Category: Uncategorized

Write Down Your Password

Microsoft’s Jesper Johansson urged people to write down their passwords.

This is good advice, and I’ve been saying it for years.

Simply, people can no longer remember passwords good enough to reliably defend against dictionary attacks, and are much more secure if they choose a password too complicated to remember and then write it down. We’re all good at securing small pieces of paper. I recommend that people write their passwords down on a small piece of paper, and keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper (i.e. their money) in their wallet.

In related news the BBC reports on a survey carried out by IT security firm Cyber-Ark that reveals that major companies’ computer passwords are ‘up for grabs’.

Half of IT managers employed by large-sized companies believe it would be relatively easy to gain the core passwords for their computer systems.

I disagree with the tone of the story which suggests that physically securing paper copies of core passwords in a safe or locked filing cabinet is less secure than digitally securing them.

Cyber-Ark would appear I believe to be biased as they offer technologies to digitally secure passwords and manage identities. I think as long as the company had a security policy that was followed in regard to access to any safe that contained core passwords this would be as secure as needed.

Tags: computer security, security

A report in today’s issue of the Independent on Sunday by Francis Elliott, Andy McSmith and Sophie Goodchild reveals that Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash

Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this week.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an initial cost of £750 each.

This seems to be a desperate move by the Government to ensure that they regain the public support for the scheme as the expected cost has continued to rise the support has decreased.

In seeking to offset the cost by selling off information they hope to gain the public’s support again. Of course if they follow through with this proposal they not only will have rescinded on their pledge that “unlike electoral registers, the National Identity Register will not be open for any general access or inspection” but will compromise the security of the National Identity Register.

The greater the access to the Register there is the more likely that the information will make it into the hands of criminals or terrorists therefore increasing the likelihood of identity theft that the Identity Card scheme is designed to prevent.

The National Identity card bill will be going before parliament yet again this coming Tuesday. Government whips are confident of winning Tuesday’s vote, but opponents are predicting that the process can be killed off before implementation due to the ever-rising costs and the now apparent risks of database breach or failure.

EDIT: Thanks to Murky.org I’ve discovered some additional links of possible interest.

ID cards: a child’s view, even a child can see how flawed the scheme is.

In today’s Sunday Times we discover that costs may force ID cards to be cheap ‘chip and pin’, thus doing away with the biometric system that although imperfect and flawed in many ways would be a much more secure system for verifying that the card was held by the true cardholder. Ironically one of the primary motives for the proposed card in the first place was that the US was insisting on taking biometric data on all visitors to their country.

It really does seem that the government wishes to install an ID card system by any means possible even if those means totally undermine the security of the system and make the ID card utterly unable to fulfil any of the objectives it’s introduction is meant to.

Edit: 28/06/2005

The Home Office has denied a report the personal details of millions of Britons could be sold to help pay for the introduction of identity cards in this BBC report ID card database ‘not for sale’.

Tags: ID cards, politics, security

In these times of increased werewolf activity it is a good thing that the dying art of forging silver bullets has been given life again.

Actually, not many people ever made silver bullets. It’s a difficult process, and their efficacy against werewolves has never been scientifically proven.

Scientifically proven or not I believe that the growing threat of Werewolves must be addressed somehow and I’m putting my trust in silver bullets. [via]

Please note that the above post is not a thinly veiled allegory where the threat of Werewolves can be be replaced with the threat of Copyright infringement and the term silver bullet can be replaced by DRM. I believe that DRM technologies have even less efficacy against copyright infringement than silver bullets do against Werewolves.

Tags: copyright, DRM, werewolves

More of those damn OAPs blighting my life. 😀

One old lady who was slowly making her way past the cinema on her Zimmerframe saw me standing by the door and told me that she didn’t like modern films and hadn’t been to the cinema since Rudolph Valentino.

Lying so-and-so. I suppose it’s possible as she was a very old lady but as he died in 1926 I think it is highly unlikely.

Perhaps it was his untimely death that caused her to stop going to the cinema as he was mourned by a great deal of people. Over 80 000 mourners turned out for his funeral and Hollywood legend relates the story that thousands of women lined the streets, causing riots. Several of his fans were even said to have committed suicide.

Tags: cinema

Software piracy ‘seen as normal’

‘Bury bad news’ claim on ID cards

Tags: ID cards, piracy

The Sun newspaper published an article today by undercover reporter Oliver Hardy concerning the sale of the details of Britons’ bank accounts by Indian call centre workers.

