Tag: article

Hardware Trojan Devices

Posted on by bobdvb

So, I was reading an article which described how a penetration testing company managed to get past a firewall by posting an employee a specially rigged mouse! The idea was that my embedding a micro-controller in the mouse which could be programmed to disable the virus protection on a computer and then load some Trojan vector. The real difference in this design was that it didn’t depend on a USB memory stick and autoload, it used HID keyboard commands instead.

One of the comments in The Register article made me think, the suggestion was basically this could be more than just a mouse. That had me thinking:

Why not put a 2G modem embedded in the keyboard!? Not just a dumb one, but one programmed to accept an incoming connection or create a reverse connection to the hacker. An mbed processor could act as the infection vector controller, or perhaps even one of the modems with embedded python-on-a-chip just to make it neat?

Then wow, that is a really big security risk and not that difficult to achieve. OK hackers, you have your next project, get going!

Correcting The Social Web

Posted on by bobdvb

I just had an idea and I think it might be rather cool…

So, I was reading the morning’s blogs/news/etc. and I came across an article in which the author had clearly just mistyped the sentence “but the company has said” instead saying “but then company has said”. This made me think, in these days of the social web editors and the distribution chain are spending less time proof reading, in addition there are a greater number of people who are less extensively educated being involved (I think we can all agree that education is less strict at the bottom echelons). Personally I don’t think my standard of English is bad but at the same time I know I regularly make mistakes while typing and that there are doubtless many errors that I don’t pick up on (my family occasionally corrects me). Continue reading “Correcting The Social Web” →

Article on Housing

Posted on by bobdvb

Following a posting by my brother about mortgages and negative equity I thought it was time to publish an article that I have been sitting on for some months. Why I didn’t put it up here earlier is beyond me, but I also thought that someone might like to actually take this up.

Read it, comment on it, share it!

The article is about how you can build a housing project in not only an ecologically sustainable way but in a way which is also economically sustainable. It might not be vastly profitable from a capitalistic point of view but it is sustainable and has room to make some money. You can find it here.

On the way back from work

Posted on by bobdvb

Today, on the train on the way back from work I was seated next to a man who was reading his newspaper. As usual I was reading over his shoulder. The article was about Madonna and the divorce settlement of £5m that she paid to Guy. I got a bit confused thinking how come a man reads this type of article.

After completing his reading he folded the newspaper and he took out of his pocket a stack of other papers. He began reading again but this time the articles were print-outs from the internet and the titles were: “Divorce Recovery Workshop”, “How to deal with Depression and Sadness” and lastly and most horrific “How to deal with suicidal feelings”!

Suddenly, everything fell into place…. For the first time in my life I felt like talking to this person and give him my advice. I didn’t. I don’t know if I regret it or not. Sometimes, we like remain anonymous among strangers however, if I had introduced myself to that man and talked to him, I might have made him feel happier even if it was for just the duration of my journey.