scarfman | Entries tagged with csc448

For this week's BLog, do a little daydreaming about how you can use your skills to make a difference in this world, or to work in the Public Interest. Write about your daydream in the BLog.

This'll be a surprise to no one who reads this journal except those who read it only for CSC448, and perhaps not even them, but - as I believe I've said aloud to each of my parents at least once - if I'm remembered after I'm gone for something other than being someone else's friend or relation, I'm pretty sure it'll be for Arthur, King of Time and Space. I hope, and have been given to believe by readers, that the characters in AKOTAS and in my fanfiction cartoons aren't seen as parodies or only jokes of themselves as they appear in the sources I salute. I think I have a reasonable chance of inspiring or assisting to inspire others to tell stories of heroes doing good, the way my sources inspire me.

What do you think is more important in regard to computer use:
A free environment? or
A secure environment?

Briefly support your opinion from what you've learned so far this semester

As one of them creative types I'm tempted to say freedom. Communication is freedom, man! Word, sword, mighty! Ideas gots to flow! Information wants to be free! Expression is the need of the soul! The man can't keep you down as long as you got the straight dope! You can't stop the signal, dude!

But your medium of expression has to be secure. If there's one thing this course has taught me, especially the bits about social engineering, it's that no system is unbreakable. What's the good of propagating the revolution on your website if its server can't stand up to the hacks it attracts?

Maybe freedom and security are antitheses but, like most sets of opposing forces in the world, a balance between them must be struck for the most benefit to be realized.

Based on the movie clip from Minority Report [the scene in which the "spider" devices go through an apartment building checking occupants' retinas looking for Tom Cruise], how do you see biometrics affecting your life in the future? What are its pros and cons? Do you see what happens in the clip as realistic for our future?

I think, like anything else that exists, it depends on how it's used. An object or a process isn't evil or wrong in itself, but in how people apply it. The cops in the movie clip ought to have had to present a warrant to the apartment house occupants or to an authority on their behalf before conducting the search, by the standards of the society I live in. That they didn't implies things about the film's society that an American will dislike and, barring that the filmmakers intended it that way (I've seen the film once and don't remember much about it, such as this scene), it wouldn't have taken but a few seconds of screentime to avoid the implication. Are similar developments in our future? Well, it's been a trend now for ten or thirty or a hundred years that technology's advancing quicker than society.

What is the subject of your end of the year project? Will it be a demonstration of software/hardware, an example of a hack, a security audit, or something else?

The discussion of biometrics in the last class meeting, specifically the way we recognize people from their gait, inspired a thought in me. There are certain action scenes from classic movies most people have seen that we could probably identify if we saw unadorned stick figures performing them: the lightsaber battle in Star Wars, Gene Kelly dancing in the rain, etc. I thought I could present some of those to the class somehow and have them guess as a group which movie each sequence came from. What I'm stuck on is how to present it. My first thought was as Flash animations, but I don't have that kind of time between now and the end of the semester. Storyboards? Great big flip books? Any ideas, groupmind?

First of all, today when I sat down at the public PCs in the university library to do this blogging, I couldn't seem to load LJ, from more than one of them. I suspect it's locked out. It wasn't last Thursday. Heads may roll. Later It must have been a temporary comm failure.

As per the Website we discussed in class, showing a host of bad physical designs (doors, cell phones, etc.), walk around your home environment, work environment, etc. Find something that has a design flaw of some kind. Just like in the Website, take a picture of it and write about the flaw. If you can find a better-designed object of the same kind, put a picture of that in as well.

Unfortunately I can't produce a picture, because I could probably find one on the web if I could remember the make and model which I don't, but the instance from real life of this that sticks in my mind was the car I borrowed from a friend in order to drive from Chicago to my brother's college graduation in Iowa. The side view mirror controls were so far away from the driver's seat that you couldn't operate the controls from where you'd be sitting when you were using the mirror. (I also found it terribly easy with the manual transmission on that car to accidentally shift into first when I meant to shift to third, but my friend didn't agree with me about that.) My jeep, despite what other abuse of it I may commit, at least is better off in the area of controls design.

What are some "social engineering" techniques. Have you ever been targeted? Give an example.

One day a few months ago I clicked on an email whose subject line claimed it was notification of an e-card from [my mother's first name]. Now, I should have known better, because when I do get an e-card from my mother it's signed "Mom". But I clicked on it, and I clicked on the link in it, and I don't remember where I ended up but if I'd ended up at an e-card I'd prolly remember now.

A little later, an hour or a day, I noticed that there were two mIRC buttons on my task bar when, as far as I knew, I'd only opened one mIRC window. I clicked on the other button but (I don't remember this incident well enough to blog about it, actually) either the window wouldn't unminimize or, when it unminimized, it was scrolling machine code instead of my chat and I couldn't close the window/program. I had to shut down the computer to get rid of that mIRC window, but once I'd done that it didn't come back ~~as far as I know~~. When I asked my mother, of course, she'd not sent me anything.

