Viewing the world through paranoid eyes.

Attack on speed cameras and automated tolling systems

2009-01-30T15:19:00.003+01:00

This blog has been dormant for a long time, but I want to resurrect it for one post. I was once employed in a company which made automated tolling systems, so I have thought long and hard about the security of such systems. So far I have not found many attacks against such a system until now. Note: This is only a theoretical attack, no one should do illegal acts in practice.

The basic idea behind a toll road system is that you buy a tag from some company, you place the tag in your car. Then every time you drive through a toll collection system the tag is read and the money is automatically deducted from your account. If you do not have a tag then your licence plate is read and a ticket is sent to your home address.

This system works perfectly there are few ways to cheat the system. You cannot send a false message, as the data sent is authenticated. The key for the authentication is in the tag, and you would have to be an expert to get the key from the tag. The most obvious way to attack is to hide your number plate, but if you do not have a number plate then the police will arrest you and to make some kind of machine that flips down the number plate each time you pass is also impractical. There are also people who try to drive the wrong way through the toll collection system, and to find holes in the fence, if the toll collection system is around a town. But these attacks only saves the attacker some money and can easily be stopped.

Therefore so far I have found no good lo-tech solutions against having to pay the toll collection system. Until you start to attack (and question) the system itself. This system works because everyone who cheats have a licence plate, this plate is unique and in many instances this reading of the licence plate can be automatically read by a computer. So the whole process from collecting the picture all the way to your payment can be automated. Now what if your licence plate is not unique?

The attack is that a "victim" Bob has some friend Eve, which creates a fake licence plate to her car matching Bob's licence plate. She drives through the system a few times and probably Bob gets a ticket, which he complains about and gets the payments dropped because from the pictures one can easily see that it is not Bob's car. Now Eve gets another car which is preferably the same make and model as Bob's car and drives through again. This time Bob has an alibi for himself and his car so again the ticket will again be dropped when he complains. After this Bob is free to challenge any ticket he gets. He has already proven that someone is out to get him and that the attackers are getting better at imitating his make and model. In the end Eve can drive Bob's car through the toll collection system, when Bob is away from town.

The cost to Eve is small, She only has to drive through the toll collection system a few times for Bob to establish that someone is out to get him. The fake licence plate can be easily removed so the chance of getting caught with a fake licence plate is quite small.
The cost for Bob is small to he has to write a letter on his free time, and do some coordination with Eve so that he has an alibi for his car for when he is supposed to have driven through the toll collection system. If Eve drives Bob's car through the toll collection system in the end. Then Bob could be liable to criminal charges if he ever got caught in lying about not driving when he actually did drive through the toll collection system.
The cost to the toll collection system on the other hand is much greater. First off they loose the fake transactions, then they have to use time and pay an employee to handle the complaint, go through the evidence and formulate a reply. Now every passing by Bob has to be manually double checked if the problem persists.

The real kicker of this attack is if there are lots of Bob's and Eve's doing this. Then the cost of running the system goes sharply up for operator. (Currently only 10% of the collected amount goes to the administration of the system, and some operators pay out fat bonuses to the board of directors). To make up for this they either have to raise prices or extend the time the toll collection system is up, both of which are unpopular solutions. Also if the papers started writing about this problem, then this would undermine the whole confidence in the system, which would mean that more people would be more inclined to complain. If the loss of confidence in the system, loss of profit and political opposition from the public becomes too great, then a automatic toll collection system will be dismantled.

But make no mistake about it any attack on a toll collection system, will be fiercely resisted by the authorities. Just look at how the politicians tied to keep the toll collection system in Trondheim running longer than they had promised because it was such a good cash cow. The best way to stop toll collection systems is actually to stop driving, but this bring me to the question of how to use oil which will be another post some other time.

My Internets are dead

2007-12-04T23:42:00.000+01:00

I could have posted about a lot of things lately.
There was a 3 week student festival this autumn which was worthy of a post. I had much fun with my friends which I could write about. The weather is something one always can comment on as it is mostly bad. I had a trip to the US to visit a friend (the girl that was engaged to my brother who died) that included much blogging material.
But I have not been blogging at all these last few weeks, and not doing much writing either. I am just waiting for Christmas and that I get to be unemployed.

