In the UK we don't really do earthquakes and tsunamis so I suppose our stress-tests will feature.... predictable rain on the first day of a test-match.
It rains every F-ing day (I've visited your islands, very nice, but it never stops raining) and you have mudslides. Worse than a tsunami in some ways, because the mud doesn't just drain away. On the good side, it rains every F-ing day so you have little mudslides rather than letting it build up to annual monster proportions...
Also your rivers flood, which is too bad, because rivers are otherwise really nice for cooling nuke plants, even better than oceans in many ways.
I know this isn`t _exactly_ the same (or really even close), but isn`t it this kind of thinking that caused the disaster at Chernobyl?
No not at all.
The "stress tests" phrasing comes from recent similar "stress tests" in the banking and finance industry where everyone important / major is guaranteed to pass, although they really want some more money etc.
Its a PR campaign, not a mechanical engineering accomplishment. The timing is even pretty similar, just long enough for the bad news to decay from the news cycle, and here comes "good news" that everyone passes the test.
current loop interfaces being much better in the electrically noisy area that is a stage/pc set up.
Not just the signalling scheme, but isn't it part of the actual spec that the receive ckt has to use an optoisolator? Bye bye ground loops and ground loop hum and popping GFCI outlets... Also not sure about "recent" blue LEDs and friends, but Ye Olden Days LEDs as used in optoisolators used to be virtually bulletproof to ESD. As in nothing short of a near lightning strike will take them out.
Bringing back to the original article topic, Faux-Geeks or Psuedo-Geeks write tech journalist blogs about new products and pontificate about tech company corporate strategy, all apparently in an anti-intellectual manner, but real geeks daydream about an alternate history world where the crappy RS-232 standard never existed and everyone and everything used a standard that was physically and electrically very much like MIDI. I would have liked that world. RS-232 kinda works, but pretty much sucks.
Of course corrected for inflation, minimum wage in the early 90s is probably equivalent to $20/hr now....
Unless, where you were, minimum wage was >$10/hr in the early 90's you might want to ask for a refund on your math courses.
Not getting your point... My $5/hr job bought me $1/gallon (or LESS) gasoline, my parents house was worth about $75K, and tuition at the local private engineering college was something like $5000/yr full time.
Now its $4/gallon gas, ye olde parental home topped out at the peak of the bubble at $300K, tuition at the local private engineering college is $30K/yr.
Minimum wage is slightly more than $5/hr, but which of those expenses has less than quadrupled?
Yeah like he's going to afford a war surplus A-10 anytime soon.
I found PPL training and light aircraft flight to be a dramatically different experience than flight sims.
Also its well known in the professional community that sim time totally screws up a real world pilot. Theres plenty of sims with nice graphics and realistic controls, but few/none with accurate simulation of controlled airspace, FAA law enforcement, etc. And I know personally that it horribly screws up judgement, in my sims I pretty much never abort a IFR landing, my judgement, which make sense for a sim flyer, would completely terrify a CFI.
Also medical is a serious issue... My grandfather, a B-24 pilot, simmed for literally decades after medical would have grounded him. Frankly, I don't know if I'd pass a medical, and I'm scared to try, because if I fail, that would DQ me from (ever?) getting a sport pilot license and flying a LSA... And a LSA is pretty boring for a guy with many hours in a A-10...
Consider how music-taste changes 10-25 versus 30-45. The first is a huge change, and probably most of the music-styles and/or artists that'll be your favourites for life, you learn to know in this age, the second age-span ? Not so much. You'll maybe get to know a few new artists, mostly such as play in genres you already know and like.
Having been there done that, I can assure you for the vast majority of people, its not some organic brain malfunction, but more like:
10-25 = I love whatever the music industry execs are pushing today. Whatever is on the top 40 station, is what all my friends will listen to, so I will too. And I, and all my friends, will wisely all rebel against "the man" in perfect conformity with each other and the music industry execs.
