Want to make any bets that the manufacturer has a masterkey, or key reclamation mechanism, and will share it with law enforcement if there is a subpoena involved?
I was thinking too slow.. The software is GPL. Download the source and take a look. I'm not making any bets, but the odds against a back door are heavily in my favor.
Want to make any bets that the manufacturer has a masterkey, or key reclamation mechanism, and will share it with law enforcement if there is a subpoena involved?
If they do, they are not talking about it. When I sent mine in for a configuration error on my part (covered by warranty) I did not provide the encryption key. They let me know they got the software unlooped and could see the unencrypted shares OK. They would be willing to check the encrypted pool if I provided the key. I declined and said it's probably OK and had them send it back. When I got it back I put in the key and everything was fine. They did not indicate any key recovery ability on their part.
A link for Simple Share NAS would be great, though I'm going to google it as soon as I finish writing this. Also, how strong is the encryption and have there been any administrative issues, flakiness, etc.?
The only flakieness I know about is one I did and had to send it in to be recovered. Use share passwords if you are using an encrypted drive. Do not do like I did and make some shares, provide passwords, then create users with user privilages, and then create an encrypted pool. It loops the software and no longer talks to the LAN. The magic reset to factory defaults does not recover from that. Other than that, read the Tom's Networking review. The rest of it is right on. The other thing a little weird is the 250G drive has a 3 year warranty but the 160G drive has only 1 year.. Go figure. Anyway the link;
The encryption is invisable to the users. When the box is rebooted, the encrypted shares simply vanish and are not seen on the network until the password is input from the web interface. Another snip from Toms site;
I was initially a little confused about how an encrypted share would work. Would the client have to enter the encryption password, as well as the user password, when mounting the network share? I saw no provision for this, but what I had to do became clear the next time I rebooted the box. When the SimpleShare rebooted, I received an e-mail from it telling me that I had to go into the administration screen and enter the encryption password. Once I did this, the share was available for clients. So this feature is meant to protect your data if someone walks off with your drive - without the password, they won't be able to access it.
end snip
That's the way to survive a raid. Packing it up breaks it if they find it. I know from experiance (i made a configuration error) that using the reset to reset it to factory defaults does not open the encrypted share. It stays encrypted and can only be opened and mounted by entering the encryption key.
Snip Digging deeper into the menus revealed some advanced functionality that didn't appear to be advertised anywhere on SimpleTech's web site or product brochures. I found menus for creating encrypted, mirrored and striped shares, which are RAID capabilities that I have not seen in other boxes of the same class. Selecting the Help button on this screen brought up a full help listing for all features of the box, including these advanced ones. Reading through the help menus indicated that the mirror and striping capabilities are designed to be used on external drives plugged into the box.
end snip
It's one of the main reasons I bought it. Raid, Encryption and easly hidden someplace to be left behind in a raid or burglary. What more could a geek want?
Which is why many newspapers and reporters share the same 'common' logonid and/or share or sync passwords / swap userids (and offices and phones). What if 'guest' accessed the site in question?
You mean like the slashdot community using a shared login and password to read a linked NYT article? It looks like turnabout to me.
1 Tax records 2 Full credit card information including card number, pin, phone numbers to call if lost or stolen. 3 Full bank details for online banking 4 Password list for various websites i log into once in a while. After all, I can't use Technician as a logon for AOL IM. So when I do use it on occasion, I need to look up my id. 5 Alarm system master password and user password. I seldom use the master password.
Can you think of any reason to leave any of that out for law enforcement or a burglar to dig through? It's nothing I would want either to have.
I wonder how many reporters are using encryption on their Filesystems these days? If they are not, now is the time to start.
For me, I use a NAS with encryption built in. It's transparant to the end user. The drives won't mount until the encryption key is entered in the NAS web based interface. You can't get to the web based interface unless you log in first. Shutting it down to seize it locks it. Encryption is done in hardware. Removing the drive for analysis will reveal a reiser filesystem which is encrypted.
I use a Simple Share NAS for my tax records and other sensitive information.
That's why I just bought an external NAS drive with encryption. If it lost power, it locks and can't be unlocked until the encryption key is re-entered. They may be able to delete my data, but they can't access it. As an additonal security, the little drive is hung remotely off the lan. Finding it to take it could be a challange.
