July 23rd, 2008 Anthony Towry
If you remember and I'm sure that you do, a while back some researchers at Princeton released a demonstration video of shaping encryption keys from frozen memory. They proved that RAM may not be quite as volatile as everyone had previously assumed. The tool they used is now public information. Great, great...so the hell what.
Another researcher had proved that through the use of a device with direct memory access (DMA) one could execute arbitrary commands by manipulating memory.
Access to memory + Crypto key shaping tool = pwned hard disk encryption without the need for a can of air and the ability to disassemble the computer (also sweet for 0wning the MacBook Air's smug little soldered on RAM).
Now, such a tool does not yet exist (to my knowledge). Fertile ground.
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June 21st, 2008 Anthony Towry
Vintage potentiometers are on the loose here at CalculatedDecision.com. We've got a box of these rare and hard to find components that need a home! If you want to go old school on some audio equipment or other vintage device these may be just the thing. Check out the page for more information on purchasing.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
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December 13th, 2007 Anthony Towry
So, I recently took a little trip to the Apple store and grabbed up that MacBook Pro I was talking about getting. I must say, it is a sweet piece of hardware. I'm really enjoying it.
My first step was loading up VMware Fusion and checking out performance on an installation of Windows XP and Visual Studio 2005. No problems so far. I'll need to stress it out with SQL Server 2005 here soon and see if it smokes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Hardware, Operating Systems, Security | No Comments »
December 1st, 2007 Anthony Towry
So, lately I've been thinking about getting a MacBook Pro to use as my main computing platform. I've been wanting a machine with native *nix support and kicking virtualization options (VMWare Fusion) since I'll be keeping one foot in the .Net world. Of course I risk joining the fanboy cult of Mac, but "what are ya gonna do?" Read the rest of this entry »
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September 24th, 2007 Anthony Towry
The iPhone remains one of the focal points of our lives these days. Hell, I don't even have one and I'm seeing all sorts of interesting news.
Today's special is "Apple Hosing Devices". So, Apple is pushing out a firmware update that is possibly going to have the side-effect of breaking hacked iPhones. Which, on the one hand, if I'm a manufacturer I don't have to make my next version of software play nice with the hack jobs on the street. OK, cool. However, when the update is aimed at the hack jobs, that's not cool.
Remember, if they don't want you to play with it...you probably should.
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September 2nd, 2007 Anthony Towry
A white-paper published by Stanford students explores an option for reducing the effectiveness of shoulder surfing. Basically, the paper Reducing Shoulder-surfing by Using Gaze-based Password Entry takes a new look at tracking eye movement as a form of user input.
Based on the results of the study the technology is just not there for this to be a practical password entry mechanism. Many modern systems lock after a number of failed attempts, as they should, but with these devices upping the legitimate users being left out on the street.
Overall, I think this is a really exciting area of study. Shoulder surfing is a real threat that doesn't take a tremendous amount of sophistication to execute. The way this will play out largely depends on hardware advancement in the areas of high-resolution video cameras.
Another really cool thing is that as this technology advances regarding security applications it will also impact areas of the accessibility market or vice versa.
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August 28th, 2007 Anthony Towry
That's the question those crazy kids over at F-Secure are asking...again. Recently, F-Secure uncovered a new hiding place created by a Sony software driver meant to enable a USB based fingerprint reader.
After reading through the F-Secure blog entry we can see that while this is certainly not a confidence builder, it appears that the device is no longer in production (putting this a few notches lower on the important things list). The real issue with this is "Really Sony? You want to do ride this ride again?", because the headline over at the Inquirer reads "Sony Installs Another Rootkit". Pretty damning.
Personally I don't think there's much of a story here. I hope Sony is scared to even think about implementing these tactics in the future, because it's obvious the kids on the street are ready to jump all over it.
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July 26th, 2007 Anthony Towry
By Christmas the average American might have the ability to purchase the much talked about XO laptop. The story over at eWeek.
OLPC is a pretty awesome project with some ambitious goals. Basically, their objective is to bring computing/technology/education to children in economically depressed parts of the world.
The device itself is incredibly well thought out and includes features necessary to keep it up and running in extremely harsh conditions (environmental and social). I'm in love with the whole idea and if this thing becomes available I'm all over it.
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