MD5 signed websites may not be secure

You may have noticed when you go to certain websites, you'll get a signed certificate that is supposed to prove that you are at that actual website. I say supposed to because there was demonstration at the Chaos Computer Congress on how to spoof (fake) a MD5 certificate of authentication. There are a couple kinds of certificates and it appears that only the MD5 CA has been spoofed. This is an older type of certificate but is still used by many websites. There has been a warning about this concept for sometime, however, it was just demonstrated . So it's no longer a concept because there is proof it can be, and has been done.

You can read all about it here http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/

Microsoft has also issued a security bulletin about it here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/961509.mspx

The guys who figured out how to do this will not release all the details of how it was done for a couple of months, to give time for a fix to be developed.

I'll post more details as they become available.

The Music Industry Has Finally Learned

Looks like the music industry has finally figured out suing your customers is bad business. It's not just suing their customers, but the way they went about it. Not only did they sue over 38,000 people for sharing music, they wanted outrageous settlement sums. The RIAA wanted $700 and more, per song that was shared. Some of the settlements they were after had total fines in the six figure range. They also filed tons of John Doe lawsuits. They didn't even know who the people were that they were after. They demanded that universities, internet service providers, and telephone companies turn over private records to them, so they could put names to IP addresses of suspected file sharers. On top of that, they used scare tatics. They knew that plenty of the college students and single moms couldn't afford lawyers. They would offer defendents settlement deals that ranged in the tens of thousands of dollars or else, if they lost, they would have to pay judgements that were in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

However, things weren't going there way. When the RIAA finaly won a settlement for $30,000 from a 16 year old who downloaded 37 songs, a judge reduced the fine to $7,400, which the RIAA accepted. Meanwhile, other judges were throwing out their lawsuits completly. While the RIAA has deep pockets and an army of high paid lawyers, one has to wonder how much is a copied song really worth. Not to mention some artists themselves were against the lawsuits. Of course the judgements themselves didn't go to the artists, they just lined the pockets of RIAA.

I can't help but wonder why the music industry didn't emnrace the whole music download system a long time ago. Being a musician myself, I'd be happy if someone shared my music with someone else. What better way to get your music out there then by letting people listen to some of it. Face it, most of us get little or no radio play and even less of us are on MTV. The sharing of music is probably the best way for a musician or band to get any other exposure.

These lawsuits failed on so many levels it's unbelievable. The only ones who win are the RIAA's legal army. Bet they aren't too happy with this tunr of events.

The Gibson Dark Fire Guitar

Besides being an I.T. guy I'm also a musician. I started playing guitar when I was 13, which happens to be the same age I was when I got my first computer, the Apple ][+. As I was growing up I played in a band, but I also became interested in audio engineering . I was the singer in a band for a brief period of time and after I was no longer the singer, I became their sound guy. I soon realized that trying to make a living as a musician was a long shot. They don't call us starving musicians for nothing. So I got a little 4 track recorder by Fostex and started recording myself and the band I was working with. After recording the band all night I had the realization that, I really liked doing that. So I decided that I would become an audio engineer. Then I enrolled at Sound Masters Recording Engineering School and got my degree in audio engineering. After that, I worked at several studios and clubs. I worked in many aspects of the recording industry, for several years, before I got burned out on the whole music bussiness and living in Los Angeles.

So while this is mainly a tech blog, I'm still playing and recording my own music. And here is where the two meet. The Gibson Dark Fire Guitar. You may have herd of, or seen, the Gibson Robot guitars. This is considered the Robot 2 guitar. It's the most advanced technological guitar to date. If you want to see what this new guitar is capable of, check out this video. I think it's a pretty amazing guitar, unlike anything I have seen before.

Major IE Update

In case you've missed it on the news, there is a big security hole in Internet Explorer. Usually Microsoft puts out updates on the first Tuesday of the month and for them to release a security update at any other time, indicates how bad it is. If you haven't already run Windows Update today, I highly recommend you do so ASAP. Be sure to reboot your computer after the update so it finishes the install. You can also head over to Microsoft and read more about it by clicking here.