Check out the Simple Tech SimpleShare NAS. Drop it in the janitor closet someplace locked.
then this law will effectively end all digital rights management!
Oh boy I hope so. With tight DRM there is a lot of good music I would have never been introduced to. For example I was impressed with the christmas light show that made the rounds on the net last year. If the copyright owner was super anal about the distribution of the song, then I neve would have found about the Trans Siberian Orchestra. As it turns out, the guy with the light show was invited to one of the concerts while they were on tour and praised for his excellent work.
Tell me again why the media companies want to keep me from finding good music?
Most of the stuff on the radio isn't worth going out and buying. This is especialy true when it comes with restrictions and viruses built in.
To make sure I get a real copy, I always look for the Compact Disk logo showing the title meets Philips specification for an audio recording. There is so very little on the shelf at the music store with the compatibility logo. It's no longer worth the effor to try to find good music with the logo anymore. I quit trying.
This has been why email attachments are regularly stripped
I like my company. I have had some e-mail with removed attachments. The mail was appended by the mailserver explaining (automated) the attachment failed a virus check complete with the name of the bug. If it was an attachment I was expecting please contact....
All my stripped attachments were from unknown overseas, DSL or cable spam mail. I never had a valid attachment stripped. I wish my home mail server was as good at filtering. I wish the cable and DSL companies would provide the same level of protection on their in and out ports.
be wary of housing inspectors recommended to you by your real estate agent
Good point. Most important is to check them out first regardless of where you find them. Check the BBB. Check refrences. A good one is worth every penny.
I just bought a house. (not online) One word of advice.. even if you see the property, hire a property inspector. A good one will tell you about all kinds of things like leaking plumbing in the crawl space, dry rot in the roof sheeting, and wireing splices not up to code. I bought my place knowing ahead of time one of the underground sprinklers was broken, the hot tub didn't work, a bad splice in the attic (twisted and taped), and the sub panel for the shop didn't meet code (3 wire service without a seprate ground in a sub panel is not permitted). It is true the house had a few things needing fixing, but the inspection report got $8,000 knocked off due to the extra expenses needed to bring it up to code in addition to the seller having an electrician update the panel.
Use the online yellow pages and find a home inspector. They will provide photos of everyting from the condition of the gutters to the torn screen window, to the rotting bottem panel on the garage door. It was worth every cent of the $750 I paid for the inspection.
I like to listen to music on it, since it's in my kitchen and readily accessible.
What I'm looking for is an appliance to replace that type setup. Most media adaptors want special back end software running on an XP box to make it work. I'm looking for a player box that will do it's own browsing of a CIFS share on a PC or Net attached storage unit. I see no reason to leave an XP box left running just to play music. It should cut down power consumption from about 80 watts for a laptop + 350 watts for the XP box, to 10 watts for the media player and 20 watts for the NAS box.
My XP machine almost never has any stability problems. In contrast, 98 had a lot of them. That alone is worth the upgrade for me.
For me XP home is a downgrade. A pc running 98SE works fine for a SOHO fileserver. Shares can be set up with either Read Only or RW privilages based on password. This is gone in XP Home. Pro has it, but it's a downgrade on XP Home.
I moved my shares to a Linux appliance. They are now on a Simple Share NAS. The hardware and software is about the same price as a copy of XP Pro without the hardware. Sorry MS. Linux makes a better SOHO low cost high performance server.
My neighbor I talk to a couple times a week, and I couldn't care less if he has Internet access. Remind me again why I care about the out-of-town traveller?
When you are home, use your own connection.. Don't leach. Be nice to travelers. When you travel, you may find them generous also. If nobody shares, then travel connections just are not there.
If too many leaches suck up the connections, then the connections go away.. The result of the trajedy of the commons. In a nutshell, don't be greedy on other people's generosity. Show courtesy.
That's why I care about the traveler. I've used and appreciated free connections while traveling.
Those are perfectly valid ideas, but if you're going to go to that much hassle, why open it in the first place? Especially the last part about having DHCP leases point to the wrong gateway. That essentially means only you can use the connection, unless you tell everyone about it in which case everyone will know. Why not just close the access point?
The idea is to simply make life difficult for the persistant leach. The out of town traveler in the neighborhood will likely find you up in good shape after you prove unreliable to the leach.
I've often thought about openning my AP, but I just know that after a week or two some jerk is going to use my DSL connection as his own personal torrent link. If I was using someone's DSL connection I'd limit myself to just normal browsing and light email. Those morons ruin it for everyone else.
