Schneier on Security: RFID Passport Security

Bruce Schneier is blogging about RFID's and how the state department is toying with the idea of embedding them into passports for better security/privacy/speed.

The state department has considered this idea for a while now but was reluctant to pursue it because of privacy and security issues (anyone with an RFID reader can find out all of your personal information stored on your RFID passport and clone it).

The new solution is to put make the RFID passports ask for a special password or security key before they broadcast their information...of course for the system to work this "key" would be known by readers in just about every international airport. That sounds about as secure as UNC's wireless network WEP key.

Schneier on Security: RFID Passport Security

TCP (Transmission by Carrier Pigeons) and by Snails

Just as we were talking about pigeons as TCP carriers, I end up sitting beside one here at the Grind as I read Dan Gillmor's article refering to an Israeli study of pigeons, "PEI (Pigeon Enabled Internet) is FASTER then ADSL" and of snails, "Snails are faster than ADSL (and Pigeons).

Laptop Rage

I found this to be a very interesting story about a professors attempt to get his laptop back. His laptop was stolen by someone and to try to get it back he tried scaring the individual. This is what he said in his class.........

"Thanks Gary. I have a message for one person in this audience - I'm sorry the rest of you have to sit through this. As you know, my computer was stolen in my last lecture. The thief apparently wanted to betray everybody's trust, and was after the exam.

The thief was smart not to plug the computer into the campus network, but the thief was not smart enough to do three things: he was not smart enough to immediately remove Windows. I installed the same version of Windows on another computer - within fifteen minutes the people in Redmond Washington were very interested to know why it was that the same version of Windows was being signalled to them from two different computers.

The thief also did not inactivate either the wireless card or the transponder that's in that computer. Within about an hour, there was a signal from various places on campus that's allowed us to track exactly where that computer went every time that it was turned on.

I'm not particularly concerned about the computer. But the thief, who thought he was only stealing an exam, is presently - we think - is probably still in possession of three kinds of data, any one of which can send this man, this young boy, actually, to federal prison. Not a good place for a young boy to be.

You are in possession of data from a hundred million dollar trial, sponsored by the NIH, for which I'm a consultant. This involves some of the largest companies on the planet, the NIH investigates these things through the FBI, they have been notified about this problem.

You are in possession of trade secrets from a Fortune 1000 biotech company, the largest one in the country, which I consult for. The Federal Trade Communication is very interested in this. Federal Marshals are the people who handle that.

You are in possession of proprietary data from a pre-public company planning an IPO. The Securities and Exchange Commission is very interested in this and I don't even know what branch of law enforcement they use.

Your academic career is about to come to an end. You are facing very serious charges, with a probability of very serious time. At this point, there's very little that anybody can do for you. One thing that you can do for yourself is to somehow prove that the integrity of the data which you possess has not been corrupted or copied.

Ironically, I am the only person on the planet that can come to your aid, because I am the only person that can tell whether the data that was on that computer are still on that computer. You will have to find a way of hoping that if you've copied anything that you can prove you only have one copy of whatever was made.

I am tied up all this afternoon; I am out of town all of next week. You have until 11:55 to return the computer, and whatever copies you've made, to my office, because I'm the only hope you've got of staying out of deeper trouble than you or any student I've ever known has ever been in.

I apologise to the rest of you for having to bring up this distasteful matter, but I will point out that we have a partial image of this person, we have two eyewitnesses, with the transponder data we're going to get this person."

*The professor admitted to making it up in order to scare the thief - who has not, incidentally, returned the laptop*

2 Dollar Man

I came across this article and thought it was real interesting that someone would get jailed for paying with two dollar bills. I honestly forgot they existed until I read this article.

http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2054/Two_Dollar_Man_jailed_in_Baltimore_County

Face Recognition/Security for your phone & SAT

I thought these were some interesting if not strange articles on cell phones.

The first link talks about devices/phones that recognize you by your face and the second tells how you can get SAT questions to your phone.

http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=9494

http://www.vocel.com/

RIAA vs UNC and NCSU

"A federal judge in North Carolina handed the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a legal defeat in its effort to learn the identities of two students accused of illegal file sharing. The RIAA had sought the identities from the students' universities, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, under an expedited subpoena process the group has since abandoned. In a December 2003 decision, another federal judge had rejected the expedited subpoenas, which did not require a judge's signature, ruling that Verizon could not be forced to disclose identities of its customers. In their capacity as Internet service providers (ISPs) for students, universities were given similar protection from the expedited subpoenas. In this case, Judge Russell A. Eliason ruled that an ISP that does not store information but merely transmits it cannot be compelled under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to reveal identities of its users. After the 2003 decision, the RIAA began filing individual "John Doe" lawsuits for illegal file sharing. Under that process, which costs the RIAA more time and money than the other, ISPs can be forced to turn over identities of users."

Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 April 2005 (sub. req'd)

China: Protesters and Police SMS each other

After SMS and email messages were used to organize crowds that resulted in anit-Japan marches and riots in Shanghai and other cities, the Chinese police are fighting back by sending warning SMS to everyone.
But will that have any effect on the marchers who have been communicating for weeks under the governments's radar?
Is this an example of a Smart Mob or just a mob and an attempt at mob control?
See the full article in today's NYTimes.

