As if it wouldn't be interesting enough at EuSecWest this week, another hardware attack has been discovered. This one is arguably nastier because it could conceivably cost the user quite a bit of money if someone hoses equipment by forcing a bad firmware flash. Rich Smith, who is the head of research into offensive technologies and threats at the HP Systems Security Lab (you know, they really could have come up with a more ominous name for their outfit) has developed a method in which an attacker can cause a permanent denial of service attack on a unit by finding …
One of the most arcane yet commonly encountered pieces of equipment on the Net today are routers - devices (usually big, expensive devices) that look at the destination IP addresses of each packet they see and decide which port to throw them out of to help them on their way. Usually you don't see them up close because they tend to live in data centers or wiring closets (for smaller shops) in racks, safely locked away. While there are a couple of manufacturers out there who specialize in them, for people in the know the first thing they think of when …
The way the last couple of weeks have been going, it's a safe bet that you can guess how Friday went. If you guessed 'more dental work', then you hit the nail squarely on the head. It has been two weeks (now a bit more than that) since my root canal, and I had gone back to Family Dentistry to get the molar in question cleaned out, built up, and have a temporary crown installed. Ordinarily, this isn't such a big deal because once the nerve's gone (i.e., post-root canal) you can pretty much dig around inside the tooth …
Running between work, home, and the bed to sleep, mostly. It's been an unusually long week (and it's not even Friday yet), and rather than write incoherent posts in the evening I've decided to catch up on sleep where and when I can. Consequently, there hasn't been much to write about in the past few days, but I can authoritatively state that there are no pin-holes in my eyelids. Battling highway traffic in southern Virginia is tiring work, though ultimately rewarding.
I've just pre-registered for The Last HOPE conference in New York City later this year (18-20 July 2008, to …
Remember my rant about people who don't get their kids vaccinated because they're afraid for the health and safety of their children? Guess what? The health and safety of kids who attend the East bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante, California are at risk due to an outbreak of whooping cough. Students and a teacher were diagnosed with the disease, which lead to the school being closed until rounds of antibiotics can be administered to everyone who came down with the disease. School officials went on the record as saying that an unusually high number of students weren't vaccinated for …
On 1 February 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere following a touch-and-go mission due to the damage incurred by the orbiter during lift off some days earlier. The crew was killed and the shuttle lost, presumably with all of the data collected while in orbit going with it. Save for the data from experiment CXV-2, which gathered information pertaining to the point of critical viscosity of xenon gas.. while poring over the wreckage of the Columbia, the recovery team operating out of the Johnson Space Center found most of the fragments of a 400 …
Unfortunately, I spent much of last Friday asleep, recovering after a routine filling went south and turned into an emergency root canal. I don't know what does it about the procedure, but it wipes me out completely - it might be the body reacting to having a part of it removed with what amounts to tiny drill bits, or it might be the knowledge of it. For all I know, it could be the aftereffects of multiple injections of local anesthetic that happens to contain epinephrine, which would logically bring about a fight-or-flight reaction as the syringe-loads naturally leaked into the …
I worked the first half of today from home because I had an appointment to have a permanant crown installed in the top-left side of my mouth. At the same time, Dr. Hong was to start drilling out tooth #30, the first molar from the front on the bottom-right side of my mouth to take care of a fairly nasty cavity that's also been giving me trouble lately.
Four hits of novocaine later and I was still feeling the drill and trying to run away from it. No matter what he did, he wasn't able to knock out the nerve …
In the past decade or so, a worrisome movement has cropped up that seems hell-bent on using bad science to try to protect their children: People who refuse to have their children vaccinated for various childhood diseases out of fear that their children will wind up brain damaged, or worse. It seems that they've triumphed: seven US states have reported an outbreak of measles to the Centers for Disease Control. Figures released by the CDC state that 64 cases of full-blown measles have been reported to doctors, with more expected to appear as the year continues. Slightly over one fifth …