Learn to set up a router and keep an eye on traffic. If a leach is killing your bandwidth, add his MAC to the deny list. Dump the cable from the router to the modem when you call it a night or go to work. Give the leach a bad connection so he will find easier pickings elsewhere. My fav. Set up a honeypot. Move the gateway address for the modem. Manualy configure your adaptor to use the real gateway. Watch them spin in the goo for a while before moving on.
In trying to stop piracy, you are in fact encouraging it.
From an end user, that sums it up. I have several DVD players. They can play MP3 audio CD's. Same thing with my portable CD player. It plays MP3's. Want to guess why I don't visit I-tunes? It has to do with an incompatibility issue. Over the air radio may have the same market penetration as over the air digital TV for the same reason. Cost and restrictions on what can play it.
Those things are the bane of fire departments. They can fire up, start to move, pretty much anything while they're trying to extract you from the car. Std procedure now is to not attempt an extract until they find the fob and get it the hell away from the car, then hit the battery disconnect (assuming they can get to it).
Please tell me more. This is the first I've heard about it. One of the safety features was they dropped the main HV contactor in an accident. HV is dropped even before the airbag is fully deployed.
Please provide a refrence. I would like to know more. I have an older Prius, and if this is more than urban legend, I want to know for future purchases.
In fact the current bunch lock themselves as you walk away from them, unlock themselves when you get close, very unnerving, you have to give the key to someone else to check it's locked.
With the new Prius, it's easy. When you walk away, the doors lock and the engine shuts off. Along with that, the lights shut off. If you walk away and the lights are still on, then check if your fob fell out of your pocket.
My kids school uses these. The PC looks a lot like a cable tv or satelite box running completely silent. Diskless and fanless. I had the chance to try one. Slashdot and other sites come up quick.
Slashdot Mirror
Look here..
http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Broadcom_SOCs
Want to make any bets that the manufacturer has a masterkey, or key reclamation mechanism, and will share it with law enforcement if there is a subpoena involved?
I was thinking too slow.. The software is GPL. Download the source and take a look. I'm not making any bets, but the odds against a back door are heavily in my favor.
Want to make any bets that the manufacturer has a masterkey, or key reclamation mechanism, and will share it with law enforcement if there is a subpoena involved?
If they do, they are not talking about it. When I sent mine in for a configuration error on my part (covered by warranty) I did not provide the encryption key. They let me know they got the software unlooped and could see the unencrypted shares OK. They would be willing to check the encrypted pool if I provided the key. I declined and said it's probably OK and had them send it back. When I got it back I put in the key and everything was fine. They did not indicate any key recovery ability on their part.
A link for Simple Share NAS would be great, though I'm going to google it as soon as I finish writing this. Also, how strong is the encryption and have there been any administrative issues, flakiness, etc.?
t inas250/
The only flakieness I know about is one I did and had to send it in to be recovered. Use share passwords if you are using an encrypted drive. Do not do like I did and make some shares, provide passwords, then create users with user privilages, and then create an encrypted pool. It loops the software and no longer talks to the LAN. The magic reset to factory defaults does not recover from that. Other than that, read the Tom's Networking review. The rest of it is right on. The other thing a little weird is the 250G drive has a 3 year warranty but the 160G drive has only 1 year.. Go figure. Anyway the link;
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/04/15/review_s
The encryption is invisable to the users. When the box is rebooted, the encrypted shares simply vanish and are not seen on the network until the password is input from the web interface. Another snip from Toms site;
I was initially a little confused about how an encrypted share would work. Would the client have to enter the encryption password, as well as the user password, when mounting the network share? I saw no provision for this, but what I had to do became clear the next time I rebooted the box. When the SimpleShare rebooted, I received an e-mail from it telling me that I had to go into the administration screen and enter the encryption password. Once I did this, the share was available for clients. So this feature is meant to protect your data if someone walks off with your drive - without the password, they won't be able to access it.
end snip
That's the way to survive a raid. Packing it up breaks it if they find it.
I know from experiance (i made a configuration error) that using the reset to reset it to factory defaults does not open the encrypted share. It stays encrypted and can only be opened and mounted by entering the encryption key.
