Bitcoin, Snapchat and XP as you’ve never heard them before – the verse in text form

Our Security in Verse from April Fool’sFun Day, 2014.

(Audio player above not working for you? Download to listen offline, or listen on Soundcloud.)

The miner's lament

Where have all the Bitcoins gone?

I mined a Bitcoin every day,
    For months and months: it went OK.
But when the price shot up, by gosh,
    I found myself awash in dosh!

I wanted more, but it got hard,
    Without a faster graphics card,
So I began to spend my time
    In trading BTCs on-line.

By cashing out while prices soared
    I thought I'd buy an ASIC board,
To let me keep on mining fast,
    And help my Bitcoin wallet last.
 
It all went well for quite a bit,
    Until my fortune took a hit.
So hear my cry, "A pox! A pox!
    On all who hacked upon Mt. Gox."

Paul Ducklin - Sophos Naked Security

---

I want to post a picture

Snapchat images that have 
"disappeared forever" 
stay right on your phone...

I want to post a picture 
   That I'd love the world to see
But I do not want that image
   To come back to pester me.
   
I don't want my employer,     
   Or my cousin, or my Dad,
To find it in the future
   And to say, "Ooooh, that looks bad!"

I want to find a service 
   That will flush it down the drain,
Once all my friends have seen it, 
   So they can't see it again.
   
And here it is! I found it!
   An app that's called "Snapchat."
It's got a yellow logo,
   And it does exactly that.
   
You take a dodgy picture
   And you send it all around,
But if you want a copy
   Then the image can't be found.
   
Or so the Play Store told me 
   That is what the app would do.
And if Google vouches for it,    
  Then it surely must be true.

Paul Ducklin - Sophos Naked Security

---

The citizens of Whitehorse

The Final Countdown - 
Windows XP end of support

A chap called Robert Service
   Who lived up Yukon way
Would have had a lot to write about
   Were he alive today.
 
He worked in business banking
   And he took the diggers's cash
When the Klondike filled with miners
   Who were bold, and loud, and brash.
 
So if he'd had a hacker's mind,
   And not a poet's bent
He could have made a fortune
   At the branch where he was sent.
 
But Service was an honest man,
   His storytelling straight.
He didn't bluff his customers
   With monetary bait.

He didn't stoop to trickery,
   Or to phishing, or to spam,
Or to social engineering
   Or to crookery, or scam.
 
He could have turned his poetry
   To bad as well as good
And spun the sort of nonsense
   That a modern scammer would.

But even if he'd wanted to,
   No matter how adroit,
There were no bugs or scripting holes
   For Service to exploit.

Because they didn't have computers,
   And they didn't run XP.
So the citizens of Whitehorse 
   Were as safe as they could be.

Paul Ducklin - Sophos Naked Security

---