October 01, 2006
Like a Moth to the Moon
Every couple of years I have a day where I 'wake up', or gain a higher level of understanding of the stakes to what it is that I'm up to at the present. This weekend was one such time.
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| San Diego Convention Center: Home of Toorcon 2006 |
This weekend, I went to Toorcon, a little itty bitty west coast computer security conference that annually holds a lot of the talks from DefCon, but without the oppressive crowds, the Vegas lights, nor the latchers-on. I'd say it's about my speed.
There are a lot of kooks in the computer security field, and they're the first to admit that they're kooks. My kind of people. I came to remember a time when I was having fun breaking systems, instead of doing the impossible task of trying to fix them.
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| Not a kook: Cory Doctorow delivering the keynote |
I became interested in computer security after I rooted myself -- I wrote a simple helpdesk software that took email, used procmail and a perl script to stuff it into a database, and then used a web interface to read it and allowed users to "take" emails for themselves, out of the untaken email list. I worked for CIT at the time, and the tool was to be used by our whole group to track helpdesk email.
Something strange happened while testing. I was forward-copying all of the normal helpdesk email from my mail account to my script, just for testing. One of the emails only got partially entered. Like, the data just got cut off. Oddly, it happened at a semicolon. Curious, did that actually work? I sent an email with "hi;drop table foo;" as the body, and sent it. My database disappeared. "Wow, this is fucking cool!" A few weeks later, I started working for the Center for Systems Assurance at the university, amazed at my newfound powers of examination.
Since then, I've been working on the seemingly impossible task of making toaster ovens out of computers, so that users can't send any data they're not supposed not, and worse so that really clever evil users can't send any data they're not supposed to. It's an impossible task, or at least an intractable one. Nobody is patient enough to make a toaster oven for our users (which is what we really need, if we want to limit them to using toaster oven functions). I'm remembering why I want to go back to grad school -- it's a lot more fun to break the toaster than it is to make it. Modus tolens over modus ponens, which is great because that's what the scientific method is all about.
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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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The Curve of Binding Energy
John McPhee follows famous physicist Ted Taylor in this piece that was -- and probably still -- ahead of its time.
Originally published in 1973, McPhee outlined the coming security and environmental issues surrounding the plutonium enrichment processes. For the most part, though, McPhee invites the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, although he does point out the ease with which any number of people could obtain the material (though not necessarily the manufacturing prowess) to make an atomic weapon.
The question still sits in my mind after reading -- are we being too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
Rated 
by reid
on October 01, 2007
by reid
on October 01, 2007
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Zodiac
Zodiac touts itself as an 'eco-thriller,' and it is just that. Told from the first-person perspective of ST (or Sangamon Taylor), the book recounts a roughly six-month period of his life busting big corporations for violating environmental laws.
Not the tree-hugging political activist type, ST is equipped with chem labs, scuba divers, maps, and an organization (GEE International, the Group of Environmental Extremists) that masterfully brings the press into the fold to scare the public with the very real dangers posed by illegal dumping. It's sort of a Sierra Club member's wet dream -- a band of ecowarriors that actually get things done.
ST finds something odd happening in Boston Harbor during his tale: a new form of pollution that could poison everyone on the planet in a matter of weeks. His quest to uncover exactly who and what is causing the latest spike in toxins goes all the way up to the President of the United States, and could end up costing him his own life.
While a neat and fast-paced tale, the novel drags on a bit toward the end, begging disbelief from even the most forgiving sci-fi folk. While not as good as his latest offerings, it's still a great read for those that enjoy a good Stephenson novel (or even those who don't).
Rated 
by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005
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Cat's Cradle
A few years ago, I attempted to woo an online datee, and she immediately criticized me for my politics. I protested the war on Iraq, which was "a shame." She defended her position of complete noninvolvement by standing behind Vonnegut.
It may seem odd to open a review that way. My assumption is now not that she was an idiot, but that she had only read Cat's Cradle, and only with a rather odd viewpoint.
Cat's Cradle looks at a cold-war world where the personifications of religious, political, and scientific single-mindedness collide to destroy the world.
Vonnegut tells a masterful tale, but it makes me wonder what one person's indifference would do to prevent us from all dying? So for now I will continue to unblindly stop unjust wars, even while I'm only reading.
Rated by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005
"it's a lot more fun to break the toaster than it is to make it."
Right on! I like breaking things..
Posted by: Laura on October 4, 2006 11:12 AM