Tag: Geek Stuff

Violent Criminals are Trying to Recruit Potential Computer Experts

One of the most violent gangs in the United States has begun actively recruiting individuals who show a high aptitude in computer skill. I would advise parents to talk with their children and warn them against joining the ranks of psychopaths such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Fatherland Motherland Homeland Security (DHS):

The secretary of that agency, Janet Napolitano, knows she has a problem that will only worsen. Foreign hackers have been attacking her agency’s computer systems. They have also been busy trying to siphon the nation’s wealth and steal valuable trade secrets. And they have begun probing the nation’s infrastructure — the power grid, and water and transportation systems.

So she needs her own hackers — 600, the agency estimates. But potential recruits with the right skills have too often been heading for business, and those who do choose government work often go to the National Security Agency, where they work on offensive digital strategies. At Homeland Security, the emphasis is on keeping hackers out, or playing defense.

“We have to show them how cool and exciting this is,” said Ed Skoudis, one of the nation’s top computer security trainers. “And we have to show them that applying these skills to the public sector is important.”

One answer? Start young, and make it a game, even a contest.

This month, Mr. Jaska and his classmate Collin Berman took top spots at the Virginia Governor’s Cup Cyber Challenge, a veritable smackdown of hacking for high school students that was the brainchild of Alan Paller, a security expert, and others in the field.

With military exercises like NetWars, the competition, the first in a series, had more the feel of a video game. Mr. Paller helped create Cyber Aces, the nonprofit group that was host of the competition, to help Homeland Security, and likens the agency’s need for hackers to the shortage of fighter pilots during World War II.

The job calls for a certain maverick attitude. “I like to break things,” Mr. Berman, 18, said. “I always want to know, ‘How can I change this so it does something else?’ ”

Between drones and these types of competitions it appears that the United States government is continuing its track record of exploiting young children by making war feel like a video game. What the government recruiters don’t talk about are the harsh realities of war. In the case of computer security working for the government means working for the entity that is actively trying to suppress free speech on the Internet. This entity has continued to push legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, and Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. In addition to pushing destructive legislation this entity has also actively worked against free speech by seizing domain names of websites it finds undesirable (without any due process, of course). This entity has even go so far as to relentlessly pursue an individual for being a proponent of free speech and free information. By every definition of the word the United States government is a terrorist organization.

If you or somebody you know is an upcoming computer expert I urge you to urge them to work on projects that help protect Internet users from the psychopaths in the United States government. The Tor Project and I2P are always looking for more developers. Those of us that want to preserve free speech, free information, and privacy online need more advocates of cryptographic tools such as OpenPGP, Off-the-Record Messaging, and encrypted voice communications. Young computer savvy individuals should work on becoming experts in such technology, encourage their friends to use such technology, and work on the next generation of such technology.

Fortunately, for those of us that work against the United States government’s continuous attempts to censor the Internet, most people described by the state as computer hackers are not fond of authority and are therefore more likely to pursue non-state employment instead of working for the monster that labels them criminals.

MakerBot Industries Unveils Prototype 3D Scanner

3D printers are a marvel of modern engineering. A device that is able to build almost any solid object from the ground up stands to reshape modern manufacturing. One of the gaps in the technology has been the lack of a tool that allows you to scan an object so you can replicate it. Last week at South by Southwest MakerBot industries unveiled a prototype desktop 3D scanner:

The maker community has helped on that front, as well, with MakerBot’s Thingiverse serving as an unparalleled resource for 3D images, meaning that, once your printer’s all set up and calibrated, you can download and print to your hearts delight — but what if, say, you want to print up something that some kindly soul hasn’t designed for you? You could learn a CAD program — or you could invest in an industrial 3D scanner. The latter option has lead to something of a land rush of companies and individuals looking to break things wide open with an affordable, consumer-facing offering. And while MakerBot still seems a ways away from the final product, the company used SXSW as a platform to unveil a prototype of its MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner.

Imagine being able to toss a part onto a scanner and having copies print out in a few minutes. That’s what 3D scanners combined with 3D printers stands to do. It will be interesting to see where this technology goes in the next decade.

Tor Relay Update

Last week I mentioned that I purchased a Raspberry Pi specifically to use as a Tor relay. Two days ago I received the following e-mail:

Hello and welcome to Tor!

We’ve noticed that your Tor node christopherburg (id: 3F17 3F07 DDBB D8F6 34C7 9588 6F99 E808 1AE6 AB42) has been running long enough to be flagged as “stable”. First, we would like to thank you for your contribution to the Tor network! As Tor grows, we require ever more nodes to improve browsing speed and reliability for our users. Your node is helping to serve the millions of Tor clients out there.

