Tagging Along with the Bad Guys
By Deanna Hartley on 08-21-2008
A ride-along is one thing, but how would you feel if you could ride shotgun for extended periods of time in a hardened criminal's - ahem...make that "suspect's" - set of wheels?
Well, this is essentially what cops can now do, albeit from the safety of their desks.
That's right, technology triumphs and beats the bad guys again!
While sitting in front of their computers, law enforcement officials can track down the exact location of a suspect. They do this through a GPS, or Global Positioning System, that they stealthily install in unsuspecting suspects' cars.
This concept has even been tagged by some as "an invisible police officer inside your car."
And while this is super-convenient for those whose job it is to chase law-breakers, it has called into question the ethical ramifications of the concept as a whole.
For instance, how would you feel if you knew a cop were tracking your every move 24x7 in real time - from the local diner to an inconspicuous motel? But then again, it may not bother you, especially if you aren't suspected of armed robbery or sexual battery.
While the ethical aspects of the case are highly subjective and the discussion has to be left open-ended, in my mind it basically boils down to a matter of nonessential privacy versus communal safety.
Hackers Exploit Internet Flaw
By Agatha Gilmore on 08-06-2008
Well, it’s happened. That massive Internet security flaw that was revealed last month by Dan Kaminsky of IOActive Inc. has been exploited. According to an article on CNN.com, hackers have taken advantage of the weakness to infiltrate information being sent back and forth on DNS servers and redirect people from legitimate Web addresses to sites of their own creation. This is despite the fact that the details of the flaw have been kept tightly under wraps. While one immediate issue here is that of the illegal financial gain offered to those crafty and malicious enough to go after it, the real issue at stake is that of the vulnerability of people’s information on the Internet. After all, one of the main draws of going online is the anonymity it provides. Sure, the number of vulnerable servers has decreased dramatically in the last few weeks as companies rush to patch them. But this Internet hole demonstrates just exactly how exposed we all are, even when we think we're not. What does this mean for the future of the Internet? Is it a fleeting concern or will it have a lasting impact?
Where Is the Love?
By Agatha Gilmore on 07-18-2008
If 2008 had a theme song, it might be “Bad Boys.”
It certainly does seem like this year — and month in particular — is rife with examples of security issues.
First, on July 7, security researchers said they discovered a major Internet software flaw that would allow hackers to reroute, at will, all those using corporate computer networks.
The man who discovered the flaw, Dan Kaminsky, a researcher at IOActive Inc., had this to say to the L.A. Times: “This is about the integrity of the Web, this is about the integrity of e-mail. It’s more, but I can’t talk about how much more.” (Ooo, cryptic.)
Then on July 13, a man named Terry Childs was arrested for allegedly gaining unauthorized access to and locking up parts of the internal network of the city of San Francisco, specifically in the Department of Telecommunication Information Services.
According to an article on CSOonline.com, Childs, a city IT employee, became increasingly erratic and disgruntled in the days leading up to his alleged crimes. After he was arrested, he allegedly gave false passwords to police and then refused to offer any information whatsoever, according to a source. He is currently being held on $5 million bail.
Earlier in the year, a woman named Danielle Duann was indicted for computer hacking after she allegedly deleted database records at the Life Gift Organ Donation Center in Houston, Texas.
Then there’s the growing issue of certification fraud. It’s been broached by IT vendors, companies and individuals alike. It’s popped up on our forums, too, as young IT pros look to move up the ranks and seek advice on studying for exams and search for legitimate resources.
All these examples of breached, vulnerable or ethically questionable security certainly aren’t reassuring. Yet perhaps the silver lining is the fact that for the first time ever, IT companies are banding together to tackle the problem.
For example, software companies are all issuing patches to fix the Internet security flaw before its details get out, and major vendors have come together to form the IT Certification Council (ITCC) to eradicate exam cheating and fraud.
Then again, while this unprecedented collaborative effort is appreciated, why must it happen only when there’s a major crisis? It begs the question: Is the IT marketplace just too competitive?
