just act like you know what you are doing
That’s me on the left, you on the right. Note how I look like the bad guy, but I’ve got him pinched in my really long claw-arm? My job is awesome (especially on days like today when I call in apathetic sick).
Last week I accidentally learned of the existence of SSL-Explorer: The World’s First Browser-Based, Open Source SSL VPN. This looks like a relatively easy way to set up a VPN for almost no cost, plus they have commercial support if you get stuck. Cool!
Filed under: Computers, documentation, SecurityChaosreader is a perl program for taking tcpdump logs (pcap files) and beating them into a readable, usable format. HTML, for example. If you ever work with tcpdump files this is a must see.
Filed under: Computers, documentation, SecurityToday CNET is carrying an article entitled China: We don’t censor the Internet. Really.
In China, we don’t have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that’s a different problem.
One of three things is happening here:
Because I know first hand that big chunks of the Chinese Internet are blocked from accessing many large American networks, I tend to go with option three. I don’t have enough proof or confidence in the Chinese government’s statements to believe that it is strictly a technical issue.
Here’s what I have seen happen in my work: versions of Microsoft Windows are written in the UTF-16 character set. This software works well enough to get released. The UTF-16 character set, however, does not support enough characters for East Asian languages. To support that, a new version of the operating system must be produced with the apropriate changes. When a security vulnerability is discovered in the operating system, a fix for the UTF-16 (English) version is released first. A clever programmer can use the information in the fix as a map describing exactly what the problem is. Because of the additional work involved in creating and releasing the fix for versions which support, say Chinese (for example) there is a delay during which all of those systems are vulnerable to exploit and in a way, explicit instructions for how to do that have been provided by Microsoft. Following this, many networks in East Asia are brimming with compromised systems and network administration there isn’t significantly better than it is here. Couple that with lots of high speed Internet access and you can see why Chinese networks present a big problem to large international networks. So, yes, there are some blocks that network proviiders have placed on Chinese networks until those networks get cleaned up and traffic more balanced toward legitimate than malicious.
Filed under: Real Life, Security, The Internet
While the world of network security and physical security don’t perfectly correspond, there are some rather interesting analogues between the two. As technology pushes forward in areas like agriculture (for one handy example) we begin to see interesting problems appear and new dangers previously only thought of in comic books and science fiction. We need to begin to consider now, today, what the warning signs for tomorrow’s world should look like. Without careful consideration we risk icon-space collisoins where a warning symbol in one region or population or hieroglyphic dialect could be an invitation in another.
Notice: the linked article makes use of the word decohere. nice.
And this reminds me of this article I saw a couple of months ago about the problem of building a “keep out” sign for a site where nuclear waste was to be buried and, hopefully, left undisturbed for 10,000 years.
Filed under: images, Real Life, SecurityRight now, these DOE sites are usually protected with “keep out” signs, chain-link fences, and guards. However, there’s no guarantee that any of those measures will be feasible more than a few decades from now.
As a computer professional, I have seen several cases where problems were caused by “slipping a digit” or “fat fingers” typing out the wrong number.
As a network security professional I deal daily with the effects of having millions of insecure computers connected to the Internet. Few know better than I the havoc and danger that situation could impose. In my office we regularly and offhandedly contrive plausable situations where clever exploitation of the Internet as it stands today could have a significant impact on real — offline — life as we know it. And usually these theories don’t require any huge physicist brainpower, just a little malice and the patience required to put together a model train.
So I am doubly horrified when I read about a bungled investigation in which a wrong IP address brings real-life horror to innocent people. Americans. In America.
It causes the public, the real people who would presumably benefit the most from a well-wired society that works cheaper, faster, and more efficiently to ask Do ‘computer police’ have too much power?
I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description.
…
My wife and I were interrogated about Internet crime. … we do not even e-mail.
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Our home was searched by a para-military search-and-seizure team.
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At 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 2, the chief investigator of Pittsylvania County returned our possessions and said that the wrong IP (computer) address had been identified. We would not be charged.
Think about it.
Filed under: Computers, Politics, Security, The InternetYou may call it a dirty campaign, but I think Apple releasing a iPods with a virus that impacts Windows computers is hilarious. Of course I’m not supportive of deceptive or malicoius behavior. But I find real amusement in the time bomb it sets up for Apple. If you read their description of the situation you notice a certain lack of contrition in the tone. They say, oh it’s just a “small number — less than 1%” (yeah, of eight million). Over and over they call it a “Windows virus” but the virus wasn’t written by Microsoft. It was written to target Microsoft Windows machines because they are the easiest targets and most widely distributed platform. With the increasing popularity of OS X comes an increase in the threats to that platform. In the future it will be platform-independent or a OS X -targeted malware that gets distributed on some popular consumer device and, well, let’s just hope Apple has some good recipes for how to eat crow.
This is not a Windows problem any more than the flammability of gasoline is a car problem. Fundamentally this is a social problem exacerbated by the lack of diversity in the computing environment. Windows just happens to be the easy and productive target, for now.
Furthermore, looking up RavMonE.exe in the Sophos threat database we learn that it installs a backdoor and contacts a list of sites to report successful infection. I sure would love to get a copy of the version on the iPods and find out what sites are in that list!
Filed under: Computers, Security99 just put up a piece that is still under revision. She requests your brief attention to help improve it, and I sugest that you read it because it is quite nice already. The full title (as of this writing) is Hacks, Cracks, and Pranks: Fear and Goofing on the Internet, in the Basement, and at WTO Meetings
Here’s a taste:
Filed under: documentation, Security, The InternetHey, guess what? Not all hackers are evil, pimply, lurking teenagers with a poor sense of fashion and a great sense of disaffection. They are also not criminals by default, not necessarily computer geniuses, and some of them might even be people you’d have over for dinner. Conversely, some of them are one or more of those things, but consistently, they are easy targets for a sweaty mainstream media, jonesing for the next sexy lead.
Let’s pretend that a file is called secrets and is full of information that I don’t want anyone else to know. I can encrypt just that file using the GNU Privacy Guard like this:
gpg -c secrets
enter a passphrase
enter passphrase again
You’re done! But now both the original file secrets and the encrypted file secrets.gpg exist so:
rm secrets
To view the contents of the encrypted file simply:
gpg -d secrets
and give the passphrase when prompted.
If you lose your passphrase, well, tough luck.
Filed under: Computers, documentation, Security
