Tag: Geek Stuff

Happy Birthday Alan Turing

Today is June 23rd, 2011 which makes it the 99th birthday of the man usually called the father of computer science, Alan Turing. The article gives a good overview of his life, which ended up being quite tragic. Turing was a genius who’s research helped win World War II:

His work, however, was advanced enough to get him noticed by the powers that be and, in World War II, Turing became an integral part of the effort at Bletchley Park to break German ciphers and decode military transmissions.

The work carried out by Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park was of critical importance to the war effort. General Dwight D. Eisenhower stated at the time that intelligence received as a result of the codebreaking activities at the Park, “has been of priceless value. It has saved thousands of British and American lives and, in no small way, contributed to the speed with which the enemy was routed and eventually forced to surrender.”

Most people who were of value in winning that war were held up as heros and presented metals. Unfortunately for Turing he was also a homosexual which was not acceptable back in that era:

An inherently honest man, Turing reported a break-in at his home in 1952 and admitted to police that he had been engaged in a sexual relationship with one of the suspects, Arnold Murray. At the time, same-sex relationships between men were illegal in England and Turing was promptly arrested on charges of ‘gross indecency’.

Found guilty, Turing had his security clearance revoked – preventing him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy work for the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ – and was forced to undergo hormonal castration via oestrogen injections to curb his ‘unnatural’ urges, under threat of imprisonment.

“Hey man, thanks for helping us win the war against the Nazis but your sexual deviance is unacceptable so we’re going to use our monopoly on the initiation of force and subject you to experimental treatments that will most likely kill you.” At least that’s what I image the conversation ended up sounding like.

Although crucial to the war effort and a brilliant man in general being the subject of state aggression takes a toll on most people. After being the victim of state violence Turing was unable to cope with existence anymore and sadly ended his own life:

The strain of being excluded from his beloved work and branded a pervert proved too much for Turing, who was found on the 8th of June 1954 having taken a lethal dose of cyanide to end his own life.

Many soldiers owe their lives to the work this man performed and everybody in this era owes him for computers as we know them. Happy birthday Alan Turing!

Lulz Security and Anonymous as Testers of Internet Anonymity

A hacker group called Lulz Security has been making news as of late, especially after Tuesday’s escapade. Before that Anonymous were making headlines. You’ll hear arguments both for and against the actions of these groups but what I find more interesting than their escapades is the fact that most members of these groups have avoided law enforcement.

I often talk about the importance of anonymity and groups like Lulz Security and Anonymous make great testers of the ability to remain anonymous on the Internet. People likely to be prosecuted by law enforcement would do well to watch the actions of these groups and determine how they are able to avoid law enforcement. If the tactics used by these groups allows them to avoid those who are seeking them out then the same tactics can be used by political dissidents in oppressive countries. Those wishing to release dirt on private or government entities would also be well served by such information.

iOS 5 Supports S/MIME Encrypted Email

Here is an interesting iOS 5 feature that Apple doesn’t seem to be advertising very much (since most people probably don’t care), the ability to use S/MIME to sign and/or encrypt e-mails sent from you iOS device. This is actually a pretty killer feature for me as I like to sign e-mails I send (of course I used a self-signed certificate so it shows up as invalid unless I send my public key to recipients).

HP/Palm TouchPad Goes on Sale July 1st

HP/Palm’s (I know the Palm name is dead but damn it I refuse to stop using it) iPad competitor, the TouchPad, is set to go on sale July 1st. I’m rather excited about this device because I think it’s one of the few new tablet devices that at last has something interesting to offer consumers beyond the capabilities of the iPad (namely WebOS).