As a node operator, you may be interested in the Tor Weather service, which sends important email notifications when a node is down or your version is out of date. We here at Tor consider this service to be vitally important and greatly useful to all node operators. If you’re interested in Tor Weather, please visit the following link to register:

https://weather.torproject.org/

You might also be interested in the tor-announce mailing list, which is a low volume list for announcements of new releases and critical security updates. To join, visit the following address:

https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-announce

Thank you again for your contribution to the Tor network! We won’t send you any further emails unless you subscribe.

Disclaimer: If you have no idea why you’re receiving this email, we sincerely apologize! You shouldn’t hear from us again.

As of this writing my relay has been running for 8 days, has sent 38.65 GB of data, and has received 38.10 GB of data. I’m happy that this thing has proven to be an effective relay. My next step is to pursue the development of a relay image that can be written to an SD card, plugged into a Raspberry Pi, and operate as a relay without requiring any additional (or, at least, significant) configuration.

How Tor and HTTPS Work

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted a nice diagram that explains how Tor and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) work in regards to security and anonymity. If you click the HTTPS button the diagram explains how HTTPS protects your data, if you click the Tor button the diagram explains how Tor protects your anonymity, if you have both buttons clicked the diagram explains how Tor and HTTPS work together to protect your data and anonymity.

Neither Tor or HTTPS are perfect, especially when you’re accessing data outside of the Tor network (in other words, not accessing a hidden service). The anonymity that Tor provides cannot protect you if you chose to reveal personal information and HTTPS is only a secure as the trust chain created by issued certificates. The trust chain created by HTTPS has been compromised before when hackers were able to acquire the root signing certificates used by DigiNotar and it’s possible that many trusted certificate authorities are willing to issue fraudulent certificate to government entities. However both tools are relatively effective at what they do and when used in unison can do a great deal to protect your identify online.

Using a Raspberry Pi as a Tor Relay

I’ve been discussing Tor more frequently because I foresee a day when laws such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) force everybody wanting to communicate online anonymously to seek shelter in fully encrypted and anonymized networks. In addition the that Internet related laws are slowing making it so only people who receive a stamp of approval from state regulators will be allowed to legally post material online. In fact the United States government has already used its influence to take down websites it found undesirable and there is no reason to believe such actions won’t continue.

Many people are turned off by Tor because it is relatively slow. The Tor network’s bandwidth relies on relay nodes, which all traffic is transmitted through. What is needed to speed up the Tor network are more fast relay nodes. To this end I’ve begun investigating the use of Raspberry Pis as Tor relay nodes. For those who are unfamiliar with the Raspberry Pi it is a credit card sized ARM-based Linux computer. Two models are available, a $25.00 model and a $35.00 model. As you can see the device is dirt cheap, based on a processor that Tor has been ported to, and, in the case of the $35.00 model, has a built-in Ethernet port. All of these features make for an ideal platform on which to run a Tor relay.

I ordered a $35.00 model Raspberry Pi (although I paid slightly more since they are in very short supply at the moment) Friday and received it Monday. After installing Rasbian, the Debian-based Linux distribution optimized for the Raspberry Pi, onto an SD card I had lying around I plugged my little device into my television and booted it up. Installing Tor on the device was easy, I just had to enter the command sudo apt-get install tor and wait for a minute or so (since the device uses an SD card for storage write operations can be kind of slow). After the short wait I had Tor up and running and merely had to edit the torrc file to enable it as a relay node, open port 9001 on my firewall, and restart the Tor service. My little relay now appears on the Tor Metrics Portal and has traffic routing through it. For now I’ve throttled the relay to use 1Mbps normally and allow 1.5Mbps burst speeds. I plan to increase the bandwidth bit by bit until the relay begins to interfere with my overall network speeds (I use my network for other services including serving this website and I don’t want the relay to interfere with those).

If this project pans out I believe it will offer an effective way to increase the overall bandwidth of the Tor network. I know several people who would like to run a Tor relay but lack the technical expertise to set one up. Having a cheap Tor relay appliance, which is possible by utilizing embedded platforms likes the Raspberry Pi, would give those people an option to help increase the network’s bandwidth and, by so doing, make the network more appealing. Someday, if the Tor network becomes fast enough, a bulk of Internet traffic could seek refuge from today’s tyrannical states in the encrypted and anonymized heaven it offers. Should that happen there is little states could do to censor people online.

I’ll close by saying that the future we live into today is amazing. You can now pick up a fully capable computer for $35.00. That is something I never expected to say just a few short years ago.

