PhoneSecure
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
I'm not generally an insecure person. I'm perfectly happy with carrying in excess of ?1000 in electronics on my person... well, maybe I should get some protection after all, and I've found it, in the form of PhoneSecure.
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Phraselator
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
One step closer to the babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
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Epson fabricates 20-layer PCB using InkJet tec
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Epson has fabricated a 200micron thick 20 layer using their own InkJet technology with a conductive ink containing silver micro-particles measuring from several nanometers to several tens of nanometers in diameter, and a newly developed insulator ink.
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PetaPixel displays, 100TB storage and more...
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Colossal Storage is developing 14M dpi or 200Tpixels per square inch of near-non-volatile display. It is based on a ferroelectric material which gives each pixel a state retension of up to 12 hours. Display resolutions of up to 4Petapixel will be possible with this technology.
Colossal Storage is also developing a holographic media which can store 10TB on a single 3?" disc. The theory behind it can go up to 1.5Exabytes (1.5x10^1
.
They are currently looking for companies who are interresting in licensing the products.
Click here to read more...
Issue 2 Newsbits
article written by : released on : 04 August, 2004 | send a private message! 's rating : ***** |
Recently I have visited http://www.apache.org and found out, that there's a version of Apache web server for Windows. (I hope you know, that web server is a program, not a device). The latest version available was 1.3.9, so I downloaded it and successfully installed it on my PC, running Windows 98. It's not really true, to be exact, I also have Linux installed on my computer, but I'm just get acquainted with this OS. Anyway, after successfull installation of Apache, my computer became a web server, which can be accessed from Internet by typing my IP address as URL. However, there are several problems. First: I use dial-up connection to Internet, wich dynamic IP address. This means, that every time I connect to the Internet I have different IPs. Second: the connection speed of 28000 bps (or 3600 bytes per second) can satisfy me, but it may not satisfy other users. Just imagine the situation, when 10 users try to access my server simultaneously. The speed won't be more than 360 bytes per second (or most probably even lower). The third main problem is operating system. I (as well as most users) use Windows 95 (or 9 which is not supposed to be an operating system for servers. It's easy-to-hack, unreliable buggy system, which crashes every day (at least I don't remember a day when I did something serious on my computer (program debugging) and it didn't crash).
Apache web server can be used with Windows 95 or 98 just for fun or (like in my case) in a very small network. I have 10BaseT Ethernet network, consisting of 2 computers (iCeleron 400Mhz and AMD 486DX4/100).
Short reference: Apache is the most popular web server in the world. It is distributed under GNU license. It means that it's absolutely free (even more, you can get a source code of the server for free). You may download the latest version here.
This is Apache web server running. As you see, there's no difference from what you see in Internet. You are probably confused to see http://main/ as URL, but, this is Intranet, not Internet, and I can create any names I want.
At 31st of August Nvidia - announced next generation graphic chip, which is called GeFroce256. The most important difference from TNT2 (previous Nvidia chip) is presence of GPU or Graphics Processing Unit. "The GeForce 256 GPU is more complex than today's CPUs providing unprecedented visual power for your PC. With Transform, Lighting, Setup and Rendering on a single chip, the GeForce 256 GPU delivers 15M polygons/second and 480M pixels/second of performance. Its unique 256-bit rendering engine enables an order of magnitude increase in visual complexity." is written on Nvidia official web site. Just take a look at the screenshot:
Nvidia promises that GeForce256 will be fast enough to render scenes as complex as this one. Take a look at the specifications below:
* Single-Chip GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)
* Integrated Transform and Lighting
* Independent Pipelined QuadEngine?
* 256-Bit QuadPipe? Rendering Engine
* AGP 4X with Fast Writes
* High-Quality HDTV Processor
* 350MHz RAMDAC
* 256-Bit 2D Rendering Engine
* Complete Support for New Microsoft? DirectX? 7 and OpenGL? Features
Creative, ASUStek and others companies have already announced new GeForce256 video cards, which will be available in November, or probably even October.