Life After Death
By Daniel Margolis on 06-11-2008
The week I started working at Certification Magazine (October 2006), I bought my first iPod. I was returning to working in the city after a couple years of commuting to a job in the suburbs, so my travel entertainment needed to change over from a car stereo to portable electronics (again). It was time to step up to an iPod; it seemed like the initial battery life issues I'd heard about had finally been resolved and the technology was mature enough to invest in it. Lugging dozens of CDs to work and attempting to switch discs in a Walkman while walking or riding the train was over.
I bought an 80 gig iPod for $400. True to form, I then set out to convince myself this had been a bad move by spending hours trolling online forums reading horror stories from people who'd bought an iPod, used it for a couple months and had it die and been unable to negotiate a replacement. For the first couple months I owned the thing I was obsessed with it breaking, I was sure it would happen soon. I'd ask people about the health of their iPods and realize they were much less concerned about it than I was. In a March 2007 column for Cert I wrote:
"When I received a couple of box sets from my mother weeks in advance of Christmas last year, I immediately opened them up and installed them on my iPod so I could have as much time as possible to enjoy them in that format. (For this same reason I gave my girlfriend, owner of an iPod Nano, a pair of Bose Triport-IE headphones weeks in advance of Christmas.) As I explained to my Mom in an e-mail: "Ah, death ... of your iPod, the stark inevitability of life."
But in the 19 months following the purchase, that iPod never did really fail in the way I'd anticipated it would: For reasons unrelated to my usage of it. At one point on a plane ride home from Tucson, Arizona, it stopped being able to turn off, completely draining the battery, but this was fixed simply by plugging it into iTunes and allowing it the program to fix a hardware bug.
Last month though, I left for work and went to turn my iPod on and it wouldn't power up, it'd just display the Apple logo and die. This turned out to be a battery problem, which developed because I'd gotten seriously lax about letting the thing get a full charge, only ever allowing it on the USB cable to receive new content. Charging it for a full day did the trick.
I thought I'd cheated iPod death; I was beginning to think the thing would last so long it'd start to look ancient in comparison to newer models. But this morning my iPod finally broke, for real, and here's what happened:
I dropped it.
It'd been dropped before. The second week I owned it I dropped it in a subway station, resulting in some scratching on its face but nothing in the way of failure. I went and bought a nice protective case. It'd been dropped a couple times since then but each time nothing happened; the case was pretty good (it has rubber edges).
But last night, I'd just put the new Lil Wayne album on it and was putting it on my stereo table to make sure I grabbed it on the way out this morning. I fumbled with it and it fell flat on its face. I picked it up and turned it on and it seemed everything was fine, but the next morning when I grabbed it I heard something shaking around inside. This is fine for an Atari 2800 controller but not an iPod. Sure enough, when I walked out the door and tried to shuffle it froze up.
I'd bought Apple Care a couple days after I first bought the iPod, and felt somewhat foolish in doing so at the time (it felt like paying $40 for an empty cardboard box). I even neglected to register it for almost a year. But today that move suddenly seemed extremely smart, wise, etc. I'd been told I'd need an appointment to go to the repair counter at the Apple store, so I called Apple and was served by a friendly representative who somehow made it seem cool and groovy to own a broken iPod.
My appointment was at 11:20, but when I arrived at that time I was met with my name five spots down on a list on a flat screen monitor. Sitting on that bench in the sunny Apple store on Michigan Avenue for a half hour, frustrated that it didn't seem like I was going to be able to get my problem resolved and get back to the office within my lunch hour was somewhat bleak. But eventually I got to step up to the counter, hand a guy my broken iPod and have him hand me a refurbished one. It's not new but it sure looks new (at least, it looks like what a ‘new' iPod looked like back in October 2006). I even had to peel a layer of cellophane off it to start using it.
So ... now ... there's the joyous task of reloading nearly 14,000 songs on my new-old iPod. My computer's hard drive is significantly smaller than 80 gigs, so I had been deleting my libraries. I'll probably start by reloading my most recent CD purchases, which at least will have the effect of shocking me into the present (I had become a habitual shuffler).
Most importantly, it's finally happened. I've seen the death of my iPod and come out the other end intact. And the best part is it breaking was all my fault; there's no need to quixotically curse the gods of Apple.
