October 3, 2012
,
12:44 -0400
Hubert Chathi: SHA-3 competition winner announced: keccak #
Link: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/winner_sha-3.html
Via: reddit
0 Comments
August 7, 2012
,
15:51 -0400
Hubert Chathi: "If you have an AppleID, every time you call Pizza Hut, you’ve giving the 16-year-old on the other end of the line all he needs to take over your entire digital life. " #
Link: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/
0 Comments
July 19, 2012
,
18:40 -0400
Hubert Chathi: Man who protested TSA by stripping is acquitted of indecent exposure #
Link: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/07/northeast_portland_man_who_str.html
Via: /.
0 Comments
April 18, 2012
,
14:03 -0400
Hubert Chathi: Schneier's take on Hawley's essay #
Link: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/hawley_channels.html
0 Comments
April 16, 2012
,
11:10 -0400
Hubert Chathi: Kip Hawley is not an idiot? #
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577335783535660546.html
Via: Slashdot
0 Comments
September 16, 2011
, ,
10:27 -0400
Hubert Chathi: Help stop the proposed warrantless spying legislation http://www.StopSpying.ca/ # #
0 Comments
July 18, 2011
,
12:38 -0400
Hubert Chathi: "If you wanted to be a smuggler, probably the first thing you'd want to do is enrol in the Nexus program" http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/07/18/bc-nexus-pass-smuggling-border.html #
0 Comments
January 22, 2010
, ,
12:37 -0500
Hubert Chathi: OK, now this is really getting ridiculous http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bomb_scare_aboard_plane_caused_by_harmless_prayer_box # #
0 Comments
January 5, 2010
,
14:55 -0500
Hubert Chathi: stupid paranoia wins again http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/05/security-canada-us-airport.html #
0 Comments
December 17, 2009
, ,
18:07 -0500
Hubert Chathi: Nearly 2/3 of Canadians would # online http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2009/12/17/ekos-poll.html In related news, nearly 2/3 of Canadians don't understand #
0 Comments
July 17, 2009
,
11:40 -0400
Hubert Chathi: wants users to have passwords that are 20 characters long, with at least 8 upper-case letters, 9 lowercase letters, 4 digits, and 8 Unicode symbols above the normal ASCII range... #
0 Comments
December 3, 2008

clipperz

, ,
17:40 -0500
[thumbnail]
URL:
http://www.clipperz.com/
Tags:
security, privacy

I used to pretty much only use my laptop, which was nice, because all my data was stored in one place. However, I now use a desktop computer at work. For the most part, it's OK, because I don't need to access much work stuff from home, and vice versa. However, occasionally it does happen, and so I'm thinking more about online services.

Clipperz is an online password (or other textual data) manager. Now for most security-conscious people, “online” and “password manager” do not go together. However, Clipperz uses JavaScript to encrypt all your data before sending it to their servers. That means that none of your data can be accessed by Clipperz (or anyone else) unless they know your password.

Even better, Clipperz is free/open-source software, which means that if you really don't trust them, you can audit their source code. Or run your own service.

I had thought about implementing something similar, but Clipperz does more-or-less what I want it to, plus some things that I hadn't thought of. The only downside is that I wish it would have better organizational features (in particular, a hierarchical organization).

0 Comments
November 7, 2008

Government wants good hash

,
17:09 -0500

No, not that kind of hash. The NIST is holding a contest for a new cryptographic hash function. Vulnerabilities have been found in the most commonly used hash functions, MD5 and SHA-1, and the contest is for the new SHA-3 standard. The deadline for submissions was last Friday, so if you missed it, too bad.

Schneier et al. have submitted their algorithm, called skein, and Rivest et al. have submitted MD6.

The NIST held a similar contest several years back for encryption algorithms, which resulted in Rijndael being officially named as the Advanced Encryption Standard. That contest took 5 years. We'll see how long this one takes. Hashing is generally less well-understood, and harder to do, than encryption.

0 Comments
October 7, 2008

Data mining can't identify terrorists

, , ,
20:11 -0400
[thumbnail]
URL:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10059987-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Tags:
news, security, privacy

(see also: /.)

The National Research Council has released a 352-page report that tells us what most of us knew already: trying to use data mining to find bad guys doesn't work very well. The problem being that there are too many false positives.

Whether or not this will actually stop anyone from trying to do it anyways remains to be seen.

0 Comments