February 11, 2003
Crypto
About a year ago today, I met Doug and since then I've become slightly more paranoid delusional. And Doug got me hooked on crypto. Last night he emailed me about the PET Workshop taking place in Dresden. So now I'm organizing a key signing so I can lower my mean shortest distance. And I even found out that there some profs here with quite a few signatures. The one across the hall from me has 20 some odd sigs on his key. Amazing.
I can't thank Doug enough for helping make me a better nerd.
| TrackBackYeah for the first one, I emailed him yesterday to sign keys. I never see him though; maybe he is on sabattical this semester?
For the second one sure. I need to generate new certificates though since I botched my first attempt. So I need to re-read the thing on how to make a new certifying authority and keys and crap, cuz I forget how :). Once I do we'll just mail key fingerprints encrypted with our GPG keys eh?
Posted by: Reid on February 12, 2003 04:27 PMMaking those damn self signed certs is a bitch. I used this thing last time:
http://tinyca.sm-zone.net/
It's not perty but perl/tk bindings never are...
Posted by: dfc on February 14, 2003 12:11 AMPost a comment
Further back...
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Previous Trips...
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Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
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Stealing the Network
I first bumped into the Stealing the Network series when reading the exploits of Joe Grand, one of the book's many hacker authors.
The 'Stealing the ...' series of books follows a rather disparate group of computer hackers as they help a former NSA spook (many of them unwittingly) gather the money he needs to retire.
The stories themselves are not fantastic fiction. The writing is uneven and choppy, the characters are stereotypical and not very well thought-out. What is fascinating about this book series is the technical accuracy of the exploits (at some points *too* accurate, with screen shots and step-by-step instructions).
It's a great series to read if you're a system administrator, or just getting into the wonderful field of computer security.
Rated 
by reid
on March 06, 2011
by reid
on March 06, 2011
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Close to the Machine
Ellen Ullman is one of those authors that somehow avoided my radar. Until now...
Close to the Machine is less a book than a collection of loosely related personal anecdotes from Ellen's time as a very rare thing -- a successful female bisexual independent computer programming consultant.
In the course of her work and relationship life, she learns hard lessons about programming, running a business, being lonely, and loving the wrong people. I found it particularly poignant being a crypto-nerd with difficult times in relationships and a more-or-less NDA'd, secret work life.
This book is a must-read for anyone into running their own business, programming, or anyone dating a person that is a business-a-holic or programmer.
Rated 
by reid
on November 23, 2009
by reid
on November 23, 2009
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The Long Trip Home
I had the joy of dining with the author in Florida. We went to a little Brazilian BBQ where he spoke with our waitstaff in (what I can only assume was) flawless Portugese.
Brian Wyllie spent 1969-1971 living in Brazil working for the Peace Corps. His recent book outlines his trip back to the United States via Bolivia, Peru, and the Carribean chain, by way of bus, train, and sailboat. The format comes spattered with observations from the modern day, and makes me think, "this must be what John McPhee's journal looks like."
The trip sounded like a fantastic one, but I was left wanting more detail...where did the gun (being snuck through customs in a variety of places, no doubt) come from? And how did Geneve's hair smell? Alas, we'll have to wait for another book to find the answers.
Rated by reid
on April 16, 2009
by reid
on April 16, 2009
Werd...
This raises two interesting questions:
1. Where is his sig on your key and you on his?
&
2. Why don't we sign each others ssl certs?
Oh yeah I found a new way to generate passwords:
Posted by: dfc on February 12, 2003 02:52 AMdfc@liberate:~/obsd/src$ openssl rand -base64 8
idaMsMkMrSQ=
dfc@liberate:~/obsd/src$ openssl rand -base64 9
lXnPDwZRKM8F
dfc@liberate:~/obsd/src$ openssl rand -base64 9
JLiC5uyFJ0jv
dfc@liberate:~/obsd/src$ openssl rand -base64 9
hjd1df7ogGPD
dfc@liberate:~/obsd/src$ openssl rand -base64 9
zuw16Gu4D1Gb
dfc@liberate:~/obsd/src$ openssl rand -base64 9
h9NAWaX4kiu6