Category Archives: Security Reviews
Security Review: Integrated Webcams
The other night one of my friend’s asked me about the webcam in her laptop. She was concerned about people gaining access to it and spying on her. Her fears got me to thinking about this problem. Integrated webcams are … Continue reading
Security Review: TrueCrypt
Summary TrueCrypt is a disk encryption system intended to solve the problem of people being forced to disclose encryption keys or face consequences. It allows a disk partition to be completely encrypted. The most recent version even includes a special … Continue reading
Security Review: Access to our IMA Building
Summary:For this security review, I have chosen to evaluate our very own IMA (Intramural Activities) Building which I am a somewhat frequent visitor to. The security concepts for the IMA are rather simple: let only those who are authorized into … Continue reading
Security Review: Facebook Privacy Setting
Along with its popularity, Facebook has become the central of personal informations. It records users’ personal information along with their interaction and activities with other users. Privacy setting is used so users can decide who they would like give access … Continue reading
Security Review: The Safeway Club Card
This security review is inspired by the story of a firefighter whose Safeway shopping history landed him an arrest for arson in August, 2004. More information on the story here: http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/safewaycard.htm Most people are probably familiar with the concept of … Continue reading
Security Review: Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets
The Mac OS X Dashboard is a platform for developing small applications, or Widgets, that can be accessed and hidden quickly at any time within the OS. Common widgets tasks include simple calendars, calculators, games, weather tracking, and system monitoring. … Continue reading
Security Review: Laptop Locks
Most modern laptops have a slot in them that allows the user to affix a lock to the chassis. The locks usually come in the form of metal cables with a combination or keyed lock on one end which fits … Continue reading
The online tax system is safe to use. Well, if the government thinks that you’re unimportant, that is.
Yesterday I was looking through Schneier’s blog and found a link to an interesting article about the UK and online taxes (Article). According to the article in the UK, “Thousands of ‘high profile’ people have been secretly barred from using … Continue reading
Security Review: Smart pillboxes, maybe too smart?
Recently an MIT research team has developed a smart pillbox to help combat the problem of patients failing to take their medication at prescribed intervals. This problem of over/underdosing of the drug by the patient accounts for ~10% of hospital … Continue reading
Security Review: Tor
Tor (http://www.torproject.org/) is a service and application to enable anonymous access to the Internet. It works by relaying network requests through a number of peers before ultimately accessing the resources requested. In this way, those listening on your connection will … Continue reading