Category Archives: Security

Security

Granick on bugspotting

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News about the legal issues, courtesy of Wired.

The federal statute and copycat state laws prohibit accessing computers or a computer system without authorization, or in excess of authorization, and thereby obtaining information or causing damage.

What does it mean to access a networked computer? Any communication with that computer — even if it’s simply one system asking another “are you there?” — transmits data to the other machine. The cases say that e-mail, web surfing and port scanning all access computers. One court has even held that when I send an e-mail, not only am I accessing your e-mail server and your computer, but I’m also “accessing” every computer in between that helps transmit my message.

Security

Get a temp number for your mobile

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Shadow/substitution solutions are becoming all the rage as people look for ways to create plausable deniability both from an attack and defense perspective. That’s just a fancy way of saying that more and more people want to be able to disappear.

Safe Talk is a UK company that suggest you use their service in order to

give out a temporary phone number to people you first meet so they can call you – until you know if they’re fit or fit to drop!

If people haven’t started adopting transaction-based IDs for their credit cards (offered by issuers for years now) how likely are they to start using them on their mobile? Maybe the motivation is higher on mobiles because the relationship is more likely to sour in ways that require a disappearing act? Fake name, fake number, imagine the possibilities. Will this be a convenient add-on service for social network sites, or the next big thing for spammers and phishers to abuse? I mean if it is successful as a (legitimate) service, and able to handle the looming liability/trust issues, I wonder how long it will be before this is a standard service from the major carriers.

History, Security

Cheney indicts self

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Can you say, double-standard or questionable ethics?

But 9/11 changed everything in the sense that it forced us to think anew about our enemies, about who our enemies were, about the kind of threat we faced as a nation, about what kind of strategy we needed to pursue to be able to safeguard our nation from those attacks. The President made a very basic, fundamental decision that very first night after the attacks. And that was that henceforth, we would hold accountable those — not only the terrorists, but also those who supported terror. If a state or a government provided safe harbor or sanctuary, or financing, or training or weapons to a terrorist organization, they would be deemed just as guilty of the terrorist act as the terrorists themselves.

Mr. Cheney, the threats you refer to were not new to you, but your change in thinking about the enemies of the US should have happened prior to 9/11. Why? Because that’s what the bipartisan commission said in early 2001, echoed by Clarke as well as the outgoing staff from the prior Administration. Remember when you and Bush ignored those? Ooops, so much for leadership. I guess you guys like to dismiss anyone who disagrees with you. Remind us again why your wife resigned from the Hart-Rudman commission? She refused to think anew about the “kind of threat” and didn’t like being disagreed with? Sad that it took such a huge disaster to open your eyes and allow you to agree with what honest and good people had been telling you; even more sad that your choice of words in the public forum do more harm to your nation than good. We expect this kind of incompetence from Rumsfeld, but you too now?

Just for reference, here is another voice of leadership to compare yourself with:

The president of the United States hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him he is not.
—Harry S Truman

Now, if you want to talk about accountability…

Poetry, Security

Will encrypt text for food

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Mark Van Dine has a cool WordPress site with some funny graphics. I thought this was was particularly catchy. See if you can solve the message. Here’s a hint, if you can find the key, the answer will be clear.

Hmmm...this is a tough one.

Wonder if anyone is writing crypto-poetry? (No, I don’t mean the infamous “Banned Code Lives in Poetry and Song” since that is code turned into poetry rather than the other way around)

Oh, and for a really good laugh, check out his thoughts on his father’s new book called “If Instead of Apes We Had Come from Grapes, We Wouldn’t Just yet Be Wineâ€?. Here’s an excerpt from the book itself:

Things appear for reasons.
Reasons appear for things.

The ring announces there’s a bell,
so there’s a bell. And sure as hell,
if there is a bell… it rings

It’s a call to mate or to salivate
or to fold with a pair of kings.
To the ding-ding jingling clang or gong,
the trains pull out and the planes take wing,
the boxers box and the singers sing
and everyone sings along:
jingles for soap and for soda pop,
so the shippers ship and the shoppers shop.
It’s all arranged at the stock exchange,
and you can’t sit still for long.

2. Nature & Nurture

If cradle training taught you well,
you learned which bell’s for you:
when you counted ribs or the bars on cribs,
noting nipples, inscribing bibs
with what was what and who was who,
learned on your fingers the proper things
your own bell tells when you hear it ring,
how you go to hell if you hear the bell
and you don’t know what to do.

But how, pray tell, do the ringers of bells
know when it’s time to ring?

Well,

Things appear for reasons.
Reasons appear for things.

Yeah, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Music anyone?
(i.e. Rose Rouge by St. Germain)