brainwagon

I have a couple of devices at home that provide http servers on my local network. I have them tucked nicely behind my firewall so that they are not accessible from the outside, but occasionally, I would like to login to them to perform some reconfiguration or the like. This is where ssh comes to […]

I’ve been interested in TEMPEST and related technologies for a while. Here’s another link to another paper: This project investigates a novel eavesdropping technique for spying at a distance on data that is displayed on an arbitrary computer screen, including the currently prevalent LCD monitors. Our technique exploits reflections of the screen’s optical emanations in […]

For all the people who’ve come to see this as my ham radio blog, I apologize, but I do have other interests, and computer security is one of them. It’s not that I am any kind of expert, but I have played around quite a bit with various bits of computer security and cryptography over […]

I’m not 100% obsessed (more like 98%) with radio topics: this morning, I found this link on Hack a Day which provided a link to several articles having to do with TEMPEST. I’ve blogged about TEMPEST before, but for those who haven’t heard of it before, it’s a way of eavesdropping on electronic signals by […]

I’ve bitched before about CSI and their use of “video enhancement” to read displays and the like using low resolution security cameras reflecting off objects. It’s interesting to see what is actually possible using this basic idea though. Link courtesy of Bruce Schneier’s security blog: Schneier on Security: Spying on Computer Monitors Off Reflective Objects

There is a new security update for WordPress, which I’ve already installed without any serious mishap/problems. If you run WordPress, you might think about giving it an upgrade. [tags]Wordpress,Blogging,Security[/tags] Addendum: I’ve been having minor problems with the Dashboard in this release not displaying correctly.  I’m still trying to figure it out.

Matt Blaze and company have a new paper just out entitled Signaling Vulnerabilities in Wiretapping Systems, which details a number of problems with the methods and equipment normally used by law enforcement to tap phone equipment. These include vulnerabilities that allow the surveilled party to make it appear to call numbers other than the one […]

Xerox printers use a watermarking technique to insert codes onto all printed documents from their Docucolor color laser printers. These identify date, time and printer serial number with a grid of yellow dots which appear in the printout. Presumably these codes are inserted to make the job of the Secret Service simpler in tracking their […]

Slashdot pointed at this kind of cool article on how the hidden code on the Xbox was hacked. I thought it was pretty cool and illuminating.

Boing Boing documents the quick imposition and then reversal of a cell phone ban in the Lincoln and Holland tunnels in NY. Apparently they were concerned over the risk that remotely detonated devices presented, but (as the NYPD apparently pointed out) the idea of having a place where people cannot use their cell phones to […]

Tom sent me a pointer to Jef Poskanzer’s notes on how he handles a million spam messages every day. No, that’s note an exaggeration, Jef gets hit by a million of them every day. Holy crap. Jef is a the author of the really nice thttpd, which I used to run my website for years […]

Courtesy of Scoble’s blog, here is a post concerning “Low Rights Internet Explorerer”: IEBlog : Clarifying Low-Rights IE Low-rights IE will only be available in Longhorn because it’s based on the new Longhorn security features that make running without Administrator privileges an easy option for users (User Account Protection). When users run programs with limited […]

Sigh. Things like this really depress me. Minnesota court takes dim view of encryption | CNET News.com A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent. From the PGP FAQ: Who uses PGP? People who value privacy use PGP. Politicians running […]

This EFF-funded project sounds very interesting. It attempts to provide anonymity by making traffic analysis difficult by using something called an onion router. I’ll have to read more about it. Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and […]

Boing Boing mentioned a paper by Markus Kuhn on reconstructing the contents of a screen by measuring the reflected light in a room with a fast photosensor. Cool stuff, reminiscent of Ross Anderson’s work with Soft Tempest, which I experimented with briefly.