Interesting Stuff

Renter’s insurance saleslady: If your stuff is worth $5,000 and $1,000 of it gets stolen, that’s already a third of your property.

This line of reasoning was supposed to convince me that I need $30,000 of coverage for my $5,000 of stuff.

Coming back from DEFCON, I felt like Jack, coming down the beanstalk to announce that “there are giants in the sky! There are big, tall, terrible* giants in the sky!” I was introduced to a whole new world with new ways to look at everything. I had no idea most of that stuff was out there and accessible to me. Everyone seemed more knowledgable about every single topic, but it was exhilerating to see it all.

I met up with Matt, Dan, John, Eric, and two guys I hadn’t met (Chris and Andrew) in Vegas, and we all shared a room intended for 4 people. The first day, everything was delayed by 2 hours because the fire marshall forgot to approve our convention, or something. After that, however, there were talks running continuously from 10am until midnight (yes, you had to miss some talks if you wanted to eat meals). Although most of the stuff was about computer security (hex editors, phishing, the EFF, RFID spoofing, database rootkits, etc) there was a surprising amount of (non-computer) security stuff there too (lock picking, safe cracking, neurolinguistic programming, etc). There was also some (non-security) computer hacking stuff: hard drive repair, steganography, fuzzing, extreme programming, autonomous robotic BB-guns, the list goes on. Late at night, we went to the Hacker Jeopardy sessions. I’m now inclined to say that all game shows would be more interesting if they had strippers.

Here are some more highlights:

• Dan Kaminsky (who is the hacker version of Judiciary Pag), gave an amazing talk about…um…everything. SSL, security problems with DNS, visual bindiffs, security problems with online banking. He’s incredibly relaxed, yet brilliant. His work is amazing, and he drinks beer throughout the talk. In fact, at the end during the question and answer part, he gave me a beer for suggesting the visual bindiff can be used to find duplications in your code! Usually I don’t like beer, but this one kind of tasted like victory. \/\/00T!
• I got to talk to and shake hands with Cindy Cohn, director of the EFF. This was pretty special for me, because they’re one of the greatest organizations I can think of.
• Lots of people were doing crazy hacking in the hotel: pay phones went missing. One of the elevators I rode in had the emergency phone open, and some guy karaoking Sinatra tunes out of it at us. Someone even managed to hack the Hacker Jeopardy display system during the game itself.
• In theory, I learned how to pick locks (both normal picking and bump picking) at the Lockpicking Villiage. The weird thing was that they had a lockpicking contest, and apparently an 11 year old girl did rather well in it.
• They have a Spot The Fed contest every year, where you try to find out which other conference-goers work for federal agencies (DoJ, FBI, USPS, Marines, Washington DC meter maids… any federal employee will do). This was pretty fun to see, but one story will always stick out: a woman brought a man up on stage and claimed he was a fed. She said she knew this because the night before, they hooked up, got drunk, had sex, and while he was asleep she went through his stuff and found his badge.
• There were several games of a unique form of capture the flag going on: on the network was a computer with several security problems purposely put into it. The object of the game was for teams to hack into the box and then keep everyone else out. Not exciting to watch (just a bunch of people busily typing on their laptops), but a fun concept anyway.
• I saw the wall of sheep, which is a computer with a packet sniffer and data mining system on it. It searched the network for unencrypted usernames and passwords, and then projected them up on the wall. A good reminder of how insecure most websites are.

So, DEFCON wasn’t as good as AAAI was, but I still had a great time and got my money’s worth. I’m not yet sure if I’ll be back next year, but I’m glad I went once. As the EFF panel mentioned, it’s really the only conference where the invited speakers can show up for the earliest talks at 10:00, unshaven, hung over, and still get a warm reception.

*Terrible: extreme in extent or degree; intense

OK. Despite the overwhelming amount of stuff I still need to find homes for, I really like my new apartment. It is by far the nicest/biggest one I looked at, and I think it would be a good deal if I were renting it for $100/mo more than I am. People should stop on by sometime and hang out.

My apartment building is the one in the center, the leftmost of the two with long skinny courtyards in the middle. I’m in the northernmost corner of the building, with a balcony that looks out onto the alley.

On a related note, IKEA is absolutely amazing. Last week, the only furniture I owned was a bookshelf, a lamp, and a chair. I now have a fully furnished apartment, and most of the furniture even matches! It’s pretty sweet.

Everyone here seems quite friendly, though I haven’t met many people yet. Oddly enough, about half the tenants in this building seem to have names that begin with J (I’ve met Joanne, Jacky, Jay, Julie, J’nai, Noor, Niko, Belaji, Gary, Beatrice, Susan, and Kathleen. I’m not sure how many other people live here).

Santa Monica is beautiful and sunny most of the time, which is pretty cool. I’m also within walking distance of a bunch of stores and restaurants and the bank. It’s a wonderful apartment in a lovely place. I really can’t ask for more.

Later today, I will hopefully have a summary of DEFCON, but I should get back to cleaning/unpacking.

DEFCON was awesome. I am now sitting in my new apartment, with my new cell phone (check Facebook for these numbers, or email me). A longer update shall ensue tomorrow.