Certanly. Read the Tomsnetworking review. It's in about the 4th page of the review.
t inas250/page4.html
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/04/15/review_s
Snip Digging deeper into the menus revealed some advanced functionality that didn't appear to be advertised anywhere on SimpleTech's web site or product brochures. I found menus for creating encrypted, mirrored and striped shares, which are RAID capabilities that I have not seen in other boxes of the same class. Selecting the Help button on this screen brought up a full help listing for all features of the box, including these advanced ones. Reading through the help menus indicated that the mirror and striping capabilities are designed to be used on external drives plugged into the box.
end snip
It's one of the main reasons I bought it. Raid, Encryption and easly hidden someplace to be left behind in a raid or burglary. What more could a geek want?
For more information....Hack into their website.
If you can find it. Who knows where the server is right now.
Which is why many newspapers and reporters share the same 'common' logonid and/or share or sync passwords / swap userids (and offices and phones). What if 'guest' accessed the site in question?
You mean like the slashdot community using a shared login and password to read a linked NYT article? It looks like turnabout to me.
Exactly what do you have to hide, citizen?
1 Tax records
2 Full credit card information including card number, pin, phone numbers to call if lost or stolen.
3 Full bank details for online banking
4 Password list for various websites i log into once in a while. After all, I can't use Technician as a logon for AOL IM. So when I do use it on occasion, I need to look up my id.
5 Alarm system master password and user password. I seldom use the master password.
Can you think of any reason to leave any of that out for law enforcement or a burglar to dig through? It's nothing I would want either to have.
I wonder how many reporters are using encryption on their Filesystems these days? If they are not, now is the time to start.
For me, I use a NAS with encryption built in. It's transparant to the end user. The drives won't mount until the encryption key is entered in the NAS web based interface. You can't get to the web based interface unless you log in first. Shutting it down to seize it locks it. Encryption is done in hardware. Removing the drive for analysis will reveal a reiser filesystem which is encrypted.
I use a Simple Share NAS for my tax records and other sensitive information.
That's why I just bought an external NAS drive with encryption. If it lost power, it locks and can't be unlocked until the encryption key is re-entered. They may be able to delete my data, but they can't access it. As an additonal security, the little drive is hung remotely off the lan. Finding it to take it could be a challange.
Check out the Simple Tech SimpleShare NAS. Drop it in the janitor closet someplace locked.
then this law will effectively end all digital rights management!
Oh boy I hope so. With tight DRM there is a lot of good music I would have never been introduced to. For example I was impressed with the christmas light show that made the rounds on the net last year. If the copyright owner was super anal about the distribution of the song, then I neve would have found about the Trans Siberian Orchestra. As it turns out, the guy with the light show was invited to one of the concerts while they were on tour and praised for his excellent work.
Tell me again why the media companies want to keep me from finding good music?
Most of the stuff on the radio isn't worth going out and buying. This is especialy true when it comes with restrictions and viruses built in.
To make sure I get a real copy, I always look for the Compact Disk logo showing the title meets Philips specification for an audio recording. There is so very little on the shelf at the music store with the compatibility logo. It's no longer worth the effor to try to find good music with the logo anymore. I quit trying.
This has been why email attachments are regularly stripped
....
I like my company. I have had some e-mail with removed attachments. The mail was appended by the mailserver explaining (automated) the attachment failed a virus check complete with the name of the bug. If it was an attachment I was expecting please contact
All my stripped attachments were from unknown overseas, DSL or cable spam mail. I never had a valid attachment stripped. I wish my home mail server was as good at filtering. I wish the cable and DSL companies would provide the same level of protection on their in and out ports.
be wary of housing inspectors recommended to you by your real estate agent
Good point. Most important is to check them out first regardless of where you find them. Check the BBB. Check refrences. A good one is worth every penny.
I just bought a house. (not online) One word of advice.. even if you see the property, hire a property inspector. A good one will tell you about all kinds of things like leaking plumbing in the crawl space, dry rot in the roof sheeting, and wireing splices not up to code. I bought my place knowing ahead of time one of the underground sprinklers was broken, the hot tub didn't work, a bad splice in the attic (twisted and taped), and the sub panel for the shop didn't meet code (3 wire service without a seprate ground in a sub panel is not permitted). It is true the house had a few things needing fixing, but the inspection report got $8,000 knocked off due to the extra expenses needed to bring it up to code in addition to the seller having an electrician update the panel.
