A different kind of birthday attack

Considering how many people actually use their birthday as their ATM pin, this is bad from a security standpoint.

Code runs on code

This semester has been a rather hectic one. There is this massive Java Enterprise project that lasts throughout the entire semester. In the midst of this project, our team encountered a rather puzzling bug. Despite following the sample code snippets closely and trawling through Stack Overflow, ...

Flaws of a single ecosystem

The post is triggered by the recent leak of celebrity nude photos. Apple has claimed that the iCloud ecosystem is secure and the leak was the result of targeted attempts. Nevertheless, they eventually decided to tighten the security of the ecosystem. This is not an isolated incident as I ...

Software Versioning

I have recently started managing yet another server. The server is running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and therefore support is good for another 5 years. Just to be safe, I double checked the openssl version after updating to make sure that it is not vulnerable to heartbleed. # openssl version OpenSSL ...

Wireless Woes

My struggle with wireless networking has spanned several years. One major problem with wireless is the short coverage range. As a result, rooms that are further from the router experience spotty coverage at very low speeds(1 Mbps). One of the initial solutions I have tried is using a wireless ...

unrar

I am quite surprised to find that linux has quite poor support for rar files. I have tried both unrar-free as well as the non-free version but both fail spectacularly at decompressing password protected multi-part archives. A few seconds into decompressing, an error message pops up claiming the ...

Problems with Distributed Architecture

As reported here, a bitcoin mining pool has contributed 51% of total hashing output which theoretically allows them to double spend bitcoins or to deny other miner's transactions. I am not an expert at bitcoins but it appears that the distributed architecture is a crucial feature in ensuring ...

New Form of DDoS

I was always hesitant to use pay-as-you-use services like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine for fear that the cost might spiral out of control if I turn out to be the target of a DDos attack. I did eventually try out app engine, but only because it was possible not to link a ...