Kidney, anyone?

One of my best friends is due to get a 'new' kidney, today. Just like hosting a new service. New is relative here since the market for new grown kidneys is not that big so he gets one second hand, from his wife. Like using that compiled distributed application. While they spend time unconscious under the capable hands of one team of doctors, their 3 year old spends time at our house. Like having freelancers watching over your databases.

There is a lot of risk involved in the whole kidney transplantation deal. He will get a 'strange' organ implanted and his immune system will fight it to its or their death. Like your antiviral software battling a smartly written Trojan. To prevent this from succeeding he will be taking medication to reduce the effectiveness of his immune system, which in itself opens him up to a whole range of new dangers. Like placing a very large do not scan mask. See it as DMZ's or even extranet connectivity.

But before he gets anything, she will have to give. Like opening up your tightly secured local network. She's a healthy woman in the flowering ages and has absolutely 0 health issues. Like your internal NetWare file server. She's taking a statistically small risk, kidneys get removed and people operated by the 1.000 everyday. Like hosting your own domain. Still, statistics mean little in individual cases since either you live or you die, a rather back and white situation. Like the compromise of your network with a 0 day.

The risk person in us [we do sort of the same kinda work] made us prepare for the worst. Like a BCP for an earthquake in a country like Holland. They have officially made me guardian of the little them. I have full control over all their assets. Like having the root passwords. Just in case. You never know. The scenario of him kicking the bucket, they both not waking up and whatever other terrible scenarios have been discussed, face to face and measures have been taken to assure live will be as good as possible for friend 2.0.

What can and needs to be arranged officially has been done. A will has been made, signed and sealed. List with invites & a formal chain of command have been made. Famous last words have been written. Religious & family matters been taken into account. Everything has been encrypted and securely distributed. The key hidden in Google's cache.

We also have friends over from a country where we lived for a couple of years.

Black Hat Europe will start for me tomorrow and my youngest daughter will go on her first real school holiday trip.

Later today the operation's team leader will call me to inform me of the preliminary results and I have been assigned the task to inform the selected family members, friends & colleagues.

Unless something goes dramatically wrong: then the phone will ring earlier.

Business as usual, nothing to see here, please move on.