As in previous years, there are no actual awards. These are just funny or thought provoking tweets that I've "favorited" over the last year. Also, you will notice that the categories have changed. This is because they are completely arbitrary. I make them up as I go along. So without further ado...
Best Tweet Inspired by a Movie
OH: "Get Root or DOS Tryin"
— Beau Woods (@beauwoods) June 5, 2014
Best Tweet Inspired by a Song (Tie)
@Packetknife @McGrewSecurity if you like hunting pineapples, getting root in the rain, if you're not into php, if you have half a brain…
— Fabienne Serrière (@fbz) August 11, 2014
If you havin' attribution problems, I feel bad for you son...
You got 99 C&Cs but DPRK ain't one.
— esSOBi (@essobi) December 18, 2014
Best Tweet Inspired by the Holidays (Tie)
On the first day of Christmas my Sysadmin gave to me: a remotely exploitable NTP.
— Sad Server (@sadserver) December 25, 2014
Here comes Cyber War Here comes Cyber War/Right down the internet tubes/China and Russia and all their satellites/Hacktivists hacking too
— Jack Whitsitt (@sintixerr) December 23, 2014
Best Tweet on How to be a Hacker
Becoming a hacker requires nothing more than a dedicated pursuit to answering one question, "What happens when I...?"
— Stephen Haywood (@averagesecguy) August 21, 2014
Best Tweet About Linux
Sometimes I worry the NSA might be spying on me through my desktop's webcam. Then I remember it's Linux and even I can't get it to work.
— Andrey Petrov (@shazow) February 23, 2014
Best Tweet About Metasploit
Just realised that a Metasploit module that attacked Metasploit itself would be a meta Metasploit sploit.
— Patrick Gray (@riskybusiness) March 6, 2014
Best Tweet About Medical Devices
Here's what I think of the state of medical device security: I use a needle and syringe 6 times per day.
— Jay Radcliffe (@jradcliffe02) October 21, 2014
Best Tweet About The Cloud
"Cloud" is wrong. It sounds fluffy and safe. Call it Mordor. Do you want to store your backups in Mordor?
— MuninrepeeK eroL (@munin) September 7, 2014
Best Tweet About Cryptography
Unsure if you should write your own crypto library? Consult this handy checklist:
[ ] no
[ ] hell no
[ ] wtf is wrong with you
[ ] no
— mhoye (@mhoye) October 7, 2014
Best Tweet About Two-Factor Authentication
Dear financial institution, Tumblr has enabled two-factor auth! And we just use it to share animated GIFs. Give us 2FA motherfuckers!
— Info Security Jerk (@infosecjerk) March 27, 2014
Best Tweet About Silk Road
Next semester I'm teaching "How to run Silkroad3.0 and not get caught". If you register, you get an F.
— matt blaze (@mattblaze) November 6, 2014
Best Tweet About "Named" Exploits
Dear internet, please treat your poodle for sandworms to prevent heartbleed or you may just end up shellshocked by bad analogies. Yay, cyber
— linuxstumbler (@linuxstumbler) October 15, 2014
Best Tweet About Attribution (Tie)
If the bit does not fit! You must acquit! #nkdefense
— Rob Fuller (@mubix) December 22, 2014
New rule, calling it Grugq's Razor: "never attribute to 0day what can easily be explained by bad password management"
— the grugq (@thegrugq) January 4, 2014
Best Tweet Explaining the Sony Breach
Blah blah blah cyber cyber cyber blah Sony blah blah blah North Korea blah blah cyber cyber....
— Bill Gardner (@oncee) December 20, 2014
Best "Fake" Tweet
Symantec's CEO was re-hired after it was discovered that his termination was based on a false positive.
— Fake Infosec News (@FakeInfosecNews) March 20, 2014
Best "Get Off My Lawn!" Tweet
You think you're a hotshot, kid? I've got open browser tabs older than you.
— Parker Higgins (@xor) August 3, 2014
Best Twitter... um... –er
Last but not least we have the "award" for the person who posted the best overall tweets of the year.
And the winner is.... InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity)! InfoSec Taylor Swift is an unusual account. On one hand it's an obvious parody of a celebrity with a humorous slant towards information security. On the other hand she (he? they?) offers legitimately sound advice in 140 characters or less. The quality is such that news outlets have quoted the account and the new web site associated with it, decentsecurity.com, has the potential to become a solid resource for InfoSec fundamentals.
If you follow one new account this year it should be @SwiftOnSecurity. Below are a few gems from 2014:
Serious Tweets:
You cannot leak that which does not exist. That's the ultimate answer.
But that's the same philosophy as abstinence. We need education.
— InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity) September 1, 2014
Computer security's dirty little secret is how much of the "hacking" people hear about is just brain-dead, color-by-numbers stuff.
— InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity) September 1, 2014
Funny Tweets:
Hey @hdmoore do you ever worry you'll be replaced by SSD Moore?
— InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity) October 21, 2014
Apple technology isn't in Star Trek because they couldn't integrate into existing Enterprise systems.
— InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity) May 22, 2014
This concludes the 2014 Tweet Awards. Please feel free to share your favorite tweets in the comments below. I wish you and yours a very Happy New Year!