Crack a Combo Lock
Posted by Stephen Waits Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:27:52 GMT
Badass.. I love [stuff like this](http://www.metacafe.com/watch/297062/how_to_crack_a_combination_lock/).Mach 10 UAV
Posted by Stephen Waits Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:27:51 GMT
The replacement for the Blackbird. Read about it at defensetech.
Full length documentaries online
Posted by Stephen Waits Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:03:05 GMT
TayTV has posted links to 10 documentaries, which they recommend, and are available online - for the moment anyway.
I hope to check a few of them out soon.
Rivest's ThreeBallot Voting System
Posted by Stephen Waits Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:05:54 GMT
Ron Rivest (he’s the “R” in RSA) has published a paper on a new secure, private voting system.
It’s interesting - but he’s giving our public a bit too much credit. I do think much of the system could be automated, or dumbed down enough for regular idiots to deal with it; however, people simply won’t be able to understand why their receipt doesn’t match their vote. Furthermore, I don’t think most people will even be able to look up their vote online. Still, it’s new and very interesting.
I also like that it supports Approval Voting without too much effort. If we could get Approval voting (it’s simpler than Condorcet or IRV [which is broken anyway]) into action in this world, we’d all be much better off.
Get the paper here.
New Orleans Police
Posted by Stephen Waits Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:54:00 GMT
Anyone who’s lived in New Orleans would probably expect this. Outsiders may be surprised, but insiders certainly won’t.
Scientology site got 0wned
Posted by Stephen Waits Wed, 21 Jun 2006 04:09:26 GMT
0wned by the truth that is. Check out the mirror.
Topsail/TIA much more than Phone Number logs
Posted by Stephen Waits Fri, 12 May 2006 14:54:21 GMT
Ars is running a great article about Topsail.
Seriously scary stuff.. The NSA seems to have switched roles from foreign spying to domestic spying. That sucks.
Oh, BTW, Shrub and company still HAVEN’T CAUGHT THE TOP AL QAEDA LEADERSHIP! Try to remember that the next time you see him saying the reason for all of this, in his bumfuck retardo I’m a complete fucking idiot hick accent, is so we can catch “Al Qaeda”.
Ars also linked to some rather insightful comments, with several updates, from Defense Tech.
Guns rule!
Posted by Stephen Waits Thu, 04 May 2006 03:30:25 GMT
Check out this mostly non-metal “assault” weapon. The whole calling them “assault” weapons is fucking retarded. Even Schneier seems to have fallen for this politically-charged name.
Guns rule.
Everyone should have them.
Via Schneier on Security.
CCC Videos Online
Posted by Stephen Waits Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:08:53 GMT
Videos from the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress held last December in Berlin are now online. Save yourself some time though and just grab the tar.gz of all of the torrents, then throw the ones you’re interested in at your torrent client.
There are some very interesting talks in there. Some that I’m downloading now:
- Community Mesh Networking
- Wifi Long Shots
- Better Code
- The Future of Virtualization
- Seaside Squeak
- Lojban
- Web of Trust
- I See Airplanes
- Fuzzing
- Old Skewl Hacking
- The Cell Processor
- Military Intelligence
- Advanced Buffer Overflow Methods
- Hacking Challenge
- The Very Early Computer Game industry
And there’s lots more than that!
sshd brute forcers
Posted by Stephen Waits Sat, 22 Apr 2006 04:17:46 GMT
Wherever you look, idiots. I got sick of my nightly logs being full of sshd brute force attempts. I didn’t want to run sshd through inetd, which does provide connection throttling.
I wanted to blacklist the idiots in realtime - but i don’t believe in fscking with firewalls automagically. So, I rebuilt sshd with libwrap support, and hacked together this ruby script.
It’s been running fine for a few months now, so have at it!
Download it here.
Enjoy!
Did AF1 get tagged?
Posted by Stephen Waits Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:11:31 GMT
Go get the video from stillfree.com. Is it legit? No. But, I wish it was.
Via Schneier on Security.
Buy an Enigma
Posted by Stephen Waits Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:48:00 GMT
Yes, there is an actual Nazi Enigma on eBay.
Via Engadget.
Craftsmanship
Posted by Stephen Waits Sat, 25 Mar 2006 20:12:09 GMT
Holy crap, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such craftsmanship. Take a look at this Enigma-like device. Check out all the pictures of it. Amazing stuff. Look at the other works by this artist here.