30-45 = F those music company execs and the trash they push. I'm not going to listen to their formulaic repetitive junk. I have better things to do than play-time pretend rebellion. There's a giant sea of junk created every year and I'm sure that 1 in 1000 new tracks are worth listening to, but I don't have the time or motivation to do so.
The report nicely avoids explaining it's methodology and likely uses a broad definition of games (Farmville and minesweeper anyone?)
Yes yes, everyone knows that only "REAL GAMES" are multiplayer endless remakes and sequels of first person shooters. Its a very tired old meme that should be allowed to expire.
The shuttle still would make for an awesome emergency re-entry vehicle--a classic life boat with some extra kick.
The APU fuel will freeze, the water based fuel cells will run out of reactants, freeze, then crack. The RCS oxidizer will probably eventually freeze. Thermal issues are kinda unclear. Also there was something weird about the tires that I don't remember. Anyway, facing absolutely certain death, you could try a mothballed escape shuttle with only almost certain death.
Frankly the best on-orbit use of an "extra" shuttle, although completely and utterly non-heroic and terrible PR, would be as a garbage scow, then dump the whole works in the Pacific.
More like promising your building project can do anything, having the politicians cut the budget until your grand project is little more than a driveway for a car, THEN selling the car once its built and taking the Russian bus instead.
Sadly, I'm one of those, and I graduated from an Ivy League school (by which I imply top-tier of cost) with a CRUSHING $20,000 in student loan debt, which for several years had a lower interest rate than my simple savings account, and in any case amounted to an UNTENABLE six months or so of marginal wages. Alas! Pity me, the fool who went to college!
Given your ID number, I'm thinking you went before the educational bubble really started accelerating. You have to add at least one zero to the end of that "crushing debt load". Also, now, the odds of your "marginal wages" approaching zero are much higher. Your sarcasm about the past, is unfortunately the modern day truth.
Liberal arts kids now graduate with more debt that doctors did when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the average wage paid to liberal arts kids has dropped since then, especially if you average in the unemployment checks.
I don't think it's fair to require that geeks be 50+ years old.
Just to help with categorization, if it takes someone 50+ years to figure out
which end of the soldering iron gets hot
then they fit in the moron category, not geek, unless they have a truely incredible excuse.
what layer Does MIDI fit into in the OSI stack (and no its not what CISCO tells you)
For those who don't know, thats supposed to be a (kind of) funny joke. MIDI is like ISDN in that it covers a whole bunch of layers under one umbrella, from a physical port and voltage standard all the way up to management by controlling sound mixers... The funny part is Cisco puts it under "Presentation" because its used for music performances and stuff, and those are "presentations", aren't they? I think they're trying to make the point about ".midi" extension data files being transferred by many different types of layer 7 systems, I guess.
So, you're saying you disagree with them. Right? Just checking.
The opinion of a non-geek portrayed as a geek is simply irrelevant. Right or wrong is a function of statistical randomness, not enlightened analysis. Its rather like asking Tom Cruise to answer detailed questions about F-15 flight instruction, after all, he portrayed a pilot in a famous movie, but it turns out he's just an actor.
As for right or wrong, the problem is the original article writer seeing thru very narrow 1930s-ish eyes that "intellectualism" is sitting in college, wearing tweed jackets, while puffing a (tobacco) pipe, speaking in a psuedo-british accent, and writing essays in for-profit journals. If you slightly modernize the definition to adjust to technology, nothing much has really changed amongst the geeks except they share a lot more ideas, a lot faster, and the folks "left behind" seem to be getting more than one year behind every year, very technological singularity-like.
College is a waste of time for anyone looking to go into the IT field. Programming? Its iffy honestly. Most places would hire someone with 5 years XP over some college kid with 1 year. So my choices are I could either just work in IT.. spend maybe 100k over my entire life on certs and renewals and make the same as a college kid... or I could go to college, leave with 200k in debt, still need the 100k for certs and renewals, and start 4-7 years after my competition...
