• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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A worrying looking article that declared the end of WiFi security as we know it made it on to slashdot yesterday. The article looks quite worrying, but it doesn’t seem to stand up to the test of reality. The smack-downs are impressive:

• George Ou –
  Debunking the latest fear mongering news on WPA security
• Robert Graham – WPA is NOT obsolete
• Rich Mogull – Your WPA-PSK Wireless Network Is At Risk… If You Are An Idiot

I’ve been an iPod Touch user from day one, and simply love the little devices. With the various updates and the App Store they really have evolved into small pocket computers. The touch interface is fantastic, and although it has been imitated by other vendors, it has yet to be equalled. On Friday I switched from a very old Nokia cell phone and an iPod Touch, to an iPhone. I want to have a look at how the iPhone compares to the iPod Touch, and in particular, how it is as a phone. The iPhone really is an iPod Touch with a phone, so all that’s really new to me is the phone, SMS, and the ability to access the net when away from WiFi.

My iPhone next to my old Nokia Brick

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‘Click Jacking’ is the latest browser-based security problem to crawl out of the wood work. Since it’s entirely browser based it affects everyone, regardless of their OS, not even Linux users are safe from this one! This is a cross-browser problem and also affects Flash. The technical details have not been released yet, but there is a proof-of-concept exploit doing the rounds. The basic idea is very simple, trick people into clicking on something you want them to click on but they don’t want to click on. From what I’ve been able to piece together from reading various blog postings and reports the attack uses CSS and iFrames to place invisible content over visible buttons or links. When the user clicks the button or link they see the click gets diverted to what ever is in the invisible layer above it instead. If you can do it by clicking the mouse, then you can be tricked into doing it with Click Jacking.

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I’m absolutely delighted to be able to say that a local amateur Astronomer and friend of mine, Dave McDonald, has discovered an Asteroid. This is not just a big deal for him, it’s a big deal for Ireland. This is only the second ever asteroid discovered here, and the first since 18 something (about 160 years ago). Dave is one of the leading lights in the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies and was rightly voted Astronomer of the Year last year by the IFAS members. Guess he’s a shoe-in for this year too 😉

Dave is the perfect example of an amateur astronomer doing real science. His setup is in many ways quite modest, but he has it tuned to perfection and has really nailed it’s operation. Dave is getting more out of his gear than anyone else I know. The asteroid he discovered was an insanely dim magnitude 19. This is also not Dave’s first success, last year he made the official confirmation observation of a supernova. I don’t know of any other sciences where amateurs can contribute so much real scientific work in this day and age.

You can find out more about Dave at his website, www.astroshack.net.

If you’re reading this Dave, I offer my heart-felt congratulations, I knew all your hard work and dedication would eventually pay off and you’d strike gold one of these days!

Since I’ve missed two weekends due to server troubles I thought I’d do a double post today. But rather than post two un-related photos I figured it would make more sense to pick two that are related. I’ve taken a lot of butterfly shots this year, and these two have come out as my favourites. It was a hard call to pick just two, but you can see the whole set in my Irish Butterflies Set on Flickr.

The first shot I chose is my best one of the most spectacular butterfly we have in Ireland, the Peacock Butterfly (Inachis io in Latin). We have no other butterflies with such striking colours or such impressive ‘eyes’ on their wings. I got this shot in my Grandmother’s garden near Cavan, Ireland.

on Flickr – Full-Size

The second shot is one of our most bland species, the Small White (Pieris rapae in Latin). Not as interesting as the Green-Veined White, and very small. But I still think this is a beautiful shot. I love the way the zoom lens has completely blackened the background. You’d never guess there was a hedge behind this guy! I took this shot in the Junior Gardens on the St. Patrick’s College Campus (AKA NUI Maynooth South Campus) in Maynooth, Ireland.

On Flickr – Full Size

For those of you interested in such things, here are the technical details of the first shot:

• Camera: Nikon D40
• Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
• Exposure: 1/640 sec
• Focal Length: 200mm
• Focal Ratio: F11
• ISO: 400
• Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
• Exposure Compensation: -1.0

And of the second shot:

• Camera: Nikon D40
• Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
• Exposure: 1/1250 sec
• Focal Length: 200mm
• Focal Ratio: F8
• ISO: 200
• Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
• Exposure Compensation: -0.67

I was very lucky not to get very wet while shooting this shot. I should probably have run straight for shelter but it was just too spectacular shot not to take the time capture it. This is a stitching together of five over-lapping shots at 18mm. As soon as I took the shot I bundled the camera into my bag and cycled home as quick as I could, I made it in the door with about ten seconds to spare before the heavens opened!