Use the online yellow pages and find a home inspector. They will provide photos of everyting from the condition of the gutters to the torn screen window, to the rotting bottem panel on the garage door. It was worth every cent of the $750 I paid for the inspection.
Get a licensed home inspector.
I like to listen to music on it, since it's in my kitchen and readily accessible.
What I'm looking for is an appliance to replace that type setup. Most media adaptors want special back end software running on an XP box to make it work. I'm looking for a player box that will do it's own browsing of a CIFS share on a PC or Net attached storage unit. I see no reason to leave an XP box left running just to play music. It should cut down power consumption from about 80 watts for a laptop + 350 watts for the XP box, to 10 watts for the media player and 20 watts for the NAS box.
My XP machine almost never has any stability problems. In contrast, 98 had a lot of them. That alone is worth the upgrade for me.
For me XP home is a downgrade. A pc running 98SE works fine for a SOHO fileserver. Shares can be set up with either Read Only or RW privilages based on password. This is gone in XP Home. Pro has it, but it's a downgrade on XP Home.
I moved my shares to a Linux appliance. They are now on a Simple Share NAS. The hardware and software is about the same price as a copy of XP Pro without the hardware. Sorry MS. Linux makes a better SOHO low cost high performance server.
My neighbor I talk to a couple times a week, and I couldn't care less if he has Internet access. Remind me again why I care about the out-of-town traveller?
When you are home, use your own connection.. Don't leach. Be nice to travelers. When you travel, you may find them generous also. If nobody shares, then travel connections just are not there.
If too many leaches suck up the connections, then the connections go away.. The result of the trajedy of the commons. In a nutshell, don't be greedy on other people's generosity. Show courtesy.
That's why I care about the traveler. I've used and appreciated free connections while traveling.
Those are perfectly valid ideas, but if you're going to go to that much hassle, why open it in the first place? Especially the last part about having DHCP leases point to the wrong gateway. That essentially means only you can use the connection, unless you tell everyone about it in which case everyone will know. Why not just close the access point?
The idea is to simply make life difficult for the persistant leach. The out of town traveler in the neighborhood will likely find you up in good shape after you prove unreliable to the leach.
I've often thought about openning my AP, but I just know that after a week or two some jerk is going to use my DSL connection as his own personal torrent link. If I was using someone's DSL connection I'd limit myself to just normal browsing and light email. Those morons ruin it for everyone else.
Learn to set up a router and keep an eye on traffic. If a leach is killing your bandwidth, add his MAC to the deny list. Dump the cable from the router to the modem when you call it a night or go to work. Give the leach a bad connection so he will find easier pickings elsewhere. My fav. Set up a honeypot. Move the gateway address for the modem. Manualy configure your adaptor to use the real gateway. Watch them spin in the goo for a while before moving on.
That would be nice to for mom-and-pop -- they wouldn't have big fixed-fees due to heavy users like myself.
As a mom-and-pop, the big fixed fees simply mean dial-up.. I have broadband at work and dial-up at home. My SSID is NoInternet.
In trying to stop piracy, you are in fact encouraging it.
From an end user, that sums it up. I have several DVD players. They can play MP3 audio CD's. Same thing with my portable CD player. It plays MP3's. Want to guess why I don't visit I-tunes? It has to do with an incompatibility issue. Over the air radio may have the same market penetration as over the air digital TV for the same reason. Cost and restrictions on what can play it.
Those things are the bane of fire departments. They can fire up, start to move, pretty much anything while they're trying to extract you from the car. Std procedure now is to not attempt an extract until they find the fob and get it the hell away from the car, then hit the battery disconnect (assuming they can get to it).
Please tell me more. This is the first I've heard about it. One of the safety features was they dropped the main HV contactor in an accident. HV is dropped even before the airbag is fully deployed.
Please provide a refrence. I would like to know more. I have an older Prius, and if this is more than urban legend, I want to know for future purchases.
In fact the current bunch lock themselves as you walk away from them, unlock themselves when you get close, very unnerving, you have to give the key to someone else to check it's locked.
With the new Prius, it's easy. When you walk away, the doors lock and the engine shuts off. Along with that, the lights shut off. If you walk away and the lights are still on, then check if your fob fell out of your pocket.
My kids school uses these. The PC looks a lot like a cable tv or satelite box running completely silent. Diskless and fanless. I had the chance to try one. Slashdot and other sites come up quick.