That’s it for Today

Instead of preparing blog posts I’ve been spending a lot of my free time learning how to setup Tor hidden services. So far I’ve managed to setup a server with functioning Secure Shell (SSH), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers. The HTTP and IRC servers have functioning Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security using self-signed certifications (since getting a certificate signed by an established authority defeats the purpose of a hidden anonymous server). So far I can’t guarantee that my server is properly hidden since I’ve focused primarily on getting services running, not security.

The more the states of the world clamp down on the Internet the more anonymity protocol such as Tor will be necessary, especailly for those advocating radial ideas such as agorism. I think it would be wise for everybody to familiarize themselves with Tor because you never know how far the state’s censorship practices will extend.

My Initiation iPhone 5 Impressions

On Black Friday I was made aware of the fact that AT&T had refurbished iPhone 5s for sale. This caught my eye because the cost of refurbished iPhone 5s was $100.00 less than brand new ones and still came with the same warranty. On top of that my contract was up so I was eligible for one of those steeply subsidized discounts that are all the rage with cellular phone users. I upgraded my old iPhone 4 for a new black iPhone 5 with 64GB of storage.

Although I’ve only had the phone for a few hours I feel safe giving my initial impressions. Overall I like the new iPhone. Apple installed a taller screen that, thankfully, is the same width at the iPhone 4 screen (I can still operate the phone with one hand, something that becomes more difficult as phone width increases) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) radios. Another positive change is a mostly aluminum back plate, which I hope it more sturdy than the iPhone 4’s glass back plate (I never broke mine but I know many who did).

Beyond those changes, some notable hardware improvements, and a new connector (which I’ll rant about in a bit) the iPhone 5 is a standard iPhone. If you like the previous iPhones you’ll probably like the iPhone 5 and if you disliked the previous iPhones you’ll probably dislike the iPhone 5.

Compared to the iPhone 4 the iPhone 5 feels like a toy. That’s not to say it doesn’t feel sturdy, the phone doesn’t creak or make any other odd sounds when you press on it, it’s just light. In fact it’s so light that it feels like an empty casing in your hand when compared to the iPhone 4. I doubt the weight difference is going to be appreciated by anybody as it is a very minor thing but it’s still something to note.

Since I upgrade from an iPhone 4 I never had much hands on experience with Siri. Siri is a pretty nice feature and has worked reasonably well for the minor testing I’ve performed so far. I should note that I’ve had great success with voice recognition software on Android so my expectations were high from the beginning. My testing consisted of performing searches, sending text messages, opening applications, and telling Siri to go fuck herself. Overall I was impressed although I must note that many foreign works are not transcribed properly by Siri (try doing a search for Odin, Thor, or any other Norse god and you’ll be amused with the results you get). Siri also has a decent sense of humor. When I asked “Do you know HAL-9000?” the response was “Everybody knows what happened to HAL, I’d rather not talk about it. But if you insist:” and the option to search the web for HAL is available. Little touches like that amuse me greatly and I do appreciate the attention to detail in that regard.

I was surprised to find an LTE signal in my dwelling. As far as I knew AT&T had not rolled out LTE in the Twin Cities yet. Even though LTE comes with the promise of blazing speed I ran a speed test on my LTE connection and was left wanting. The average download speed was a pathetic 4.63Mbps and the average upload speed was an even more pathetic 2.56Mbps. Perhaps the slow speeds are due to the fact that LTE is technically rolled out in the Twin Cities yet or it could be due to a ton of iPhone 5 users connecting to the LTE tower and soaking up all the glorious bandwidth. Either way I plan to do more speed tests in the future to see if things improve.

One of the most notable changes on the iPhone 5 is the connector. Gone are the days of the 30-pin iPod connector that has served use so well. In its place we now have Apple’s new connector which they dub Lightening. What does this mean for you? It means all of those 30-pin connectors you’ve been collecting over the years are worthless. Considering the number of Apple devices I’ve purchased over the years this is a big headache for me. Of course Apple sells a 30-pin to Lightening adaptor but at $29.00 you’re better off buying new cables, which Apple only wants $19.00 for. I understand why Apple is moving away from the 30-pin connector as it takes up a notable amount of room but it’s still annoying.

Speaking of annoying Apple has included one of my biggest phone pet peeves on their newest phone; the headphone jack is on the bottom instead of the top. Granted moving the headphone connector is a minor inconvenience but it still pisses me off. Why should my phone be upside down just to have headphones plugged into it? Unless you’re going to say “It shouldn’t,” don’t bother answering that question because you’re wrong.

