dispatches from Canada’s capital
1–6 of 226 entries categorized:
A lot of businesses and institutions rely upon master key systems, in which most keys can only open one lock, but one key can open all of them. The latter sort of keys are usually held by security personnel, superintendents, etc. One common approach to achieving this with pin tumbler locks is to put two [...]
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In the past, I have identified some problems with biometrics as an element in security systems. On the Wired website, there is a relatively old article describing an attack against electronic physical access control systems, developed by Zac Franken. It exploits the fact that the commonly used Wiegand protocol – used for communication between readers [...]
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Spammers are one of the most annoying natural enemies of the blogging community. They waste the time of site administrators who must install anti-spam systems and dig through suspicious comments to pick out real ones. They waste the time of users who are forced to jump through hoops like site registration and CAPCHAs.
One way to [...]
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President Obama’s speech on the United States and the Muslim world, delivered in Cairo, is worth watching:
Obama in Cairo – Part I
Obama in Cairo – Part II
Obama in Cairo – Part III
Obama in Cairo – Part IV
Obama in Cairo – Part V
Obama in Cairo – Part VI
Video on official White House website
It covers the history [...]
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Separately, I have discussed both the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine and the practice of hashing information. The fact that WA allows anyone to do so easily has relevance for things like making bets online, in situations where players want to conceal their guesses until everyone else has put theirs up.
Here is an example. Say [...]
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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has created a new website. In addition to the commissioner’s blog, there is now a website devoted to deep packet inspection, announced here.
Deep packet inspection is quite a profound modification of how the internet works. All information passed across the web goes through a number of machines. In the [...]
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