People have been trying to protect information from unauthorized access since they learned to write. This is one of the most important privacy issues. Human beings, those strange creatures, don't want their mail and files to be read, as much as other people and organizations want to read them. Why should a law-abiding citizen encrypt his mail and computer files, the reader might ask. Why do you use envelopes for regular mail rather than send a postcard? Are you trying to hide something? There are many ways to protect sensitive information from prying eyes. Following is a brief overview of some of the encryption tools.
Data Encryption circa 1999
article written by : Lordkolya released on : 10 October, 1999 | send Lordkolya a private message! Lordkolya's rating : ***** |
Cryptography
People have been trying to protect information from unauthorized access since they learned to write. This is one of the most important privacy issues. Human beings, those strange creatures, don't want their mail and files to be read, as much as other people and organizations want to read them. Why should a law-abiding citizen encrypt his mail and computer files, the reader might ask. Why do you use envelopes for regular mail rather than send a postcard? Are you trying to hide something?
There are many ways to protect sensitive information from prying eyes. Below is the brief overview of some of the encryption tools. I'm sure that people interested in more information will easily find it on the Net: it is physically impossible to cover each and every tools on this page, I just want to mention a few popular ones. Choose the one that suits you best or keep on informing all the interested parties about your family, business, financial, and other matters. You decide :-)
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
A very strong cryptographic tool. It's popularity doesn't stem from the fact that nobody knows how to break the system other than by a brute-force attack (which is a prerequisite for any good cryptosystem). PGP became popular because it is extremely well designed, fast, and has an excellent key management. There are many cryptographic algorithms as strong as the one used in PGP, but PGP's popularity and free availability made it a de facto standard for secure electronic communications all over the world.
In conventional cryptosystems a single key is used for both encryption and decryption. This means that a key must be initially transmitted via secure channels so that both parties can know it before encrypted messages can be sent. In order to transmit a key, you need a secure channel. In order to establish a secure channel you need a key. Not very convenient...
Developed by Philip Zimmermann, PGP belongs to the class of public-key cryptosystems that have a public key and a secret key, which means that you can reveal you public key to anyone, and anyone can use that public key to encrypt a message to you, but no one except you can decrypt it. Only you have a matching secret key to decrypt that message. A public key is just a block of text and can be placed on your web page or e-mailed to a correspondent. Your correspondent will then encrypt and send a message using your public key. Only you can read it using your secret key. Even the sender can't decrypt a message once he encrypted it. And here is the best news: it will take even the most powerful Big Brother's computers millennia to decipher a PGP-encrypted message!
PGP is widely available on the Net. New PGP versions are very easy to use and are available for almost any platform (old 2.x version were command-line programs with no graphical interface). PGP comes with plug-ins necessary for seamless integration with popular mail clients like Eudora and MS Exchange/Outlook. For the latest PGP version check The International PGP Home Page. Due to the US exports restrictions US residents and non-residents should use different sources for obtaining the program, so use the Download Wizard to find the right download source.
The International PGP Home Page also maintains a list of PGP-realted tools and plugins where you can find many nice programs from secure chat clients to mail utilities.
Drive Encryption
Unlike file encryption, drive encryption allows the creation and use of virtual encrypted drives. Such programs reserve certain amout of space on the hard drive, say 10 MB. The reserved area is called a container. After the container is created you can mount it to a virtual drive; as the result you see another fully functional drive on your computer:
My Computer. With a crypted disk!
This virtual drive can contain any data and/or programs can be accessed just like any other drive. But once it is dismounted, you no longer see any virtual drive and the container looks like a usual 10 MB file in the root directory. No one can find out what's inside it because without the correct passphrase the files in the container are totally inaccessible. Drive encryption is far more efficient than file encryption if you have to access your data frequently. With drive encryption you have to enter a password only once, when you mount the container.
Forget about unauthorized access to your computer while you are away. Forget about curious technicians at the service center where you brought your computer because the power supply kicked off right the moment you had several sensitive files on your hard drive. You just have to spend 5 seconds on typing the password and in my opinion it's worth doing it.