Everything VOIP

Back in the day, I was very, very interested in phone systems. My interest in phone systems came about not long after I got my first modem, back in 1982 or 83. I began calling BBS's and realized some of the best ones were outside of my free calling range. So I figured out how to tell which BBS's were free local calls, with a chart in a phone book. The chart had NPAs and Prefixs. And that was when I learned my first telco jargon; NPA is Number Plan Area or Numeric Prefix Area, which is your area code & prefix which is the first 3 numbers after your are code. Using this info I could see what other NPA and Prefix were in my local calling area. So I had lots of (818) and (213) numbers that were free to call and lots of BBSs I could call. And on some of these BBS's were telephone sections. Soon I was learning all about ESS (electronic switching systems) and old crossbar systems, basicly pre ESS phone systems which, at that time, still exisited in many rural areas. Later my attention turned to cell phones. Taking a Motorola 550 flip phone, for example, and putting it in tech or service mode just by grounding a pin between the battery and the phone. In this mode you could do all kinds of neat tricks like see the transmit and recieve signal strength, switch to differnt cell channels and even listen in on active calls.

Now we have a whole new world of voice communications using the internet as the backbone. Programs like Asterisk & Freeswitch which are a free, open source software PBX system, have sparked my interest in voice communications. People are even setting up voice confrences again, now using VoIP.

VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol which is basicly using the internet to make phone calls. If you have a broadband connection, and who doesn't these days, you can make free phone calls using your internet. To take it one step further you can even make video phone calls. Now there are lots of VoIP solutions. A popular one you may have herd of is Skype. However, there is tons of other options out there as far as hardware, software, protocols, etc.

Now we come full circle. The reason I posted this long winded message in the first place. While I was researching VoIP, I came across one site that is a great leaping off point. If you're looking for info about all things VoIP check out voip-info.org for the latest news, info, protocols, and where to get started. Just thought you might like to know.

Broken Promises & Birthday

I know, I promised that I would post again within 24 hours of the last post. I had a rough draft of another post when I made that promise. I figured that if I said I would post again within 24 hours, it would force me to do so. Well, so much for that idea.

So here I am on my lunch break, posting. Last night was my birthday and I was busy celebrating and I never got around to this blog. Just turned 40. Man, that still doesn't sound right. This is the first birthday I wasn't looking forward. I mean, I can't believe I'm 40 already. Where did all the time go.

There were a few suprises this year. Some old friends that I just recently got back in contact with sent me some e-cards and e-mails, which was an unexpected surprise. The IRC channels I hang out in posted a happy birthday message to me in the topic. Members of my World of Warcraft guild all wished me a happy birthday. The DJ at work annouced my birthday on the radio and also gave me a great gift to help me celebrate last night. My parents sent me an awesome Geoffrey Beene sweater. Then my wife an I went over to the local Indian casino to get some money on my player's card. Normally, I don't go to that casino, but they give you $1.00 for each year on your birthday, so for a free $40 I figured what the hell. I only played $10, and didn't win anything, so we left because I didn't want to spend what was left of the night, at the casino. So we came home and ate dinner. Then she dragged out a huge bag, it has a tye-dye print and matching colored tissue paper. Inside it was layer after layer of shirts and pants. As the years have increased, so has my waist and almost none of my clothes fit me anymore. So I was in desperate need of some apparel. While the thought that I've finally hit 40 makes me cringe, at least the birthday itself was pretty good.

Now that it's out of the way, I'll finally get back to the old blog. I'll be bringing you some good sites and programs as well as some usefull computing tips again.

This break in posts brought to you by techknowledgy

Yeah, I'm a geek. I earn my living, such as it may be, editing the TV news, doing voice overs for radio commercials, but mainly fixing things. The past couple weeks I've seen just about everything that could quit working at the TV & radio station, do just that. Let's start with e-mail going down quite a bit. Then the whole website. Then there was the radio broadcast computer that quit. One network switch and also a router/firewall died. Not one, but two of the Macs used for editing video, leaving us with only one for a couple of weeks, talk about stress, what happens if the last Mac quits before the replacements show up? Well, it means we cant edit and air the nightly TV news broadcast. Luckly, that didn't happen but I was just getting the new ones configured when, guess what? Two days after we got the replacements in, the video card died on the only Mac that was working previously. Talk about a close call. And then to top it all off, I got a call the yesterday morning that the TV station was off the air and the TV broadcast system wouldn't turn back on. So I had to race in early and fix it. That same night, someone else messed up and aired the news from the previous night. So on my way home I get a call the the news from the night before is running. So I had to turn around and go back to work. Recapture all the news segments. Send them to the broadcast computer so at 8 and 11pm we would air the correct news. Then encode them for the website and replace what was on it.