How to get rich quickly (2/2)

2007-10-22T16:06:00.000+02:00

In the last post I talked about getting rich quickly, and showed that it is not the amount of money you have that determines if you are rich or not. It depends more on what you can buy with the money, and even more on what you want to buy with the money.

Quote from somewhere on the internet: "If you earn 300 and only use 150 you are rich, if you earn 600 and use 601 you are poor".

Here are 3 ways to get rich quickly, they all involve pain in one form or another.

Be rich with less money
You do not have to be a millionaire to be rich, some of the riches people in the world have almost no money. Look into yourself and see that true happiness does not come from have a big house, a nice car, the finest clothes and vacations in every corner of the world. Some of the best moments in your life are just small events with friends or a loved one. Those are the things that make you rich. See that life is so much more than material things. Stop competing with your neighbours in having the fines house, car, etc. Live your life to the maximum and do it with good friends. The pain comes from having to adjust your expectations of richness to reality.

Sell yourself to the bank
You can have everything you ever dreamt of and you can have it soon. I am assuming that most of you that read this have university degrees and are currently happy sitting quietly doing research for some university, and complaining that you do not get well paid.
Well there is a way to fix that: Get some education in economics and marked yourself to financial companies. There are people out there in their 20's which are earning million of dollars, and you can be one of them if you work like hell, marked yourself, and be hungry for that promotion. Show that you are a cut above everybody else, if you have the university degree you have the brains that is need you just need to show the world how good you are. You have it in yourself, stop complaining and get off your ass.
Get that job earning yourself over a million dollar, and leverage that income to loan some more millions from the bank. The material dream can be yours, you just have to work like hell.

Inherit your wealth
One of the easiest ways to earn money is to inherit it. We will all be richer one day when our parents die as your children will get rich the day we die. If your family is dirt poor, do not worry, find some old person without any living relatives, make them happy and they will give you the money when their time has come. If you are an attractive girl in your 20's find some old guy in their 80's and marry him. For attractive guys in their 20's there are more single old women out there for you to shower with affection, they are not as likely to marry you, but they might be equally likely to leave you with some money. But from personal experience I would say that this is one of the most painful ways to get rich, not so much when an rich childless uncle of my father died, more when my only living grandmother died, and the most when I lost my only brother.

To be off by a bit is easy, to miss by 100km takes some effort to do

2007-10-15T15:10:00.000+02:00

This tale starts on Thursday, when a gaming event Østfronten 1943 started, as I have mentioned earlier. I could not go to this event on Thursday, as I had some students that had a security computer lab, and my co-lab assistant had gone to Russia for the week. So although all students this week had finished quickly and were done by Wednesday, I thought it still prudent to be there on Friday (coming a little late as usual).

Then I went home to pack on Friday evening, but was not feeling to well so I ended up sleeping the whole Friday evening. My role was not as a paying participant, but rather as an extra. So I would have probably been put into a role of playing attacking Russian soldier who is about to get killed or some other role with a quick life.

So Saturday morning came and went, and I was not sure if I would go or not, but still I said I would go so it would have been fun to be there, so I packed, ate an early dinner, checked on the net for directions, checked email and mobile for messages of some sorts, and off I went. Everything was fine, I had been at that place before, I had a car and could drive back whenever I wanted and I might do some good when I came to the gaming event, although I was 2 days late.

The place where it was planed to be, was a place where gamers have been building a secluded place to have such events. The place is called Landsbyen, and it is about 100-110 km from Trondheim, but when I came there and expected 100 people, 30-40 cars, there was no one. It was only me and nature, total silence. Just me, the forest and some patches of snow on the ground.

So I had to drive 100km back in darkness, not knowing what was wrong. Had I read wrong? Had I done a mistake somewhere? Was it the wrong weekend? Had they finished already?
What it was, was moose hunting season. This had created a crisis because some government people did not allow people in camouflage to run around the woods at night with make believe guns, because of real hunters might mistake them for moose and shoot them.

This was not announced on the laiv calendar, this was not on the web pages for the event, not in any email sent to me, but in a laiv forum thread. For some this is an important forum, but for me I do not feel I have the time to check it so often. They had almost had to cancel the whole thing, but at the last moment they fond a place north of Trondheim to hold the event.

So to give you some perspective of the error, if we map the area around Trondheim to places in Denmark. You can then imagine starting from Århus and thinking you where going to an event in Odense. Only to come there and find that the whole event has been moved to somewhere outside Aalborg.

