Rick Smith

The Ultimate USB Attack

After finishing a blog entry about the Homeland Security test using hacked CDs and USB drives, I took a look at a much nastier - though more expensive - attack.
Last year, Irongeek constructed a "penetration test device" with a USB interface - this is essentially a device that sends commands to a... more »

Penetration via Human Nature

Bloomberg has posted an interesting summary of recent hacker triumphs based on social engineering attacks. The fundamental piece of hard news was that the US Department of Homeland Security ran a test last year in which they dropped CDs and USB drives around near some US government offices. The test... more »

Looking at Lulz

I've been looking at the various files LulzSec has uploaded from their victims. These include Sony (several different sites on separate occasions), PBS, the game company Bethesda, Fox TV, Nintendo, and a computer security company called Unveillance. They actually defaced the PBS site, posting a... more »

"Cracking" Passwords

There's been buzz in computer hardware blogs over the past few days about how faster processors (and GPUs in particular) are rendering strong passwords "useless." One experimenter, named Vijay Devakumar, posted a description of his success at cracking passwords, which has been recently picked up by... more »

RAID Backups Redux: Snow Leopard

Grumble, grumble.
There has been an update to the DiskUtil program that prevents my RAID backup procedure from working.
The version I am running - Version 11.5.2 (298.4) - no longer provides a "Remove" or "Demote" function when a RAID drive is missing or offline. I've found two ways around this. I... more »

Whither the book?

I started reading ebooks on my Palm III in 1998. Now that I have a tablet, paper books seem quaint and even annoying some times.

Two households in our family own hardcover copies of Clavell's Noble House , an alarmingly thick novel from 1981. It weighs over 3.5 pounds. It makes good travel... more »