Before the educational / tuition bubble really took off, my strategy was to use the then omni-present tuition reimbursement scheme at my employer(s) to pay for college.. Worked out well, except for being so far ahead of my class that I was bored silly. Graduated with basically no debt, in fact brokerage acct fulla money, new car, new house, etc. I don't think that's possible with current hyper-inflated tuition. And this was just a decade ago, not in the 50s or whatever.
And that's with a real job... to get my real job I went to the local CC and got an associates, and kids now a days do not believe that it was financially possible to work a minimum wage job, live in an apartment, own a car, and pay near full time tuition... But it was... Of course corrected for inflation, minimum wage in the early 90s is probably equivalent to $20/hr now....
Is a person a geek because he/she is antisocial, is an expert in something obscure, or for some other reason?
According to the article, it's because they're a journalist / marketing dude / manager who tries to influence public opinion by writing about tech. Not really my definition of geek, but if it works for him...
Arguably, treating college as 'purely economic' is the anti-intellectual part(or a sign that you experienced a shitty school...)
Probably in his lower 20s, due to the educational bubble... Youngsters now a days need to take a lifetime vow of poverty if they go to college, very much like the only way to get an education in the middle ages was to take a vow of poverty and enter the monastery. Not much has changed in CS since then, not the money or the dating life. I think back on how much I learned post-college, which in part required me to spend money the youngsters will never have, due to $200K student loans...
None of the people in that article are geeks. All liberal-arts majors, book authors, marketing personnel, PR, spokemodels, management, etc. If I remember my HHGttG correctly, they're all from the "B Ark". As a group, they've always been anti-intellectual, its just they've recently had a thin veneer of geekiness smoothed over them.
It may be that I'm out of touch and being a geek now means you're a "tech journalist / blogger".
With regular old batteries I can replace them to infinity, and if I forgot some I can pick them up at a gas station on my way to the woods.
I think you still don't get it... When my flashlight does dark, I can have light again in about 30 to 60 seconds because I have a pack of AA batteries waiting for it, or whatever other AA powered device runs out of juice. If it takes overnight to charge off my car, that kinda defeats the purpose of using a flashlight at night while backpack camping... Also a lovely circular fail mode when using the flashlight to see what I'm doing while jumpstarting my car in the dark, if I had the juice to charge the light so I could see what I was jumpstarting, I wouldn't need the jumpstart, or if it takes overnight to charge so I can see what I'm doing, I could wait overnight for it to charge, except that the sun usually rises in the morning, so why not skip charging and use solar light to see what I'm doing...
Its the electric car needs charging argument all over again. But instead of being a huge energy hog worthy of a microscopic level of effort to work around, its... just a flashlight.
Huh, when I read the headline I assumed the CAD files for the housing, electronics, etc would all be available. Looking closer it seems like you're right, which is a little disappointing (although not much since I'd never build one of these anyway).
Unless I'm missing something, it's open source, the same way that a windows gaming box is open source, because the Jameco catalog had a very general article about selecting and assembling various sub assemblies to "make yer own PC", and it even named by model number one of the parts.
All five pieces of the machine of course are closed source, and both overall and detail blueprints are closed source.
I'm expecting the next breathless admission to be that when he says it has 48 candle power, or whatever, it turns out it actually is just two 24-count boxes of tea light candles.
Yeah, the "three finger salute". Sorta read between the lines although no one I know can hit ctrl-alt-delete with ring, index, pointer fingers on one hand.
They have got the key to generate the "random" token. So, yes, it's down to one factor.
But I guess the password is the easy part.. Password reuse, keylogger, etc....
OK that's exactly what I'm looking for. So its no worse than dropping back to "one factor". The two apps/systems/companies I have personal experience with that use securid use two factor only as security theater, not a realistic threat model, not for legal compliance, etc, so they're safe.