In about 15 hours, I’m getting on a plane to go to Las Vegas for DEFCON! After it is over, I’m driving to LA with some former Mudders, and getting a new life. The next time I update this journal, I should have a new address, a new cell phone (my first ever! the last of the cell-less ranks are falling, my friends), and possibly a new car. To keep you entertained in the meantime, go watch what I think is the greatest animutation ever (click the “watch this movie” link).

Until we meet again…

I have been indulging myself by reading P.G Wodehouse’s Leave It To Psmith (note that the P “is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.”). In his beautifully debonair style, Wodehouse has delivered a fascicle of wit, with memorable characters and jocose scenes.

On an as-yet-unrelated note, I have endeavored for months to desist from ending my sentences with prepositions. However, I have begun to question this goal, as it can lead to rather stilted circumlocution. The tipping point came when I read the following sentence in Wodehouse’s tome:

‘Have you considered that the tenancy of such a position throws you into the constant society of Comrade Beach, than whom it would be difficult to imagine a more delightful companion?’ [asked Psmith]

Although this is a paragon of proper preposition placement, it took three readings for me to correctly parse it. Consequently, I am seriously considering tolerating the dangling preposition so that my listeners/readers can more easily understand the sentences which they are used in. Yech. That sounded horrible. We’ll see about this. In the meantime, I think many people would enjoy reading Wodehousian stories, despite his overt erudition (Firefox’s dictionary tooltip can alleviate this problem, though I have taken to simply putting my book on top of my dictionary when I read).

Jim and I played bridge today for what I fear is the last time in the foreseeable future, since I’m moving in a week. We got last place out of 12 partnerships with a 40% game, but I’m marking this one as a win. I finally understand what an uppercut is, and although I didn’t perform one, I found one in the postmortem. But the thing that truly sets tonight apart is that on the first hand of the night, I got a double squeeze!! These are quite rare; I don’t expect to get more than one per year. Seeing it, executing it correctly, and having it work was absolutely thrilling, and it rattled our opponents to the core.

My first double squeeze in more detail →

The title says it all. Jim and I had a 53.7% game tonight which placed us 3rd out of 10, and we each got 0.5 Black Master Points. Moreover, on the fifth board of the night, I got a squeeze play! Yes, I have now finally accomplished my goal of successfully executing a squeeze play in a sanctioned game! I got a simple squeeze against LHO, and while it scored below average (because we didn’t bid the slam), no one got more tricks than I did. \/\/00T!

The 4-card squeeze play (spots approximate) →

Hezbollah and Israel are still firing rockets/missiles at each other. The Arab world has called on Israel to restrain itself, though the United States appears to support the Israeli retribution. This could very well turn into a fairly significant war, since the official Lebanon government still seems to be doing nothing about the conflict.

In the meantime, the UN Security council has unanimously voted to impose sanctions against North Korea forbidding any country from importing or exporting missile-related materials into/out of the country. To be perfectly honest, this is a pleasant surprise for me; I expected the UN’s response to be much more ambiguous. This should send a strong message to Korea.

Here’s some more good news: Pepsi, when offered a chance to buy Coke’s trade secrets, did the right thing and notified both Coke and the FBI. Three suspects have been arrested. This puts Pepsi on my short list of “good” companies, along with Google, CostCo, and DEKA (who make the Segway, a home dialysis system, lots of other great products, and major supporter of FIRST).

Friday evening, Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah declared “open war” on Israel. This comes 3 days after Hezbollah apparently kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers. In response, Israel bombed the Beirut airport, so Hezbollah attacked an Israeli warship and started launching rockets across the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel then bombed the Hezbollah headquarters, though the leaders of the group apparently escaped without injury. Israeli strategists think that a land incursion into Lebanon would turn into an imbroglio with no end in sight, so they continue to use air strikes. Civilians on both sides of the border are having their homes destroyed, and many civilians are now living in bomb shelters. Anderson Cooper is in Beirut right now reporting the whole thing, and he’s doing a great job (if you’re not familiar with him, he’s quite possibly the best reporter right now: he did much of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and has come to fill the role that Connie Chung used to hold. He can be seen on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360^o“). In the meantime, the Lebanese government has done nothing to stop the fighting. This indicates to many people including myself that the Lebanese government is powerless and Hezbollah has much more of an influence over the populace.

Something I had not previously realized is that Hezbollah is almost completely funded by Iran, which is a growing influence in the area now that Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon. Hezbollah has been firing Iranian rockets into Israel, and they attacked the warship with an Iranian unmanned drone. At this point, my opinion of Iran has sunk pretty far, since they seem to be trying to destroy other countries in the region and advocating genocide along with Hezbollah (kill the Jews!—link provided by mikasaur2000. I realize the movie shows Palestinians while Hezbollah is Lebanese, but the ideology of the two groups is remarkably similar. Except that Hezbollah is full of adults who are actually killing civilians instead of just dreaming about it). I knew Hezbollah was into this whole anti-Israel thing, but I hadn’t realized Iran was hardcore on this issue too.