An Illustrated InfoSec Zine
A spotlight on a Sprint for Internet Health project
Selina Musuta (aka Slammer) is a US based information security consultant and a Mozilla Fellow. As part of her fellowship, she’s working on an illustrated zine for security practitioners called Soupy Security.
I interviewed Slammer to learn more about Soupy Security and how you can contribute to the work.
What is Soupy Security?
Soupy Security is an interactive, illustrated story for information security (infosec) practitioners and the community organizations that they work with. Built with Twine, an open source storytelling tool, the project is a collaboration between artist, Shoog McDaniel and myself.
In the story, the player chooses a character that is a security practitioner. As that practitioner, you will work with EarthSeed, an environmental justice organization that is trying to navigate a digital security challenge.
Why did you start Soupy Security?
The project is Slammer’s attempt to think through a major challenge in their work: how to build sustainable, holistic infosec pathways for small organizations. These groups are rich in people power and vision but are strapped in terms of time, money, and other necessary infrastructure to build security into their work.
How did you decide on the format? Why a zine?
I read “Choose Your Own Adventure” books growing up. They were sort of my way of being a gamer. In some of those books, your character’s well-being was dependent on the choice you made and I wanted to bring that type of storytelling to this project. I wanted a visual and interactive way to explore different paths to addressing infosec questions that impact social and economic justice organizations. To answer that question “Why a zine?” — I love that zines have no rules on content, format, and dissemination. I’m not concerned with profit or wide distribution so I can build this in whatever I want. Right now the project lives online but I’m hoping to create a self-published print version. And I’d love to next year be able to host remix gatherings so that folks can create their own stories.
What challenges have you faced working on this project?
Writing endings for the zine is difficult. This work never ends so trying to wrap up these multiple ending stories feels stressful.
I’ve also mainly been working alone. I haven’t had the time or energy to look for collaborators. But collaboration is super important in my own growth so i need to prioritize this. Part of looking for collaborators is being open to the possibility that collaboration could mean this project transitioning into something else. I am lucky that my work is partly informed by on-going interviews with security practitioners so that feels like a form of collaboration. And there are many people in my community that have offered time to give feedback.
What kind of skills do I need to contribute to your project?
I’m still learning about Twine including syntax. What’s awesome is that there is this vibrant Twine community that is willing to answer questions. I’d love to work with someone that has a lot more experience with Twine than me. Interested in collaboration with writers especially those who bring joy and humor in their work. That’s something that is lacking in this story and I want to bring that to future stories I work on.
How can others contribute to your project?
I have a github repo. I’m still working on developing a process for contributions. For right now, I would love help in editing the initial story to make it more concise and impactful. Also I’d love to workshop this project around the U.S. so please invite me to your city.
How has the Open Leaders program helped you with your project?
I think that I have worked openly most of my adult life but didn’t necessarily have a process that I could articulate until going through the program. Open Leaders gave me structure, accountability, and that articulated process. It was also awesome to be provided a mentor that I could field ideas with as well. And I received so much inspiration from witnessing the coalescence of other Open Leader projects.
What meme or gif best represents your project?
Join us wherever you are during the month of May at Mozilla’s Sprint for Internet Health to work on many amazing open projects! Join a diverse network of scientists, educators, artists, engineers and others in person and online to hack and build projects for a health Internet.
