If you have a MacBook with an infrared receiver, did you know your Mac could be open to other people controlling your computer? By default, Mac OS will recognize the signal of any Apple Remote. Although the effect is relatively harmless (they will probably be able to randomly play some tracks on iTunes), it can range from being annoying if you were studying in the library and your friend happened to prank you, to embarrassing if you happened to be doing a presentation. Most people do not need to allow any Apple Remote to control their computer. Why would you Continue Reading
security
Heartbleed
The Heartbleed vulnerability has been all over the news this past week. As usual, the media sometimes twists the facts, sometimes intentionally, other times inadvertently. For example, I’ve heard Heartbleed being called a virus, or being framed as something that was deliberately created to be malicious. Also, from reading people’s comments on the online news articles and blog posts, it seems that many people don’t really understand what Heartbleed is or does. From my point of view as a software developer, I would like to provide some information and resources that I believe are true and report the facts (but Continue Reading
Trying to crack DeepFreeze
This is an anecdote from when I was in elementary school and takes place around 1999-2000. Windows computers were just being installed in the classrooms. The mechanism that locked down the computers initially was system policies. You could screw around with a limited number of settings and applications on the system, but a lot of stuff was restricted. However, one day in the school library, a new computer didn’t have such restrictions in place. Our 7th grade teacher (resident IT technician) had just finished setting up DeepFreeze on it, and challenged my friends and I to try to break it. Continue Reading
MyBB Security
These are just my thoughts about MyBB security updates. I’m not a security expert of any sort, but I just offer my opinion based on the knowledge I have. Over the last few weeks there have been two releases to MyBB to patch potential security vulnerabilities that have been discovered by various parties. I have seen some people who have found these seemingly miniscule updates too trivial to apply to their own boards, despite the fact that I and various other members of the MyBB staff have recommended these updates. These people seem to believe that just because no harm Continue Reading
Hacked? Not!
Sometime today a person found the WordPress install file that I accidentally left on the server and reinstalled WordPress for me without my permission. Fortunately nothing valuable was lost, and as you can see, the blog is back up and running as before. To whoever it was, thank you for reminding me to remove my WordPress install file.