] What does it say about the Central Intelligence Agency
] that its agents can crack the secret codes of enemy
] nations but can't unravel a coded sculpture sitting
] outside their cafeteria window?

] This is good news to Elonka Dunin, an executive producer
] and manager at Missouri gaming company Simutronics, who
] is obsessed with cracking Kryptos and thinks that the
] more people who work on the puzzle the quicker they'll
] solve it.
]
] "We have lots of different theories that we're chasing
] down," Dunin said of her band of sleuths, which includes
] some CIA employees. "But there's no way we'll know
] whether we're on the right track until something comes
] loose."

Elonka and Kryptos is currently featured in a front page story in Wired.

Wired News: Solving the Enigma of Kryptos

] An "evil twin" is a bogus base station that latches on to
] someone using new "Wi-Fi" wireless technology.
]
] Victims think their laptops or mobile phones are
] connected to bona fide wireless internet connections.

... And main stream media catches on to something hackers have known about for years!

"Man in the middle attacks are entirely theoretical"
-James Pete, Buzzcard Director

'Evil twin' threat to Wi-Fi users

] Do this dude edisoncarter cracked open what appears to be
] a cheesy 3rd party PS2 controller (save the good stuff
] for the gaming, we always say), hooked up the lines to a
] parallel port for signal injection, and then hash-cracker
] style used a custom app that ran brute force key
] combinations until he came up with a slew of unreleased
] cheat codes for GTA San Andreas. Damn, dude.

That is so damn cool!

Brute-forcing GTA San Andreas cheat codes

] Luckily, there's a solution: the FISH protocol. FISH
] implements an ftp-like interface over standard SSH. Since
] it interacts with the shell, it supports standard
] globbing constructs as well as completion.
]
] The protocol itself is fairly obscure, though.
] Apparently, it was originally developed as a virtual file
] system layer for Midnight Commander (a console-based file
] manager), but was later integrated with the Konqueror and
] Nautilus file managers, and is currently supported by the
] lftp program, too.
] ]
] Despite the fact that FISH has been around for almost six
] years at this point, it has not received widespread
] attention from either the user or security communities.
] It's probably time that both take a look at this nifty
] protocol. Meanwhile, I've found it to be an elegant, if
] obscure, solution to my file transfer needs, and would
] recommend giving it a try.

FISH Protocol

] PFC Viewer is a Java application I developed to view and
] export the contents of the AOL Filing Cabinet, also known
] as the Personal Filing Cabinet.

Shame this guy isn't releasing his code (oh course its a JAR, so decompiling jave byte code produces meaningful code). Over the years my Dad has needed me to extract email for dead AOL installs. This might be a fun afternoon of reversing engineering to figure out the latest PFC file format.

PFC Viewer Home

The algorithm generates recommendations based on a few customers who are most similar to the user. It can measure the similarity of two customers, A and B, in various ways; a common method is to measure the cosine of the angle between the two vectors:
...

Overview of Collaberative filters, cluster models, and other recommendation algorithms.

IEEE: Amazon's Collaberative Filtering, Cluster Models

] This step that we have taken has implications for all
] search engines. These engines crawl the public web
] without asking permission, and cache and reproduce the
] content without asking permission, and then use this
] information as a carrier for ads that generate private
] profit. We are convinced that if citizens scrape Google
] and strip the ads, and make the scraped results available
] as a nonprofit public service, that this is legal. This
] is especially the case if there are public policy
] concerns behind the scraping.
]
] Google Watch has been the most prominent critic of
] Google's outrageous privacy policies for more than two
] years. This is why we started the proxy, and it's why we
] continue the proxy. We invite Google to serve us with a
] cease and desist letter as a first step toward resolving
] this issue. So far, we have yet to hear from Google's
] lawyers. By releasing the source code for our proxy,
] we're trying to escalate the issue.

While I have been uncomfortable with the Google Cookie and saving the full 4 octets of an IP since Decius pointed it out to me, this is not the best way to address it. Interesting to see the copyright implications if this escalates.

Scraping and ad-stripping Google's results

] Part of me wants to applaud Microsoft and say that this
] is a very good thing for their customers, albeit a move
] that is long overdue. The other part of me says that this
] is a band-aid approach and a funny way for them to admit
] defeat - because it's holes in Microsoft's operating
] system that built the entire spyware industry to begin
] with.

] It's like selling people a toaster that could catch fire
] at any time, but then offering a free fire extinguisher
] to put out those fires as required. Is this the best
] they can do?

Microsoft Anti-Spyware | The Register

] There are only seven months left before the FCC takes
] away your right to watch digital television on a device
] that isn't Hollywood-approved. Under the new "Broadcast
] Flag" regime, the FCC will mandate that every digital
] television device include the kind of technology that we
] see in cable PVRs (that erase your stored episodes of
] "Six Feet Under" after two weeks so that you'll be forced
] to pay-per-view your end-of-season marathon) and media
] center PCs (that won't let you burn "The Sopranos" to DVD
] because HBO has set a no-record flag in their cablecasts
] to force you to buy the DVD boxed sets).

] The tiny silver lining here is that if you can get an
] open, freedom-loving digital television tuner between now
] and the summer, you'll be able to go on doing practically
] anything you like with the digital television you receive
] over the air and with your unencrypted cable signal. If
] you choose to do this by plugging a DTV tuner into your
] computer, you'll be able to archive your shows on your
] hard-drive, manipulate them with your favorite editing
] software, and email clips to your friends.

Thought some of you might be interested in this info. There's some specific info for mac users in the article.

'Broadcast Flag' regime

Nice collection of word lists for different languages (including different English varients Aussie, British, American), different topics and even whole dictionaries. Nice addition to John the Ripper when Brute forcing passwords, or as a cron job to enforce password security.

Multi-lanuage, multi-topic Wordlists