Social engineering too effective to fight?
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 1
Hi Mr. Mitnick,
Is there an amount of security that would stop a gifted social engineer like yourself, and if so, how much would it typically cost a Forbes 500 company?
Read your book, it was quite entertaining and informative!
There was a time when most WiFi hotspots were password-free and we could connect to the internet for free in most urban areas when we were travelling, with latencies and speeds that put 3G to shame.
Now, those times are gone forever. No more free internet for the casual user. No more sharing and love.
People like to talk about security but it's bullshit. We are not the winners in this ordeal. ISPs are. The security issues have an easy technical solution: The same one used by french ISPs to let its customers connect to other customer's WiFi.
They have a password-free Hotspot that sends you to web login and a separated, bandwidth-shaped VLAN for guests so they can't access network shares or do anything else.
That is the correct assessment but I'll disagree about the PC + PS3 choice.
While I'm not a big Halo fan (I finished the first and 2nd Halo campaigns I think), you have to admit that multiplayer Halo is like a religion to many people and is not to be dismissed lightly.
And yes, Uncharted and God of War brought me a lot of joy but the online experience on the PS3 sucks compared to Xbox Live.
Personally, I want to play street fighter online and the Xbox is the best platform to do so. PC + 360 ain't cutting it.
I'm saying this as someone who only owns a PC and a PS3 at the moment.
It will definitely not sell for $250. You must account for inflation and the fallen dollar.
If they go with separate SKUs like MS and SONY, I'll bet the cheapest and crappiest one will cost $300, and the others will hover around the $450 mark.
In conclusion, piracy is a noble service performed by historians dedicated to preserving the human intellectual heritage for the decades and centuries to come, when DRM servers are dead and legit copies are uselessly crippled.
We had 4.7GB DVD-Rs when HDDs were around 20 GB. a 4:1 ratio.
Today, we have 500GB HDDs while bluray media is 25GB. a 20:1 ratio, soon to be 40:1 or more.
The speed needed to burn enough data has stagnated while data volumes have ballooned immensely.
By 2020, SSDs will come in multiple TBs. As a rule of thumb, today's internet will fit in a laptop's storage in 2042. The same is true today with 1982's internet.
Because sexy Apple products make computer geeks sexier by extension. Steve Jobs is personally invested in the grand mission of helping neck-beards get laid.
In return, we give Apple insane coverage. Simple really.
I think it's understood that Saudi laws are crazy, what with the hand cutting and the sex segregation and whatever else goes with some of their stifling, barbaric tribal traditions.
If you ask any arab about Saudi Arabia, they'll tell you that the only good things about current Saudi Arabia are money and dates.
Oh, and if the current SSD trends continue, we will inevitably purge our boxes of magnetic disks completely.
The coding revolution is bound to slowly follow, as drives reach GBps and millions of random iops and SSD closes in on RAM, the AI will awake. That's when we all defeat it and enslave the robots. SWEET SWEET ROBOSLAVERY!
Raw fiber to the home has enormous implications we are not capable of imagining.
Wiring efforts should accelerate and government regulation should be copied from countries like Sweden, Japan and South Korea to ensure maximum bandwidth and minimum latency, worldwide.
It just makes sense. There cannot be a long-term loss in this investment. Lay fiber everywhere. Construct a fractal grid-net over the planet and get as close as possible to the speed of light. between any 2 given points.
Everybody is in favor of it. What follows will be free sound/video calls and videoconferencing across computers and smart-phones. Inevitably.
What will also follow is distributed computing, as latencies grow lower. As reliability increases, more efficient ways to treat data will emerge, which will greatly increase efficiency. The positive pressure of multi-coring our way forward under the GHz limits will increase the importance of distributed code (but for how long?) so we basically need a very fast, very reliable internet to use our cpu cycles more efficiently.
The single most powerful weapon at the U.S's disposal is the internet. Since the U.S has the most influence on the internet and the most content out there, it follows that simply encouraging other countries to ramp up broadband penetration via subsidies, foreign aid and such makes the cultural values embedded in the media produced flow like a torrent (no pun intended). Video, text, audio, decentralized communication and publishing are the tools of soft power for the united states.
More internet = more american influence. The taliban understood this very well.
I'm speaking as an arab-american. I've lived this stuff so I know it works.
If you want to keep playing online while a custom firmware is released. All that is necessary is to plug in this as the primary DNS in your PS3 network settings:
Slashdot Mirror
Hi Mr. Mitnick,
Is there an amount of security that would stop a gifted social engineer like yourself, and if so, how much would it typically cost a Forbes 500 company?
Read your book, it was quite entertaining and informative!
There was a time when most WiFi hotspots were password-free and we could connect to the internet for free in most urban areas when we were travelling, with latencies and speeds that put 3G to shame.
Now, those times are gone forever. No more free internet for the casual user. No more sharing and love.
People like to talk about security but it's bullshit. We are not the winners in this ordeal. ISPs are. The security issues have an easy technical solution: The same one used by french ISPs to let its customers connect to other customer's WiFi.
They have a password-free Hotspot that sends you to web login and a separated, bandwidth-shaped VLAN for guests so they can't access network shares or do anything else.
R.I.P free WiFi. You will be missed.
Just make everybody switch to apple computers and the botnet is immediately worthless, along with 99.9999% of the malware out there.
You're welcome.
-Steve
That is the correct assessment but I'll disagree about the PC + PS3 choice.