I was worried for a minute someone found a back door, like you can bypass any securid "protected" login using all nines as a password, you know, something like Sony would use....
we're now scrambling to envisage and generate reports from authentication logs for exceptions that might indicate we're being attacked or have been successfully attacked in the past.
why would you need to scramble? shouldn't you be looking at this anyways? on a regular basis? sure this is a good reason to take a second look - but be scrambling.
Having been there / done that, what he means is that today, over and above the normal procedure, some PHB around 5 to 10 levels higher in the org chart has mandated that he will call every person who logged in on the telephone and verify that at that time and date it was in fact that person who logged in and not someone else. Or similar level of foolishness.
RSA's customers certainly need to have a copy of their tokens' seed keys on their authentication server; but RSA doesn't need a copy of their customers' seed keys...
Unfortunately, I imagine they do need the copy: otherwise how do they make sure they never issue duplicates to different customers?
LOL that one was funny, and some PHB requirement like that is probably the cause of the whole problem. Like intro to crypto 101 problem funny. To the noobs out there, the solution involves storing the hash of the existing keys instead of the keys themselves. Supposedly, can't turn a hash back into a key, but if the hash of your new key matches a pre-existing hash, then its a dupe, make another and try again.
That's only needed if it's required to prove there's no dupes... realistically, if you have a 1024 bit key and 16 bits worth of customers, the odds of a collision, which wouldn't matter anyway, are 1 in 2 ** (1008) or in other words quite unlikely.
...is that I'm going to have to fiddle around to get my RSA key fob off my keyring so I can put a new one on. Damn keyrings always end up hurting my nails.
A really cool hack would be replicating the operation of a keyfob using the very stereotypical ardweeno board or any other microcontroller. Or even a small perl script.
By replication, I don't mean a small box that outputs a periodically changing random number on a LCD like a movie prop, but I mean a replication of my actual fob, that when used, successfully lets me log into a VPN. Now that would be cool. I haven't seen one yet.
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK we don't really do earthquakes and tsunamis so I suppose our stress-tests will feature .... predictable rain on the first day of a test-match.
It rains every F-ing day (I've visited your islands, very nice, but it never stops raining) and you have mudslides. Worse than a tsunami in some ways, because the mud doesn't just drain away. On the good side, it rains every F-ing day so you have little mudslides rather than letting it build up to annual monster proportions...
Also your rivers flood, which is too bad, because rivers are otherwise really nice for cooling nuke plants, even better than oceans in many ways.
I know this isn`t _exactly_ the same (or really even close), but isn`t it this kind of thinking that caused the disaster at Chernobyl?
No not at all.
The "stress tests" phrasing comes from recent similar "stress tests" in the banking and finance industry where everyone important / major is guaranteed to pass, although they really want some more money etc.
Its a PR campaign, not a mechanical engineering accomplishment. The timing is even pretty similar, just long enough for the bad news to decay from the news cycle, and here comes "good news" that everyone passes the test.
Participation Trophies for All!
current loop interfaces being much better in the electrically noisy area that is a stage/pc set up.
Not just the signalling scheme, but isn't it part of the actual spec that the receive ckt has to use an optoisolator? Bye bye ground loops and ground loop hum and popping GFCI outlets ... Also not sure about "recent" blue LEDs and friends, but Ye Olden Days LEDs as used in optoisolators used to be virtually bulletproof to ESD. As in nothing short of a near lightning strike will take them out.
Bringing back to the original article topic, Faux-Geeks or Psuedo-Geeks write tech journalist blogs about new products and pontificate about tech company corporate strategy, all apparently in an anti-intellectual manner, but real geeks daydream about an alternate history world where the crappy RS-232 standard never existed and everyone and everything used a standard that was physically and electrically very much like MIDI. I would have liked that world. RS-232 kinda works, but pretty much sucks.
Unless, where you were, minimum wage was >$10/hr in the early 90's you might want to ask for a refund on your math courses.
Not getting your point... My $5/hr job bought me $1/gallon (or LESS) gasoline, my parents house was worth about $75K, and tuition at the local private engineering college was something like $5000/yr full time.