It do foresee a problem with the price though as the 16GB model will cost $499.99 while the 32GB model will cost you $599.99. This is the exact same price range as Apple’s iPad which I believe to be a potential problem. I just believe it will be hard to justify the high costs of the TouchPad when the app ecosystem for WebOS is pretty poor (and most current apps being written using the Mojo API will run in a small window much like iPhone apps run on the iPad) and WebOS has very little penetration into the mobile market at the moment. At the price HP/Palm is asking it’s very unlikely I’ll buy one unless they offer a great developer discount.

iOS 5 May Warn About Unsecured Calls

Some chatter has been going around the iOS community about a possible feature in iOS 5 that would warn users of unsecured calls. The encryption used by GSM was cracked and a great presentation and demonstration (which I had the privilege of attending) were given about the crack at Defcon last year. The presentation is available on YouTube for free and is split up into four segments:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXVHPNhsOzo]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo1OPoBS5Q8]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXqQioV_bpo]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4-KAvWUiDA]

Obviously this feature won’t be able to detect if a government agent at the phone company is listening into your phone call (this is why we need secure point-to-point communication capabilities on all phones) it would at least let you know if your phone call is being intercepted locally.

iOS 5 Beta

So I loaded iOS 5 Beta 1 onto my iPod Touch and took a look around. I haven’t had much time to fiddle with it but I’ve decided that Apple did a great job of ripping off Android’s notification system and that’s a good thing. With that said Apple did add two things that I greatly appreciate; widgets on the notification pull-down and the ability to make notifications appear on the lock screen.

I’m not sure if Apple is going to allow third parties to write widgets for the pull-down menu but they have included one for stocks and another for weather. When you pull down the notification page the weather widget will give you the current temperature which is nice. Hopefully third parties are allowed to write widgets for the notification page as I could name a few things I’d like to see there.

The other change to the notification system that Apple made was making notifications appear on the lock screen if you want them to. When you turn the phone on any notifications set to appear on the lock screen will be there and swiping across a notification will open the app that sent out the notification. Thus swiping across an e-mail notification will open Mail and take you right to the message you swiped across. Overall I really like the new notification system and feel it makes iOS a far better OS to work with.

Apple Announcements

Yesterday was Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). This is generally where Apple announces their new iOS and OS X related stuff and this year I must say they didn’t disappoint. I’ll just link to Engadget’s liveblog coverage as it gives the entire WWDC keynote.

First let me say I’m glad that Apple has finally decided to improve the way notifications are handled in iOS. Instead of those damned popup boxes that interrupt whatever you’re doing Apple is going to use the notification system they ripped off from Android. Basically when a notification comes in a little message will appear at the top of your screen and swiping your finger down from the top of the screen will bring down a full list of notifications. The one improvement Apple has added to Google’s system is the fact notifications will also appear on the lock screen so there is no need to unlock the phone to see what messages you have waiting for you. Overall I think this will fix the primary usability complain I’ve had with iOS for ages now.

Apple also announced iCloud, their new revision of .mac MobileMe. First Apple has finally done away with the stupid annual $99.00 fee which means I will actually try and possibly use this service (I could never justify spending money on something Google offered for free). iCloud also looks to expand greatly on MobileMe’s feature set by adding the ability for your iOS apps to store data on Apple’s servers allowing for back ups and syncing.

Speaking of things that no longer require tethering to iTunes for, Apple has also finally started work on freeing iOS devices from iTunes. Starting with iOS 5 devices will be able to sync and backup via WiFi instead of requiring you to physically plug your device into a computer running iTunes. I’m a huge fan of this as it may allow me to backup my device via WiFi remotely by using a VPN connection. Currently if you’re away from the system you use to backup your iOS device you’re kind of fucked should you need to do a backup and restore. It seems Apple is taking the best features from their competitors and integrating them into iOS and honestly it’s about damned time some of the features were added.

The last announcement that really got my attention was OS X Lion (10.7). Lion is being released next month via the Mac App Store (I’m assuming disk versions will be available as well) for $29.99 for the standard client version and $49.99 for the server version. This is big news as the server version previously costs a fuck ton of money (about ten times what Apple is now asking) and now will be affordable to most people. With a price like that I will actually upgrade my little Mac Mini server instead of letting it sit at 10.6 for the entirety of its life.

Overall I’m actually exciting about the announcements at this year’s WWDC and look forward to the release of iOS 5 and OS X Lion.

Technological Advancements

The computer field interests me because it’s moving so damned fast. If every industry advanced as quickly as the computer market we’d probably have faster than light travel by now and could live for 500 years. I love seeing demonstrations of these advancements and the fact that an iPad 2 can beat a supercomputer from the 1990s makes for an excellent expression of such advancements.

