Ferret is a number of things. From their page:

Examples of data seepage is what happens when you power-on your computer. It will broadcast to the world a list the list of WiFi access-points you’ve got cached on your computer, the previous IP address you used (requested by DHCP), your NetBIOS name, your login ID, and a list of servers (via NetBIOS request) you want connections to.

Even if you then establish a VPN connection to hide everything else, you’ve already broadcasted this information to everyone on the local network.

The FERRET tool gathers this broadcasted information and correlates it. It demonstrates how much you expose to hackers.

I went ahead and did some minor modifications to the code they’ve released to get it to compile on my Mac. Seems to work, if you find bugs let me know.

Go here for a download link at the bottom of the page [and, if you're interested, future updates will be made on that page - unless it's something mindblowing]

so me and my posse only go for 12″. laptops, that is. while I have involuntarily spread a Macintosh epidemic among my peers - many of which have never dreamt of owning a Mac - a particularly interesting trend has evolved: most were more than happy to go for the smallest form factor available. 12″ or 13.3″ models [sold two friends on them, a third is coming up]. not enough people to get a real survey going on. so:

• one non-geek, student, self-proclaimed techno-dummy. hasn’t called me beyond helping her with Office, life goes smoothly. not the kind of person that watches movies or does anything that would warrant a large display anyway, so being portable was the seller [albeit the MacBook isn't the lightest of laptops, it certainly isn't that big]
• non-geek, student, knows a few things [my direct geekness has rubbed on this lovely lady.] in prospect to buy a MacBook, 13.3″ 12″ machine. very upset that the new Macs are 13.3″, actually. doesn’t care about size that much because she can do her work just fine.
• half-geek, computer literate. owns a 13.3″ MacBook. probably because he can use his 21″[comments below] 20″ LCD at home whenever need be for something bigger.
• me. 12″ iBook owner. love being able to balance it on a knee and type anywhere. wanted specifically this form factor [which is kind of why I originally ended up buying a Mac] got a 22″ LCD for coding and movies that I can expand this display on if I really need to.

So what trends are we seeing here? Girls revolve around the 12″-13″ mark. Typical. Though they do not need anything in addition to that and are quite satisfied with said…. diagonal. Guys? Well we’re geeks and know better than to be as superficial as to measure our manliness in laptop screen sizes. But just to be sure, we’re packing something big for back-up, possibly extra machines at home.

I was listening to episode 187 ["on an undercover cop"] of BinRev today an got struck by an idea:

What if people started using RFID tags for something useful for a change and put them [at the very least] in high-traffic areas to aid those with disabilities [especially blind persons] by providing an identifier for street signs, crosswalks/traffic lights etc? From my Google research it seems that these could be used for additional applications to further justify the cost of implementing the system. The people in question would simply carry around an RFID reader that will scan and receive the ambient tags; it can then process it in a number of ways to generate speech regarding the surroundings [harder to do with street names but relatively trivial with signs, for example.]

Wal-Mart has already implemented a similar system for its stores. I believe there is a lot of possibility to extend this into the streets - start with those areas that have so much traffic volume that makes it hard to ‘navigate’ for guide dogs.

straight out from a DREAMLiGHT nfo

Note on R5/TC’s

Over the past 6 months the major movie studios have been releasing retail dvds early in Russia. They do this to stop the widespread use of pirated telecines (which were once very common). Lately however there has been very few real telecines, most of the scene telecines you see are actually R5 retails. R5 retail is rushed out by the studio, they are basically competing with pirates, so there is little to no cleanup of the film after the telecine process. So the main difference between telecines put out by the pirates is that the r5’s are done using pro equipment, professional studios and professional people. The quality of R5 retail is very similar to dvdscr’s, no time is usually spent cleaning up dvdscrs either.

The range of quality we now have is like this.
R1/2 retail > DVDSCR > R5 Retail > Telecine > Telesync > Cam.
Vhs scr and wps, come around the ts mark (obviously differs between rls).

so that’s that… since I was talking to somebody about something that had to deal with this.

fear of the unknown. fear of screwing up life. fear of facing up to death.

fear of dealing with existence on your own

[in regards to this /. article]

I wish this was only but a game… that way, at least I knew what I wanted.

This is an ‘intermezzo’ to my AID series regarding some stuff I saw tonight.

Do not come into a coffee shop, plug your cellphone in and stay there for a couple of hours, ocasionally mumbling words into the phone. Without a coffee. Do not turn the volume loud enough for people around you to hear you’re listening to a machine. Do not strike small conversations with strangers on completely random topics after doing this for a long time. They will be even more observant of what you do and how you go about doing it. Do not seem ready to leave when somebody else leaves - great way to get the cops called on you.

Whether he was or doing something illegal or not is relatively unimportant. He drew enough attention from staff and other patrons so that he would be remembered for a fairly long time, come need to do so. Maybe it was attire and prejudice, maybe it was secrecy. Maybe he didn’t care if he was being observed.

As a lesson, this is not what you want to be acting like if you’re doing AID.

Wordpress 2.1.1 has been tampered by some cracker and contains exploitable code. Everyone on that bandwagon should move to 2.1.2 ASAP to avoid some nasty things from going on with their blogs. Like getting pwnt :)

Is this lax security on the part of WP? Wouldn’t say so. It is an open-source project. Not that it’s inherently insecure, just that when a lot of people could have access, some shithead somewhere will try to gain an edge with his friends. Should it have been caught before it was mass-released? Yes, probably so. But it got caught fast enough I guess so hopefully nobody got screwed over too badly.

I wonder who’s scanning for WP 2.1.1 in the header files right now…

Anonymous Information Dissemination. A list of relatively brief ideas on how somebody could disseminate information through anonymous means. Possibly useful to whistleblowers, freedom fighters, free speech activists, revolutionaries.

Disclaimer: There are less-noble reasons for using these hint lists. Like water quenches thirst or suffocates by drowning. Use at your own risk and by your own judgement.

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