Full disk encryption is too good, says US intelligence agency | ExtremeTech – StumbleUpon. I have to wonder if this is disinformation. When the supercomputers that the government have gathering as much information as they do, it seems that a password would be trivial to figure out. I wonder why they would make this study available if true.
Voice-recognition in a lift – Burnistoun – Episode 1 – StumbleUpon. This is hilarious. Completely believable. Voice recognition technology can be frustrating at times.
SIPRNet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – StumbleUpon. I wonder if we are safer for knowing this information? Does security ever really exist?
Interesting that there is more interest in Mac viruses.
I wonder if this means that Mac anti-virus companies have a stronger case to make for purchase of their software? Thanks Intego!
It has been for me. I opened Console and it said that the last 5 crashes were due to the presence of Cisco AnyConnect software installed. I had a friend give me version 3 so I have been trying it. Well I didn’t have a VPN session going when it crashed, but the module was still loaded and it was indicated as the problem.
So I have uninstalled the program using the Cisco Anyconnect uninstaller and restarted the machine. I am trying to recreate the crash, but what I have done in the past to create the crash has not triggered it. Have I found the solution for you?
Other research at the Apple forums said it was the system UI server. This was a problem in Snow Leopard too, and seemed to be fixed then by throwing away the UI preferences. You can throw it away by going to your own user folder ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost. Throw away that entire folder. I am going to do that if it crashes again.
Nice informative article. I wish I had read this when my site got hacked. If you run a WordPress site this is required reading.
FaceTime calls are encrypted, HIPAA compliant | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog. This is fantastic. Now this will be an easy sell in a corporate environment. With Skypes recent security problems, makes this announcement even sweeter.
I don’t know about you, but I peak in remembering about 5 different passwords. After that they all seem to get fuzzy when and where I should use them.
So I spend some time at websites resetting my password to the newest password that I am using. In the decade of using passwords, I have about 50 different passwords that I have used. However I mostly use 5 passwords and that is sometimes due to the silly nature of website authentication.
Isn’t passwords on the Internet a mess? The bank that I use won’t allow punctuation or special symbols. Isn’t that silly? So I must have a unique password for them. Another website requires 12 digits, so I have an extra password for them. Most sites require 8 digits with a mix of upper/lower and punctuation. Those are normal. One site required a 16 digit password. I rarely visit them. I can’t remember the site because I always had to reset the password.
I have tried systems like OpenID and using Yahoo/Twitter/Facebook login. Those help but still are a terrible way to authenticate. Generally when you do that, you give those places rights to tweet or communicate in your name and give up some privacy. Not worth it to me, so I normally create an original account. What makes authentication worse is when sites have enforced usernames that are all upper case or lowercase. Why not give people the most flexibility instead of being so proprietary.
The older I get the less I am tolerant of proprietary formats and processes. I think the growth of open source has made people more sensitive to vendor lock in, and push against that. It is strange therefore, that we seem to embrace vendor lock-in with Apple. Clearly they have clever products, but is that enough to safeguard our choices and liberty? I do not think so.
So what do passwords protect us from? A cynic would say unemployment. By using them, we ensure we have a job. However the real truth seem to be that since passwords can be cracked, they are a poor security choice. Passwords would be great if people’s memories were better. However since most people use the same password for everything, it becomes more of a security risk than less of one.