Just think about that for a moment. In the span of roughly 20 years we’re now at the point where a handheld electronic device that costs hundreds of dollars surpasses the computing power of a massive supercomputer that listed for $17 million (the Cray-2 in this case). The human race is fucking awesome!

Tear Down of an FBI Tracking Device

I can’t express in words my love for iFixit. Somehow the guys there manage to get a hold of every device manufacture and create excellent tear down guides allowing people such as myself to perform self-repairs on many electronic gadgets. It seems that working with Wired the guys over at iFixit were able to obtain one of those Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) tracking devices and went to work tearing it apart.

The thing I was most curious about was the power source. It seems these tracking devices are powered by lithium-thionyl chloride batteries which I’ve never heard of until today. These batteries specialize providing long term power (think 10 to 20 years) to devices which don’t require a ton of power. That’s some pretty sweet technology if I do say so myself.

I was also surprised at the ease at which getting into the tracking device was possible. If I were the FBI and wanted to make a device that allowed me to ignore those pesky laws against illegal search and seizure I’d have epoxied the living shit out of everything inside to make a tear down practically impossible. It’s not like they need to worry about repairing these things as they have access to the government’s printing press as long as they can drop the word terrorism into their request.

The guys at iFixit it also have the following disclaimer:

Disclaimer: We love the FBI. We’ve worked with them on several occasions to fight crime and locate criminals. We’ve helped them with instructions on gaining entry into certain devices. We have nothing against them, and we hope they don’t come after us for publishing this teardown.

I also have a disclaimer… We (by which I mean I) here at christopherburg.com hate the FBI. We feel that no organization should be able to go beyond the law and the FBI has done that numerous times without consequences. The only way we’ll help the FBI is if we are subpoenaed and forced to do so. We have a lot against them including the fact that they’re run by a bunch of authoritarian assholes.

More on Open WiFi Networks

A couple of days ago I mentioned my reasoning for not running an open WiFi network. Funny enough the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted an article about why one should run an open WiFi network. As I said in my previous post on the matter I would like to run an open WiFi network so those who needed WiFi access could get it but I don’t want to deal with the fact anything an anonymous person accessed on my open network would appear as though I accessed it.

This has lead me to ponder a means of setting up an open WiFi network that could be publicly used while keeping my traffic secure, separate, and not having anything a third party does on my network reflect badly on myself. What follows is the solution I’ve thought up so far with no real concern yet for implementation.

Obviously I want my wireless traffic to be encrypted as I value my privacy. This is easy enough to do with good old WiFi Protected Access (WPA) using a strong key. Thus ideally I would have two access points, one open for third party use and one secured for my use. The other feature I would desire is keeping the publicly accessible network completely separate from my private network. This is easy enough to accomplish by using a gateway device with Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) capabilities. I could setup one VLAN for the public network and another for my private network which would prevent the public network from talking to my private network.

The final and most difficult requirement is avoiding any legal ramifications that could be directed at me because of the web traffic generated by a third party. Like many network problems requiring anonymity I believe I’ve found my answer in the form of the Tor project. Tor is a network that can be used to anonymously access the Internet. Anonymity is achieved by encrypting all traffic and bouncing it between multiple nodes until that traffic reaches an exit point and is decrypted and sent to its destination. The benefit for me is the fact you can’t trace the source of any data going across the Tor network back to either its source or destination meaning anything accessed on my public network wouldn’t reflect on me.

What I would need to setup is a mechanism of ensuring all traffic that goes across my public network would be sent through the Tor network (not really the intended use of Tor I realize but alas it fits my needs here). I would want to set it up in a manner where inability to connect to the Tor network would disable the public network from reaching the Internet. This wouldn’t be difficult once I actually setup the Tor gateway system. There would likely be a problem of a slow connection as the Tor network isn’t speedy but honestly I don’t care, you get what you pay for. Likewise multiple peoples’ traffic would be going through a single Tor relay but again that’s not my problem nor is the fact I can’t control what happens at the Tor exit node my problem.

So this is my initial proposal for setting up a publicly accessible WiFi network without having to worry myself with personal security or the actions taken by those accessing my public network. I’ll probably investigate this a bit more and may even try to setup a trial and see how it turns out. Or I may instead do something else and leave this proposal untested and assume somebody will like the idea, implement it, and tell me how it worked out for them.