So let's see if I covered everything that went down the last couple weeks. The local area network, our internet connection, our website and domain, our video editing computers, our radio broadcast computer and our TV broadcast computer. Oh yeah, almost forgot the computer that got a nasty virus and sent out 2 thousand emails after an employee opened and attachment with a 0 day virus. A 0 day virus is one that the anti virus software doesn't detect yet, which makes for a challenging clean up. And guess who had to fix all of it, in between my usual video editing, DVD production and TV show scheduling. Not to mention my own computer repair side jobs after work and on the weekends. Then throw in 3 days of the flu, just to make sure I have that much more work to catch up on.

The good news is, once I finish building a new audio/video production PC this week, I should be more or less caught up. At which point my job shouldn't be so exhausting and I'll have time to start posting here a lot more often. In fact, I promise to post something new in the next 24 hours.... As long as I don't get called in to work to fix something that has crashed. Hmmm, I should turn off my cell phone this weekend. Scratch that, I got 2 computer side jobs this weekend already...

Another Ad Sense Phishing Scam

This just came in and I wanted to pass it on before it got too old. It's another phishing scam using google's ad sense as the bait. Do not click on the link in the e-mail if you get this. It's a redirected link that doesn't go to the ad-sense log in.

Quick and easy screen capture

Here's quick little tip for capturing a screen shot. Ever get an error screen that you need a copy of, or maybe you want to save that high score screen, just to prove you pwned everyone in Counter Strike. Or perhaps you'd like a print out of a screen from some program that doesn't have a print option.

First thing you need to do is capture the screen. That's easy enough. Just press (and hold) the ctrl key + the shift key + the Prt Scr key. Don't feel bad if you don't see the Prt Scr key right away, it's on the top row near the right end. So once you've pressed the three magic keys, all at the same time, your screen has been captured by microsoft and will forwarded to the FBI for further inspection. Well, probably not, but your screen shot is stored in memory just waiting to be pasted somewhere.

Now that your screen is in memory you can paste it into a graphics editor. One that is built into windows is mspaint. Rather than dig through the menus for it, just click on start and on your start menu you should have run. When you click on run it will open a dialog box and you can type mspaint in there and press enter. This will launch mspaint. One other way you can get to mspaint quickly is to press the windows key and the r key. That will also launch the run command and then you type mspaint and hit return. Once you have mspaint open, or any other graphic editing program, you just need to paste your screen shot into it. You can go to the edit menu and down to paste. I prefer to use ctrl-v to paste. The ctrl-v command works in any widows program to paste whatever you have copied, in this case it was our screen capture. You don't have to use mspaint, in fact just about any other graphics program would be better, but mspaint comes with windows. You can also use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and even Microsoft Word. Once you have your image in your graphics editing program, you can crop it, edit it, save it and/or print it.

So to sum it up. First, capture your screen by pressing ctrl+shift+PrtScr. Then open mspaint or your grpahics editing program of choice. Then paste your screen shot, press and hold the ctrl key and press the v key.

Now lets see that PrtScr key finally get a little attention.

Amazon music vs iTunes

I've always only put advertisements on here from companies I support, use and believe in. Which is one reason you won't find many ads on this site. And as you can see I have Amazon MP3's on here now.

The reason I have them here is they are better than iTunes and I hope they catch on. First off, let me say I'm not an Apple hater. I started out with an Apple ][+, which I loved. I made the switch to PC's because Apple quit making the Apple II's with the Apple ][GS and when the Macs came out, they were $5000 and a PC could be had for around $1000. I also use Macs at work to edit video for our TV news broadcast as well as any other video editing I do there. So I don't hate Apple. Now that I've cleared that up, let me tell you why I like Amazon.

