The Author – Bart Busschots
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Sep
13
Trial – Some Interesting Articles I’ve Read
Filed Under Polemics & Politics, Software Development | 3 Comments
A lot of other bloggers do posts where they just list interesting articles they’ve read. It’s not something I’ve really considered before. However, I’ve recently started coming across some excellent articles that I think are worth sharing. So, I’m gonna give it a go. Consider this a trial. If you’re a regular reader let me know whether or not you’d be interested in reading more posts like this one by leaving a comment.
Sep
12
Eircom Security – More Bad News and Some Suggested Solutions
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security | 35 Comments
This is a follow-up article to my earlier article Eircom Exposes Its Broadband Customers to Serious Security Risks. If you’re following the comments on that article you’ll see that I’m trying to bring these problems to Eircom’s attention. I haven’t gotten very far yet but I’ll keep updating those comments with what ever progress I manage to make. However, there has been another development that I feel I need to bring to people’s attention. This afternoon I was anonymously sent some very interesting information regarding yet another alleged hole in Eircom’s security. I MUST STRESS THAT I HAVE NOT VERIFIED THESE CLAIMS as to do so would involve attempting to break in to someone’s network and that’s illegal. However, should this prove to be true Eircom has yet another problem to fix. In this article I’ll start by explaining the alleged problem, then propose a simple solution, and end with some simple advice for Eircom customers who wish to protect themselves from these security vulnerabilities.
[tags]Eircom, Security[/tags]
Sep
11
Eircom Exposes Its Broadband Customers to Serious Security Risks
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security | 28 Comments
I had heard complaints from people in the past that Eircom didn’t seem to do the whole security thing properly at all. I guess I just hopped they’d have sorted themselves out by now. They haven’t. I’m not sure if it’s down to incompetence or just not caring about their customers, but, in my book there are no valid excuses for leaving your customers exposed. Eircom have chosen to give their customers a wireless router. This makes things a lot simpler for the customer since it means they don’t have to go messing around with cables and such, but it potentially opens them up to significantly higher security risks. In the relationship between an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a customer, the ISP must be the one on top of security issues. The average broadband customer cannot realistically be expected to be a security expert. Customers can only be expected to follow instructions from their ISP, and they have every right to assume that these instructions will not expose them to serious risks. Having gone through the process of setting up Eircom broadband for my grandfather last weekend I can tell you they are totally failing to protect their users by instructing their customers to set up their networks in a way that is highly insecure.
[tags]Eircom, Broadband, Ireland, Security, WEP[/tags]
Sep
9
A Trip Down Memory Lane – Returning to my Old School to Talk About Science
Filed Under Science & Astronomy | 10 Comments
As part of a program to promote science at second level my Leaving Cert physics teacher asked me back to give a talk. I decided to focus on something that the curriculum certainly never does, the stuff we DON’T know. The curriculum teaches science as a set of laws and equations. It all seems very much set in stone, almost like commandments chiseled into tablets. What the curriculum doesn’t really teach kids is how science evolves or how it is evolving today. Right now scientists are trying to thrash out some really very fundamental questions about the universe we all live in. It’s the continuation of a never-ending epic struggle to better understand our universe. Students generally don’t get to see that, so I dedicated my talk to explaining just two of those very fundamental mysteries which scientists are trying to get to the bottom of right now.
Sep
2
iPhoto 7 – A Closer Look
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Photography | 7 Comments
In a follow up to my initial thoughts on the new iLife I want to have a more detailed look at the new iPhoto now that I’ve had some time to really get to use it. Although my overall impression is that this version of iPhoto offers significant improvements over the previous version, it is not perfect. One part of my work flow has become less intuitive in one sense, yet more intuitive in another. There is also still one very annoying omission from iPhoto.
[tags]iLife, iPhoto, Apple[/tags]
Aug
28
New Aluminium iMac – WOW!
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 3 Comments
The new iMacs look great in the ads and on the Apple web page, and, on paper, they look like good value for money. That was all I could really say about them until this afternoon, when the first of them arrived here in work. Believe it or not they look even better ‘in the flesh’, they just make you go ‘WOW’. Within moments of the box being opened there was a crowed of curious windows users gathered around it! Apart from the aluminium and glass being nicer materials than the old white plastic, the new case is much better proportioned so the old ‘chin’ that people complained about with the previous generation of iMacs is effectively gone. Sure, there is still space under the bottom of the screen but it doesn’t look out of proportion any more. The second thing I noticed is how much I like the new glossy screens. I’m a big fan on them on the MacBooks and MacBook Pros and I think they also work well on the new iMacs. Everything you load on it just looks shiner than on the old iMacs. The model I played with had the 20″ screen, a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and cost around €1,200. I didn’t get to play with it for long but it seemed very fast and very snappy. I would have no hesitation in recommending this machine to family and friends.
