Elamb Cybersecurity

Category: Other Stuff

  • Track Down

    Kevin Mitnick will probably totally disagree, but the movie Track Down was pretty entertaining. 

    Its a hollywoodized version of Tsutomu Shimomura‘s book called Takedown detailing his attempts to capture computer (now reformed) cracker Kevin Mitnick.  Russel Wong plays Shimomura and living legend Kevin Mitnick is played by none other than Skeet Ulrich.  Skeet does a great job.

    I found myself laughing out loud at some of the stuff Kevin pulled off in the movie.  I have not read Shimomura’s book so I don’t know how much of the movie was acurate.  But either way they made Kevin out to be one bad, bad MF.  

    Appearently, there is some controversy on how truthful Track Down and Takedown are to the the events that actually took place with Kevin’s conviction.  A lot of this is talked about in Emmanuel Goldstein’s Freedom Downtime.  I guess I’ll have to check that out next.

    If you’re an overall security geek like my self you’ll get a kick out of the movie.  Just keep in mind that it is a work of fiction… with actors like Master P, I suppose that is not hard to do.  I also noticed that Shimomura appears in a scene in which he is laughing at his character getting heckled… ironic.

  • Global Firepower: Military Strength Rankings

    If history has shown the observer one thing, it is that war is a part of life. Strange as that may sound, documented records report only 300 years of known peace on our planet, leaving the rest to wallow in the path of war. What that statistic tells us is that there has been some source of conflict – be it religious, territorial or otherwise – between two or more parties on our planet for thousands of years. GlobalFirepower (GFP) provides a unique analytical display of information based on sources from all over the globe. Our information is broken down into five major categories shown below. More countries will be added to the site as information becomes available.

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  • Digg will take over the world

    When I was in high school, I read this book called Ender's Game, by a man named Orson Scott Card.  The book is about a strategic prodigy named Ender who is the only hope for saving humanity from an alien invasion.  It was a great book. 

    In the bookd Ender's brother and sister, Peter and Valentine, are just as bright
    as he. Peter convinces Valentine to collaborate in his grand scheme
    of controlling the planet Earth.  They start by creating a huge following on the Internet.

    I think that the comment system created by Kevin Rose and the Revision 3 team is going to be copied enough to make it an unofficial standard.  The one thing that is very powerful about digg is that it harnesses the power of the collective masses participating.  Some topics that are supercharged with emotion moving hundreds  of commenters on digg into action.  The site becomes like a loaded gun.

    Perhaps it won't be digg that starts catapults the current online revolution but it will almost definitely be something very similar.

  • Firewall – Harrison Ford

    Just saw the movie Firewall on DVD.  The old man has still got it.  Harrison Ford as usual, delivers.  The man is amazing.  The consistency to his character, Jack, is impeccable. 

    Firewall is about a director of security who gets manipulated into taking money out of the bank where works.  The criminals take Jack's family hostage and threaten to kill him if he doesn't cooperate. 

    One thing I thought they did really well was to leave out the usual Hollywood visual effects of hacking.  You'll see them in movies like “Hackers” where hacking on a unix system looks like Tron.  In reality hacking looks very boring especially if you don't know what you are looking at.

    It is a decent movie.  Perhaps I'll add it to my hacker/security/tech collection (once I start building it).

  • Scoble Does Parody of A-List Bloggers

    <OWNED>
    Chris Pirillo, Adam Curry, himself, Dan Winer, Ray Ozzie, Anil Dash, Ray Ozzie, Anil Dash, Dave Barry, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Lawrence Lessing, Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Doc Searls, Dan Gillmor, Howard Rheingold, Joi Ito, Chris Locke, Esther Dyson…

    </OWNED>

    read more | digg story

  • Web 2.0 Services, feed readers

    My original plan for this page was to have the largest repository of social      links on the web. But there are too many and its been done to death so      I'll just point you to the social bookmark gurus who have spent lots of      time compiling the lists of social bookmarks:

        3Spot…    

    has the most exhaustive list of Social Bookmarking. 3Spot takes        it up a notch by breaking down the Social Bookmarking services into different        categories:

             * Social        Bookmark Managers.
    MORE ON SOCIAL BOOK MARKS HERE.

  • Why Linux Wont Replace Windows

    A well written article using the motorcycle/car metaphor on why linux will never need to replace windows.

