Convenience vs Security in the Real World
Shmoocon is a security/hacker conference where security people show how to hack and how to protect against hacks for personal and corporate needs. If you know how to hack someone else, then you are better equipped to prevent those same attacks against yourself, your clients, and your company.
At Shmoocon, a presenter showed how to use those convenient RFID payment chips inside Debit and credit cards for fraud
Just because something is easy, doesn’t make it a good idea. Look for the full video link later in the comments.
Use Complex UserIDs When Passwords Are Too Short 4
Passwords Too Short?
Sometimes websites don’t allow strong passwords. No punctuation, spaces or over 20 characters, so what can we do to increase the security just a little?
Change our login account ID to something long and random. Often, userIDs don’t have to be an email address or your name – they can be anything – perhaps 30 characters long. So, use a long, random userid for those websites that can’t allow long, complex passwords for whatever reason. Combined the userid and password will hopefully be more secure in this way.
A Question to You 2
The Question
If wiretaps and intercepting snail-mail both require a court order in the USA, then why doesn’t listening in on internet communications also require a court order?
Poor Design Wastes 3 Slots In a PC Case 6
Ever wonder what PC card designers are thinking? A system here has an adapter that converts Infiniband into 4 internal SATA ports. That’s fantastic, but the design of that adapter is less than desireable. It takes up 3 PCI slots. I’ve lost the use of 3 PCI slots just due to poor design.
Home Nerd-Station Setup for Servers
Thought we’d get off the software and virtualization track a little with this post. I hope you don’t mind.
Below is a photo of the rack setup for my home-office here. Notice that the rack is a steel rack on wheels, like you may see at a bakery or in restaurant storage areas. There are 5 cables that leave the rack. Everything else is connected on the rack itself. Those external connections have plenty of slack.
When I need to work on connections from the back, I’ll swing the entire rack out for easy access.
The keep the noise level low, the lowest rack has some carpet. It is amazing how much this helps reduce vibration noise. Simply amazing. Before the carpet, it was tough to work in this room.
There is other equipment not pictured (storage, routers, computers, portable devices) on the network too. Nothing too exotic or expensive. Most of that other stuff is 4+ yrs old. Heck, most of the stuff shown in the photo is over 4 yrs old too.
