Categories
Computing

How To Safely Store A Password

Use bcrypt

Categories
Computing

Parallel Algorithm Leads to Crypto Breakthrough

Parallel Algorithm Leads to Crypto Breakthrough [via]

Dr. Dobbs reports that a cracking algorithm using brute force methods can analyze the entire DES 56-bit keyspace with a throughput of over 280 billion keys per second, the highest-known benchmark speeds for 56-bit DES decryption and can accomplish a key recovery that would take years to perform on a PC, even with GPU acceleration, in less than three days using a single, hardware-accelerated server with a cluster of 176 FPGAs. The massively parallel algorithm iteratively decrypts fixed-size blocks of data to find keys that decrypt into ASCII numbers. Candidate keys that are found in this way can then be more thoroughly tested to determine which candidate key is correct.

Categories
Security

Pick Locks Like a Pro

Pick Locks Like a Pro
Via: Online Education

Categories
Reviews TV

24 Day 8: 8pm – 9pm

Not much security related in this episode but still lots of ridiculousness and illogical situations.

The Russian mobster’s son is dying of radiation sickness but he refuses to allows his other son to take him to the doctor. Really not much a doctor could do anyway as there is no cure a doctor can only alleviate the symptoms with anaesthetics (to relieve the pain) and antibiotics (to prevent infections due to the compromised immune system). If he is dying why not put him out of his misery?

Of course number one son ignores his father’s sage advice and not only takes his brother to a doctor but then tells the doctor it’s due to weapons grade uranium. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure that it is not medically relevant to know what isotope it was that caused the radiation sickness.

I love Jack’s hypocrisy, Renee is no more unstable and brutal than he’s ever been. Even her death wish is not that far removed from some of his behaviour in previous seasons.

The subplot regarding Dana’s mysterious past stands out so far as the most stupid element of this season so far. Would CTU agents be allowed unsecured cell phones at work? Apparently her past involves being an ex-con, as an accessory to murder! Then her ex-boyfriend seems to be succeeding in his plan to blackmail her into violating CTU security to give him classified documents that he can sell. I think that for any sane person that the risk of being caught and tried as a traitor would be a far worse scenario than merely losing one’s job.

How did the nuclear material get smuggled into the US and how do they propose to smuggle it out again? Since 9/11 there have been great strides in outfitting US and borders with radiation detection equipment and under the Container Security Initiative foreign ports that are shipping containers into the US, so this would appear to be a nigh on impossible proposition in the real world. Ironically the CSI according to Misha Glenny in his book McMafia has created a situation where it is now easier to smuggle goods into the US because foreign officials can be bribed to overlook what a container might have in it as long as it does not have nuclear material.

Categories
TV

Passwords in House M.D.

In Episode 17 (Season 5): “The Social Contract” of House M.D. there is a throwaway line about how Wilson never password protects his patient files.

The context is that House has sent Taub to discover what Wilson is up to behind his back instead of going to the Monster Truck Rally with him. Taub brings back a bunch of print outs of deleted emails including one exchange between Wilson and a fellow oncologist from another hospital which included a patient file that couldn’t be printed out because it was password protected.

I’d be very worried if doctors were not routinely encrypting files let alone merely password protecting them if they are sending them via email.

Categories
Movies Reviews

Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air

Categories
Copyright

"Offline" filesharing recognised as a threat

Call for study of threat from “offline” filesharing

Policymakers urgently need better information on people’s attitudes to copyright law, according to a report out today warning that friends swapping hard drives and memory sticks could pose as great a piracy threat to media companies as online filesharers.

Storage capacity is going steadily up and up, cost per GB is steadily coming down and bits are never going to be hard to copy.

No matter what steps corporations and governments take to combat file-sharing it will be impossible to stamp it out completely.

Categories
TV

David Simon interview in Vice magazine

Vice magazine interviews David Simon about The Wire, politics and his new TV show Tremé.

Categories
Terrorism

UK "terrorism" stop-and-searches ruled illegal

BBC News reports Stop-and-search powers ruled illegal by European court [via]

Categories
Comics TV

Why hasn’t Gotham Central been adapted into a TV series?

Marc Bernardin of the io9 blog asks Where’s My Goddamn Gotham Central TV Show?.

I have to agree. Not only is Gotham Central one of the best written comic book series of the last ten years but it is ideally suited to be adapted into a television series.

Gotham Central is a police procedural whose story focused not on Batman but instead on the Gotham City Police Department and the difficulties of its officers living and working in Gotham City replete with supervillains and also having to deal with less fantastical stuff such as corruption within in their own department.

There were rumours at the time of its publication that it might be adapted into a television series but following the failure of Birds of Prey it was decided by Warner Bros. Television not to pursue the project.

But that was before the success of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. They could and should capitalise on the renewed interest in Batman and Gotham City and as police procedurals are a staple of US television I believe it is not all that much of a gamble.