A group of folks oriented in the direction of the fringe seem to have made an error or two in their reasoning. Afraid of what might happen as a result of the recent economic downturn in the United States (the understatement of the decade), they've gathered before a statue of a bull on Wall Street to pray around it. Now, while I'm all for the practical use of the irrational from time to time, you really should know at least a few details about what sort of irrationality you're working with. P.Z. Myers, who wrote the article that I'd …

Earlier this week the information security community collectively slapped its forehead as computer magazine C't published the results of its security analysis of the the Easy Nova Data Box PRO-25UE RFID, an external hard drive that was advertised as transparently encrypting stored data at the drive level using the AES cryptosystem and a 128-bit key (an algorithm and keysize which the NSA has blessed as worthy of encrypting information carrying a security classification of SECRET or lower, incidentally). A key fob containing an RFID chip is used to unlock the drive and provide access to the encrypted data. Because all …