    This is a great article for those interested in the Linux vs Windows debate.

    Linux is an alternative to
    Windows, but not a replacement. It will never be a replacement, because
    it has incompatible goals. Microsoft's goal is to get their software
    onto as many PCs as posible, as their priority is profit. Linux has no
    such goal, because Linux is free. It has a different priority.

    Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) is the exact opposite of
    proprietary software like Windows: FOSS is all about the
    software    . It's not
    about the number of end users. Software that works well but has only a
    few users is considers a failure by comemrcial software standards, but
    a success by FOSS ones.

    Lots of great, great points for those wanting to switch from Windows to Linux, A MUST READ for LINUX N00bs.

    I use Linux for the security things that I can't do with Windows (or at
    least I don't know how to do easily with Windows).  Like carrying
    an OS in my pocket loading it on a system in another country and *hacking a network.

    * Hacking
    Disclaimer: (All is done legally, with consent of network owners… Do
    not try this at home.  Hacking networks is done by and in the
    presence of trained professionals.  No animals are harmed in my
    hacking events). 

    Thanks linux.oneandoneis2.org, I really learned something.

    read more | digg story

  • Marine (naturalized philipine citizen) Spy caught in the White House!

    A Marine (naturalized citizen of the Philipines) stole 100 classified documents from FBI computers.  There is no telling what he took or who sold the information too.  This is bad.

    Top Secret information is information that if compromized could cause grave damage to National Security. 

    This is a wake up call to the entire intelligence community particularly in the area of determining personnel security.  There is perhaps no government employee as trusted as a Marine.  I suspect that this single act will make it more difficult for naturalized citizens of other countries to advance in high ranking government posistions for fear of allegiance to the same. 

    And you know what this means… no President Arnold Schwarznegger :(..     

     As for Mr. Aragoncillo, they will throw the book at him.  Call me crazy but this seems like the wrong administration to mess around with.  The Bush administration might start saying that the Philipines has WMD's. 

    Aragoncillo, a naturalized citizen from the Philippines and US marine, used his top secret clearance to steal classified intelligence documents from White House computers. Both the FBI and CIA are calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history.

    In 2000, Aragoncillo worked on the staff of then-Vice President Al Gore. When interviewed by Philippine television, he remarked how valued Philippine employees were at the White House.

    “I think what they like most is our integrity and loyalty,” Aragoncillo said.

    read more | digg story

  • CEO of Microsoft Smoking Crack!

    Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, says he will “CRUSH GOOGLE” the search engine and its brilliant Ad system.

    Hey, Steve.  Get off the pipe!  MSN search sucks. 
    Altavista is better than MSN.  Here is a suggestion from some
    stupid nameless blog, Write better search code.  Beat Yahoo's
    search engine, then come after Google.  The Internet is Google's
    house they are slam dunking on you all day.  They've done
    things with Firefox and NOW:

    On Tuesday, Google may strike back at Redmond's heart: Microsoft Office.

    Google and Sun Microsystems will hold a press conference
    on Tuesday at which they're expected to announce a collaboration to
    bring StarOffice productivity applications to Google users.

    If you can say that Microsoft has an Arch enemy I guess it
    would be a combination of Sun Microsystems, Google, and Mozilla. 

    In 2001 Baller named the following:

    1. Linux – The rock: invading Microsoft territory from below.
    2. Unix – The hard place: unyielding in the enterprise space above.
    3. Oracle – The database giant that won't give ground.
    4. Sun – Big, powerful Unix boxes stymie Windows 2000.
    5. AOL – Still the king.

    In 2005 it would be:

         1.   Linux – Still going

         2.   Unix (OSX on x86?) – Still going

         3.   Oracle

         4.   Mozilla – the viral spread of Firefox on inferior IE

         5.   Google – Undisputed Search Engine, Internet Kings

         6.   Sun
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  • Motorola RAZR 2 appears online

    It is still as svelte as it ever was, but the original Motorola RAZR V3
    is getting a little long in the tooth, if you know what we mean.

    A few people I've talked to said they didn't think the RAZR was worth
    the money because its not intuitive and its load time is slow.  I
    think I'll hold out for a PDA/Phone. 

    As for the RAZR II, it seems to look just like the first.

    read more | digg story