All the MP3's at Amazon are DRM free. That means Amazon's MP3's don't have that nasty digital rights management, that keeps you from playing the music you've paid for, on more than 1 computer or portable music player, at a time. I really hate the fact that you have to "Deautorize" a song before you can move it to another computer or player. I have several computers, a Sony PSP and a couple of mp3 players. When I want to transfer a song, that I bought, I want to just transfer it. Not go through the hassle of "deauthorizeing" and removing it from my other computers or music players. If I get a song from Amazon, it's .89 or .99 cents and I can put it on all all my computers, and media players. They are also encoded at 256k. iTunes are not mp3s, but aac and they are encoded at only 128k. Apple has responded to the Amazon "threat" by offering some music, EMI's catalog is the only ones I see currently, in a DRM free, 256k AAC file, for $1.29. You get the same thing on all of Amazon's mp3's for $.89 or $.99

What iTunes does have over Amazon is convenience of buying. The iTunes program makes it pretty easy to buy songs. iTunes also has a bigger library of available music. If you're capable of downloading music and copying it to your portable player than I suggest checking out Amazon first, if they don't have what you're looking for, than you might want to try iTunes. For me, the choice is easy, less expensive, higher quality and DRM free, that's how I like my music.

All Your Base Belong to Kentucky

I haven't been very happy with our domain and website host, at work. The website we have runs slow at times, and every time I check the server load, it's always high. We are on a shared server so I realize this is to be expected now and then, but all the time? Our e-mail also goes down quite a bit and the web based e-mail, until recently, took a minute or more to load the first menu. This is really a problem for a company that is in the news business. As you can imagine, there is all kinds of information we get through out the day. So if we can't get the details about a story, it can affect our TV or Radio news broadcasts.

I decided to look into other hosting companies. While I was doing that, I came across an intresting site, The Modern Domainer. And while I was there I read one the craziest legal decisions I have ever seen, in regards to the internet.

Apparently, Kentucky siezed 141 domain names. How they can do this, or even believe they have the power to do so is beyond me. And a circuit court has upheld the decision. This is a case I'm going to keep an eye on. You can read the whole story here.

Haunted Houses

I've risen from the dead to bring you some videos. Halloween is my faveorite holiday and I would have liked to have deadicated this entire month to Halloween articles. Unfortunately, it took me longer to dig out of my grave than expected. So here are some videos I found on youtube of haunted houses. Some professional and some that people set up at their own homes witch are a real scream. So sit back all you guys and ghouls and have a look.

-x-x-x-OLD TOWN HAUNT 2008-x-x-x-x-


-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Fearplex Haunted House - L.A. County Fair


-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Scott Lane Terror Cemetery Haunted House Yard Haunt 2007


-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
haunted beverlywood home


-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
2007 Halloween yard display (gimmepig's)

Free Flash Video Player

I'm working at a radio & TV station. Our website has our daily TV news broadcast on it. The video we have on there is flash video and I've been given the task of improving our flash player. I've decided to go with the JW FLV Media Player. Which just happens to be the same player our website developer wanted to go with.

The JW FLV Media Player is free for non commercial use. It has a lot of great features. The most useful feature for me is you can create playlists. In this playlist you can tell the flv player to not allow certain videos to be skipped. So when someone chooses to watch the news, the can select any segment they want or start at the beginning and watch all of it, one segment after another. The files in the playlist that can't be skipped will be commercials. The JW FLV Media Player can also be skinned so you can give it any look you want. You can also add a logo which will be placed in the upper right corner. The code is pretty easy to figure out and there is also a setup wizard and lots of examples of how to use all the variables. You can use java or embed code to add it to any website. Thanks to the embed code, it's very easy to add any video, and the player, to a blog or forum post. So if you've been looking to add your own video to a website or blog, the JW FLV Media Player could be just what you're looking for.

A Little Freeware Keno

I was looking for some keno games for my wife and thought I'd share with you what I found. There's quite a few out there of course. I'm no keno expert, however if anyone is, she is. So I'm gonna let her pick the best. And the winner is Mike's Freeware. There's single and multi-card versions. And quite a few to choose from. Not only are the prices very reasonable, the 4-card keno (pictured above) is only $4.44, there are playable demos that you can download. Still not interested, did I mention that there are several completely free versions. If you care for keno at all, these are worth checking out.

