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Computing

Exploit of DRAM vulnerability leads to attack vector on disk encryption

Ed Felten and his colleagues have released an amazing research result which leads to an attack on hard disk encryption systems such as TrueCrypt, BitLocker and FileVault. Through the process of rapidly reducing the temperature of the memory chips in a computer they can extract the data contained within which would include the encryption key neccessary to decrypt the computer’s hard drive. [via]

Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access. We use cold reboots to mount attacks on popular disk encryption systems — BitLocker, FileVault, dm-crypt, and TrueCrypt — using no special devices or materials.

This is a very interesting piece of research but I don’t believe that it actually yields a practicable attack on hard disk encryption as long as the user maintains control of their computer in the thirty seconds or less following shutdown.

Just make sure that you don’t leave your laptop laying around whilst in sleep mode or locked by a screensaver password, but a user with enough security sense to have hard disk encryption on there computer is unlikely to do that anyway.

Declan McCullagh gives his analysis of the research in this article Disk encryption may not be secure enough, new research finds.

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Copyright Politics Uncategorized

Illegal downloaders ‘face UK ban’

British internet users face ban for illegal downloads. A draft copy of a Green Paper produced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was leaked to The Times newspaper which detailed how the government was considering introducing legislation that would require ISPs to take action against users who access pirated material.

The Government’s resolve on the issue has apparently been stiffened following similar proposals made by the governments of the US and France. The proposal is designed to bolster the UK’s creative industries but it is questionable how much impact it will have on piracy and how willing Internet Service Providers will be to cut off their revenue by banning their own customers.

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Comics Reviews TV

Smallville sufferance

I don’t know why I continue to watch Smallville as it just pisses me off that there seems to be far too little movement towards Clark becoming Superman. I guess the producers figured that the endpoint of the show would be when he finally took up the mantle that was his destiny.

But it’s dragged on for six and a half seasons now, and he’s in his early twenties it’s about time that the character got his journalism degree ( the whole Clark and the gang go to college thing was dropped pretty quickly), stopped bumming around on the family farm and started frigging flying.

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Reviews TV

Review: Ashes to Ashes

One of the stand out shows on the BBC of the last few years was Life on Mars (BBC|Wikipedia), which saw DCI Sam Tyler played by John Simm waking up in the year 1973 after being hit by a car in 2006.

Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time?

The first episode of Ashes to Ashes (BBC|Wikipedia) the sequel series was screened last night and though I thought it was good fun and I enjoyed it a great deal at the moment I feel it isn’t quite in the same league as Life on Mars.

I liked the mystery and ambiguity over Sam’s predicament in Life on Mars but the final episode of that is like the first page of Ashes to ashes and it’s pretty clear that Alex is gravely injured from the gunshot and is probably experiencing the alternate universe of Gene Hunt (based on the report of Sam Tyler’s that she’d just read) as she dies.

With the Geneverse being clearly not based in reality from the outset in this show they’ve decided to go all out and create a bit of a pastiche of Miami Vice albeit set in London. Hopefully the Miami Vice idea of flash cars, speedboats and automatic weapons doesn’t survive beyond this first episode as fun as it was it was frankly a bit rubbish.

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Reviews TV

Lost: 4.02 Confirmed Dead

Episode two of the new season continues at the same heights of quality established in the season three finale and begins with a great WTF moment – the discovery on the ocean floor of the wreckage of Oceanic 815! Then cut to Daniel Faraday the guy that parachuted onto the Island as the end of the last episode inexplicably crying at having seen the wreckage on the TV news. Presumably this is a flashback.

Locke is acting like Colonel Kurtz – nice one Sawyer.

I think Ben is more of a manipulator than an outright liar as he mostly does tell the truth but spins it in such a way as to make people do what he wants them to do. He is pretty much several steps ahead of anyone else and so it’s never clear what his motives or intentions ultimately are.

It’s only a matter of time ’til he gets us Johnny and he’s already worked out how he’s gonna do it.

Again Sawyer’s perception of others is spot on in my opinion.

Faraday proves to be just what the viewers are seeking as he’s pretty forthcoming as to answering questions and seems pretty knowledgeable. Confirms that the freighter isn’t there to rescue them but is cut off from revealing what their primary mission is by another new character Miles Straum, Ghostbuster. Lost has skirted near to the supernatural before but Miles’s ability to converse with the dead is right in that zone.

Meanwhile the third of the people from the freighter Charlotte Staples Lewis is out of the frying pan and into the fire when having landed badly from the helicopter she’s now discovered by Locke’s party. In flashback we’ve seen her discover in Tunisia a Dharma collar round the skeleton of a polar bear, evidence of multiple Dharma sites round the globe or some freaky dimensional rift thing. “You’ve been living here this entire time?” Is it just me or does her incredulity here suggest that in the outside world a greater period has passed than the 90 days that have passed on the Island.

This might tie up with the fact that it doesn’t seem long enough for Frank Lapidus to have fallen to being a pilot for a Caribbean tours company from having been an airline pilot for Oceanic. But then as he was almost the pilot of Oceanic 815 he might have felt survivors guilt and quit immediately.

Bullet proof vest, guns and Naomi’s “Tell my sister that I love her” indeed being a code heavily suggests that the freighties came expecting trouble. But trouble from whom? They’ve come for Ben and if they have any knowledge of him and the Others then it seems like a wise precaution. But none of them were particularly surprised by the Oceanic 815’s survivors presence on the Island and it has to be remembered that they in their encounters with the Others have proved themselves to be dangerous also.

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Uncategorized

Archbishop of Canterbury: Sharia law in UK is ‘unavoidable’

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK seems “unavoidable”.

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting some aspects of Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.