Now its $4/gallon gas, ye olde parental home topped out at the peak of the bubble at $300K, tuition at the local private engineering college is $30K/yr.
Minimum wage is slightly more than $5/hr, but which of those expenses has less than quadrupled?
You should get a PPL and a light aircraft then.
Yeah like he's going to afford a war surplus A-10 anytime soon.
I found PPL training and light aircraft flight to be a dramatically different experience than flight sims.
Also its well known in the professional community that sim time totally screws up a real world pilot. Theres plenty of sims with nice graphics and realistic controls, but few/none with accurate simulation of controlled airspace, FAA law enforcement, etc. And I know personally that it horribly screws up judgement, in my sims I pretty much never abort a IFR landing, my judgement, which make sense for a sim flyer, would completely terrify a CFI.
Also medical is a serious issue... My grandfather, a B-24 pilot, simmed for literally decades after medical would have grounded him. Frankly, I don't know if I'd pass a medical, and I'm scared to try, because if I fail, that would DQ me from (ever?) getting a sport pilot license and flying a LSA... And a LSA is pretty boring for a guy with many hours in a A-10...
Consider how music-taste changes 10-25 versus 30-45. The first is a huge change, and probably most of the music-styles and/or artists that'll be your favourites for life, you learn to know in this age, the second age-span ? Not so much. You'll maybe get to know a few new artists, mostly such as play in genres you already know and like.
Having been there done that, I can assure you for the vast majority of people, its not some organic brain malfunction, but more like:
10-25 = I love whatever the music industry execs are pushing today. Whatever is on the top 40 station, is what all my friends will listen to, so I will too. And I, and all my friends, will wisely all rebel against "the man" in perfect conformity with each other and the music industry execs.
30-45 = F those music company execs and the trash they push. I'm not going to listen to their formulaic repetitive junk. I have better things to do than play-time pretend rebellion. There's a giant sea of junk created every year and I'm sure that 1 in 1000 new tracks are worth listening to, but I don't have the time or motivation to do so.
The report nicely avoids explaining it's methodology and likely uses a broad definition of games (Farmville and minesweeper anyone?)
Yes yes, everyone knows that only "REAL GAMES" are multiplayer endless remakes and sequels of first person shooters. Its a very tired old meme that should be allowed to expire.
The shuttle still would make for an awesome emergency re-entry vehicle--a classic life boat with some extra kick.
The APU fuel will freeze, the water based fuel cells will run out of reactants, freeze, then crack. The RCS oxidizer will probably eventually freeze. Thermal issues are kinda unclear. Also there was something weird about the tires that I don't remember. Anyway, facing absolutely certain death, you could try a mothballed escape shuttle with only almost certain death.
Frankly the best on-orbit use of an "extra" shuttle, although completely and utterly non-heroic and terrible PR, would be as a garbage scow, then dump the whole works in the Pacific.
More like promising your building project can do anything, having the politicians cut the budget until your grand project is little more than a driveway for a car, THEN selling the car once its built and taking the Russian bus instead.
Sadly, I'm one of those, and I graduated from an Ivy League school (by which I imply top-tier of cost) with a CRUSHING $20,000 in student loan debt, which for several years had a lower interest rate than my simple savings account, and in any case amounted to an UNTENABLE six months or so of marginal wages. Alas! Pity me, the fool who went to college!
Given your ID number, I'm thinking you went before the educational bubble really started accelerating. You have to add at least one zero to the end of that "crushing debt load". Also, now, the odds of your "marginal wages" approaching zero are much higher. Your sarcasm about the past, is unfortunately the modern day truth.
Liberal arts kids now graduate with more debt that doctors did when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the average wage paid to liberal arts kids has dropped since then, especially if you average in the unemployment checks.
I don't think it's fair to require that geeks be 50+ years old.