If there are any keno games out there that you know about, please let us know in the comments below.

2 More Phishing Scams

Here's a couple more phishing scams I came across today. The first one is another paypal scam. Here's a screen capture from my gmail account. As you can see by the big red box warning you that this is a scam. That was added by gmail and obviously isn't in the original e-mail.

The second one is supposed to be from Wells Fargo. It tells you that you have to update your information and that you will only have limited access until you do so.

As always, never respond or click on any links in e-mails that ask you to update any banking or personnel information

FCC Says No To Comcast Port Blocking

As you know, I'm not one of those bloggers who looks for news stories, writes a couple lines about it and then gives you a link to the original story. I don't have anything against those types of blogs. It's just that there is more than enough of them. Once in a while I will pass on a news story to you, if I feel it's important enough. Recently there has been a couple and this is one of them.

If you haven't followed this story, here is what has been going on. When you use your computer on the internet, it communicates through ports. The ports are like channels that are used for certain types of data. For example port 21 is used for ftp, port 80 is used for websites, and it goes on and on. There are certain ports that are typically used for p2p or file sharing traffic and torrents. One could argue that torrents and p2p programs are used for illegally sharing software, music and movies. While this may have been true in the beginning, it is no longer the case. Many people and companies are using p2p and torrents for legal file transfers. There's lots of linux distributions, video blogs, and even the BBC is using it for legal distribution of media.

Apparently, Comcast decided that they would cut down their traffic by blocking ports that are commonly used by p2p and torrents. Comcast also realized that their customers would be pretty upset when they found out that they were paying $60+ a month and didn't have access to the entire internet. So what did Comcast do in the wake of tens to hundreds of thousands of irate customers calling them to find out why they all the sudden couldn't use p2p or torrents? They did what any honest company would do, they lied. Comcast told customers that they weren't doing it. If you called Comcast to find out what the problem is, they denied it had anything to do with them. When a company the size of Comcast tries to lie to the public about something like this, it isn't long before people working for said company come forward and let the cat out of the bag. Which is exactly what happened. This got the FCC interested.

After Comcast got caught trying to deceive it's customers the FCC started looking into it. So when a public hearing was held at Harvard, Comcast payed people off the street to fill seats. This way, when people who actually cared about what was going down, came to the hearing, they couldn't get in because the seats were already filled.

Today, the head of the Federal Communications Commission announced that Comcast, who is the largest Cable company in the nation, violated federal guidelines when it blocked and degraded Web traffic. This is a real victory to consumers. Finally, the FCC is standing up for the consumers and not just big business.

For more details here's a couple different links.
Wired

PCMag

GigaOm

Google AdSense Phishing

Looks like the phishermen are at it again. There must be plenty of phish in the internet sea. However, you don't have to be one of the phish attracted by their lures.

Phishing is what they call those e-mails that attempt to trick you into giving up personal information, usually financial, which is then used to steal your identity and rape your bank account and or credit cards.

The latest one, I have seen, is using some old tricks but with new bait. The e-mail appears to come from Google's Adsense program. It warns you that you will not receive any more payments, unless you update your information. Which you can do with the link provided in said e-mail.

To the average user, everything might look ok at first glance. However, if you try to reply to the e-mail, it will bounce back. If you click on the Google AdSense link that is provided, you will most likely end up at a domain that has google and adsense in it. But on closer inspection you will see there is more to the domain, like a .tw or other domain. Don't be fooled by how the page looks like the real thing.

So if you get one of these e-mails, don't click on it. And if you do have a Google Adsense or any other account, that you have received an e-mail informing you that it needs updating, never click on the link in the e-mail. It's very easy to forge a link in any e-mail and is common in phishing scams. Type the address directly into your browser, or use google or some other search engine to find it for you.

Stay tuned for an article on how to spot phishing scams.

State of this Blog

What's going on here? There's good news and some not so good news. The good news is, I am going to continue adding to this blog. I will also finish the previous articles that I started. Since I now have the NewEgg link at the bottom, and if want to help support this blog I encourage you to click on the "Where I buy everything" before you make any purchase from NewEgg, I am able to see what kind of traffic I am getting here. I got to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. There's more people reading this than I thought. Due to the lack of comments and with how irregular I have been posting here, I figured I was just going through the motions for myself and a few other people. However I am getting quite a few views a day and a definite spike when I do post something new. I'm not expecting to reach thousands of people a day, but there are some of you out there who are reading this and that is encouraging. I will start updating more often.