House to probe phone firms over text rumors of quake

Manila phone company is accused of starting a hoax SMS message flow saying a “disaster will happen in Manila and Quezon City a few days after April 15,” just to raise text messaging revenue. The article suggests some changes to be made in present laws to include people sending out false information by text messaging.

Cars to rat on drivers

The United Arab Emirates has a traffic problem. The abnormally high rate of traffic-related deaths there has resulted in a multi-year program to use technology, specifically telematics and GPS, in the form of a black box that evaluates, reports and warns drivers if they are out of line.
IBM is the winner of a four year contract to install tens of thousands of these black boxes in UAE cars and trucks.
But that's not all the information from the boxes has many uses. "The data gathered by the devices can be used not only by the government to monitor traffic habits, but also by commercial companies to offer consumer-related services such as rental cars and hotels" writes Martin LaMonica at CNet.
For more see: "IBM Car Tech to Nab Speeders"

AOL launches VoIP service | Google's new video service | RFID Sniper Rifle? | Toxic Blogs

Looks like AOL is making its way into the VoIP business.

AOL launches VoIP service | The Register

and

Google is coming up with a cool new platform for people to distribute their videos.

and

Bruce Schneier's blog has some good discussion (scroll to the bottom) about RFID's and how to possibly intercept their communications with something similar to the "bluetooth sniper rifle" discussed in the article.

and

Check out this article on Toxic Blogs. It describes how blogs can and are being used for virus/malware/keylogger distribution. Maybe that should be a class project for our blog :-)

Duke changes Ipod Plan

This fall all Duke freshman were given ipods, the new class of Duke freshman won't be so lucky:

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- An iPod in every new student's hand?

Not this fall at Duke.

The private university in Durham has decided not to reprise last year's experimental mass handout to all incoming freshman of the pricey, hard-disk portable digital players.

Only students enrolled in certain classes will get the free gadgets.

The school, which hoped the $300 players would enhance students' learning by allowing them to record lectures, capture oral notes and play language-training recordings, spent $500,000 on the pilot project.

That covered the iPods, salary for an academic computing specialist and grants to faculty members who participated in the program.

After a preliminary report on the project, Duke now plans to issue iPods to students enrolled in selected classes.

(read more)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/04/07/college.ipods.ap/index.html

Yahoo and Google show interest in Wikopedia

The fact that Wikipedia is preparing to produce a dvd version of the english version of the site.

Yahoo offered both financial and technical backing Thursday to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and maintained by volunteers.

Yahoo Inc. is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and resources to the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, a Yahoo representative said.

Could this be the beginning of a large intellectual partnersip for the good of public information sharing?
here's the link www.eweek.com

TIVO might be facing even more hurdles

Forgent Networks, which has so far garnered more than $100 million in fees on its so-called JPEG patent, is going after the digital video recorder industry.

The Austin, Texas-based maker of DVR components owns four patents it claims give it the right to collect royalties on computers or similar devices, such as those made by market leader TiVo, that record, store and play back video- and audio-transmitted signals.

Check out the site here http://news.com.com/Patent+litigants+target+DVRs/2100-1047_3-5659298.html?tag=nefd.top

Slashdot | Skypecasting - P2P File Sharing

Skype is so cool :-P

"Technologically savvy users are merging these technologies to "Skypecast", using Skype's service to distribute recordings across the internet for free. This allows expert users to run their own mini-radio stations, which can be accessed by any Skype user. Skype does not actively support these uses, but encourages its users to find new applications for their service. Other possibilities discussed by Skypecasters at Unbound Spiral or Moodle are to turn an MP3 player into a radio station for any of Skype's 29 million registered users to dial up using their Skype line. Instructions also are available on how to record a personal soap opera and use Skype to distribute it en masse. Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the Internet."

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/10/1640214&from=rss

Employment Search Facts

The following post from ITFacts’ web site is interesting, but not really surprising (to me): “80% of college grads will look for jobs on the Web, 51% will check out newspapers.” The page has links to many interesting statistical results related to IT and employment. ITFacts.biz also has some interesting facts about the computer game industry and some popular web sites on its main page.

Raleigh Man Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison for Spamming

ABC News is running an article wherein Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, NC, has been sentenced to 9 years in prison by a Virgina judge for sending an average of 10 million emails a day. Read up on it here.

So, anyone know him?

Raleigh discovers the Joy of TXT

News and Observer reporter, Matt Ehlers, discovers that people in Raleigh use SMS -- he refers to this as "texting" -- to flit and stay in touch with their sweeties.
Not quite "toothing" but something that I've seen in my own classes (but please don't try it in our class).
The article does raise an interesting language question: Are you a more effective flirt if you say/write less?

Anonymous Blogging HOW-TO

In the wake of Apple's treat and suit of bloggers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed guidelines for anonymous blogging.

Should you blog anonymously or should you be responsible for your thoughts no matter the risk?

Bluetooth Sex Fraud

Last year, British readers were shocked to see an article describing how bluetooth was used for finding easy sex. Thanks to wire services the story spread worldwide quickly. Now "toothing" has been revealed to be a giant hoax.
The article in the Register about the hoax also disses Rheingold's Smart Mobs story on the role of SMS in the Phillipines. The writer notes that the price of a voice call in the Phillipines drove people to use SMS. Had voice been cheaper, he writes, people organizing by "phone" would have been the non-story.

BBC: Current State of Blogs

A relevant and somewhat interesting read about blogging across the world.. talks about political pressure on blogs and political change through blogs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4398243.stm

- bd