Welcome to My World

I've been working on this website for over ten years now, and it's still got a ways to go. I've uploaded thousands of pictures, organized them, written about travels across India and Southeast Asia, played with geiger counters and I even wrote a book. Along the way I've spent many hours inside the Unix servers used to run this website, plus various others running 24/7 and 365 on the Internet... yet I haven't quite captured everything.

In the past ten years I've written a book that I'll likely never publish, moved to Montreal and back, met a girl and got married along the way. Life keeps getting better.

The main reason for this website is to have fun, be funny and smart (or stupid, at times) and hopefully make you laugh... a little bit here, sometimes quite a bit there at the picture, until one day you snort milk out of your nose after finding a really good one.

Hacking SCADA systems, or Hacking a Building's Lights?

The video below is really good - and funny. It appears that two hackers took control of a building's lighting system using a Macbook, some Intel hardware, a wireless device of some sort and some clever hacking. If only it weren't a complete hoax. There is an excellent article over at Wired by my former colleague Kevin Poulsen that talks about this in more detail.

This is in the domain of hacking SCADA systems, sure. But I'm not sure that kind of work is likely to happen anytime soon, certainly not for most buildings. I love the video though and the throwback to Space Invaders. Enjoy.

Kudos to Kevin for taking a McAfee security researcher to task for thinking it was a real hack.

Career Progression (or, the Art of Working Hard)

The poor bastard in the video below has a really tough job. He works long hours, never gets vacation or time off, and he has sore hands and muscles all the time. It's rough. It's hard work - no doubt he works very hard.

It's another funny video I received in e-mail from my friend Larry...

Secure FreeBSD e-commerce web server

I wrote an article on building a secure web server that is quite capable of secure e-commerce transactions. I may send it off to get published as I'm rather proud of it, or I may simply publish it myself here on my securityf2 website. The article takes a stock FreeBSD Unix installation and adds the latest PHP/MySQL/Apache set of daemon servers in a virtualized, CHROOT jail environment with the ModSecurity web application firewall, the AIDE file integrity monitor (a Tripwire-style intrusion detection system), a strong packet filter, SSH host key encryption for remote access, remote log monitoring with daily automated security audits of installed software, and finally, simple instructions on keeping the system updated.

I can say with confidence that servers such as the above can process many thousands of credit-card transactions over a short period of time. Much of the underlying technology is used by the biggest companies on the Internet, including Google, Yahoo, Apple, and many more. Even with 100% free software and some knowledge, anyone can harness the power of e-commerce on the Internet.

Unicycling, Ten Years Later

For kicks I decided to update my unicycle page a bit, and feature it here. My 28" wheel is hanging in my garage and if we ever get good weather again, I'll take it out for a ride. It's April and snowing outside, it sucks!

File integrity monitoring on Mac OS X

I started a small page on using AIDE on Mac OS X. AIDE is a Tripwire-style file integrity monitor that watches for changes on a filesystem. It can be used to detect a system compromise by watching for unexpected files appearing in key areas of the system. My config file still needs some work, but this is enough to get you started.

I'm finding AIDE a bit cumbersome on Mac OS X. It works great on a secure web server where most files rarely change, but it does not works as well in a dynamic desktop environment - too may changes going on a daily basis to keep track of. I've been thinking about writing my own file integrity monitor that uses Apple's built-in filesystem change notification tools and a event/time based reporting system to make monitoring the system for compromise much easier and more "natural." I think the idea is a winner, the only problem is finding the time to code the tool and build a user interface for it...

Why many people are PCs

Note: Yes I do lust after new Apple hardware, at times. It's the ultimate Mac-Windows-BSD-Linux machine, thanks to VMware. My next purchase will surely be the 17" Macbook Pro with the matte screen, a big solid-state hard drive, a couple of extra power adapters, and more. Worth it even at well over $4,000...

Hello, Mac. Hey Mac, how's it going? Some people who prefer PCs over Macs are the very people who fix them. They make quite a lot of money fixing PCs because they break down often. The software crashes. The entire system crashes. There are viruses and spyware, adware and trojans. You need anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware, anti-fungal cream... er, I mean anti-virus all-in-one software. PCs often have heavy restrictions at work: where you can go, what you can do. The state of the PC is a rather big mess of a corporation, meddling with other messy corporations, at times. And there's big money in fixing all this mess, which all sometimes works better after augmenting it with tools and utilities. In the end, it mostly works. But couldn't there be a better way?

People like to make money. Big money, sometimes. Fixing PCs, selling band-aid solutions to PC's problems, and offering software and hardware solutions to the common Windows/PC virus, flu or general Windows/PC maladie. There are many of these. Yes, the operating system gets sick sometimes and thousands of third party vendors, software people, consultants, specialists, and nerds and oddballs work to fix the problem. For a fee.

Some of us have lost too much data, too many hours trying to recover from blue screens and red screens and strange, difficult-to-understand error messages that don't make any sense. There has to be a better way.

It's not a question of who has the best technology, though. The Mac OS X design and the first-class industrial hardware wins hands down, it is years ahead of Windows in many ways like integrated search technology, automated backups, integrated drivers and integral components that give is a general ease-of-use advantage. Integrated software using shared databases work together to share contacts, photos, music, web design, movie libraries, and much more. It is easily the best out-of-the-box multimedia experience for most photographers, movie buffs, musicians, writers, scientists, academics, and of course the average joe home user who just wants to get things done. My girlfriend tried a Mac for the first time just a year ago, and only recently she wondered if Microsoft had a future or not, because the Mac was so obviously more advanced, friendlier, easier-to-use, and even looks nicer visually than Windows and all those "tower PCs". I found it interesting that she wondered if they will even still be around and profitable in a few years, in light of the Mac. But I assured her they will. It's a huge industry and Windows will be the dominant operating system for a long time to come. Twenty years from now, people will still be running Windows as well. That doesn't mean it's the best, or the most fun, or the smartest, or the most advanced, or even the most innovative, most of the time. It's just the biggest.

It doesn't matter, of course: which operating system is "better". That battle is long since over. It's now all about making money, something I very much like to do myself. It's about growing a business, and the system that breaks down most often and has the most problems will need the most money fixing. It needs the most servers, the best virtualization, the biggest hardware, the best tools to maintain it. We're talking big bucks. There's big money in fixing all those many myriad of problems. Add in the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware, anti-fungal security software to a myriad of hardware choices for servers and workstations, to SANs, cloud computing, virtualization, infrastructure choices and network fabric and you've got quite an investment on your hands. Windows security, something I used to talk and write about in one of my former jobs, is just one of the many ways PC people can make money. Many people are making money off Windows, in one way or another. It doesn't matter which operating system it is, in the end.

I use both Macs and PCs extensively, of course. Plus FreeBSD and Linux. Each has its own neat features, their own way of doing things. In a virtualized world, all can be run at the same time on hardware of your choice. My opinion on what I prefer, if nothing else, is an informed one. It doesn't mean you need to agree. The best that you, the reader, can do is to learn enough about both systems to have an informed opinion as well... and then we can debate.

Thanks for visiting.