Now for the not so good news. My wife's mother has become gravely ill and bed ridden. Rather than put her in a rest home to be forgotten about, we are taking care of her at her home. This requires round the clock attention. Which leaves me little time to write the in depth articles that I wanted to. So for the time being, I will only post small bits of news and information. When I have more time, I will get back to the larger in depth articles I had started.

Building a Video Editing System - Storage

Since I am still researching which processor and motherboard would be best, I'm going to start with storage. Video editing systems demand fast storage and lots of it. Hard drives are an amazing value these days. I can remember when an Apple Sider 10 MB (thats not a typo thats 10 megabytes) was $500. As of this writing, you can get 500 GB SATA drives for $130.

Basically you have 3 types, PATA, SATA, and SCSI. We will be using SATA or SATA II because they are faster than PATA and a better value than SCSI. You will see specs for these drives that say 1.5 mb/s (megabytes a second) or 3.0 mb/s. These numbers don't really do us any good because these are peak speeds and they won't sustain data transfer speeds of that for long. So we can improve this with a RAID system. There are several versions but we are only concerned with RAID 0 and RAID 5 because these will improve our data, such as the video itself, access times. RAID 0 takes 2 hard drives of the same size and reads and writes to both of them at the same time. Our computer sees it as one large drive, the size of the two drives combined. We get ourselves a couple of 500 GB drives, set them up with RAID 0 and booyah, you got 1000 GB or 1 TB (Terrabyte) of fast, working space for your video editing. But there is a drawback and one I have experienced first hand. If either one of these drives fails, which they will do if not replaced first, you lose everything on both drives. Up to a whole TB of work lost, poof! Ouch! There are ways to find out when a drive is failing and replace it before it does, but in the real world, most people aren't going to know. That brings me to RAID 5. You take 5 drives of the same size and end up with 4 drives worth of space. If we take 5 250GB drives, you end up with 1000 GB or 1 TB of usable space. RAID 5 can read and write to the drives at the same time , so we get the increased speeds. It also creates what is called parity bits. This is where the extra space goes, but it's well worth it. Thanks to the parity, we can rebuild the data on a failed drive. When one of the drives dies, we replace it with a good one and the RAID 5 system rebuilds it. RAID 5 will give us the speed and peace of mind about our projects.

So we are going to use RAID 5, made up of 5, 7200 rpm, 250 GB or 500 GB, depending on the budget, SATA drives. I'm currently using the Seagate Barracuda drives. I've tried every brand under the sun and have seen them all fail. The Barracuda has a 5 year warranty while most the other manufacturers have a 3 year warranty for their drives in the price range.

For our Windows XP and Adobe CS3 drive, we will go with the Western Digital Raptor, 74 GB, 10K RPM SATA drive. It's a more pricey than the 7200 RPM drives, this 74 GB costs more than the 500 GB SATA drive. It will make a nice fast drive for windows and the video editing applications.

Building a Video Editing System

I got a client who wants me to build a new video editing system. So I'm going to go through it with you. Show you what parts I chose and why. I'm going to head over to newegg and and pick out the parts. Then I'll be back to show you what I have decided to use.

Myspace Hacks Again

I got to make this quick because it's time for me to get to work, but I felt this was important. I was on myspace and I got one of those adds that said, your computer is running slow would you like us to do a free scan for you, of course I clicked no. At that point my antivirus, NOD32 caught a java script infection. The scary thing about this was I chose NO for my answer and it still tried to install the virus. The add claimed it was from a company called spyware destructor. I'll post more details as I get them. Be careful out there

Wasn't This Hacking/Security Month?

When this month started, I was fairly excited. Computer security is a subject that I'm very interested in. It's also a subject I know a quite a bit about. So when I said this month would be dedicated hacking, I was really talking about computer security, and I figured I would have a lot of material to post. Then something called life came into the picture. A bunch of problems cropped up, and seeing how there are already too many blogs that are about people's lives, I figured I'd spare my readers, both of you, the boring details.

