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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Category Archives: Security
XKCD & Password Security
If you were on the internet last week, you probably saw an article, twitter, or Facebook post about the xkcd comic on password strength. The comic, which was (most likely) inspired by an article entitled, “The Usability of Passwords” basically says that using a multi-word password (3 or more words), is more secure than what I have referred to as “complex passwords” in past articles on this blog. The writer of the original article makes the point (which is what the xkcd comic points to) that passwords using three or more dictionary words, has more entropy and is thus harder to crack, therefore making them more secure. While there is a bit of truth to the article, it leads to some false understandings of how hackers actually go about hacking passwords, and make assumptions that aren’t entirely accurate. Continue reading
Using Secure Passwords
This morning, this article about a Facebook board member’s account being breached inspired me to touch on passwords again. I’ve talked about secure passwords in the past, but on a daily basis I am confronted by people that talk about not wanting to use a more secure password because it “would be hard to remember” but then they will complain when their Facebook or Twitter accounts are hacked. Continue reading
Security Flaw in Popular Disk Encryption Programs Found
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an article about a research paper that shows how popular disk encryption software can be defeated. The article (found here) explains that popular disk encryption programs like BitLocker (Windows Vista’s disk encryption program) and open source favorite, TrueCrypt, are not invulnerable to the suggested attacks. Continue reading
Posted in Security, Technology
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Spread OpenID Site Launced (Do These Really Help?)
My question is, do the sites really work? I mean Firefox is doing fine true, but that was more due to the full page New York Times ad that SpreadFirefox helped raise money for. So while the website itself brought the community together for the purpose of marketing, is it the website or rather the efforts of those behind the website that are helping the products? I guess one could argue that they are one and the same. However, why create a second website? OpenID already has a pretty nice looking website (OpenID.net). Does it really need a second one to explain the benefits and such of OpenID? Continue reading
Posted in Security, Technology
Tagged firefox, mozilla, OpenID, single login, spread firefox, Web
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Who Owns Your Data? (Scoble/Facebook)
So it calls into question, who exactly owns the data on the social network sites? We all automatically assume that because we put the data there, add the friends, make the connections, install the applications (linking them to their respective site where applicable) that we own that data. After all the data is about us. We input it, why should we not own it? That is where the privacy issues come from. If you don’t own the data on a social networking site, then who does own the data, and what can they legally do with that data? These are some serious issues to concern yourself with. If you do not own that data and the site can do with it whatever it pleases, then you basically have zero privacy when it comes to your data on that particular site. Continue reading
Google & Your Privacy
So over the Christmas holidays, Google added a feature to Google Reader that caused some privacy concerns. While I’m not sure why everyone was in such a fit about it, because the feature was in fact called “Shared Items” so … Continue reading
Michael Koby 