Category Archives: security

Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a piece in Popular Mechanics about the growing trend of cops bullying photographers who take pictures in public places, and why officials who believe such photography is against the law are mistaken.

I believe there i… Continue reading

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Photog detained by cops and BP security guard in Texas

A freelance photographer who was taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man claiming to be with the Department of Homeland Security, according to nonprofit news org ProPublica. The photogr… Continue reading

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Crack the Code in Cyber Command’s Logo

The U.S. Military’s new “Cyber Command” logo contains a hidden code. Noah Shachtman at Wired News says, “Help us crack it!”
Related reading today: Bruce Schneier says “The Threat of Cyberwar Has Been Grossly Exaggerated.”

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Use a Single-Use Code to Securely Sign into Windows Live [Windows Live]

If you find yourself at a remote computer, or unsure of your net connection, you can sign into Live.com, Hotmail, and other Windows Live services using a single-use code, which Microsoft will send via … Continue reading

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The Model MHDD – Manual Hard Drive Destroyer

When you need to make sure your data is truly destroyed, use one of these. Government specifications require that in an emergency situation a hard drive needs to be destroyed so that a person or persons can not spin the … Continue reading

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Rainbow Hash Cracking

Coding Horror has written an informative article on Rainbow Tables, and why Windows servers can be particularly vulnerable. The multi-platform password cracker Ophcrack is incredibly fast. How fast? It can crack the password “Fgpyyih804423″ in 160 seconds. Most people would … Continue reading

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Downloads: Secure Login (Firefox Extension)

This Firefox extension makes the saved passwords feature of Firefox safer by forcing you to click on the Secure Login button in order to fill in your login name and password on forms. This helps prevent cross-site scripting attacks on … Continue reading

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LCDs vulnerable to Van Eck Phreaking

Just like CRTs, someone can eavesdrop on the electromagnetic emissions from your LCD display. Back in 1985, Wim Van Eck proved it was possible to tune into the radio emissions produced by electromagentic coils in a CRT display and then … Continue reading

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Downloads: TrueCrypt 4.3 (Windows, Linux)

The latest update to the TrueCrypt encryption utility is now available. We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 4.3 has been released. Among the new features is full compatibility with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista, support for devices and file … Continue reading

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The Lockdown

Engadget has a fascinating series of articles on lock security and lock picking. The most popular locking mechanism in the world utilizes the pin tumbler design, first developed 4000 years ago in Egypt and then rediscovered and perfected a century … Continue reading

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Meet cGrid, the real-time P2P punisher

A new tool has been announced in the piracy arms race. This tool can be deployed by network administrators to monitor network traffic in order to identify people using P2P services, and can automatically boot them off the network. The … Continue reading

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Use TaskList to identify spyware

TaskList.org can tell you whether or not a process in your Windows task list is spyware. Link (via Lifehacker)

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Downloads: PuTTY 0.59 (Windows, Unix)

Grab the latest version of the PuTTY SSH client and associated utilities. Link (via Digg)

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Congressional aide busted for trying to hack his GPA

An aide for a Montana congressman was fired for trying to solicit hackers from attrition.org to boost his college GPA. The hackers merely led him on through a series of hilarious emails, including some asking him to take pictures of … Continue reading

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Locksport International Guide to Lock Picking

This is a visual guide to lock picking in comic book format. This guide is easier to read than the classic MIT Guide to Lock Picking. Locksport International is proud to provide a simple, visual guide to lock picking. It … Continue reading

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CIA Level Computer Security

Some useful tools to keep your data away from prying eyes. Everyone wants to be a badass. Whether you want to admit it or not, if you are a self respecting geek, you want to protect your sensitive information in … Continue reading

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IRC transcript of world’s worst hacker

This is a hilarious transcript of a naive script-kiddie being baited into trashing their own machine. <Elch> You’re a real computer expert <bitchchecker> shut up i hack you <Elch> ok, i’m quiet, hope you don’t show us how good a … Continue reading

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Defending against brute force ssh attacks

I found this great little overview on defending your ssh server from script kiddies. This should be required reading for anyone running a ssh server. During 2005, bute force attacks on the ssh (secure shell) service became pretty popular. These … Continue reading

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Social Engineering, the USB Way

This short article documents how frighteningly easy it was to compromise a credit union’s network security. They simly left USB flash drives that had been purposely infected with trojans where employees could find them, sat back, and waited for sensitive … Continue reading

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Digital Camera Noise Fingerprints

Researchers can use the noise profile of digital camera sensors to identify whether a set of images came from a certain camera. From MetaFilter: Every original digital picture is overlaid by a weak noise-like pattern of pixel-to-pixel non-uniformity. Although these … Continue reading

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