Category Archives: Security

Poetry, Security

National Poetry Month

Leave a comment

Here’s to April showers and National Poetry Month. Scholastic has some fun links to help kick off the celebrations; “use these resources throughout the school year to practice language and literacy skills for all grade levels.”

Community Poems (PreK–2)
Creepy Crawlies (K–2)
The Farm Octopus (K–2)
Poems About Me (PreK–2)
Get Ready to Rhyme (K–5)
The Name Game (PreK–1)
Poems About Me (PreK–2)
Writing an Acrostic (3–8)
Noun Poems (K–5)
Small Poems (1–5)
Personification (K–5)
Chants and Street Rhymes (3–8)
Math Poetry Puzzles (K–4)

The chants and street rhymes are especially interesting to read and reflect on from a security perspective. Imagine using the following rhyme as your passphrase:

Bake a pudding, bake a pie,
Did you ever tell a lie

Or if you are restricted to using passwords, perhaps you could create this version of the same:

baPBa314Du

…if you know what I mean. Here’s another good one to play around with:

Ooo-ah, wanna piece of pie,
Pie too sweet, wanna piece of meat,
Meat too tough, wanna ride a bus,
Bus was full, wanna ride a bull,
Bull too fat, want your money back,
Money too green, wanna jelly bean,
Jelly bean not cooked, wanna read a book,
Book not read, wanna go to bed.
So close your eyes and count to ten,
And if you miss, start all over again.

Security

Commercial cell phone spying

Leave a comment

Pre-orders are being taken by a company called FlexiSpy that promises the ability to spy on Symbian, Pocket PC, and Blackberry devices. It apparently gives you the ability to remotely monitor a phone’s log/history as well as tap into real-time data:

FlexiSpy Pro allows you to specify a phone number from which you can call their mobile phone, and rather than the phone ringing, FlexiSPY PRO activates the microphone on the phone, so you can listen in to what is happening where ever the phone may be or whatever they may be doing. Call their phone, and you now are the ‘fly on the wall’ that we’ve always wanted to be sometimes listening in on their conversations, actions, etc.

Might be handy to spy on yourself to keep a log of all activity…

Security

Hong Kong Police DB leaked

Leave a comment

This report suggests some serious issues are afoot with security in Hong Kong:

The database contained complaints made from 1996 to 2004. As you would expect in such a database, it wasn’t just information on the complainant that was compromised, but also the name, age, gender, rank and station of the police officers against whom the complaints were made, and specifics of the complaint and the outcome, including any action taken against the officer, up to dismissal. Other index tables seemed to record the occupation of the complainant, their educational attainment, and whether they had a criminal record. Also, if the complainant had been charged with an offence, then the type of offence was recorded, and the outcome of the prosecution, including the type of sentence.

One table seemed to classify nationality into either Chinese, Mainlander, Vietnamese, Filipino, Pakistani or Others. Complaints were also categorised into causes (presumably the cause was concluded after investigation), including “tactical complaints” and “political complaints” – imagine who gets that category.

[…]

In our view, the Government will not escape blame in this episode. The IPCC secretariat apparently allowed its data to be taken off-site by a consultant, reportedly for the purpose of conversion of the database from one format used by COPA to another used by the IPCC. The person who worked for the consultant then reportedly left the consultancy, and took the data with him, storing it on the commercial server. An alternative explanation might be that the consultancy outsourced the work to him.

Ouch. Do you suppose people might just be afraid to complain about exposure of complaints?