Just to help with categorization, if it takes someone 50+ years to figure out
which end of the soldering iron gets hot
then they fit in the moron category, not geek, unless they have a truely incredible excuse.
what layer Does MIDI fit into in the OSI stack (and no its not what CISCO tells you)
For those who don't know, thats supposed to be a (kind of) funny joke. MIDI is like ISDN in that it covers a whole bunch of layers under one umbrella, from a physical port and voltage standard all the way up to management by controlling sound mixers... The funny part is Cisco puts it under "Presentation" because its used for music performances and stuff, and those are "presentations", aren't they? I think they're trying to make the point about ".midi" extension data files being transferred by many different types of layer 7 systems, I guess.
So, you're saying you disagree with them. Right? Just checking.
The opinion of a non-geek portrayed as a geek is simply irrelevant. Right or wrong is a function of statistical randomness, not enlightened analysis. Its rather like asking Tom Cruise to answer detailed questions about F-15 flight instruction, after all, he portrayed a pilot in a famous movie, but it turns out he's just an actor.
As for right or wrong, the problem is the original article writer seeing thru very narrow 1930s-ish eyes that "intellectualism" is sitting in college, wearing tweed jackets, while puffing a (tobacco) pipe, speaking in a psuedo-british accent, and writing essays in for-profit journals. If you slightly modernize the definition to adjust to technology, nothing much has really changed amongst the geeks except they share a lot more ideas, a lot faster, and the folks "left behind" seem to be getting more than one year behind every year, very technological singularity-like.
College is a waste of time for anyone looking to go into the IT field. Programming? Its iffy honestly. Most places would hire someone with 5 years XP over some college kid with 1 year. So my choices are I could either just work in IT.. spend maybe 100k over my entire life on certs and renewals and make the same as a college kid... or I could go to college, leave with 200k in debt, still need the 100k for certs and renewals, and start 4-7 years after my competition...
Before the educational / tuition bubble really took off, my strategy was to use the then omni-present tuition reimbursement scheme at my employer(s) to pay for college.. Worked out well, except for being so far ahead of my class that I was bored silly. Graduated with basically no debt, in fact brokerage acct fulla money, new car, new house, etc. I don't think that's possible with current hyper-inflated tuition. And this was just a decade ago, not in the 50s or whatever.
And that's with a real job ... to get my real job I went to the local CC and got an associates, and kids now a days do not believe that it was financially possible to work a minimum wage job, live in an apartment, own a car, and pay near full time tuition... But it was... Of course corrected for inflation, minimum wage in the early 90s is probably equivalent to $20/hr now....
Is a person a geek because he/she is antisocial, is an expert in something obscure, or for some other reason?
According to the article, it's because they're a journalist / marketing dude / manager who tries to influence public opinion by writing about tech. Not really my definition of geek, but if it works for him...
Arguably, treating college as 'purely economic' is the anti-intellectual part(or a sign that you experienced a shitty school...)
Probably in his lower 20s, due to the educational bubble... Youngsters now a days need to take a lifetime vow of poverty if they go to college, very much like the only way to get an education in the middle ages was to take a vow of poverty and enter the monastery. Not much has changed in CS since then, not the money or the dating life. I think back on how much I learned post-college, which in part required me to spend money the youngsters will never have, due to $200K student loans...
None of the people in that article are geeks. All liberal-arts majors, book authors, marketing personnel, PR, spokemodels, management, etc. If I remember my HHGttG correctly, they're all from the "B Ark". As a group, they've always been anti-intellectual, its just they've recently had a thin veneer of geekiness smoothed over them.
It may be that I'm out of touch and being a geek now means you're a "tech journalist / blogger".
With regular old batteries I can replace them to infinity, and if I forgot some I can pick them up at a gas station on my way to the woods.