Overall I like the new iPhone although I will admit it’s not that much of an upgrade over the iPhone 4. If I had to summarize the difference between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 I would say the latter is merely a collection of nice, albeit minor, improvements that have become available over the last two years. Nothing about it is Earth shattering but I felt it was worth the upgrade cost. My feelings are obviously subject to change based on future experience but so far I’m impressed.

My Assessment of OpenNIC

A few months ago I posted about OpeNIC. For those who didn’t read that post OpenNIC is a decentralized Domain Name System (DNS). Most Internet users setup their computers to use DNS provided by their Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are several weaknesses to using an ISP provided DNS including possible reliability issues (the ISP’s DNS servers go down), potential censorship (the United States government has used its power over DNS providers to enforce nonexistent censorship laws), and stored log files of sites you’ve visited that are easily accessible by law enforcement officers.

OpenNIC, being a decentralized system, avoids many of these weaknesses. Since there are so many OpenNIC servers available to use the chances of a complete DNS outage is reduced. Government enforced censorship is more difficult because the OpenNIC has several exclusive Top Level Domains (TLD) that cannot be controlled (i.e. shutdown) easily. Logs are also harder for government officials to obtain since most OpenNIC servers either keep no logs or purge logs within 24 hours (a server’s policy is generally be found here).

I’ve been using OpenNIC for all my DNS needs since September and so far have had a favorable experience. Well known TLDs (.com, .net, .org, etc.) are properly forwarded to their respective servers so I’m able to access any domain name without issue. DNS lookups aren’t noticeably slower using OpenNIC when compared to using DNSs provided by Google, OpenDNS, or Comcast. I also haven’t experienced any downtime. Overall I like OpenNIC and will continue using it and will recommend it. I think the system is able to address some shortcomings of centralized DNSs while being reliable enough for day-to-day use.

Pure Awesome on Your Wrist

The things watchmakers can do has always amazed me. Using tiny sprints, gears, jewels, and miscellaneous other parts watchmakers are able to make machines that keep accurate time. Most watches are fairly insignificant devices, displaying the time and date. Some watches, such as the Aeternitas Mega 4, are marvels of horology. The Mega 4 is a purely mechanical watch containing 1,483 moving parts, support for two timezones, and an impressive prepetual calendar mechanism:

The eternal calendar of the Franck Muller Watchland workshops is different from any traditional perpetual calendar in that it takes into account the rule governing the Gregorian calendar stating that all century years not divisible by 400 are common years and not leap years.

The eternal calendar follows a cycle of 1’000 years (renewable to infinity) thanks to two additional sets of wheels:

The first set of wheels, comprising a wheel of 10 years, a wheel of 100 years and a wheel of 1’000 years, allows for the display of a cycle of 1’000 years.

The second set of wheels was designed for the setting, through the use of cams, of the skipping of the leap years three times in a row every 100 years and its re-establishment the fourth time.

A feature set like this on an electronic quartz watch wouldn’t be very impressive but the fact this watch is mechanical demonstrates the sheer skill some horologists have.

OpenNIC

The Internet remains one of the few communication tools that has avoided falling entirely under the state’s control. This is likely due to its decentralized nature. Unlike communication systems of yore that relied on centrally managed systems the Internet was designed to avoid centralization. Anybody can setup and run a web server, e-mail server, instant messenger server, etc. As it currently stands one of the central points of failure that still remain is the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is the system that translates human readable uniform resource locators (URL), such as christopherburg.com, to addresses understood by computers.

Most people rely on the DNS servers provided by centrally managed authorities such as their Internet service provider (ISP) or other companies such as Google or OpenDNS. Unfortunately these centralized agencies are central points the state can use to censor or otherwise control the Internet. The United States government has exploited this vulnerability in order to enforce copyright laws and it is likely they will exploit this vulnerability to censor other content they deem undesirable. Thankfully there is no reason we have to rely on centralized DNS servers. DNS, like every other protocol that makes up the Internet as we know it, was designed in a way that doesn’t require central authorities. Enter OpenNIC, a decentralized DNS.

I haven’t had much time to experiment with OpenNIC so it may not even be a viable solution to the centralized nature of DNS but it looks promising. OpenNIC is a network of DNS servers that not only resolve well-known top level domains (TLD) but also resolves OpenNIC specific TLDs such as .pirate. Since the system is decentralized there are no single points of failure that can be easily exploited by the state. I plan on experimenting with OpenNIC to see how well it works and, if it works for my needs, switching over to it for my domain name needs. I’ll also write a followup post overviewing my experience with the system and whether or not I can recommend it for general usage. It is my hope that OpenNIC will serve the purpose of avoiding the state’s influence over DNS and thus assist those of us who are actively fighting against the state.