This shot was taken from Mullen Bridge (the bridge on the Straffan road at the entrance to the train station) looking East towards Dublin. The track you see is the Dublin to Sligo railway line and the canal is the Royal Canal which connects Dublin to the river Shannon.

Click to Enlarge

[tags]panorama, photography, storm, clouds, Maynooth, Ireland, Kildare, Royal Canal[/tags]

Just a very short follow-on post related to my last iPhone post. First, we have the bad, a diary by a developers showing just how arduous the process is here. The key quote is his conclusion:

Development for iPhone is an incredibly difficult process, much more difficult than it needs to be. The arduous process of shipping an application for the Mac suddenly appears to be absolutely straightforward after going through this mess. I really don’t envy those companies who have staked their success to the iPhone platform. The amount of arbitrary hassle, uncertainty, and delay in the process can only feel vastly worse when your livelihood depends on it.

Secondly, the other side of the coin, why the hassle is worth persisting with, there’s money in them there hills!

[tags]iPhone, Apple, development[/tags]

When Apple announced the app store I was a little nervous, but I could see the positive side and was prepared to believe that Apple would be good gate-keepers. It soon because clear I was too optimistic. I was already annoyed with Apple when they started to impose their taste on the world by banning joke apps they didn’t approve of like Slasher and Pull my Finger. Myself and Allison had a big argument about it a little over a month ago on NosillaCast Episode 164. Allison felt that Apple should be allowed to choose what to sell in their store, and she has a point, however, when you block all other options and make yourself the sole distributor of software for an entire platform it’s not wise to go all Victorian with your policies. Obviously Apple CAN block what ever they want, I just think they shouldn’t because it’s bad for users, bad for developers, bad for the platform, and hence, bad for Apple. My solution was simple, have a rating system. If you think something is rude or in poor taste give it an explicit rating! At that stage we were just talking about matters of taste, this week things have taken a very different turn and Apple have moved on from Victorian prudishness to anti-competitive and anti-use practices. They have denied a better podcatcher access to the store because it competes with Apple software. Granted, Apple use the word “duplicate”, but it comes to the same thing in my mind, if you’re not allowed to duplicate any functionality Apple implement then you’re not allowed to compete and that’s bad. To be honest I’m shocked Apple were so blatant about this. When you start creating monopolies for yourself and then banning competition it’s hardly a massive leap to jump to “anti-trust”.

[tags]Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch, App Store, developers[/tags]

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It’s taken them months, but Apple have finally caught up with the rest of the world and patched the critical DNS flaw disclosed in early June. This is Apple’s second attempt at patching it, they did a very poor job on their first attempt, but thankfully they seem to have gotten it right this time. It’s taken Apple over three months to patch OS X, this is totally rediculous considering Apple users the standard ISC implementation for both their DNS server and DNS resolver in OS X. ISC released patches on the 8^th of June, it took Apple till the 15^th of September to get their update out!

For a more detailed look at the two major security updates Apple released in the last few days (one for iPhone/iPod Touch, and one for OS X 10.5 and 10.4) check out my analysis on the IMP blog.

[tags]IMP, DNS, Apple, OS X, security, vulnerability[/tags]

This is an old photo which I recently scanned. It was taken in early January 2000 in my home town of Duffel in Belgium with my trusty old Olympus OM/1. The reason the shot is to grainy is that I used to have a bit of a thing for fast films, in particular Kodak Gold 800 Zoom. As seems to be the norm for this series, I’m not really sure why I like this shot, I just do and have since the first time I saw it when I got my photos back from my local One Hour Photo (remember those?).

This is Belgian electric locomotive number 2334 which rather un-imaginatively belongs to NMBS/SNCB Class 23. These locomotives are still in service today despite now being over 50 years old (having been built between 1955 and 1957).

Click to Enlarge

[tags]NMBS, SNCB, Belgium, Locomotive, Duffel, train, photography[/tags]

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