Track down problems

When you need a bit more help in debugging, Xcode 3.0 offers an extraordinary new program, Xray. Taking its interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand, now you can visualize application performance like nothing you’ve seen before. Add different instruments so you can instantly see the results of code analyzers. Truly track read/write actions, UI events, and CPU load at the same time, so you can more easily determine relationships between them. Many such Xray instruments leverage the open source DTrace, now built into Mac OS X Leopard. Xray. Because it’s 2006.

Leopard to include DTrace.

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard Sneak Peek - Xcode 3.0

Userspace Filesystem Encryption with EncFS
by KIVILCIM Hindistan
04/14/2005

For a long time now, computer-related theft has been a real problem. The most likely victims of these thefts are laptops and USB sticks, which are obviously very easy to lift (and leave with). Desktop computers and backup media are stolen less frequently. In all of these cases, much of the time, the data stored in the media is more valuable than both the computer and the media. An important question is how to protect valuable data in our computer's storage areas.

Woes of Encryption

A solution may be to use gpg or similar PKI-based file encryption, but that is still far from transparent and key maintenance is still not very practical. When you consider that you may have to work with several files at a time, this solution becomes even less practical.

The immediate solution is to use an encrypted filesystem, which will encrypt all of the data written into the filesystem and decrypt it on the fly when you need to access it. Though this may solve most of the problems, it has performance/privacy trade-offs; the encryption of your latest work may be good, but the encryption of your favorite text editor or your browser's cache files may be unnecessary.

There's another partial solution related to partitioning on Linux: having all of the system files on an unencrypted partition and the data files on an encrypted partition. As a best-of-two-worlds solution, this seems to solve both the performance and privacy problems, in theory. However, in real life, having such a partitioning may not be easy; you may not have the rights to repartition a multi-user system, or your hard disk layout may make it very difficult to repartition.

The problem is bigger with USB sticks, for you may want to use those sticks to store your private data as well as to exchange some other data with others, probably Windows users. Having a filesystem-wide encryption scheme would subvert that goal. Many projects have tried this classical approach. The most famous are Loopback, CFS, and TCFS.
EncFS

Related Reading
Linux Server Security

Linux Server Security
By Michael D. Bauer
Table of Contents
Index
Sample Chapter

Read Online--Safari Search this book on Safari:

Code Fragments only

A new and different approach to this problem is EncFS. EncFS runs in userspace, meaning that you do not have to compile kernel modules or have administrative rights. Its most important feature is being able to encrypt not the whole filesystem or partitions, but separate directories. For its simple usage and implementation, on a modern CPU the performance loss is almost negligible, because even a 1.5GHz CPU waits often for RAM or hard disk I/O and has enough power to perform encryption and decryption on the fly.

Valient Gough's EncFS page

LinuxDevCenter.com -- Userspace Filesystem Encryption with EncFS

eMpower Lite Demo Mov

eMpower_Lite.mov (video/quicktime Object)

This is some messed up footage of the application that my company, Lucision, has been developing. It is now done, and this is a video of it in operation.

Still have to make it flash, shrink it, and put it on the main page...

eMpower Lite Rough Cut Demo Video

Myth #8: I need $5 million to start my business

Reality: Unless you're building hardware (in which case you should definitely rethink what you're doing) you most likely don't need any startup capital at all. Paul Graham has written extensively about this so I won't belabor it too much, except to say this: you don't need much startup capital, but what you do need is a willingness to work your buns off. You have to bring your brilliant idea to fruition yourself; no one else will do it for you, and no one will give you the money to hire someone to do it for you. The reason is very simple: if you don't believe in the commercial potential of your idea enough to give up your evenings and weekends to own a bigger chunk of it, why should anyone else believe in it enough to put their hard-earned money at risk?

Get a prototype working, a simple version of the thing you want to sell, or pack up and go home.

Rondam Ramblings: Top ten geek business myths

This Tech Tip provides straightforward instructions on how to construct and use a passive Ethernet tap. The end product may be used with any hub or switch and any operating system. A passive Ethernet tap is useful when installing an intrusion detection system (IDS) sensor or when snooping Ethernet traffic.

Snort - the de facto standard for intrusion detection/prevention

Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.

Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice - washingtonpost.com

Me and Jimmy Carter. Oohhhhh yeah.

meandjimmy.jpg (JPEG Image, 1280x1024 pixels) - Scaled (72%)

Also http://lucision.com/legal/chunky2.gif

This is what I've been working on for the last few months. It is just about done.

eMpowere Lite 1.0 Screen Shots

These guys are top notch 3d illustrators. We used them for an ad, and they did outstanding work.

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