Update: I never went to the place where the laiv was. Afterwords a friend told me that he had told me to check the web because the event had been moved, but I do not remember that he said anything to me.

Snow in Tronheim

2007-10-12T14:50:00.000+02:00

Before I continue with my rambling about getting rich quickly (which still does not have comments). I have to talk about yesterday, a strange day. Below is a picture taken from my flat that morning.

Winter has come to Trondheim.

Now if you ever wonder why I want to move back to Denmark, this picture says it all. I want to move somewhere where there is something else than rain or snow. I do not care about the fact that Al Gore or the Panel on climate change won the Nobel peace price. All I care is that the place where I live is dry. (For all you Danes who things it rains all the time, Trondheim is worse with just a few drops all day long for months on end and with early snow).

Yesterday I also bought plane tickets to visit a friend in Oslo area in two weeks time. After trying to get hold of that friend all week long to coordinate when I should come in the weekend.

Yesterday was also the 11.th which is usually when I get paid from the university. This time was no different than any other time, only that I achieved what I would call money neutrality. What I mean with that term will not be explained, only that it was a financial goal I had.

Lastly yesterday it was so cold that I had to start warming up the apartment for the first time this winter. I usually leave that task up to my 4 neighbours. I should also have packed for a trip this weekend to be part of a gaming event this weekend (Østfronten 1943), but I was too tired to do it. (I am only assisting, so my somewhat later arrival today will not affect things).

The snow did not stay yesterday, it was washed away by the rain which fell for the rest of day yesterday.

How to get rich quickly (1/2)

2007-10-09T15:51:00.000+02:00

In my post on financial blogs I read Mirca commented "isn't there any advice/magazine/blog about how to get rich QUICKLY?"

This post (and the next one) is my attempt to answer this question. Now I will start off with saying that there is no single way to get rich that can work for everyone, there is also no single way to get rich quickly that is without PAIN. Some will read my articles and still not like my answers, to those I would tell then to go buy a ticket to a lottery and hope it is your lucky day that is their only solution.

We first start out by defining what is it to be rich, most people will tell you that to be rich is to have lots of money. That is a good definition, but it is not correct, because of one little thing we all forget and that is that money is worthless. Money is nothing, money is represented by pieces of paper, or bits representing bank accounts in some computer, but in reality they have no real value in and of themselves. Let me give you an example:

Above is the first note in the newly created national bank of Tord. They are created by a national bank and they are usable as legal tender in the country of Tord (still to be created). They are not counted in kroner or dollar, but in units. For all practical purposes this is money.

What is missing in the previous definition is that to be rich is to have lots of money, money that other people can accept in exchange for goods or services. To really define what it is to be rich we have to go deeper, we have to define it in terms of what you can do with the money.

If you want to be rich quickly, you have to find out what you wanted to do with the money before you get them. So dear reader, what would make you rich, not in terms of an amount of kroner or dollar, but in terms of what you could do with the money? If you cannot define this, then let me give you a million units and you will be rich in a flash.

More on this next post.

Vrrmmm!

2007-10-04T15:20:00.000+02:00

Yes, I now have a car! I have just "signed" the contract for a Mitsubishi Pajero — I got it last Sunday, yeah! Behold:

I have tried a lot of different cars, but this old wreck was the one that fitted my needs and budget the best. It comes ready with lots of miles and some rust, so that means that I do not have to mistreat a brand new car myself. It also does not need an expensive insurance as it is almost ready for the scrapheap.

And the best thing is, I did not have to wait nine days…

(this posting is a parody of a blogpost by Martin Geisler, the car is real)

Changes in lifestyle

2007-09-26T22:19:00.000+02:00

In Denmark, I spent the evenings at work and the weekends in my apartment. The only sport I was doing was football, which is not suited to my two left feet and sometimes cycling the Brabrand-trail in the weekends. I never could find a good gaming group to hang out with in Denmark, although I did try to get one started.

In Norway I got back to my gaming group, we meet regularly each week, either on Mondays or Thursdays. This is great I get 6-8 friends over, we talk for 1/2-1 hour and then we play roleplaying games for 3-5 hours before we call it a night.