I think you still don't get it... When my flashlight does dark, I can have light again in about 30 to 60 seconds because I have a pack of AA batteries waiting for it, or whatever other AA powered device runs out of juice. If it takes overnight to charge off my car, that kinda defeats the purpose of using a flashlight at night while backpack camping... Also a lovely circular fail mode when using the flashlight to see what I'm doing while jumpstarting my car in the dark, if I had the juice to charge the light so I could see what I was jumpstarting, I wouldn't need the jumpstart, or if it takes overnight to charge so I can see what I'm doing, I could wait overnight for it to charge, except that the sun usually rises in the morning, so why not skip charging and use solar light to see what I'm doing...
Its the electric car needs charging argument all over again. But instead of being a huge energy hog worthy of a microscopic level of effort to work around, its ... just a flashlight.
Huh, when I read the headline I assumed the CAD files for the housing, electronics, etc would all be available. Looking closer it seems like you're right, which is a little disappointing (although not much since I'd never build one of these anyway).
Unless I'm missing something, it's open source, the same way that a windows gaming box is open source, because the Jameco catalog had a very general article about selecting and assembling various sub assemblies to "make yer own PC", and it even named by model number one of the parts.
All five pieces of the machine of course are closed source, and both overall and detail blueprints are closed source.
I'm expecting the next breathless admission to be that when he says it has 48 candle power, or whatever, it turns out it actually is just two 24-count boxes of tea light candles.
I meant using it as the hilt for a sword.
Great, just what we needed, a new euphemism for that activity.
What gesture? Or should I read between the lines?
Yeah, the "three finger salute". Sorta read between the lines although no one I know can hit ctrl-alt-delete with ring, index, pointer fingers on one hand.
is determined by a secret RSA-developed algorthm
The algorithm is already public knowledge.
Article is better written than most, or at least better cut and pasted, but needs editing. Which is it? Secret or public?
They have got the key to generate the "random" token. So, yes, it's down to one factor.
But I guess the password is the easy part.. Password reuse, keylogger, etc....
OK that's exactly what I'm looking for. So its no worse than dropping back to "one factor". The two apps/systems/companies I have personal experience with that use securid use two factor only as security theater, not a realistic threat model, not for legal compliance, etc, so they're safe.
I was worried for a minute someone found a back door, like you can bypass any securid "protected" login using all nines as a password, you know, something like Sony would use....
we're now scrambling to envisage and generate reports from authentication logs for exceptions that might indicate we're being attacked or have been successfully attacked in the past.
why would you need to scramble? shouldn't you be looking at this anyways? on a regular basis? sure this is a good reason to take a second look - but be scrambling.
Having been there / done that, what he means is that today, over and above the normal procedure, some PHB around 5 to 10 levels higher in the org chart has mandated that he will call every person who logged in on the telephone and verify that at that time and date it was in fact that person who logged in and not someone else. Or similar level of foolishness.
RSA's customers certainly need to have a copy of their tokens' seed keys on their authentication server; but RSA doesn't need a copy of their customers' seed keys...
Unfortunately, I imagine they do need the copy: otherwise how do they make sure they never issue duplicates to different customers?
LOL that one was funny, and some PHB requirement like that is probably the cause of the whole problem. Like intro to crypto 101 problem funny. To the noobs out there, the solution involves storing the hash of the existing keys instead of the keys themselves. Supposedly, can't turn a hash back into a key, but if the hash of your new key matches a pre-existing hash, then its a dupe, make another and try again.
That's only needed if it's required to prove there's no dupes... realistically, if you have a 1024 bit key and 16 bits worth of customers, the odds of a collision, which wouldn't matter anyway, are 1 in 2 ** (1008) or in other words quite unlikely.
...is that I'm going to have to fiddle around to get my RSA key fob off my keyring so I can put a new one on. Damn keyrings always end up hurting my nails.
A really cool hack would be replicating the operation of a keyfob using the very stereotypical ardweeno board or any other microcontroller. Or even a small perl script.
By replication, I don't mean a small box that outputs a periodically changing random number on a LCD like a movie prop, but I mean a replication of my actual fob, that when used, successfully lets me log into a VPN. Now that would be cool. I haven't seen one yet.