Cleaning out my desk at work today (not fired, moving offices), I ran across some Summercon T-Shirts Redpantz gave me.

All my xterms -DISPLAY in Texas

Damn you Adam Shostack! Damn you! [shakes fist] :-)

I knew I shouldn't have introduced you two at Black Hat! :-)

A September court document from a federal prosecution of alleged steroid dealers reveals the Canadian company turned over 12 CDs worth of e-mails from three Hushmail accounts, following a court order obtained through a mutual assistance treaty between the U.S. and Canada. The charging document alleges that many Chinese wholesale steroid chemical providers, underground laboratories and steroid retailers do business over Hushmail.

... uhhhhh... ... Must go now. [begins shredding]

Hushmail uses industry-standard cryptographic and encryption protocols (OpenPGP and AES 256) to scramble the contents of messages stored on their servers. They also host the public key needed for other people using encrypted email services to send secure messages to a Hushmail account.

The first time a Hushmail user logs on, his browser downloads a Java applet that takes care of the decryption and encryption of messages on his computer, after the user types in the right passphrase. So messages reach Hushmail's server already encrypted. The Java code also decrypts the message on the recipient's computer, so an unencrypted copy never crosses the internet or hits Hushmails servers.

In this scenario, if a law enforcement agency demands all the e-mails sent to or from an account, Hushmail can only turn over the scrambled messages since it has no way of reversing the encryption.

However, installing Java and loading and running the Java applet can be annoying. So in 2006, Hushmail began offering a service more akin to traditional web mail. Users connect to the service via a SSL (https://) connection and Hushmail runs the Encryption Engine on their side. Users then tell the server-side engine what the right passphrase is and all the messages in the account can then be read as they would in any other web-based email account.

The rub of that option is that Hushmail has -- even if only for a brief moment -- a copy of your passphrase. As they disclose in the technical comparison of the two options, this means that an attacker with access to Hushmail's servers can get at the passphrase and thus all of the messages.

Hushmail Spills it to Feds

The following is your Speaker's practical guide for Black Hat Japan.
Attached you will also find a PDF with helpful instructions regarding your arrival in Japan. If you have any questions, never hesitate to Ask. Thank you.

...

Plan on speaking at about one third your normal pace.

...

Talk style and difference of language structure Japanese sentence structure is different than English. English is Subject-Verb-Object, but Japanese is Subject-Object-Verb. This means the translator needs to hear the complete sentence before they can translate it.

...

If they never get a chance to breathe, you are talking too fast. With these reasons, especially "Machine gun Talk" or "Elevator Pitch" type of talk style will fail completely.

Wow. This is going to be tough.

[At Bluehat, during Jeff Forristal's presentation]
Caleb: Thats' how fast you talk
Me: Really? Are you kidding me?
Caleb: Yep, that fast. And with hand gestures. Lots of hand gestures

Meanwhile, the methodology the military is using to gauge violence in Baghdad has come under fire.

"By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working," said the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, addressing a Washington think tank last week.

Durbin's criticism was echoed by David Walker, head of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, who also raised questions about how the statistics were compiled.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday, Walker said he is not comfortable with the methodology used to track the death toll driven by sectarian violence.

For instance, he said, a body found with a gunshot to the front of the head is classified as an ordinary crime, while a body with a gunshot to the back of the head is attributed to sectarian violence.

Walker said he would expect such a methodology to reflect a reduction in sectarian violence.

Sound like somebody might be using Fuzzy Math.

And, on a side note, CNN's website sure looked like crap in 2000...

Measuring Iraq's violence

This is one of the most beautiful and yet humble sights I've seen in a while. A years worth of work, reduced to 8 megs on an FTP site.

I guess ~130 TIFFs compress really well.

[dances]

It's 1:40am. If no one can see my dancing, is it still bad?

[thinks]

... screw it

[dances]
[cats run in terror]

... I guess that answers that

[resumes dancing]

WooooooooHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

"America really doesn't give a s*** about New Orleans. We forget. The bridge that collapsed [in Minnesota] -- it's gone, it's yesterday's news. The miners -- if they're not digging a sixth hole, we forget about them. We as a society, we really don't give a damn," Ventura said.

Even our assclown of a president has forgotten New Orleans.

I don't see him making any more bullshit speeches about promising to "rebuild our city" while standing in front of an American flag and broken homes and wearing a button-up shirt with no tie and rolled up sleeves, as if the cluster fuck that is his domestic policy is actually "working" on the problem.

Tale of two cities: Biloxi and New Orleans - CNN.com

Me: Did you hear about that Senator pleading guilty
Bryan: You lose a little street cred when your a republican and you try to bang another guy in the mens room.

(Late night) Quotes at work

JAPAN! (as in a personal invite to go speak at BH Japan)
HOUSE! (as in a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath in Roswell, closing is on Sept 24th)

But not JAPAN HOUSE! That would just be silly. I've never been to Asia before. I've never owned a house before. Two cherries in one day! I'm a life's experiences whore!

[Does HR inappropriate victory dance...]

WHOOOO! Stock payout day! WHOOOO!

...

OK, so its not quite hookers and drugs and fast cars and "fuck you I'm fully vested" money, but it will make my down payment on a house much nicer!