Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Category: Privacy and Security

  • The Keys to the City are Yours

    I have many opinions about Wikileaks,  none of which are original or interesting (if you want that, try here, here, here, here, here, here and  here). What I find more interesting (and disturbing) is the reappearance of Anonymous to defend Wikileaks. Three  thoughts: If a bunch of anonymous hackers can take down several notable sites…

  • Charleston Town Center Mall abuses private citizens!

    A few days ago an internationally known award-winning photographer was arrested for innocuous taking of photos (and allegedly resisting arrest). Gary Harki writes a great story of the incident. As it happens, this photographer was arrested once before – for taking photos of Bill Gates wedding from a public place. The photographer sued the major…

  • “There is just nothing left of her.”

    Karen de Sa reports a heartbreaking story of parental abuse and murder. The criminal father of a young girl received full custody during a divorce and ended up killing her. The method was particularly nefarious. Not only did he sexually abuse her, but he told everyone that the girl had run away.  The mother disagreed…

  • Thread to End all Threads

    Last Saturday I came across a single post on a forum. This forum was one I had never heard of, and the subject was something I had also never heard of. Someone had linked to it from another site, and I found the subject to be of immense interest. I am not going to mention…

  • Advertising vs privacy

    Wow, I knew about the trick of replacing your hosts file on your PC to block out adware/spyware/malware traffic. But last time I installed Windows I never got around to doing it. After I came across this site about blocking parasites from your PC, I got around to doing it. Yes, it works (you should…

  • XSS, Privacy and Carnivals and Bandwidth penetration

    An anonymous slashdot poster on why XSS vulnerabilities occur Samidh Chaktrabarti on the Carnival Booth algorithm for defeating terrorists. Speaking of airline security, practical nomad gets harrassed for making sure an airport worker was affiliated with TSA. Kip Hawley is an idiot…or some think that. Richard Wray reports some remarkable statistics on broadband penetration: In…

  • P2p the safe way

    Great digg forum about how to use p2p without getting hounded by the RIAA/MPAA. The consensus seems to be: 1)use usenet (you’ll have to pay $15 or so, but you’re not sharing anything, plus usenet servers don’t keep logs), 2)only use private torrent trackers (i.e., darknets like waste) and 3)use encryption methods like Tor, 4)put…

  • Incompetent Content Filters at school

    If you’ve been following the Amero case (about the substitute teacher who accidentally exposed her students to porn because of spyware), this analysis (7 pages long!)  by Mark Rasch is particularly thorough. Actually, given the fact that I am single, I am relatively ignorant about home solutions for content-filtering for PCs accessible to kids. Anybody…

  • Bluesecurity calls it quits! Spam Problem Continues

    Slashdot forum on the announcement that bluesecurity is getting out of the spam-fighting business. Some of the juicier comments: Which brings us right back to a centralized server in the first place. As long as everything has to pass through a single choke point (or even a small number of them), they are susceptible to…

  • Using Blue Frog to Fight Email Spam

    Email spam wars have begun! The spam fighters are under attack, but bluesecurity.com is where you can download blue frog, a tool that sends opt-out emails to spammers. A security expert summarizes: Blue Security’s approach to reducing unsolicited email is to combine a do not email registry with a mechanism that automates and simplifies the…

  • Statements and Contradictions (or Lies)

    George W. Bush, April 20, 2004 : Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.…

  • Falafel and Patriots

    The Onion’s scoop on the renewal of the Patriot Act: (See Dec 13) Bill Parker, Metal Fabricator “Dammit! I’m never going to be able to check that falafel cookbook out of the library.”

  • Is .xxx a bad idea?

    Why a .xxx is a bad idea. I summarize: 1)they’ll be pressured to allocate certain IP addresses for adult sites, and that would be admininistratively maddening. 2)they’ll be pressured to create different categories of content (i.e., somewhatdirty.dirtysite.xxx vs. reallydirty.dirtysite.xxx) which is ultimately self-defeating, 3)it’s a trivial task to redirect people from a .com site to…

  • Finding Rootkits on Windows/ Yum in Linux

    Rootkit revealers for Windows. From a slashdot forum on how to know if your machine is a zombie. The thought of this terrifies me. Here’s a list of valuable linux tools. Last night I made the switch to fedora (though I haven’t configured wireless or networking). I have to admit; I’m spoiled by gentoo’s emerge…

  • Hotmail for Terrorists

    Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser write an article about how al Queda used publicly available technology to run a base of operations. The movement has also innovated with great creativity to protect its most secret communications. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks later arrested in Pakistan, used what four…

  • Notes to the Guy Hacking my System

    Yesterday listened to the amazing audio talk by Clay Shirky, “Ontologies are overrated”. This talk (which later formed the basis for his article bearing the same title) is fascinating and important. I’ll respond when I have time. Handy list of computer security tools. Rootkithunter as was public key encryption and Monit was recommended to me…