Tag Archives: Security

Prosecuting the Press

Posted on 2021-10-15 by jcs

As you all know, Irreal doesn’t think very highly of journalists and the press. What Irreal likes even less is know-nothing politicos who nevertheless feel fully qualified to opine and pass judgment on technical matters. The Congressional hearings on social … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Technical Problems with Apple’s CSAM Scanning

Posted on 2021-09-08 by jcs

I’ve written several posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) about Apple’s planned CSAM scanning project but those posts have always focused on how Apple was betraying their long held promise to protect our privacy and not allow random … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Apple and Backdoors

Posted on 2021-09-04 by jcs

In the ongoing Apple CSAM saga, Irreal has mostly been concerned with Apple’s betrayal of their promise to protect their users’ privacy but there’s also the issue the long term security consequences of Apple’s decision. We’ll take a look at … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Malware Using “Exotic” Languages

Posted on 2021-08-07 by jcs

I tagged this post Security but it might just as well have been tagged Humor. ZDNet is reporting that malware authors are using “exotic” languages to avoid detection by the antivirus folks. If, like the majority of the technical press, … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

On Passwords and SolarWinds

Posted on 2021-03-03 by jcs

By now everyone knows about the major breach of the U.S. Government (and probably others) that had its genesis in an exploit that gave attackers access to the SolarWinds build chain. Some are reporting that the problem was a leaked … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Burner Emails

Posted on 2021-02-10 by jcs

FourZeroThree has a nice four and a half minute video on how and why you should have a burner email account. The idea has been around for a long time under the name of disposable email addresses. The idea is … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Setting Up and Using Authinfo With Emacs

Posted on 2021-01-12 by jcs

Once you start moving more and more of your computing tasks into Emacs, you’re going to need a way of handling passwords. Mail is the canonical example but there are also things like blogging sites, ftp servers and other functions … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Read Meat Friday: A Trojan In Your Editor

Posted on 2021-01-08 by jcs

Is there a backdoor in your editor? Probably not, even if you’re using IntelliJ, but in a moment of schadenfreude for FOSS folks, the New York Times is reporting that JetBrains software may have been used as vector in the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Building A Password Generator in 3 Minutes

Posted on 2021-01-06 by jcs

Today—the whole week really—has been consumed by yak shaving so this is a short offering. Salah Qadri has a nice 3 minute video (3 minutes, 48 secs actually) in which he builds a reasonably good password generator. The generator builds … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Worst Passwords of 2020

Posted on 2020-11-23 by jcs

We haven’t done this for a while but it’s time, once more, for a survey of the year’s worst passwords. Sadly, the only real question is, as usual, whether 123456 or password heads the list. This time password has inexplicably … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment