Lax crypto discipline was a big factor in helping to break Enigma traffic, but there were fundamental quirks in the operation of the units that prevented it from being as secure as the Germans believed it to be. (also, after more than one investigation that indicated Enigma traffic was being broken, the Germans refused to believe that their design was insecure).
- a letter was never encrypted as itself (the famous example is the message that contained all letters of the alphabet except one, thereby indicating, not only that the plaintext consisted of only the letter missing in the ciphertext, but the sequencing of the rotor changes)
- the reflector rotor never moved, and there were only three (four in some units) rotors.
- there were only six "stecker" jumper wires, so only six pairs of letters could be swapped
Enigma was anything but sound, and more so because it depended so much on the operators. That the Allies were able to break Enigma traffic on a continuing basis is proof of that.
Looking at the SIGABA rotor scheme, you can see immediately that it is a far more complex unit than the Enigma, and (as far has been disclosed) it was never broken. And that's not because the Germans never tried.
3. The term âoeintercepting deviceâ means any device or apparatus which is capable of transmitting, receiving, amplifying, or recording a wire or oral communication other than a hearing aid or similar device which is being used to correct subnormal hearing to normal and other than any telephone or telegraph instrument, equipment, facility, or a component thereof, (a) furnished to a subscriber or user by a communications common carrier in the ordinary course of its business under its tariff and being used by the subscriber or user in the ordinary course of its business; or (b) being used by a communications common carrier in the ordinary course of its business.
Interesting. Looks like if he'd used the record app on his iPhone, subsection 3a would have applied, and he would not have been using an intercepting device...
AT&T was only too eager to work with Apple, they must have been blinded by all those prospective new contracts. So blinded, apparently, that they ignored their network engineers' advice.
AT&T knew (or should have known) exactly what they were getting into with the iPhone, and they knew their data network wouldn't support an infinite number of iPhone users.
I have no sympathy for AT&T on this one. If they didn't make a huge profit on all those 2-year iPhone contracts, they have no one but themselves to blame. A prudent carrier would have allocated some of those profits to network upgrades. Working with Apple to minimize the amount of data needing to be transferred for "overhead apps", like visual voicemail, would have been another prudent move.
What we have now, is a clear example of what happens when a company places short term profits ahead of long term facilities development...in other words, the "suits" beat the "nerds" again.
Just curious...one of the arguments I always hear for the MS servers, is that Outlook's shared calendar doesn't have much serious open source competition. And there doesn't seem to be an open source drawing tool that works with Visio's proprietary file format.
Good on you for dumping them. A company that treats its customers like criminals risks alienating said customers. Often, these alienated customers examine their options and become "former" customers:-)
I have seen this happening with a computer running Skype.. Is your dad running Skype? Tell him to kill the Skype process in the system tray & see if the problem goes away.
refers to an administrator interface, and the whole patent is about "administrator interface to transmit a message from an administrator to a user contact device". Seems like it's talking about a "master to slaves" selective broadcast system, rather than a "peer to peer(s)" system like Twitter.
Thats sort of a major conceptual difference, right there.
We'll let the lawyers fight it out, but I wonder what made this company think they could patent that.//how is a paging system with multiple user groups not covered by this patent?
So, the prior art is broader than the claims...meaning the technology they are attempting to patent was already common in the industry and being used in more imaginative ways than in their patent.
I fail to see how what they're attempting to patent is novel...perhaps the narrow application of using a touchpad to control a dedicated media player with gestures is patentable, but nobody using a touchpad for anything else (including using one to control a PDA or smartphone) should be worried.
Heck, practically every CAD program in the 80s and 90s used mouse or digitizer tablet gestures for shortcuts.
[I always wonder why these patent trolls aren't subject to hitmen...seems like one day a very large company might do a cost-benefit analysis and decide that a fatal accident is cheaper than years of litigation]
It reads a card, checks your balance and pokes money out a slot.
What increased functionality is there?
(well, yes, it takes in deposits, too, but...)
Really, why aren't these things running the most limited OS possible? Running WinXP on them is just silly. I would have thought WinCE would be more locked down, but apparently not.
The comment about OS/2 machines being more secure is interesting. I'd rather have IBM running my cash machines than Microsoft.
"Here's a crazy idea: how about nuclear power? Oh, that's right, the word "nuclear" is too super-scary for the science-based environmentalists. Never mind that they actually are better for the environment than anything else."
Except for that pesky radioactive waste, of course. Nasty stuff. And it stays nasty for quite a while. Need to find somewhere to put it. Somewhere good for the environment.
And there's always the issue of maintaining control over the nuclear plant. Can't fall asleep at the switch or allow any of the valves to jam, or you get another 3-Miles island.
Me? I'd rather give up my view than risk my health.
Not as bad as you'd think. Electric screwdriver with torx bit, don't need to worry about keeping the screws "found", as I won't be putting it back together, and it's a few minutes a drive to get the platters out. But I don't do it too often...
"They could randomly switch the pad to clear text mode, log the pin and claim it was wrong. Then switch back to PIN entry mode and leave the ATM software do its job."
I like that. Guess I need to improve my "think like the bad guys" skillz...
From TFR: "Additionally, the malware harvests what is believed to be key or PIN data, saving the information in a file C:\WINDOWS\kl."
So, they waffle on whether the PIN is captured. The filename "kl", does imply "KeyLogger", though.
Perhaps Eastern European ATMs are built differently that those in North America...maybe "saving a bit of money" by doing the encryption of the PIN in the PC, instead using an encrypting secure keypad.
Or, since the same keypad is used for PIN entry and regular input, perhaps the control signal that tells the keypad whether to encrypt or pass keypresses through has been tampered with...so the entered PIN comes through as normal keypresses, and is encrypted by the malware and passed on after logging to the file?
Or, maybe it's just a guess on the part of the author.
I have a gen-you-wine Western Electric white Touch Tone Princess Phone, which I got at a flea market for $2. A new handset cord and some 409 cleaned it up just fine, and it works as well as it ever did. Nothing like the heft of a real handset and the positive feel of those full-travel (illuminated) buttons!
It has some dents and dings on it, but, as you say, it's probably good into the next century. And the handset can be used as a hammer or "persuader".
After a power failure, where our cordless phone base station stopped any calls from being made, I decided I wanted an old school wired phone in one room of the house.
Slashdot Mirror
Lax crypto discipline was a big factor in helping to break Enigma traffic, but there were fundamental quirks in the operation of the units that prevented it from being as secure as the Germans believed it to be. (also, after more than one investigation that indicated Enigma traffic was being broken, the Germans refused to believe that their design was insecure).
- a letter was never encrypted as itself (the famous example is the message that contained all letters of the alphabet except one, thereby indicating, not only that the plaintext consisted of only the letter missing in the ciphertext, but the sequencing of the rotor changes)
- the reflector rotor never moved, and there were only three (four in some units) rotors.
- there were only six "stecker" jumper wires, so only six pairs of letters could be swapped
Enigma was anything but sound, and more so because it depended so much on the operators. That the Allies were able to break Enigma traffic on a continuing basis is proof of that.
Looking at the SIGABA rotor scheme, you can see immediately that it is a far more complex unit than the Enigma, and (as far has been disclosed) it was never broken. And that's not because the Germans never tried.
That was the real time sink at Data General in the early 90s. Played over the internal TCP/IP with Sun workstations.
3. The term âoeintercepting deviceâ means any device or apparatus which is capable of transmitting, receiving, amplifying, or recording a wire or oral communication other than a hearing aid or similar device which is being used to correct subnormal hearing to normal and other than any telephone or telegraph instrument, equipment, facility, or a component thereof, (a) furnished to a subscriber or user by a communications common carrier in the ordinary course of its business under its tariff and being used by the subscriber or user in the ordinary course of its business; or (b) being used by a communications common carrier in the ordinary course of its business.
Interesting. Looks like if he'd used the record app on his iPhone, subsection 3a would have applied, and he would not have been using an intercepting device...
Great!
I can use it to power my $10 laptop: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/indias-10-laptop
My BS meter is pinned on this one.
Huh?
AT&T was only too eager to work with Apple, they must have been blinded by all those prospective new contracts. So blinded, apparently, that they ignored their network engineers' advice.
AT&T knew (or should have known) exactly what they were getting into with the iPhone, and they knew their data network wouldn't support an infinite number of iPhone users.
I have no sympathy for AT&T on this one. If they didn't make a huge profit on all those 2-year iPhone contracts, they have no one but themselves to blame. A prudent carrier would have allocated some of those profits to network upgrades. Working with Apple to minimize the amount of data needing to be transferred for "overhead apps", like visual voicemail, would have been another prudent move.
What we have now, is a clear example of what happens when a company places short term profits ahead of long term facilities development...in other words, the "suits" beat the "nerds" again.
Though Daugherty said he is still stunned that he had to get clearance from the NSA for the archaic artillery piece
Why would he need clearance from the NSA?
I'm guessing the reporter messed this one up. The Department of Homeland Security would be my guess.
Just curious...one of the arguments I always hear for the MS servers, is that Outlook's shared calendar doesn't have much serious open source competition. And there doesn't seem to be an open source drawing tool that works with Visio's proprietary file format.
Good on you for dumping them. A company that treats its customers like criminals risks alienating said customers. Often, these alienated customers examine their options and become "former" customers :-)
...you could use home heating oil (but that would be illegal, because it's not taxed for road use).
My receipt for heating oil contains the notation "dyed diesel fuel".
