Vitae Tacitum, Litaniae ex Signum →
Fascinating piece on the notion of passwords, written by Ian Urbina at the New York Times Magazine; with an exceedingly tight focus on the true meaning of the so-called password object...
'We Don't Have An Algorithm For This'
via Dr. Holger Sierks, a Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Scientist and Principal Investigator, leading the team working on the OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) on-board the Philae, describing the effort taken by human researchers when analyzing images of the comet...
The ramifications to many endeavors, ranging from automated driving, to automated information and physical security functionality (identity management, authentication, access control, biometrics, image recognition, et cetera) are startling, when confronted with new visages, we have yet to develop algorithmic capabilities to manipulate the data, and bend it to our will. EOM
OpenStack Juno, The Release
News, via Renee Yao [with guest writer Mark Voelker, technical lead at Cisco] writing at Cisco Blogs, of the newly released OpenStack 2014.2 (aka Juno). Fundamentally, OpenStack open-source software targets the creation of cloud compute infrastructure, both private and public. Absolutely Outstanding.
British Tabulating Machine Company - The Turing Bombe Rotors 1940 - 1945
Bletchley Park, The History →
Readers who have examined this weblog during the thirteen years plus of it's publication, know of my Interest in Matters Turing and Bletchley; Alan Turning & Bletchley Park, that is... With those Foci in mind, here is a fascinating serial scrutinizing the history of Bletchley Park, the nearly seventy-year-old locale of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) (now known as GCHQ). Today's MustRead.
Virtue of Patience
Cogitate thrice upon updating newly released software with newly released patches to fix newly discovered bugs, as evidence of cruft...
News of Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park has released the August 2014 edition of the Trusts' podcast series, this time, entitled 'Inspiring Women' in cryptanalysis; in which, the Trust focuses on the work women accomplished at Bletchley Park during World War II.
Mnemonic Wheel
An aged mnemonic given new life. In this case, the utilization of artifacts [color wheels] which inform memory regarding password data entry. Today's' Must Read.
Microsoft, The Complex Password Conundrum
Redmond - apparently - now believes in the efficacy of something-less-than-complex, at least in regards to passwords...
News from the Crypt
TrueCrypt, that is...
Now in it's second round of safety audits, the Open Crypto Audit Project is remaining on track (notwithstanding the apparent closure of the original TrueCrypt project) targeting TrueCrypt for their planned audit, based on the highly successful on-line generated bankrolled. The already published Phase 1 Audit Report (in PDF format), reveals little on the downside, unless you expect ruthless attention to detail, and tight coding best practices...
TrueCrypt, Kaput
Unfortunate news, for TrueCrypt users, and project contributors... Apparently, the developers of the full disk encryption (FDE) open source product are in the process of shuttering the projects SourceForge site, along with directions targeting the product's users to migrate TrueCrypt partitions to BitLocker.
Cyber Security, Theory of Power
In today's MustRead, we focus or attention on a fundamentally well-wrought thought piece targeting the notion of leverage and power, encapsulated within the cyber-security realm.
If you read anything today, read Billy Pope's tremendous screed and think on it, just a tad...
Mickens: Computers are a Sadness, I am the Cure...
via Monitorama PDX 2014 an exposition of sorts, presented by the eponymous James Mickens of Microsoft Corporation (NasdaqGS: MSFT) Research. Hat Tip -Trey at Firewall Consultants.