There are serveral programs for drive encryption available on the market today:
These programs differ in functionality, design, encryption algorithms and price. ScramDisk is freeware and comes with the open source code. It features many different encryption algorithms to choose from and also allows to hide data in sound (.WAV) files. The current version is only for Windows 95/98, but there are plans to release an NT-compatible version. BestCrypt is shareware and works with both Windows 95/98 and NT. It's very well designed and is easy to use. PGP Disk is not bad too, but it in my opinion it is a bit buggy. All in all, ScramDisk and PGP Disk are probably the best choice for those who seek ultimate security and don't trust any encryption programs without the source code, while BestCrypt wins my personal award for the interface and ease of use.
Pkzip/WinZip password protection
The name rings a bell, doesn't it? Pkzip and WinZip compression utilities can create password-protected archives. This protection method is FAR less reliable than the ones described above. Cryptanalysts claim that the encryption method implemented in zip compression has serious weeknesses that make it possible to crack it other than by trying all possible letter combinations until the right one is found. So beware and use this method only if you are sure that the adversary is not very powerful. But if the attack is carried out on a standard PC using freely available crack programs, zip password protection can be a fast and easy-to-use tool, although not devoid of the "family" drawback of all symmetric cryptosystems.
There is a number of ZIP crackers available on the Net, you can try Fast ZIP Craker by Fernando Papa or PKZcrack (both are freeware), or a nice shareware GUI utility Advanced Zip Password Recovery (AZPR) (my personal choice). These utilities either try passwords out of a big dictionary, or perform a brute-force attack by trying all possible combinations. According to psychologists most men use 4 letter obscenities as passwords and most women use their boyfriends', husbands' or children's names. So if your wife's favorite password is Michael, whereas your name is Stephen...Here is a simple rule: don't use words that are likely to be in a dictionary. Use long passwords (up to 24 sign), containing digits and symbols (?!$ etc.). A brute force attack at 200,000 combinations per second (the rate typical for PC Pentium 100) for a 6 character password gives us the following chart:
| Digits only | |
| Lower case letters only | |
| Symbols only | |
| Lower & upper case letters | |
| Lower & upper case letters, digits | |
| Lower & upper case letters, digits, symbols
|
And what if the password length is 24? Take a calculator and do
it yourself
Millennia.
Self-extracting Encrypted Files
When you encrypt files using a conventional encryption program you must use the same program to decrypt it. However there are programs that create self-extracting encrypted files that don't require any addtional software. You can send such file to your friend or copy it to a floppy disk: to decrypt it one only needs the correct password. If you are looking for such utility, check Kwick-Crypt. This is a freeware program that allows you to create self-extracting archives encrypted with 256-bit Blowfish (very, very strong!). There is also called Norton Secter Stuff by Symantec. Unfortunately it offers only 32-bit encryption which can be broken within a couple of week using a standard PC. Check the Password Crackers site if you need a program that can break Norton Secter Stuff (aslo available crackers for many other programs).
MS Office Password Protection
Don't ever use this method, at least for Office 95 documents. Cracking is so fast that the manufacturer of a commercial software package had to put "empty" loops in the program to slow down its performance to make the buyers who couldn't recall their passwords think that they paid for something serious. As for the non-commercial package (7K), there is no pretence: it cracks MS Office documents in a split second. It works fine with MS Word 6.0 and 7.0, MS Excel 5.0 and 7.0, US and many localized versions (check the file for the full list). For other MS Office crackers check the Password Crackers site.
Issue Image!
This is my CD-ROM drive which does 1400 revolutions per minute (or 23,3 revolutions per second) reading 600 Kilobytes of data per second. In other words, this is 4x speed CD-ROM. The disk is really rotating, you can't see it because of the high shutter speed I used while shooting.
This summer there were several problems while reading CDs, so I had to disassemble my CD-ROM drive and try to fix the problem manually. (Don't consider me a fool, the guarantee was over). I managed to make drive to read disks being opened (though there are several levels to prevent it) and at that moment I took this picture. By the way, it's Acer 645A 4x speed CD-ROM drive, if anyone is interested...