For class blogging this week we were to look at netcraft.com, visualware.com, showmyip.com, and internic.net/whois.html, and answer the question: What is an application of this data when applied toward the digital divide, or empowering someone to have knowledge? Will this type of info assist in the competitive bidding, sales marketing, and revenue? Does that give someone power?

Maybe my imagination is failing me, but I don't see how being able to trace IPs empowers you over someone on the other side of the digital divide, who hasn't got an IP. And I'm not sure how it applies to marketing and business competition, except that that's the way to compile geographic demographics, if you can dig'em out from under proxies.

In news of the continuing battle between me and Wordpress as installed on the university server, the class's password will not open up my professor's blog for me so I can remind myself what this week's blogging assignment is. Until he responds to my email, a few comments on this week's reading will have to do.

We were to finish off Alinsky's Rules for Radicals this week, including the discussion of the benefit of jail time to the movement organizer as a chance to rest and to write. Now, I'm between jobs this month (last day on the previous job was 9/7, training for the new job starts 10/4). One thing I've done with my first vacation in years (decades?) when I didn't have to go somewhere and/or look after children was I went to the children's section of my childhood library and got out the first five Doctor Dolittle books. The passage from Alinsky, and the passage in Doctor Dolittle's Circus when Dr. Dolittle first spends time in an English jail (previously having only been in African jails), remind me of the sequence in a later book, I forget which one, when Dr. Dolittle is back home in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh and has a book he wants to write. Of course when he's sitting at home all the animals from far and near with medical complaints take up all his time, and he decides the only way he's going to get time to write is if he gets arrested and put in jail. Of course he has a silent comedian's trouble getting into jail on purpose in the first place, and once he's there the local animals ignore his pleas and do their best to get him out; the digging rodents undermining the jail's foundation, and so forth. But what's more subversive than writing a book about how animals are people too? Then we'd have to admit it about the humans who just look different from us.

The next chapter deals with Alinsky's revolutionary idea that the way to implement societal changes is to become proxy for a great number of the stockholders of the huge corporations that are, more and more, becoming our effective government. This from a man who died in 1972. On the other hand, in previous chapters Alinsky admitted that solving one issue always leads to new, unexpected issues ... and I can't help but wonder if this proxy stockholder idea of his isn't what's led to such things as hostile takeovers in today's cutthroat corporate jungle. I wonder whether, in making this idea available to the Have-Nots by putting it into his book, Alinksy didn't also, if not instead, hand it over to the Haves for their ruthlessness in dealing with each other.

The blogging assignment this week for CSC 448: Freedom and Security in a Digitally-Divided Society was to find the operator's manual for something, anything, and read it to find an "exploit" - an exploit being that element a hacker looks for as a weakness, the intentional or unintentional back door that lets the hacker in. The professor told us not to go ahead and do the hack (he always makes me think of Nessus going through the Liar's equipment locker when he says things like that, though I don't doubt his sincerity), just identify the exploit.

I decided to go ahead and read the owner's manual for my 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee, since I've owned the damn thing most of a year now.

I was a few pages into it, trying to identify an exploit for a Jeep, when I stopped to consider: What constitutes an exploit for a motor vehicle? What, for that matter, constitutes a hack? Well, what constitutes a motor vehicle's normal, intended operation? Getting you from one place to another without hurting or killing you. So what would a hack do? Hurt or kill you, or provide the opportunity for you to get hurt or killed.

I found my exploits on the page I was looking at.

The highlighted sentences in the fourth paragraph indicate that merely operating this vehicle in a manner other vehicles are operated can result in injury or death. That's an exploit.

The highlighted sentence in the fifth paragraph indicates that failing to use the seatbelts can result in precisely the effects of operating the vehicle that are not intended by its designers and manufacturers. That's an exploit.

The highlighted sentence in the sixth paragraph indicates, or at least suggests, that neglecting to read this owner's manual can result in injury or death. That's an exploit! Despite my professor's best intentions or my own, I've already hacked this device and didn't even know it!

The dialog of the triangle cartoon from last week's CSC448 posting has been revised to clear up an ambiguity. The last clause in Superman's dialog originally read, "it'll happen in space," rather than, "conflict will happen in space," which may have inadvertently allowed the reading that the clause was reflective not to "conflict" but to "self-destruct or evolve into something else". (If the dialog change doesn't appear for you above, you need to reload your page.)

Edit According to the list of midterm grading items, this entry contains both the blogging for Week 3 and for Week 4.

1.) What are some leading thoughts on cyber warfare, is a digital "pearl harbor" feasible? (I'm not certain whether we were supposed to review the PowerPoint presentations online in order to help us form our responses to this, but at the moment my student login is disabled so I must wing it.)

I've seen some national or international virus scares over the last few years - viruses that were supposed to make everyone's PCs turn into a pumpkin at a particular time and date - and all of them were bigger news before their deadlines than afterward. The closest thing there's been to a legitimate scare was Y2K. This all discourages me from believing that a "digital Pearl Harbor" is a practical goal. It seems to me, given the difficulty, anyone clever enough to pull it off must be someone clever enough to realize that doing it means, afterwards, it won't work to call 9-1-1 when the cannibal gangs start knocking in your windows and smoking you out of your home.

