Search Results for: cracker

Found 27 search results for cracker (this is page 1 of 3).

Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger | Ars Technica

Dan Goodin of Ars Technica wrote an eye-opening piece on the astonishing state of password cracking. Passwords once thought a few years ago to be safe enough to outlast a century of cracking attempts can now be broken in a matter of days (or even hours) – with a $1000 computer, no less.

The ancient art of password cracking has advanced further in the past five years than it did in the previous several decades combined. At the same time, the dangerous practice of password reuse has surged. The result: security provided by the average password in 2012 has never been weaker.

A PC running a single AMD Radeon HD7970 GPU, for instance, can try on average an astounding 8.2 billion password combinations each second, depending on the algorithm used to scramble them. Only a decade ago, such speeds were possible only when using pricey supercomputers.

via Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger | Ars Technica.

Cracker – The Golden Age

This is the Golden Age
It’s hard to imagine
with the way I feel today
that this is the Golden Age
The Golden Age

Somewhere I failed
Somewhere I lost you
in a black crowd of crows
and shiny things
I can’t remember
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in Uncategorized | 111 Words | Comment

DefCon 25

Having worked in IT for (gasp!) twenty-five years, I have long enjoyed the side of my job that deals with securing the networks I am responsible for. Network security is a game to me; trying to find and stop hackers before they find and stop me. As my blogging has revealed over the years, I enjoy solving a good mystery. How far back can a track an attacker? Or an adversary? How much knowledge can I dig up? This is all very fun.

My current job doesn’t deal with this directly as I am lucky to have a great team who watches the network. Still, I have to pay some attention to what’s what. So, when the department budget allowed for sending me to my first DefCon, I was delighted to go. Two weeks ago, I was on a plane to Las Vegas to join 25,000 other “hackers” in an intense, three-day powwow of matching wits, sharing forbidden knowledge, and proving points.

This year is the 25th anniversary of DefCon (i.e. “DefCon 25”). DefCon gets its name partly from the U.S. Department of Defense’s “Defense Condition” levels, as popularized by the movie “War Games.” Partly, it’s a made-up word with the “Con” meaning “convention.” DefCon was started (if I am correct) by Canadian bulletin-board owners who decided that on-line meetings were not enough. It has continued to be one of the premier conferences/training sessions that draws attendees from around the world.
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Your Clever Password Tricks Aren’t Protecting You from Today’s Hackers

Good password-choosing advice from Lifehacker. Bottom line: if you can remember your password it isn’t good enough.

Our passwords are much less secure than they were just a few years ago, thanks to faster hardware and new techniques used by password crackers. Ars Technica explains that inexpensive graphics processors enable password-cracking programs to try billions of password combinations in a second; what would have taken years to crack now may take only months or maybe days.

Making matters much worse is hackers know a lot more about our passwords than they used to. All the recent password leaks have helped hackers identify the patterns we use when creating passwords, so hackers can now use rules and algorithms to crack passwords more quickly than they could through simple common-word attacks.

via Your Clever Password Tricks Aren't Protecting You from Today's Hackers.

How to simulate being a sailor

I found this on another website and thought it was funny. If you’ve ever been in the Navy you’ll recognize these.

How to Simulate Being a Sailor

  1. Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.
  2. Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.
  3. Repaint your entire house every month.
  4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.
  5. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.
  6. Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbor’s house. Ignore his complaints.
  7. Once a month, take all major appliances apart and then reassemble them.
  8. Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and backdoors, so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.
  9. Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.
  10. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water heater off. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.
  11. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can’t turn over without getting out and then getting back in.
  12. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say “Sorry, wrong rack.”

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Is Stealing Music Really The Problem?

A good response to David Lowery’s response to Emily White.

What started this was a post on NPR’s website by an intern named Emily White who admitted to buying very little music in her life but owning a lot via various levels of legality. This led to an impassioned response by Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker frontman David Lowery, who eloquently argued for the ethical and moral obligations Emily should have towards these artists and how stealing music has dramatically impacted their financial lives. This post has sprung up impassioned responses by, among others, Bob Lefsetz and a manager who is also, coincidentally, named Emily White. People have dug in their heels and have spilled many hours defending and vilifying both sides.

Yet lost in this discussion is one important element. Facts. Because if you’re going to argue that stealing has impacted your business, you should actually prove that…y’know…a lot of people have actually stolen your music.

via IS STEALING MUSIC REALLY THE PROBLEM? – FutureHit.DNA.

The First Amendment is not just for artists

So this young NPR intern named Emily White wrote a breathtakingly clueless defense of her choice to steal music rather than to pay for it, her ridiculous argument boiling down to it being more “convenient” to steal than to purchase. She apparently doesn’t see how her actions hurt the very artists she claims to admire.

Over at the Trichordist blog, musician David Lowery wrote a rebuttal to White. Lowery is the force behind the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. I’m a big fan. I own a number of Cracker CDs and even got Lowery’s autograph after Cracker swung by Raleigh for a show a few years ago. Some of my money wound up in Lowery’s pocket and I’m happy with that. He earned it.
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