I’ve just completed a “Reddit this” FeedFlare module for Feedburner users. This will add the option for your RSS users to submit your posts to reddit.com right from their RSS feed application. After it’s installed, it’ll look like this: And here’s the FeedFlare link so you can use it in your own feed. I’ll be adding it to…
Archives for February 2007
Security: How Network Ports Work
Many who are new to networking and security wonder what it means to have “ports” open on your computer. Some get rather anxious when an online port scan reveals that something’s open on their system. What follows is a silly, but hopefully memorable way for beginners to remember how nework ports work. Houses, Windows, and Midgets Imagine a…
Vista’s Security Hobbled By Microsoft’s Own Insecure Past
Yesterday I wrote about Joanna Rutkowska’s work that highlighted a serious security flaw in Windows Vista. Her finding was that in Vista, many applications require that they be installed with administrator privileges, and that during the install process users are given two options: 1) install with elevated privileges, or 2) don’t install the application at all. Yesterday’s post…
Free Will: The Necessary Delusion
One of the more interesting sub-debates associated with Atheism vs. Religion is that of free will. Quite simply, many Atheists don’t believe in it at all, while the majority of traditional believers feel that God gave them the ability to shape their own lives by clearly making decisions for themselves. I personally don’t believe in it. My reason…
Security: Implementing A Secure And Usable Internet Password Scheme
Being an information security consultant I am often asked how to balance the need for online passwords that are both hard to guess and easy to remember. There are a number of solutions out there for dealing with the problem, but the system that I’m about to outline below is an elegant hybrid of simplicity and security. It…
DMIESSLER.COM: 2006 Platform Statistics
The following is a chart of the top ten operating systems used to view my site in 2006. As you can see, Linux and OS X are doing well, but not as nearly as well as Firefox is doing against Internet Explorer.
Leopard Instead of Vista: Three Reasons Why Your Next Computer Should Be A Mac
With the new release of Microsoft’s Vista operating system, many are considering their upgrade path. Is it time for a new PC? Should I wait for Vista? What’s this Mac stuff all about? In this article I’m going to put forth a very simple argument, which essentially boils down to this: For anyone wanting to perform basic computer…
Security Filters Are All The Same
Let me start by stating that much of what I’m about to cover was seeded by a wonderful talk I heard by Marcus Ranum back in 2003. Since then I’ve been sort of mulling everything over, and here are the basic ideas: From Marcus’s talk: Q: What does a packet filter do? A: Looks at a few parts…
A Real Solution To The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
I’ve been thinking about this issue heavily for over a decade (since going to the Middle East while in the military), and I’ve always had a bit of cognitive dissonance concerning my opinions on the matter. Last week, however, I was presented the actual answer, and it was strikingly elegant. I was shown this new perspective by a…