2.) Watch the short video clip at http://winstream.creighton.edu/bjk79676/SRP448/BergmanExercise2.wmv. Complete the exercise and post on your Blog by next week's class. (For my non-CSC 448 readers: The exercise was to review what you know about, or research, the weaponization of space and create a graphic expressing your opinion. The assignment assumed the use of photographs processed in MSPaint or Photoshop, but "non-digital" painting or drawing was also allowed. Regular readers of this journal know that I tend to do my drawing in MSPaint already, so:)

Last week, after failing to sort out my problems with the university blog server, my Freedom and Security in a Digital-Divided Society instructors endorsed my idea of making my entries here in my LiveJournal, and for the balance of the semester. So, for this week we were to read the first two chapters of Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky, 1971, the second chapter being on the lack of absolutes in the issue of means and ends, and answer the following questions about a "favorite social activism event, movement, or cause" of our own choosing.

A. identify the social activism event, movement, or cause The war between the English and the Spanish during the last half of the sixteenth century, when Elizabeth I and Protestant England were defying Catholic Spain's claim to rule over England, based on the Pope's granting the appeal of Philip of Spain to uphold Mary, Queen of Scotts' will leaving the English throne to Philip.

B. identify the rule of ethics of means and ends as presented in Alinsky's book Alinsky's seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends reads, "Generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics."

C. identify the source (web URL, magazine citation, book reference and page number, etc.) The Wikipedia article on the Anglo-Spanish War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Spanish_War_%281585%29

D. tell why you believe the event, movement, or cause illustrates the specific rule When I read Alinsky's seventh rule it struck me as a rephrasure of what Blackthorne the British sea pilot says in James Clavell's novel Shogun about the war in Europe. Lord Toranaga the eponymous character of the novel reacts with outrage at the behavior of the British, stating that fighting against their liege lord as they're doing is treason. Blackthorne looks Toranaga in the eye and says, "Unless you win." Toranaga laughs... According to the Wikipedia article, England had most of its practical goals thwarted for the half-century the war lasted, but remained Protestant; while Spain won the war on points, so to speak, but ran out its purse doing so and never achieved the English throne. Therefore, by Blackthorne's and Toranaga's criterion, the rebellion wasn't, after all, treason.

Thursday evenings this semester I have Freedom and Security in a Digital-Divided Society. Pretty much the only homework assignment last week was to go to the university blog server, create your blog, and answer a couple of questions. Following the directions for creating the blog and logging on for the first time aren't working for me. I'm pretty sure it's not any lapse on my part, because it fails whether I'm trying from home or office, with Firefox or IE. The Wordpress stylesheet doesn't even load. When I emailed my trouble to my instructor I also suggested I could answer the questions at my LJ. He didn't respond to the suggestion, but here goes.

What would you like your classmates and instructors to know about you? Include a picture. (For picture see this entry's icon. If you see a cartoon instead of a photo, you're looking at the Recent Entries page instead of at the page for this specific entry.)
I work in the office of the School of Nursing, and I draw a cartoon every day and put it on the internet. I have a wife, two grown stepchildren, two stepgrandsons and one stepstepgrandson. I'm a computer science major and I want to go into website design and maintenance. I'm a student of the modern screen action-adventure hero as the natural descendent of the fireside folklore hero of all of human history up until now, which means I go on the internet to read, write and draw stories about King Arthur, Captain Kirk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. [The assignment specifies securing this answer in a password-protected post, but that assumes that I got my Wordpress blog going, whereas this is Plan B.]
And, based on your reading for next week's class session: What would classify different hackers into categories of White Hat, Black Hat, and Gray Hat? Does a "sneaker" qualify as a Hacker?
Well, according to the reading, a White Hat is someone who hacks in for entertainment purposes only, without any intent to perform mischief or malice, like Matthew Broderick in War Games (though of course for him It All Went Horribly Wrong). Black Hats are hacking in with mischievous or malicious intent, like the villains in the recent Harrison Ford movie I didn't see where he runs network security for a bank. Grey Hats hack into The Man's systems for information or to perform mischief that they believe is ethically sound even if illegal, like Willow on Buffy. I'd say sneakers are paid White Hats.

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scarfman

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Page Summary

Final blogging for [this] class
Blogging for Grades
This week in blogging for Digital Divide class
This week in blogging for class
CSC448 Blogging, Week 6, part two
CSC448 for the week
Jail, and stock proxies
There was a time when a "hack" WAS a transportation vehicle
Significant revision
This week in CSC 448: Freedom and Security in a Digital-Divided Society
Means and ends
Introductory questions

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Paul Gadzikowski

Thanks for reading.

Entries tagged with csc448

Final blogging for [this] class

Blogging for Grades

This week in blogging for Digital Divide class

This week in blogging for class

CSC448 Blogging, Week 6, part two

CSC448 for the week

Jail, and stock proxies

There was a time when a "hack" WAS a transportation vehicle

Significant revision

This week in CSC 448: Freedom and Security in a Digital-Divided Society

Means and ends

Introductory questions