For sports I started with "innebandy" (running after a ball with a stick, like ice hockey without the ice), but that was not a sport for me. Then I started with dancing swing (Boogie-woogie and lindy-hop) and it is actually fun. I have tried to start as a beginner before, but it is actually fun, and this time I am actually getting better fast. I am starting to actually be able to coordinate my feet and hands and think of how to dance at the same time (thinking of 3 things at the same time is usually 2 more than a normal man can manage). But I still have things to work on as I am trying to complete a 8 beat move in 7 beats, which usually messes up things. An added befit is that there are more girls in the dance classes then there are boys.

For the weekends I have travelled to Oslo last weekend to visit an old friend, and I am going to Oslo again next weekend to attend a gaming event and to visit friends.

For all the good things in Denmark and all the fun I have had down there, I am a Norwegian at heart and I have 10 years of roots and acquiring friends in Trondheim. There is something said for living in one place long. If I could just merge these two places I would have the perfect place on the earth.

Financial blogs I read

2007-09-26T21:58:00.000+02:00

There are two ways of getting more money. One is getting paid more, by getting a raise, changing jobs or taking a second job. The other way is using less, or getting more for less money. The second option is usually the better, and you can get a better life using less money. For more on this I follow these two blogs daily: The simple dollar and Get rich slowly .

For an overview of the Danish housing markets we have the following 2 part article (on a Norwegian blog which is highly negative of world markets). I can also add my own observation, when I came to Denmark November 2006, there was a sellers marked, when I left I could count 6-8 for sale signs on my way home, and I only needed 10-15 min to cycle home (downhill).

Personal finance

2007-09-13T13:10:00.000+02:00

I have been researching the question of personal finance (the kind of money we have and are gone at the end of the month) and global finance (the kind of money you can only dream about, and only big banks understand). Now I have accumulated enough knowledge/disinformation for at least 10 blog posts. Time will tell if I can ever do 10 blog posts without getting distracted and start talking about something else, but as I have bought Civilization 4 recently it does not leave me much time for bloging.

To start this off I have some financial information that is of global importance:
The dollar index (the dollar in respect to other important currencies) is now below 80.
For a short introduction to the significance of this: This index started at 100 in 1973, it has traded at between 120 and 80, but never below 80. Scroll a bit down in this article to see the index form 95-06.
Oil is now about to break the $80 per barrel barrier.
The mess in the American sub-prime mortgage is still not over.

Economists tell us that these things are not good for the global economy, but also remember that it is economists that got us in this mess in the first place. Now these guys control the flow of money, so if they tell us that things are going to get bad, then things are going to get bad.

Voting in Norway

2007-09-10T14:35:00.000+02:00

Today there are local elections in Norway, it is local elections and I do not care which way the election goes.
1. The election results will only affect some aspects of my life here in Trondheim, and as I might be leaving this town in about one year the election has limited effect on me personally.
2. As I have lived one year in Denmark, the Norwegians have found me unfit to vote in the local elections.

Anyway to please my blog audience I have taken a test of which party I should have voted for:
The winner is Venstre (left) a central left party. A party that stands for decentralizing and freedom for individuals, a small party that I usually do not think of voting for. The runner up is an extrem left leaning party, followed by a more moderate left party. Then I jump over to the moderate right, and so on. At the bottom is the party at the far right which is against immigration. All in all a quite left leaning views.

The interesting part was that 10 years ago, I would probably have had FRP and H towards the top. I like FRP free-marked speaking, but as everyone (who knows me) knows, I have allways liked people from abroad.

Ever lost?

2007-08-30T21:23:00.000+02:00

If you are ever lost then just start a random walk, and you will eventually get to where you want to go. This is true in 2-dimensions (ref: Wikipedia, Mathworld) but only 34% chance in 3-dimensions (ref: Wikipedia, Mathworld).
Although our world is has 3 dimensions, we cannot fly so we can transform the 3-dimensional space we live in into a 2-dimensional structure which contain all the places which we can walk on.

Random videos

2007-08-20T21:58:00.000+02:00

Here is a collection on strange or amusing videos:
Stacking up dices.
Doing tricks shots on a pool table.
Real life Minesweeper movie (trailer).
Laser wielding guys against deadly furries.

A small cute dancing robot.
The small cute dancing robot is the star of a real music video.

Some videos you probably have seen before:
A wooden computer.
OK Go's video where they dance on treadmills.
The evolution of dance.

Good bye Denmark, hello Norway

2007-08-20T12:15:00.000+02:00

My stay in Århus, Denmark has come to an end, and I am back in Trondheim, Norway. I have had 11,5 great months in Denmark, but work forces me to go back to Norway.