While I'm not a big Halo fan (I finished the first and 2nd Halo campaigns I think), you have to admit that multiplayer Halo is like a religion to many people and is not to be dismissed lightly.
And yes, Uncharted and God of War brought me a lot of joy but the online experience on the PS3 sucks compared to Xbox Live.
Personally, I want to play street fighter online and the Xbox is the best platform to do so. PC + 360 ain't cutting it.
I'm saying this as someone who only owns a PC and a PS3 at the moment.
The PPC+SPE combo units ARE the far-out architecture of the PS3 he was talking about.
He was not talking about the PPC alone.
For desktops, always use an SSD as your OS/Applications drive.
For casual photographs: Buy the smartphone with a cutting edge camera. You'll have your phone with you more often than a camera.
For tvs: size first, then black levels, then refresh rates. You can safely ignore the rest.
Sony hasn't lost any customers with this whole thing. In fact, they gained many customers since the PS3 was hacked.
If people could force sony to exchange their PS3 with an xbox360, then I'm sure maybe 5 or 10% of PSN customers would switch.
Under current conditions, negligible amounts of people will switch.
It will definitely not sell for $250. You must account for inflation and the fallen dollar.
If they go with separate SKUs like MS and SONY, I'll bet the cheapest and crappiest one will cost $300, and the others will hover around the $450 mark.
Mark my words!
In conclusion, piracy is a noble service performed by historians dedicated to preserving the human intellectual heritage for the decades and centuries to come, when DRM servers are dead and legit copies are uselessly crippled.
Nonsense. Component looks great, I've tried it with 480p, 720p and 1080p and the image quality is indistinguishable from HDMI.
Microphone in the kinect. Just speak "channel 34" or, even better, "CNN sports".
Any further questions?
We had 4.7GB DVD-Rs when HDDs were around 20 GB. a 4:1 ratio.
Today, we have 500GB HDDs while bluray media is 25GB. a 20:1 ratio, soon to be 40:1 or more.
The speed needed to burn enough data has stagnated while data volumes have ballooned immensely.
By 2020, SSDs will come in multiple TBs. As a rule of thumb, today's internet will fit in a laptop's storage in 2042. The same is true today with 1982's internet.
The professor only says good news when he has bad news so all of you have it backwards!
I think paying $360/year to read it on my iPhone and iPad is an absolute bargain.
Who's with me?
So basically, openGL is to direct3d what the gimp is to photoshop.
Because sexy Apple products make computer geeks sexier by extension. Steve Jobs is personally invested in the grand mission of helping neck-beards get laid.
In return, we give Apple insane coverage. Simple really.
Your DVDRs wouldn't do those kids any goods. You'll need to buy a much more expensive 2.5" HD for them to stock the (up to 43GB) games.
No, the Killer app are the delicious controls that will allow non-casual games to be played.
Battery life remains a huge problem though.
I think it's understood that Saudi laws are crazy, what with the hand cutting and the sex segregation and whatever else goes with some of their stifling, barbaric tribal traditions.
If you ask any arab about Saudi Arabia, they'll tell you that the only good things about current Saudi Arabia are money and dates.
SMS is the worst way of interacting facebook that I can imagine. This will be at best a last recourse in extreme situations.
Female genital mutilation is rare and certainly not common in muslim society. Please provide a reliable cite if you persist in your shocking claim.
In fact, body mutilation of any kind is forbidden by Islam. The body is supposed to be God's creation and vandalizing it is bad (goes the reasoning).
Oh, and if the current SSD trends continue, we will inevitably purge our boxes of magnetic disks completely.
The coding revolution is bound to slowly follow, as drives reach GBps and millions of random iops and SSD closes in on RAM, the AI will awake. That's when we all defeat it and enslave the robots. SWEET SWEET ROBOSLAVERY!
Raw fiber to the home has enormous implications we are not capable of imagining.
Wiring efforts should accelerate and government regulation should be copied from countries like Sweden, Japan and South Korea to ensure maximum bandwidth and minimum latency, worldwide.
It just makes sense. There cannot be a long-term loss in this investment. Lay fiber everywhere. Construct a fractal grid-net over the planet and get as close as possible to the speed of light. between any 2 given points.
Everybody is in favor of it. What follows will be free sound/video calls and videoconferencing across computers and smart-phones. Inevitably.
What will also follow is distributed computing, as latencies grow lower. As reliability increases, more efficient ways to treat data will emerge, which will greatly increase efficiency. The positive pressure of multi-coring our way forward under the GHz limits will increase the importance of distributed code (but for how long?) so we basically need a very fast, very reliable internet to use our cpu cycles more efficiently.
Probably preaching to the choir here...
You were and are quite right in my opinion.
The single most powerful weapon at the U.S's disposal is the internet. Since the U.S has the most influence on the internet and the most content out there, it follows that simply encouraging other countries to ramp up broadband penetration via subsidies, foreign aid and such makes the cultural values embedded in the media produced flow like a torrent (no pun intended). Video, text, audio, decentralized communication and publishing are the tools of soft power for the united states.
More internet = more american influence. The taliban understood this very well.
I'm speaking as an arab-american. I've lived this stuff so I know it works.
If you want to keep playing online while a custom firmware is released. All that is necessary is to plug in this as the primary DNS in your PS3 network settings:
67.202.81.137
And ta-daa, we're back online with 3.55.