National Poetry Month – The Cybersecurity Edition

April is National Poetry Month, a time when we can celebrate poets and their craft. To join in the celebrations, we at the State of Security asked employees at Tripwire and in the wider infosec community to create and share some of their favorite cybersecurity-related poems with us.

Here are some of our favorites from Twitter:

Did you know April is #NationalPoetryMonth?

We're reaching out to the infosec community hoping you'll share some of your best poems with us. Feel free to comment below or even DM us.

Starting a thread… ✍️

— Tripwire (@TripwireInc) April 6, 2020

Thanks to Ray Lapena for this security haiku video.

Thanks to @raylapena for this cybersecurity Haiku!#cybersecurity #phishing pic.twitter.com/BQrOfgZPZW

— Tripwire (@TripwireInc) April 6, 2020

A couple of poems from Irfahn Khimji. The latter inspired by his inner Shakespeare!

Nice work, @TheRealKhimji!

There once was an S3 bucket left unsecured,
So much data that could be procured.
A simple alert could have theft prevented,
Stress on the SOC could have relented.

Next up, @anthony_id, @theorrminator, and @DaveG_Tripwire! #NationalPoetryMonth

— Tripwire (@TripwireInc) April 8, 2020

A second entry from @TheRealKhimji. This time he shares his inner Shakespeare;

Vulnerability, vulnerability, wherefore art thou vulnerability?
Deny thy exploit and refuse thy access;
Or if thou wilt not be apply my sworn patch,
And I’ll no longer be Vulnerable. #ThisIsTripwire

— Tripwire (@TripwireInc) April 9, 2020

If only Mary had that FIM solution…

Thanks, Paul Norris!

A new entry from, @pjnorris!

Mary had a little breach,
Her data was posted online,
If only she had a FIM solution,
She’d have been just fine…#ThisIsTripwire

— Tripwire (@TripwireInc) April 8, 2020

This time a security haiku from Tim Erlin.

On Patching (a Haiku)

Patch applied with love
Vulnerability gone
Endless risk remains#securityhaiku

— Mute if you're not talking (@terlin) April 7, 2020

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Here’s a security poem from Stu Peck,
Just for you…

I was gonna send this:

Red team is on your network
Blue team doesn't have a clue
But don't worry, they have a thick report for you … 😂😂🤣🤣🤣

— STUͣͬͭ ͣ ͬ ͭ (@cybersecstu) February 15, 2019

The brilliant John Odpenakker shared a limerick that resonates too true!

I'll go for a limerick

Once upon a time, there was a sys admin from Kent
But there was something he didn't understand
That even with everything backed up in the cloud
After the ransomware his entire company was wiped out
Now there's nothing left to defend

— John Opdenakker – Social isolation counter: 43 (@j_opdenakker) April 6, 2020

I thought I’d join in the fun…

Your biggest concern
Should be the insider threat
not no toilet roll#NationalPoetryMonth

— Joe Pettit (@joepettit2) April 6, 2020

Brad W doubts his ability to sqlmap.

roses are red
violets are blue
if I can run sqlmap
a script kiddie can too!

— Brad W. (@reassuringURL) April 7, 2020

Thanks to MediaPro for sharing their very timely working from home haiku:

Here's a timely #haiku about #workingfromhome:

While working from home
Connect securely: a must
Do not take chances

— MediaPRO (@MediaPROInc) April 6, 2020

And finally, the last entry on Twitter from James McLaren:

"When I am old, I will team purple
using RedHat that doesn't go
and doesn't suit me…"

(Apologies to Jenny Joseph)

— James McLaren (@manfrommaralea) April 6, 2020

Those were just some of our favorites that were shared with the team throughout National Poetry Month. However, we decided to have a look around and see what else we could find! Here are some of our favorites.

I Made a New Password

I made a new password
That no one could guess.
It’s long and confusing
And truly a mess.
It has random letters
and numbers galore,
with dozens of symbols
and spaces and more.
My password is perfect,
completely secure,
and no one will break it;
of that I am sure.
It’s flawless and foolproof.
I don’t have a doubt.
But, whoops! I forgot it
and now I’m locked out.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Yesterday (The Beatles) – Backup Poem

We discovered a few other fun poems on Twitter too:

Couldn't sleep last night…
So I wrote a poem about my job at @OnyxPoint

There once were some guidelines from NIST
Like some infosec stuff on a list
So we wrote up some code
To secure every node
And that's how SIMP came to exist. #DevOps #InfoSec #SIMP

— judy johnson (@miz_j) September 10, 2019

Inspired by Shakespeare, "Once more unto the breach"
Disclaimer: all views are my own#limerick #humorous #poems #fun #cybersecurity #databreach #infosec #security #breach #funfriday #creativity pic.twitter.com/nrwHokxkLd

— brockwebb (@brockwebb) January 18, 2020

It's a #poetrymonth, so we got creative:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
We can protect
01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101111#infosec

— NordLocker (@NordLocker) April 16, 2020

To finish, we found this interesting article by Camila Domonoske around using poems as a way of creating stronger passwords. She calls them “passpoems”. You can learn more about her theory here.

If you’ve been inspired by reading all these cybersecurity-related poems and want to take part, add your contribution to our tweet or email me directly.

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