It was great seeing friends here in Trondheim, some who have been my friends for over 10 years. On the other hand I will miss all the friends I have from my time in Århus. To all the people I know in Århus: I hope to see you again, sometime, somewhere in the future.

Back from holidays

2007-08-07T00:07:00.000+02:00

The last 11 days have been used to get away from work and maybe relax.

Wednesday last week was used to visit the northern tip of Denmark, and Thursday was used to drive to Copenhagen. It was great seeing Denmark from a car, and it was a great experience. I finally feel like I have seen (most of) Denmark. On Friday I went to Norway to attend a wedding of a cousin of mine at Stange (2 hours north of Oslo). The wedding (and baptising of their child at the same time) was picture perfect. The weather was cloudy and not to warm, but the ceremony and the wedding dinner and party afterwords was perfect. The only problem was that we had to endure a 6 hours wedding dinner with lots of speeches. Lots of good drink and some good food plus a few breaks made the whole dinner liveable. The party on Saturday was supplemented with an excursion to a "Seter" (place where they had the cows for summer pasture) on Sunday.
Tuesday evening to Sunday morning was spent relaxing in a cabin some 100 meters from the sea. The cabin is located 1,5 hours south of Oslo, between Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg. Then on Sunday it was back to Denmark.

So I have not really had to much time to relax, and the weather has been cold or wet, but it was good to take some days of and get away from e-mail and my browser. 8 days meant that 470 e-mails was waiting in my inbox. Of these 470 half was spam and half was e-mail lists I subscribe to, only 30 or so were real mail that I have read.

Now it is only less than 2 weeks before I leave Denmark to live in Trondheim again.

Thriller

2007-07-22T15:39:00.000+02:00

Now for some relaxing youtube videos.
First the classic Thriller video by Michael Jackson.
Then the same thing recreated by 1500 inmates.
And for the final the Indian version.

Now there is more than inmates can do:
First the algorithm match (with subtitles and Ninjas).
Then recreated by nearly a thousand inmates.

As for some light scientific reading I can recommend "A history of slot machines"

See Metallica using only 9 charracters

2007-07-21T17:19:00.001+02:00

This is the last Metallica post for now, with a look at what it took to gain entry to the concert.

The picture shows one of the 3 tickets used to gain entrance to the concert, the tickets where e-mailed to me as a pdf-file. One ticket was used by me, one used by Gabi and one was sold in the Friday bar. There is lots of information on the ticket, but the important information was section B, entrance 8 and the bar code. Section A was the few in front, and section B was for the rest of us. Entrance 8 was probably a way to divide up people into groups, so not everyone would use the first entrance.

The only thing they were interested in at the entrance was the bar code. They scanned it with a hand held bar code scanner, the device showed a green light, and I was allowed through to the concert area. So 9 characters of information was all that was needed to gain entrance (in this case "+7MA$7$-V"). The other 2 tickets contained only alphanumerical characters in the bar code, so that gives a message space of at least 39^9 ≈ 47 bits. If we assume 50 000 tickets then roughly 1 out of (2^32) 9 digit codes is a valid entrance value. This 9 character code is probably a hash of some kind, and if it is constructed in a good way it is as good as unbreakable.

On the other hand, as I was a reseller of one ticket, I had ample opportunities to cheat. E.g. Sold the ticket more than once (they have some kind of back end system which allows the bar code to be used only once). The first one would go through easy, but the others would be rejected. I could have modified the hash value to some other value and sold it to some unsuspecting fool as a valid ticket, and so on. Now I am only an honest but curious attacker so no harm was done, but if any of you reading this can come up with attacks on the ticket system then please post a comment.

One more thing to add, a boy got a metal replica of a gun through airport security(link in Norwegian).

Great Metallica concert

2007-07-19T14:11:00.000+02:00

Following up on the last post, the Metallica concert was great. I had waited for 20 years to see them live and it was great seeing them. I especially liked the fact that at the end of the concert the drummer spoke Danish. I have known that he was Danish for a long time, but never hear him speak. I have added some links to videos from the concert further down in the post.

