Nail varnish, glitter and a potato

In more than two decades of doing this job – journalist, author, consultant and analyst – I’ve been confronted by some strange attention-grabbers at conferences and meetings around the world. None so unexpected as being shown how to open a hotel safe with a potato during a recent visit to the F-Secure research labs in Helsinki. Steve Cassidy was there, so can vouch for the potato being the stand-out moment in a 300-plus slide PowerPoint presentation.

Yet F-Secure still managed to outdo itself and win my award for the weirdest welcome letter I’ve received across my 26 years of international business travel. The title was odd enough, informing me that if I travel with my laptop, I “should probably travel with nail polish”. The gist of the thing being that security software won’t save me if someone swipes my laptop, compromises it with malware, and returns it without me noticing. At which point I should produce an award for honesty, seeing as F-Secure has been in the antivirus software business for 20 years or so. I’m probably not worth wasting a zero-day exploit on, so I’d actually hope that my security software did spot that malware had been installed.

The letter continued with advice for using glittery nail polish if travelling with a laptop in places I don’t feel 100% secure. Slop some over your laptop screws, take a photo and then occasionally match the two since glitter nail polish forms a unique seal apparently. Very good, but I’ve spotted yet another flaw. If I was travelling to an area where I didn’t feel 100% secure, say the annual Black Hat or RSA security conferences, then I wouldn’t take my laptop. And neither should you...