It took me a few days to notice that Tim tagged me. I am supposed to “Pick up your nearest book and go to page 123. Find the fifth sentence, and post on your blog the next three sentences. Acknowledge who tagged you, and then tag five more people.”

There are two books equidistant from my chair — and as it turns out, the same would be true were I at home or work: the second edition of Ross Anderson’s classic Security Engineering, and Adam Shostack and Andrew Stewart’s The New School of Information Security. I’ll choose the latter because it isn’t so damn big and doesn’t hurt my arm so much to pick it up.

Most children who go missing do so in custody disputes and are taken by someone they know and trust. The advice to “never talk to strangers” doesn’t address the main cause of children going missing, and it puts them at risk when they become lost. In 2005, 11-year-old Brennan Hawkins got lost in the Utah mountains.

I don’t want to leave the next sentence off because it’s a good point: “For four days, he avoided searchers because he was afraid to talk to strangers.”

Shostack’s book announcement gives a good overview of the book, and Gary McGraw’s recent interview with him on the Silver Bullet Security Podcast should give you a better idea of where they’re coming from.

I’m not going tag five more people. Just cuz.