Via Schneier on Security.
What the Whitehouse doesn't want you finding in Google or Yahoo
Posted by Stephen Waits Sun, 19 Mar 2006 04:36:00 GMT
While searching for some information on the robots.txt standard, I ran into an interesting link. See, robots.txt is a standard file web admins can put on their site to help instruct search engines on what they should index. Search engines don’t have to pay attention to it - but, of course, the major ones do follow it. Back in the day an indexer’s crawl could damage your site - but those days are gone. It’s all about attempting to control what gets indexed, not how much.
So, you can find out the pages that a web admin does not want indexed in a search engine by checking out their robots.txt file.
For example, take a look at one of my site’s robots.txt file here. In this case I’m happy to have the SE’s crawl and index my entire site.
Now, check out whitehouse.gov’s robots.txt file. These are all the URLs they don’t want you finding in Google or Yahoo. They don’t mind if you find them, mind you, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Tracking down DDoS idiots
Posted by Stephen Waits Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:26:25 GMT
Here is a long article about a kid from Sacramento who tracked down some DDoS attacks. But it’s much more than that. Read it if you’re into compsec. I enjoyed it.
Refuse ID at the Airport!
Posted by Stephen Waits Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:50:19 GMT
It’s legal! Read about it at The Identity Project.
You have to submit to secondary screening though. If enough people do this then we’ll slow down security lines. Then all the sheeple will get mad and complain, and maybe, just maybe, something will change for the better.
At a minimum, try it out and report back to that Identity Project page (linked above).
Via Schneier on Security.
Energy Questions
Posted by Stephen Waits Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:51:26 GMT
Here’s a page at Stanford that answers many common Energy Questions, such as this:
Q. Isn’t the world running out of energy.
A. No. Nuclear and solar energy are each adequate for the next billion years. That’s right; billion not just million or thousand. Bernard Cohen published the facts about that.
This page assumes the law of conservation of energy. If you don’t understand that, look at law of conservation of energy. Here’s how you can tell if you don’t understand. Several times I have received in email the following idea for powering cars with hydrogen from water. Run the car on hydrogen obtained by splitting water by electrolysis using the car’s generator to get the electricity. If you can’t quickly explain why that idea can’t work, you need to follow the above link.
.. and this:
Q. Should we go all out to economize the use of oil to make it last longer?
A. Probably not. Too many regulations are likely to be more harmful than letting the prices rise as the reserves get scarcer and as demand from the developing world grows. 2002 August: In saying this I’m disagreeing with political opinions including those dominating the scientific community and the Government financed energy studies community.
And, no, I can’t vouch for the validity of any of this – I read it on the Internet.
Search Engines for Hacking
Posted by Stephen Waits Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:22:14 GMT
Back in the day (‘92-ish) my friend and I used to use the ftp search engines to find files we were interested in. Namely, warez. :)
Anyway, that tradition has lived on throughout the years. It’s easy to find tons of webcams, open administration web pages, and the list goes on.
Google makes more directed searches easier these days. This article summarizes how to do this in Google.
Via reddit.
Airport Security Still Sucks
Posted by Stephen Waits Sat, 25 Feb 2006 16:04:38 GMT
It’s all for show, it always has been. Most of what we’re forced to go through is actually increasing our security. In fact, I’ll choose driving over flying these days, even if it takes me a bit longer to get to my destination.
Peggy Noonan sums up my thoughts nicely in this WSJ Opinion Piece.
Shrub's Foiled Terrorism "Story"
Posted by Stephen Waits Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:33:13 GMT
Honestly, when I heard the story on the radio, I immediately thought it was totally made up. It had all the catchy words in it. It was about foiling a plot that would hit the largest building on the west coast. The terrorist was going to use “shoe bombs” to penetrate the cockpit door and crash the plane into the building.
Luckily, according to Shrub, his system of illegal wiretaps can help to prevent this “attack”. He fails to mention that his administration can just as easily prevent such terrorist attacks, if we pretend for a moment that the whole story isn’t completely made up, using legal wiretaps.
After so many extraordinarily blatant lies, how does anyone believe anything this idiot says?
Anyway, here’s an article which analyzes Shrub’s fancy “story” a little more than I’m capable.
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