The Iggblog

For whatever reason, probably my own coffee habits, I was remembering a VW commercial from back in the day. Some girl that owns a coffee place running around delivering things with her golf. At the end she says “I’ve got to cut back on the caffeine”, which I always find myself saying to myself at around 2 in the afternoon. So I found it on youtube for kicks, and was surprised when I started watching it. I actually had to hunt down some info and see if my hunch was right. It was. If you watch NCIS, you’ll know it when you see it. The ironing is delicious.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Saw this article on Digg today (clicky for full text): U.S. Military are now looking for ways to weaponize hacking.

From the article:
U.S. Defense Department officials were so impressed with the level of coordination between ground military ops and cyberattacks against strategical targets during the recent conflicts, that they are now looking for ways to weaponize hacking. Aviation Week glanced at such a device and reports that it is being designed to be easily used even by non-techy soldiers.

Apparently, there are several devices currently being developed behind closed doors specifically for such purposes, but the one Aviation Week talks about is intriguing. It is basically a highly complex hacking tool designed for the unexperienced that is to turn soldiers into veritable script kiddies. Granted, script kiddies with a lot of firepower.

Script kiddies are widely regarded as being at the bottom of the coding barrel. Whether the government means to refer to soldiers using such devices as such, they basically are making script kiddie boxes. Just as their namesake, script kiddie soldiers would be useful against most civilian targets and most non-hardened or haphazard websites. The irony here being that the stimulus for making these hacking boxes was more sophisticated or coordinated attacks against our own government or military. Any kind of hardware “hack box” that joe blockhead soldier could finger mash would be useless for such an attack.

The device is easily able to map out all the nodes of a given wireless network and, if necessary, cause them to disconnect, then watch them getting back online in order to identify weak spots. Once the best target is determined, the soldier (slash hacker) is presented with several attack attributes and can adjust their respective level by using sliders on a touch-screen. These attributes include, but are not limited to covertness, speed, or collateral damage.

I’m no hacker, and all of those things are quickly and easily accomplished with free tools. Ther are live linux distros that fit on a keychain USB key with all those wireless tools. I don’t think Backtrack has any tools to drop wireless clients, but ARP poisoning is a technique that’ll do it on most wireless nodes. But to do that you’ll need a little talent and patience to learn why and how it works. Ethernet, wired or wireless, is a dumb and gullible protocol. It’s trivial in most cases to fool it into telling you more than you should know, or making it do what you want it to.

I really hope the government is still thinking of employing hackers to do our cyber defense and offense. You can’t weaponize an abstract talent. that’s just not how it works. I’ve always advocated this and I’ll do it again, hacking is a love based skill. A real hacker is a very highly trained and very disciplined person, even if it’s all self taught. You can’t distill that and drop it in a box for anyone to use. Deploying script kiddie soldiers against an enemy with even a couple moderately skilled personnel would be like beating a tank with a baseball bat. And about as good on defense when the tank fires back. Never mind when (not if) any enemy gets their hands on these devices and analyzes them.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

This might be nerding out a little more than usual, but it’s also pretty awesome.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

… Just sayin’

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

So I’ve finished moving. I’m right on Comm Ave in Allston now. My commute is a hair longer, but much less complicated. I can technically take a right onto comm ave and just keep going till I get to work… the pike is a little faster though. The place is tiny, but I don’t really notice too much (unless I’m cooking). We’re only here for a few months till we move again in September. We’re headed to a gorgeous place in east Boston. It reminds me a lot of the place I used to live with Dan in Marlborough. Heat and AC are included which is pretty awesome if you’re like me and you don’t want to skimp on being comfortable. It has a pool and a huge fitness center, so I can cancel my gym membership. And parking is (finally) included. Our room is huge… we have our own bathroom and walk-in closet. It’s on the 6th floor, so we get sweet views of the city. Really looking forward to this place. Normally I’d be freaking out at how small my current place is, but my head isn’t in it.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I normally could give two craps about celebrity news. But this guy isn’t really a celebrity per se, and he’s so shady that I can’t help myself. The “shamwow guy”, aka Vince Shlomi, airs commercials that reek so badly of scam that you feel the need to take a shower after watching them. Dry off with a regular towel though, kids… You’d probably catch something if you actually used a ShamWoW. Latest news on this lovable fellow is that apparently he’s been arrested for punching a prostitute in the face. Classy.

“Police reports obtained by the site claim that Shlomi met 26-year-old prostitute Lenea Harris at a Miami nightclub, and subsequently brought her back to his room at Setai Hotel. Shlomi allegedly paid Harris $1,000 for “straight sex.”

That’s went things took a turn.

Shlomi told police “that he kissed [Harris] when all of a sudden [Harris] bit his tongue and would not let go,” according to the report.

Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue…”

Full article: Clicky

For your viewing pleasure:

Click for full sized and obviously NWS image:

Shamwow and Slap-Chop ads:
ShamWoW
Slap-Chop

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

The name of the department I work in right now is insite. It’s probably just some corporate goon’s idea of a trendy spelling of “insight”. When our updated systems get rolled out the new name for my group will be RIM, for “remote infrastructure management”. Because… I mean… Everyone loves acronyms, right? This means my job title will be “RIM operator”. I think people need to be a little more careful with acronyms though. We’re already calling eachother rim jockeys, and we’re just waiting for someone to come walking in with a resumee asking for details on the RIM job. At least they didn’t go with “automated network usage support”. It’s a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea.

In related news, I’ve come to find out one of my coworkers almost got a medal for his time served over in the middle east. the acronym on the medal would have been for “the war on terror”, signifying his diligence in the fight against TWAT for his time served.

This vid has been floating around the net getting great reviews for a month or so, but I recently stumbled it again and it was just as cool as the first time I watched it. So I thought I’d share. For the non-nerds, it’s a brief and enjoyable (no kidding, it’s actually pretty cool) history of the internet. Anyone that has a little curiosity about the world around them will probably like it, it’s not a pile of jargon. For the nerds it’s just fun to watch… Lore is a big part of geekdom. The fit and finish on it is top notch. The embedded vid is pretty good, but it’ll probably look better on the host site. Enjoy, let me know what you think.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Driving on days like today make me very thankful for having gone through a few seasons of ice racing and training at Tim O’Neil‘s rally school. Not because I’m sliding all over the place 100% of the time, but because it gives me the confidence and knowledge to not drive like a complete asshat. The drivers out there were so bad that they were slowing down the snowplows. If you’re driving slower than the plows, keeping them from moving, you probably shouldn’t be on the road yet.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Apparently there’s a resurgence of 80’s “style” going on. Some broken mind somewhere decided it’d be fun to make the 80s happen again. I was out earning boyfriend-points with Emily on sunday while she was clothes shopping, and some of the stuff that was on the racks there was pretty dreadful. Below is an example (clicky for larger):

Yes… Jeans with day-glow tips. Who decided that’d be a good idea? Also on the plate were: pants with stirrups, oversized trashbag sweaters, and black stonewashed jeans (I guess these never really completely disappeared, but they were at stores other than hot topic). I don’t think anyone wants to remember how they dressed in the 80s. Perhaps it’s novel to some people that were born in the 90s… but dammit learn from the mistakes of those before you!

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.