural Height: August 2011 Background: Following on from Wildebeest and other discussions, topic #1 in the DMZ became not security, but food, and just what we could or had eaten. Some delicious examples:
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