Your life for sale

Cash for a villain … crooked Kkaran Bahree with Sun undercover reporter Oliver Harvey in Delhi

Crooked call centre workers in India are flogging details of Britons’ bank accounts, a Sun probe has found.

Our undercover reporter was sold the top secret information on a thousand accounts, and numbers of passports and credit cards.

But what happens once those details have been stolen? For answers we look to the following New York Times article. Black Market in Stolen Credit Card Data Thrives on Internet

But surely the introduction of a National ID card will stop this blight of identity theft. Well actually no it won’t, it could even make it easier for criminals to steal your identity and the consequences will be far worse.

Tags: ID cards, Identity Theft

A customer asked me today.

What is War of the Worlds?

What the fuck planet you been living on lady? Have you never heard of the book let alone managed to miss the media blitz that has happened about the new movie starring Tom Cruise.

Of course I didn’t say that but I am constantly astounded that I have to explain what the big summer blockbusting movies are. I’d understand if it was some obscure European movie and I’m quite happy to describe what they are about, but when it is a movie that is advertised many times a day on television, is on magazine covers and is being indirectly promoted by articles about Tom Cruise and his recently announced engagement to Katie Holmes I’m almost literally struck dumb.

See also:
The official movie website.
I’m really looking forward to seeing this movie as it is a favourite book of mine and although Spielberg does tend towards schmaltz he is a very able director.

Dark Horse The War of the Worlds comic adapted and abridged by Ian Edginton with art by D’Israeli. This looks damn good as well, D’Israeli’s art is beautiful.

There has been a slew of War of the Worlds adaptations in recent years, there has been another movie this unlike Spielberg’s set in the original period and there was the Alan Moore comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2, which was an interesting twist on the original.

Tags: books, movies

I caught a programme on BBC Two last night about punctuation, specifically bad punctuation and the poor placement of apostrophes.

It really is a hornets’ nest as can be seen from the comments about it at the BBC website.

How’s your punctuation? Test yourself, find out here.
Amazingly I scored 83%

Tags: punctuation, TV

Bad Wolf revealed

The series as a whole was a lot better than I was expecting. I thought that I would watch it regardless but probably not make that great an effort to see every episode but after the first one I was hooked and it became must watch TV for me.

I think Russell T Davies has done really well to craft this series as it had pretty much everything a long-time fan could want but also be a great introduction to the character for those newcomers.

I must say that the Dalek’s massacre of all on floor 0 was exciting and unexpected in an expected kind of way and a little scary too. They killed everyone, even the younglings!

DO NOT INTERRUPT! DO NOT INTERRUPT!

CBBC: Doctor Who Series 2 secrets revealed

In the first series we had the Bad Wolf running through, is there anything similar in the second series?

“Yes there is, and that word has already been heard on screen. And that’s all I’m saying. You’ll have to go back and trawl through 13 episodes to realise what I’m on about.

“You’ll hear the word in the Christmas special though”

Can you tell us a bit about the Christmas special?

“It’s going to be 60 minutes long. It’s the first story of the new Doctor played by David Tennant.

“I remember when I was young it’s very strange when a new Doctor comes along, and that’s exactly how Rose feels. Her mum gets involved again, but beyond that I can’t give anything else away.

“It’s as Christmassy as can be. It’s got reindeer, it’s got sleigh bells, it’s got the works.”

On a related theme BBC News reports that a New scientific model ‘permits time travel’.

Novikov self-consistency principle

Tags: Doctor Who, science, TV

David Rowan writes in today’s Times Copyright wrongs: we can’t let the music industry suits stifle creativity

The essayist and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay understood the perils when a similar battle to extend copyright was being waged in 1841. Amid calls to stretch the protection to 60 years after death, Macaulay saw no public benefit from a monopoly lasting longer than 42 years or life. “Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not?” he asked in the House of Commons. “Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? An advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action.” Many valuable works, he argued, would be suppressed — and publishers treated with such contempt that the reading public would happily turn to “piratical booksellers”.

A 20-year patent limit forces other industries to innovate, so why should the innately risk-averse record labels need any more than a 50-year monopoly? If Mr Purnell truly wants to foster creativity, he ought to broaden his musical tastes.

It is in my opinion a well argued case that Mr. Rowan makes for not extending copyright if the goal is to foster further creativity.

Tags: copyright