Whitelisting at 30,000 feet
Posted by Matt Petrosky on Wed, Jul 21, 2010
Right now I'm flying back to Boston after visiting a prospect this week (so I’m literally at 30,00 feet) and an interesting event occurred before takeoff that I thought I’d share!
The plane waits at the gate for many extra minutes and a man eventually runs on, presumably because our flight had waited for him. As he boards, he hands the flight attendant five or six candy bars. That seemed odd, but she thanked him and he wandered down the aisle, likely getting stuck in a middle seat.
What happened next sent me into a tizzy. The flight attendant opens the “flight deck” door and hands each of the pilots one of the candy bars! Maybe I’ve watched one too many movies, but that immediately struck me as a horrible idea. What if both pilots eat them?! Then I thought “maybe the flight attendant knows the man and trusts him.” So I asked the flight attendant if that was the case and she said “no, I have no idea who he is.” Outstanding….
In reality, however, what happened there is analogous to what happens to our users every day when they browse the web and check email. Innocent-looking and even "corporate-branded" websites and emails entice them to “click here”, “download this”, or “install now” and almost all of it is garbage.
Really, I’m fine if the man had handed candy bars to everyone on the flight and everyone gets sick and rolls off the plane. But whatever food goes into that cockpit had better be WHITELISTED! :D