I will follow up this post with a look at big concerts and security. 50 000 people had paid about 640 Danish kroner to see the concert. That means that the band gets 30 million for playing for 3 hours (if they only have 1/4 of it after expenses are paid they that is still a good hourly wage). On the other hand there is a lot that must function on time and without problem otherwise you have 50 000 angry people and a security nightmare. Therefore the security must be tight, but not uncomfortably tight. When looking at security we must think of potential threats, for inspiration on potential attacks look at Schneier and his movie plot contests.

In that respect we can start too look at their attempt at restricting sound recording equipment and photography. Some years ago it was prohibited with all forms of cameras and sound equipment. This is still not allowed, but they are starting to cave inn to mobile phones. They now said that mobile phones where allowed, but added "please do not use the camera function". I can tell you that this was totally ignored. At any time during the concert I could look around me and with a high probability see at least one camera phone up in the air. Most people looked like they used the video function to capture some moments of the concert, and after the concert I saw a good deal of compact cameras, probably smuggled in before the concert. So there their attempt at stopping sound recording and photography are totally not working. They should try to relax their requirements and wake up to the digital environment, but this is like the large music companies which are still working in ignore mode. To organizers of large concerts: Let me tell you once and for all, your attempts at blocking the future are not working (all links to youtube videos, for more search for Metallica and Århus).

On the other hand I would say from personal experience that a ban on cameras are probably useful in the sense that it is very annoying to see a concert where people take pictures with flash all the time, and if you allow cameras most people will forget to turn the flash off.

Girls are evil and selling a Metallica ticket

2007-07-13T13:24:00.000+02:00

I was going to call this post: "Never trust anyone", but after talking over lunch it got the current title. Todays news story (in Norwegian) is a man that once had a girlfriend and they where living together and where engaged. The girl wins 9,6 million Norwegian kroner and moves out a few days later. He sues her but gets nothing and now has to pay 62500 Norwegian kroner in lawyer fees.

Now lets look a bit more closely. The lottery ticket did not have a name attached to it, and the girl was talking to the lottery company so she got it transfered to her account. He goes to court and does not ask for half, but for all of it. They did not have any written agreement between them while living together. So it was word against word in court. The lawyer fees where incurred not the first time he lost, because when he appealed the verdict and lost again, then it was just frivolous litigation and he rightly incurred the lawyer fees for both sides. So remember to have money in your hand or written agreements with people. Even your girl/boyfriend, never trust them they might cheat you.

Which brings me to my story I have a Metallica ticket that nobody wants. I had a verbal agreement, but that deal fell through so now I am desperately trying to sell a Metallica ticket for the concert tonight (or I will stand to loose DKK 660).

Stupid Norwegians

2007-07-11T19:31:00.000+02:00

Speaking as a Norwegian, there is maybe not a race dumber than Norwegians once the weather becomes warm and they get a couple of beers. This article tells about a prime example of the race called Norwegians and how dumb and lucky they get (article in Norwegian).

A 26 years old guy came to Roskilde, when it was over he walked 2-3 kilometers on the rail tracks and lay down. Gets run over by train and looses his legs, waits 45 min in the ditch gets seen by the next train and is alive today. More stupidity and luck is a rare find. On the same note we have this youtube video of dumb Norwegians in Italy. It is an advertising video, but it shows how Norwegians should refrain from staying anywhere where the temperature could be over 25. Luckily this seems not to be a problem in Denmark at the moment.

Updated 12/07: Just an additional note on stupid Norwegians, last year 3.290 of them had to be hospitalized because of they had had to much to drink (alcohol poisoning). Article is in Norwegian.

Ideas change lives

2007-07-05T22:36:00.001+02:00

In my (almost) random search through the internet, I have looked at many sites, but then I came across the TED conference as they say it "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers". For me that means expensive conference (I will never afford it) with famous speakers, where I will sleep through the doers part because they are more interested in money than ideas.

I might be right about it not being worth it for me to go there personally, but the site contains more. They have shot videos of the best talks and put them up for free on the internet. And I have just watch a few videos and they are mind blowing!!!

Bush watch not stolen

2007-07-04T16:39:00.000+02:00

Given new evidence I retract my statement that Bush watch was stolen. The evidence is another video shot by NBC from a different angle. I could find two different youtube videos to show this clip. Even Bruce Schneier has updated his blog concerning this case.

Norway also have their share of pickpockets as the Norwegian police chief found out the hard way. Maybe this guy knew something about it, he was arrested with 14 drivers licenses and 14 credit cards. He claims he was going to the police with the cards, when he was arrested, but I personally do not believe that guy. (Last two links in Norwegian.)