I don’t think the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is unavoidable nor desirable. Just because some British citizens don’t relate to the legal system does not mean that a parallel legal system that they’d be more comfortable with should be adopted. As it is it could be argued that British prisons are full of people that don’t relate to the British legal system should we adopt a separate system for them too. One legal system for drug dealers and another for the rest of us.

This is not the way the British legislative process works nor should it be.

Although if you believe crackpots like Melanie Phillips it is inevitable anyway because of the Government’s appeasement to Islamic extremists and the onset of the Islamification of Europe.

I don’t see how having separate systems brings out social cohesion either as surely it does the exact opposite and only serves to increase the differences between communities.

Also it seems unworkable to me. Which system would take primacy when one party wanted their case heard in a Sharia court but the other party didn’t or in the case of something like adultery which the British legal system doesn’t take a view on but Sharia law does.

He suggests that marital disputes could be dealt with in a Sharia court but in the case of marriages and divorces British civil law takes precedence over Canon law of the Church of England so why should Muslims have it any different.

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Uncategorized

Homicide: The real life on the streets

Using Google maps The Baltimore Sun have plotted all the murders that were committed in 2007 and so far in 2008. As well as switching between the year that the murders took place in the results can be filtered by age, gender and race and it can be seen that a disproportionate number of them are young black men.

That last statistic won’t surprise viewers of The Wire though.

Categories
Computing

Vulnerability in Google’s handling of SSL and session IDs

Wired’s Threat Level blog covers the vulnerability in Google’s handling of SSL and session IDs.

One of the big stories at DefCon last year was a security researcher’s demonstration of wirelessly sniffing users’ session cookies while they accessed their e-mail accounts or conducted e-commerce transactions via wireless networks. The attack allowed a hacker access to the victim’s Gmail or Hotmail account without needing to decipher the user’s password.

Now the security researcher who presented that info has found that even using SSL HTTPS to access your Gmail account — which was touted at the time as a surefire way to protect Gmail users against such an attack — is vulnerable to this hack.

Additional coverage at The Register.

Categories
Computing

Pension details of M&S staff left on stolen laptop

BBC News: M&S staff details left on laptop

Marks and Spencer has been found in breach of data protection rules after the theft of a laptop containing the personal details of 26,000 employees.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the data on the laptop, which was stolen from the home of an M&S contractor, was unencrypted.

The ICO has ordered M&S to make sure all laptop hard drives are fully encrypted by April 2008.

Categories
Reviews TV

Lost: 4.01 The Beginning Of The End

So Lost season four starts and we’re straight back to a recap of events on the island from season three’s finale.

– Not Penny’s boat. Charlie sacrifices himself in order to pass on this most important message to Desmond.
– Locke kills Naomi. After his strange encounter with Walt he’s under the same impression that Ben is that the boat people are not who they say they are.

Great fake out with Hurley’s Camaro crashing through the pile of mangoes as we are no longer on the island we are indeed in another flash forward, but Jack seems less far gone so it would suggest that it’s not quite as far in the future as season three’s finale was.

I’m one of the Oceanic Six!

Which begs the question which six people made it off the island? Jack, Kate and Hurley for sure, but as Kate is a fugitive perhaps her presence off-island in the future is not widely known. So Kate cannot be confirmed as one of the six.

The detective that’s interviewing Hurley is Ana-Lucia’s former partner and has no idea that she survived the crash, Hurley claims not to have known her at all. The implication here is that the outside world thinks that other than the Oceanic Six everyone on the plane died in the crash and for some reason the six that made it back are not telling the truth.

Hurley’s having visions and wants to return to the nuthouse. Charlie is telling him that ‘They need him’, which they is it the other survivors who are left on the island?
Hurley’s cannonball is one of unparalleled joy and by the look of the flashforward is the last moment of happiness for poor Hurley. Not sure why he thinks all his money will be gone upon his return though as he’s only been missing a relatively short period of time and so couldn’t have been declared dead yet.

Naomi’s not dead!

Matthew Abaddon looks evil from the very moment that he smiles and waves at Hurley and learning what his name is just confirms that suspicion. Though he claims to be a lawyer for Oceanic I have a feeling he’s not but if not then who does he work for. No business cards just seems like a signal to the audience that he ain’t what he claims to be surely because all the major players certainly have the resources to fake a few business cards. “Are they still alive?” Who does he mean?

Given Hurley’s character I’m sure the only reason he’d not tell the truth about the crash would be so he could protect those who were left behind on the island.

Nice caring moment with Sawyer checking on Hurley to make sure he’s okay but the Hurley gets good and lost on the trek from the beach and we get some spooky shit with the whispers in the jungle and Hurley encounters Jacob’s cabin. Is that Christian Shephard in the rocking chair?

“Tell my sister that I love her” is surely as coded message from Naomi to the freighter for “These crazy Oceanic survivors have killed me!”

How does Locke know about Charlie’s message and death? Has he been tracking the beach party and eavesdropping on them.

Charlie finally catches up with Hurley at the nuthouse and he isn’t merely a hallucination as another patient saw him. He is dead but he’s also here. Is Charlie a creation of the Island? And if he is then the Island has an ability to project well beyond itself. He has a message for Hurley he needs to return.

Jack would have killed Locke had the gun been loaded.

Powerful moment when Hurley rejects Jack’s leadership to join Locke and in doing so he initiates the split in the group and Sawyer joins Locke too. This is interesting as we know that members of both groups make it off the island but it is only Jack’s that intends to meet with the people from the freighter.

The final flashforward reveals a lot as Jack says he’s thinking of growing a beard and at the moment does not want to ever return to the Island even though Hurley does since receiving Charlie’s message. So this flashforward takes place before that of the season three finale and consequently something significant has to happen to Jack other than the growing of a beard to see him start drinking heavily again and to want to return to the Island.