The one thing I was a little worried about with these new iMacs was their new hyper-thin keyboards. So, I opened up Text Edit and started typing. Shockingly the feedback from the teeny keys is fantastic. The keyboard is an absolute joy to use despite how odd, and indeed un-usable, it looks. One of the lads in the office is even thinking of buying one for his PC!
Aug
27
Just a little follow-on from to my article Genuine Disadvantage, Windows Genuine Advantage is back up. So far MS have kept quiet as to what the cause was. Anyhow, you can read all about it in Gregg Keizer’s Computer World article Massive Microsoft WGA meltdown fingers legit Vista and XP owners as pirates. The links at the end of the three page article also make good reading and I enjoyed Harry McCracken’s short opinion piece titled Windows Genuine Advantage: The Jig is Up over at PC World.
[tags]Microsoft, Windows, Vista, Windows Genuine Advantage, Genuine Advantage[/tags]
Aug
25
Genuine Disadvantage
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 4 Comments
I have never been a fan of any system that makes life MORE difficult for people who pay for software than for those who pirate it. I also detest any company that treats all it’s clients like criminals. This is why I have issues with those music and movie studios who force DRM on people, and also with MicroSoft and their insultingly named “Genuine Advantage” program. To treat people like criminals because they were good enough to pay for your software is insulting enough. But then having the gall to call the spyware they force upon their customers to continually verify their non-criminality “Genuine Advantage” is just adding insult to injury. It was the invention of Genuine Advantage that proved to be the final straw that drove me away from Windows to Linux and then to OS X. Today, I feel I can rightfully say “I told you so”. Genuine Advantage is now BROKEN. It’s not 100% down but loads of people are having their valid Windows installs marked as pirated and cripled because of a major problem with the Genuine Advantage servers. At the moment the best estimate for a time to repair is next Tuesday! Many people who were good enough to actually pay for Microsoft’s mediocre OS are now being denied service by MicroSoft. Way to reward your loyal customers Bill!
[tags]MicroSoft, Windows, Genuine Advantage[/tags]
Aug
25
Unlocking Hidden Features in OS X
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 1 Comment
As a Windows user I was always a huge fan of the program Tweak UI which let you easily mess with some hidden settings in Windows. This week I’ve been experimenting with two similar apps for OS X, Tweak Freak and Tinker Tool. I experimented with both and really I can only recommend Tinker Tool.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Tweak UI, Tweak Freak, Tinker Tool[/tags]
Aug
22
SSH Agent – Simple Yet Secure SSH Keys On OS X
Filed Under Security, System Administration, Computers & Tech | 6 Comments
If, like me, you spend a lot of time using SSH you’ll probably like the idea of being able to log in to servers without a password. If you really want this you can do it by setting up a SSH key pair with an unencrypted private key. This works, it lets you log in to your servers without a password. HOWEVER, it’s a simply disastrous idea from a security point of view. The only reason I don’t do this is because the idea of an unencrypted private key scares the bejeesus out of me. Hence, I still dutifully type my SSH password each time I connect to a server, and each time I check something in to source control. I’ve been keeping an eye out for a simple solution for a while but hadn’t been actively thinking about it for months. That is until I came across Dave Dribin’s blog post Putting the “S” Back Into SSH this morning. Dave rightly points out that there is a solution, ssh-agent, the problem is it’s a command-line tool and by all account not the simplest one to use. So, what’s obviously needed is a nice GUI for ssh-agent. Dave initially thought he’d found the solution in the program SSHKeychain. SSHKeychain is more of a proxy for ssh-agent than a GUI for it though, and Dave soon discovered that it has it’s fair share of problems. So, in the end, I didn’t decide to use SSHKeychain. However, the post inspired me to have another go at finding a solution. Also, the reference to ssh-agent sparked a vague memory in the back of my head of an OS X GUI for something to do with SSH that had the word ‘agent’ in its name.
[tags]SSH, SSH Keys, ssh-agent, OS X, Apple[/tags]