Hey, I even remember the good old days when your toys could actually shoot eye-removing, easy-to-swallow missiles/fists/pointy things 15 feet across the room with deadly accuracy.
Although I did almost go blind using those infernal red plastic filters to read the TRUE battle stats on my Dinobots. I should sue.
There's also not much indication from the FBI regarding what kind of targets they're looking at with Magic Lantern. It's also absurd to assume that the FBI is basing their entire future of "cyber-crime-fighting" on this technology. It's just one more tool in the toolbox.
Gee, you're running OpenBSD. So they get a search warrant for your home, and while executing that warrant, they install a hardware keystroke logger, or put a tap on your net connection lines, or have ninjas camp in your attic. If the feds are rabidly intent on finding out what you're doing on your computer, they can probably find out a way to do so, unless you're going to move into a lead-lined bunker.
Randall Kennedy, a co-author of the InfoWorld article, posted in their forums that all of the machines had 256MB of RAM and that memory was not a bottleneck.
Unfortunately, InfoWorld has not provided any more details regarding the hardware configurations used in their testing. As the article stands now, it is impossible for any outside party to duplicate their test environment.
Zero Knowledge Systems (and its personnel) are quite well known in crypto circles, and have received attention on Slashdot. Ian Goldberg, their Chief Scientist, most recently received attention as a co-author of the paper on cracking WEP. Stefan Brands, who has done a whole lot of digital cash work, works there. The corporate advisory board is a Monsters of Cryptography tour lineup. Their "media coverage" page is chock full of quotes from their many brilliant people.
And...so what?
You are entirely correct that no one has ever heard of them. Most of their "advertising" comes from sound-bites in the media from their staff, often commenting on issues not specific to their Freedom product.
They seem to have forgotten that star-power in a relatively obscure field and a cool corporate name do not a successful company make. (A product that doesn't suck is also a nice bonus, but seems to be entirely optional these days.)
From reading John Young's dialog with the NYT, it seems his reasoning was twofold:
1) Since other people were unmasking the names, the information was no longer known to only him and the NYT, and was therefore in the public domain.
2) In the interest of security, he decided that by publishing the names, everyone would be on an even playing field, and any people involved in the operation would know that they had been exposed. (Rather than not knowing if they were named and if so, who had uncovered the names already.)
He had a hard decision to make, and I think he did the right thing. The moral questions of full disclosure get a lot hairier when it's potentially peoples' lives on the line, not just RealServer remote DoS attacks.
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Hey, I even remember the good old days when your toys could actually shoot eye-removing, easy-to-swallow missiles/fists/pointy things 15 feet across the room with deadly accuracy.
Although I did almost go blind using those infernal red plastic filters to read the TRUE battle stats on my Dinobots. I should sue.
It should be noted that #1 on the list is the MGS2 Solid Snake ACTION FIGURE, not the game.
He said "FreeBSD", not "OpenBSD".
There's also not much indication from the FBI regarding what kind of targets they're looking at with Magic Lantern. It's also absurd to assume that the FBI is basing their entire future of "cyber-crime-fighting" on this technology. It's just one more tool in the toolbox.
Gee, you're running OpenBSD. So they get a search warrant for your home, and while executing that warrant, they install a hardware keystroke logger, or put a tap on your net connection lines, or have ninjas camp in your attic. If the feds are rabidly intent on finding out what you're doing on your computer, they can probably find out a way to do so, unless you're going to move into a lead-lined bunker.
Randall Kennedy, a co-author of the InfoWorld article, posted in their forums that all of the machines had 256MB of RAM and that memory was not a bottleneck.
Unfortunately, InfoWorld has not provided any more details regarding the hardware configurations used in their testing. As the article stands now, it is impossible for any outside party to duplicate their test environment.
Zero Knowledge Systems (and its personnel) are quite well known in crypto circles, and have received attention on Slashdot. Ian Goldberg, their Chief Scientist, most recently received attention as a co-author of the paper on cracking WEP. Stefan Brands, who has done a whole lot of digital cash work, works there. The corporate advisory board is a Monsters of Cryptography tour lineup. Their "media coverage" page is chock full of quotes from their many brilliant people.
And...so what?
You are entirely correct that no one has ever heard of them. Most of their "advertising" comes from sound-bites in the media from their staff, often commenting on issues not specific to their Freedom product.
They seem to have forgotten that star-power in a relatively obscure field and a cool corporate name do not a successful company make. (A product that doesn't suck is also a nice bonus, but seems to be entirely optional these days.)
From reading John Young's dialog with the NYT, it seems his reasoning was twofold:
1) Since other people were unmasking the names, the information was no longer known to only him and the NYT, and was therefore in the public domain.
2) In the interest of security, he decided that by publishing the names, everyone would be on an even playing field, and any people involved in the operation would know that they had been exposed. (Rather than not knowing if they were named and if so, who had uncovered the names already.)
He had a hard decision to make, and I think he did the right thing. The moral questions of full disclosure get a lot hairier when it's potentially peoples' lives on the line, not just RealServer remote DoS attacks.
A couple links of note for people interested in this stuff:
Meier Steel has some INCREDIBLE examples of Damascus steel work
This site has a very nice photo-essay on the making of traditional Japanese swords