Never fear. The cool thing about having my own blog is, I can do what ever I want with it. I'm going to make April computer security month also. And with any luck, I'll post something tonight that actually deals with that topic.

I'm home for lunch and I got a TV show to edit. I don't think my boss would appreciate me being late because I was busy blogging. So I got to head back to work before I'm even later than I am now.

The First Hacking Site of the Month

We interrupt the previous story to get down to what I said we would be featuring this month, Hacking. When it comes to hacking, video tutorials, this site is one of the best. Irongeek's Hacking Illustrated Videos
can be found at, where else, Irongeek.com
There's a lot of them and he has been making them himself for years. He also has a tutorial on how he makes the videos. This site isn't the prettiest sight around but it more than makes up for its looks with great content. From the Basic Nmap Usage, Sniffing VoIP Using Cain, Metasploit Flash Tutorial, Using SysInternals’ Process Monitor to Analyze Apps and Malware, Creating a Windows Live CD for System Recovery and Pen-Testing with Bart's PE Builder,
and so many more. There's bound to be something of interest to all but the most seasoned veterans.


While Irongeek maybe best known for his video tutorials, he has also written some nice netowrk security articles. His latest, State Hacking/Computer Security Laws, is very informative and was posted at the end of December of 2007, so it's current. How To Cyberstalk Potential Employers "This article is less diabolical than its title might imply. Essentially, I want to give the reader some tips for finding more information about a potential employer than the job listing may reveal." And he does. It's well written and I like his inclusion of screen shots.

If irongeek.com only had the video section, that would be enough alone for me to recomend it. I'm sure he laid the ground work and inspired others to make hacking video tutorials. There's also a couple scripts/apps that he wrote, some reviews, and don't forget the clips of him working out. And if my word isn't good enough, there's also half a dozen campuses that use his material. And here's a nice little link that shows you all the info that can be seen from your browser.

This one is a keeper. Definitely worthy of a bookmark and some time for further exploration. I tip my proverbial hat to Iron Geek. Well done sir.

From Piracey to Hacking - PT 1

Why hacking? Why hacking indeed. Let us step into the time machine, not the one in OS X. Set the controls for Los Angeles 1982. As the view comes into focus you see a 14 year old punk and a computer class teacher. "Do you like to play games on your Apple ][+?" asks the teacher. "Oh yeah! But I only have a couple..." I reply. The teacher hands me a black, "elephant" branded, 5 1/4" floppy disk. "Give this a try." the teacher says. "Thanks a lot!"



When I get home from school that day, I head straight over to my ][+, my usual ritual. But this time, I stuck the disk I got from my basic programing teacher, into the floppy drive and flipped the switch. A very simple text menu came up...

[A] CHOPLITER
[B] SNAKE BYTE
[C] SABOTAGE
[D] TAX MAN

]ENTER YOUR CHOICE

No way?! Not a game, but several! How did they do that? Usually you just get 1 game per disk, at most. This disk has 4! So I press one of the letters and a graphic screen comes up before the game, that lists the names of the "Crackers" and a "Distributed by" group name. It also has several places listed with phone numbers next to them, such as Abdul's Oasis and Pirates Cove. Who were all these people and what are these places, with phone numbers from all over the country?

March = Security/Hacking Month

It's been a while since I've updated anything here. Recently I took over as video editor at work. So on top of my I.T. job, which can be quite time consuming on its own, I'm editing the news broadcast everyday and pretty much everything else. This leaves me pretty spent by the end of the day. On top of that, there has been a lot of work to do around the house. Add to that the lack of interest this blog has generated; I don't know that anyone even visits here. I just didn't feel like there was much point in continuing it.

While watching some hacking podcasts I felt inspired. I decided I will devote the month of March to the topic of computer security and hacking.

This month I will show you some of my favorite sites, tools, podcasts and blogs that deal in computer security and hacking. I plan on doing a lot of posts this month. Hopefully I'll get a comment or two so I know there is someone out there and have a reason to continue updating. If so, I will continue to be more active here and devote each month to a topic. There are so many topics I would like to cover. This way, there will be some sort of theme each month and not just random bits here and there.