Security

Psychological factors in conveying intelligence

May 12, 2013

in Bombs and rockets, Politics, Psychology, Security

“The process of relaying intelligence can distort its meaning. Content can be altered unconsciously in transmission. Garbled data are made to appear more coherent when relayed in conversation, allowing actual disjunctions between facts to be replaced by false connections; lengthy information can be made shorter; details are suppressed subconsciously if they are not consistent with [...]

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William James on war

April 20, 2013

in Bombs and rockets, Economics, Politics, Psychology, Security, Writing

“History is a bath of blood,” wrote William James, whose 1906 antiwar essay is arguably the best ever written on the subject. “Modern war is so expensive,” he continued, “that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of [...]

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Concept for making use of Google’s ‘Inactive Account Manager’ feature

April 13, 2013

in Geek stuff, Internet matters, Law, Politics, Psychology, Rants, Security

Presumably after considering the consequences of doing so, Google has become a sort of unusual executor of the digital estates of users who opt in to their ‘Inactive Account Manager’ feature. They are given the option to set how long a ‘timeout period’ must pass before the system kicks in. They are then allowed to [...]

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Apology for eaten emails and comments

March 15, 2013

in Geek stuff, Internet matters, Security

These days, I need to be extra-vigilant in terms of filtering possible spam and malware. I also get a substantial volume of spam comments and emails each day. As a result, it is almost certain that I am occasionally missing legitimate emails and comments, deleting them from spam folders that I don’t have time to [...]

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iTunes updates

February 28, 2013

in Geek stuff, Internet matters, Rants, Security

The decision of whether or not to update iTunes is always a wary one for me. On the one hand, it is possible they are patching essential security bugs that are leaving one or more of my devices vulnerable. On the other, it is likely that the update will include at the very least a [...]

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‘backed by certain states’

February 6, 2013

in Geek stuff, Internet matters, Security

In a slightly ominous development, GMail is now warning me that: “We believe that attackers backed by certain states may be attempting to compromise your account or computer” and urge me to: “Protect yourself now“. This is probably just further fallout from the Stratfor hack. I wish it wasn’t happening while I am so completely [...]

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Phone hacking – everything is a computer these days

January 2, 2013

in Bombs and rockets, Geek stuff, Internet matters, Security

This video shows off some of the realistic attacks that can be performed against office-type landline telephones these days: The presentation in this video was made by by by Ang Cui, a researcher from the Columbia University Intrusion Detection Systems Lab. More information about the ‘symbiote’ protective software mentioned in the video is on their [...]

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Intrigue

December 31, 2012

in Books and literature, Psychology, Security, Writing

From Kipling’s Kim: “It was intrigue,— of course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak,— but what he loved was the game for its own sake — the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and sounds of the women’s [...]

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Anyone want to try Silent Circle?

November 8, 2012

in Geek stuff, Internet matters, Security

Given the unencrypted email and phone traffic is now likely to be intercepted by state intelligence services, and given that services like Skype probably have backdoors that render their encryption ineffective, would anyone be interested in trying out Silent Circle: a new encryption platform backed by Phil Zimmerman, creator of the original PGP? According to [...]

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