I have seen this happening with a computer running Skype.. Is your dad running Skype? Tell him to kill the Skype process in the system tray & see if the problem goes away.
refers to an administrator interface, and the whole patent is about "administrator interface to transmit a message from an administrator to a user contact device". Seems like it's talking about a "master to slaves" selective broadcast system, rather than a "peer to peer(s)" system like Twitter.
Thats sort of a major conceptual difference, right there.
We'll let the lawyers fight it out, but I wonder what made this company think they could patent that. //how is a paging system with multiple user groups not covered by this patent?
I use it regularly on Ubuntu, under WINE. Everything works fine, except network features (you have to update manually)
It's an excellent simulator and you can add other vendors' SPICE models to it easily.
Linear Technology makes it available for free, and they have worked to make it usable under WINE (or so the sales rep told me)
So, the prior art is broader than the claims...meaning the technology they are attempting to patent was already common in the industry and being used in more imaginative ways than in their patent.
I fail to see how what they're attempting to patent is novel...perhaps the narrow application of using a touchpad to control a dedicated media player with gestures is patentable, but nobody using a touchpad for anything else (including using one to control a PDA or smartphone) should be worried.
Heck, practically every CAD program in the 80s and 90s used mouse or digitizer tablet gestures for shortcuts.
[I always wonder why these patent trolls aren't subject to hitmen...seems like one day a very large company might do a cost-benefit analysis and decide that a fatal accident is cheaper than years of litigation]
The turbulence on the downstream side of the mountain peak, the "rotor", will!
Just like in a stream, you can get trapped on the downflow side.
It's an ATM.
It reads a card, checks your balance and pokes money out a slot.
What increased functionality is there?
(well, yes, it takes in deposits, too, but...)
Really, why aren't these things running the most limited OS possible?
Running WinXP on them is just silly. I would have thought WinCE would
be more locked down, but apparently not.
The comment about OS/2 machines being more secure is interesting.
I'd rather have IBM running my cash machines than Microsoft.
"Here's a crazy idea: how about nuclear power? Oh, that's right, the word "nuclear" is too super-scary for the science-based environmentalists. Never mind that they actually are better for the environment than anything else."
Except for that pesky radioactive waste, of course. Nasty stuff. And it stays nasty for quite a while. Need to find somewhere to put it. Somewhere good for the environment.
And there's always the issue of maintaining control over the nuclear plant. Can't fall asleep at the switch or allow any of the valves to jam, or you get another 3-Miles island.
Me? I'd rather give up my view than risk my health.
Death to America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GqDzTCuUq0
"Sounds time intensive."
Not as bad as you'd think. Electric screwdriver with torx bit, don't need to worry about keeping the screws "found", as I won't be putting it back together, and it's a few minutes a drive to get the platters out. But I don't do it too often...
I disassemble it, remove the platters, mount each one in a vise and bend it by striking it with a hammer.
If they can get data off that platter, they're welcome to it.
1 square inch of Scotch brand #33 electrical tape.
Wow. Scary stuff.
"prepare to abandon aircraft"
Don't think I ever want to hear that.
"They could randomly switch the pad to clear text mode, log the pin and claim it was wrong. Then switch back to PIN entry mode and leave the ATM software do its job."
I like that. Guess I need to improve my "think like the bad guys" skillz...
From TFR:
"Additionally, the malware harvests what is believed to be key or PIN data, saving the
information in a file C:\WINDOWS\kl."
So, they waffle on whether the PIN is captured. The filename "kl", does imply "KeyLogger", though.
Perhaps Eastern European ATMs are built differently that those in North America...maybe "saving a bit of money" by doing the encryption of the PIN in the PC, instead using an encrypting secure keypad.
Or, since the same keypad is used for PIN entry and regular input, perhaps the control signal that tells the keypad whether to encrypt or pass keypresses through has been tampered with...so the entered PIN comes through as normal keypresses, and is encrypted by the malware and passed on after logging to the file?
Or, maybe it's just a guess on the part of the author.
"A phone today will break if you drop it."
Not mine :-)
I have a gen-you-wine Western Electric white Touch Tone Princess Phone, which I got at a flea market for $2. A new handset cord and some 409 cleaned it up just fine, and it works as well as it ever did. Nothing like the heft of a real handset and the positive feel of those full-travel (illuminated) buttons!
It has some dents and dings on it, but, as you say, it's probably good into the next century. And the handset can be used as a hammer or "persuader".
After a power failure, where our cordless phone base station stopped any calls from being made, I decided I wanted an old school wired phone in one room of the house.
Now, get off my lawn...
Last place I ordered from doesn't carry it any more. These folks in TX claim they do:
http://about-australia-shop.com/product_info.php/products_id/1576
It's "Vegemite" and yes, it is an "acquired taste"
(best acquired in childhood)