Skip to main content

Hoorah for vulnerability!

It's articles like these that don't much faze me. Mainly cuz I'm nerd enough to already know some of this stuff. Also, it makes a callout to a WEP hacking software platform I'm more than slightly familiar with *ahem*.

No, not the main thing they're talking about in the article--Firesheep. No, just good ole Aircrack-ng. I mainly use it to get some internets when I need'em and don't have a WEP key for any of the available wifi networks. There are ways of using Aircrack-ng and related software to steal people's identities and passwords and stuff, but that's hardly what I'm interested in (or knowledgeable enough about XD).

Anyway, so I'm not all that surprised to hear that, yet again, there's some big ugly weakness--privacy or otherwise--readily present in the internets. Just knowing and playing with and reading up on Aircrack has taught me plenty about the pitfalls of internet/cyber security.

I will admit that I'm somewhat surprised how easy it is to exploit this one. Apparently any ole n00b can abuse it with Firesheep. That's a facepalm-of-frustration waiting to happen to nerds everywhere. No longer can we feel l33t!!

Sadface.

What baffles me, though, is that this software was released all the way back in October.

It's been three months. Three fucking months.

And, more or less, this issue wasn't unknown even before then. And yet it's only just gotten covered in the NYtimes. Many major sites still haven't implemented solutions. Granted, as the article points out, that isn't as easy a task as it is to complain about, but still. I'd have hoped for more terrified millions to have stormed the gates/servers demanding moar security.

Ah well, these things happen, I suppose.

Comments

Other things that might interest you...

On phases and fixations.

My fixations are powerful, but they can also be maddeningly ephemeral and fleeting. And I hate that; about them and, honestly, about myself. But I’ve never really  asked why I feel that way... I'll commit immense amounts of time and energy and even money to a fixation for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two, sometimes rebranding my whole personality around it, then just...move on. I'm not sure when I first noticed this pattern—if it was always there or if it emerged and intensified over time—but it's been part of me for a long while. And every time I do, I feel such guilt and shame. Who even am I if I can't be consistent, dedicated, substantive? How disingenuous is it that nothing I care about lasts? I’ve always just accepted those feelings; I’ve never poked at them in earnest. If you can’t tell from the recent flurry of activity on this blog, I have been fixated on blogging; I mentioned in a recent post about this blog that I had a compulsion to revamp the whole bl...

Oatmeal is tasty.

{slurps up berry-oatmeal-deliciousness} Indeed. I need to work on rebuilding a morning schedule. I can be zombie-like enough that I'll waste a perfectly good morning, and have often slept through many. And, really, it's such a useful time of day.

My new favorite painting.

I, generally speaking, love art. I wish I understood it better; sometimes I can articulate its effects on me and what I think; at other times, that's tough for me. This is an attempt at understanding art, if only by trying to understand my experience of it.¹ The title of this post is a bit funny, tho: "New" is misleading—I first drafted it 6 years ago in Dec 2017, updated it in Aug 2018, and revised it a bit this week (Feb 2024). I'll write more about visual art and my ability to interact with it another time, but here's what I've got for now. So I finally went. There's a show right now at the Phillips Collection on Pierre-Auguste Renoir, my longtime favorite artist, and I went. I got to see more of his work at one time than I ever have before. And I found myself a new favorite painting among them—not just a favorite out of Renoir's work, but perhaps a favorite among all art I will ever see. The exhibit itself explores the story behind one of Renoir...