Wikileaks

Mr. Assange is currently seeking political asylum with the government of Ecuador.  While it still might be a crazy person theory but I find the timing for start of Manning’s trial and Assange’s extradition rulings to be a little close.  I know even if he had not been seeking asylum there is still time for him to appeal but it seemed that Manning was waiting an extraordinary amount of time before the start of his half.  Then now with months of silence both balls are rolling again.

Even if he was extradited to the US I still do not have clear understanding on what he would be charged with and how they would make it stick.  That’s what makes this unbelievable to me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18529726

Certificates and BES

I recently went through an interesting experience of having to re-create the CA in a network and regenerating all of the keys for the servers.  Which for the most part worked well except I had an issue with the BES server and it not being able to connect back to the mail server.  This was somewhat expected, we had to re-generate the keys for the other hosts against the new CA for them to connect back.  The BES was a little different, we did not have to do it’s keys be re-add the CA and the mail servers keys to it’s windows key store.  Not the BES servers specific key store which through me for a loop for a minute or two.

Specifically you need to add the CA and the mail servers new certs in to the trusted root cert authority.

Lighting

I don’t think the statement at the end of this article is particularly fair, but here it is.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/05/opinion/bergen-al-qaeda-whos-left/index.html

Fear of al Qaeda in it’s current state is hardly irrational, the only reason that the numbers are so low is from the actions taken to counter the threat posed by them.  While it may be needed to re-evaluate the current amount of control applied to the risk, doing nothing is not an acceptable solution.

New car technology

I like shiny new things with new tech adaptations of technology.

While running an engine on compressed air is not new, to me it makes more sense the electric. No worries about the batteries during a crash scene.  You still have the worry of the compressed air tank getting ruptured, it might be safer then the alternative still.

http://www.mdi.lu/english/oneflowair.php

I would like to know how extreme temperatures effect the rage of the vehicle.

Month End Wrap Up

There is more going on just in this last week that I can keep track of.

Facebook is still dropping on the stock exchange;

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9V3R9JG0.htm

It’s at the point now where it was initially picked at for a price, but I don’t think it’s done going down just yet.  It has now dropped 25% of it’s initial value.

Julian Assange has lost his extradition case;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2012/may/30/julian-assange-extradition-verdict-live-coverage

He still has a chance of appeal in the next fourteen days, I am on the fence with this.  I can’t really disagree with the extradition, but I can’t ignore the conspiracies that have him heading to the US as soon as he touches down.  It fits with the heal dragging on Bradly Manning’s case, which is also just getting started up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/29/bradley-manning-life-in-prison-interview?newsfeed=true

I personally don’t think he stands much of a chance at winning.  Also I have a feeling that Julian is going to be involved in this soon enough.

Trojan’d Anonymous Web Surfing Tool

This is something that I always think of when people are using tools like this, if you are really trying to hide this is the last thing you need to happen.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/05/29/spying-trojan-targets-iranian-web-surfers-dissidents/

It’s really not the ones that we know about that are an issue, I am always paranoid that someone will slip code in to an official repository with matching hashes.  Or just make a legitimate commit to the project that does bad things that slip past the moderators.

Interview with a lock picker

I have always been fascinated with the mechanics of locks, key and rotation. I have never tried much with keyed locks but I have spent a lot of time to rotation locks. You can feel the mechanisms inside of the rotation locks if you work them slowly enough, then try a feel out the numbers needed.

Here is an interview with a real professional.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ken-doyle-safecracker#

I still play with a few locks around the house, they are kinda like a puzzle to play with while you are waiting for something.

Skywiper / Flame Info

Here is some more,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18253331

Again this looks like the work of a nation state, I am sure there will be more sophisticated software then this discovered this year.

Skywiper write up

Excellent write up on skywiper it has some pretty advanced features and it’s longevity is astounding.

http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf

I am sure there is more malware of this caliber still out there and undetected. With more big players coming in to the arena I am sure sure there is more then a few high quality teams creating top notch malware now.

Hardware Malware

I can’t say that this is surprising, if the shoe was on the other foot they would be doing it to them.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Assurance

This is a clear sign that the current supply chains are a bad idea, just because it’s cheaper does not mean its the best solution. A huge amount of time and effort are placed in to making trusted systems and it’s all for nothing when you cannot trust the hardware. This makes me think what I am running that is not made over seas?