Video of pickpockets

2007-07-03T10:58:00.000+02:00

I always knew ~~Italians~~ gypsies where not to be trusted, this video of pickpockets from Milan proves my point. See how the pickpockets follow the unsuspecting tourist and remove valuables from their purses.

So when traveling abroad never keep your wallet or important travel documents in easy to reach places. Keep things in your front pocket or in a bag where it takes you 1 minute to get to them. Pickpockets can be in any country Spain, Albania, etc. also spring to my mind. For further reference of pickpockets here is the video of Bush loosing his watch in Albania.

Edited: After showing the video to Claudio (an Italian) I have to update this post. First he tried to say that it was first a fake, but looking at the tape we can see that it is probably authentic. Then he tried to say it was not Italian, but the Italian flag kind of gives it away. Then he said they where probably gypsies and not Italian so there he probably has a point. (But I still think the gypsies have Italian passports.)

Friday humor

2007-06-22T22:09:00.000+02:00

I just had to blog this thing I read from a Norwegian newspaper (VG): "One ton of marijuana (cannabis) went up in smokes" the article is in Norwegian, but it is fun to read. They do not know who placed the marijuana, but the 35 firefighters fighting the fires inhaled enough smoke that they will not be able to pass a drug test in the coming weeks.

A Friday humor goes here is a mash up video of Idol and American presidential race.

Danes are hard to understad

2007-06-19T19:18:00.000+02:00

Claudio pointed me to this fun youtube video about Danes not understanding other Danes.
(Of cause made by Norwegian comedians, shown on Norwegian and subtitled in Norwegian.)

How to live together

2007-06-12T20:23:00.001+02:00

Cory Doctorow has written a nice article "Snitchtown" about how we should live together and how digital cameras on every corner does not help. Best quote: "When you watch everyone, you watch no one".
On the other hand if people do not behave as USA wants them to behave they now use enhanced interrogation techniques. Now to get something linkable you mix politicians talking about it, with Monty Python's Spanish inquisition to get a funny youtube video.

Caring for your introvert

2007-06-06T18:56:00.000+02:00

Nice article about introverts.

I am not a casino

2007-03-20T16:31:00.000+01:00

Planet DAIMI creates an aggregation of feeds from blogs. One of those blogs that are aggregated is my blog. Somehow my last post there was for a while a post to some spamer some casino stuff... I am not going to give the spamers a link or anything, and I am just posting this to show everyone that this blog is spam free (depends on your definition of spam, but we here assume the usual definition to spam, as related to messages over the Internet).
Also I would say that I am slow to write on my blog for the moment, I just do not feel like it. I also try to keep my blog Planet DAIMI compliant so I do not get any red boxes.

Eating, vegetarians

2007-02-08T13:18:00.000+01:00

Following up on my philosophical ideas:
To live we need food, now food comes in many form and sizes. Food for humans is almost anything we can eat everything from large and small animals, vegetables, fruit, fish, insects, etc.

But for the bigger picture there are roughly 3 kinds of nutrients:
Animals eat other animals and/or plants.
Plants feed of sunlight.
Computers (or silicon life/machine life, which I define as life) feed on electricity or petrol.

Now I admire vegetarians, for their love of life and their unwillingness to kill other life to live, but I think they are missing the point. If you look at plants and animals they are both made up of cells. Everything we eat is made up of cells, and if you look at them in the microscope there is no large difference between plants and animals, they are both made up of millions of cells. Millions of living breathing cells. On the other hand the vegetarians have understood something the rest of us have forgotten, and that is that we are not pure meat eaters or made to live on artificial foodstuffs. Humans are most adapt at living with a mostly plant diet, that is the most healthy thing we can eat.

Now I love life and I like to preserve any kind of life there is, but I am also born as a animal therefore I must kill other form of carbon life to live. In game terms it is either kill or be killed, and I personally like to live and must therefore kill other life to live. If the life I kill is animal or vegetable makes no difference to me, it is all food, therefore I will never be a 100% vegetarian.

But I greatly respect anything I eat, they have given their life for me to live, and someday microbes will make a tasty snack of me. That is the cycle of life.

(Clarification: The above statements might by some be misread in the direction of cannibalism, now that is wrong I do not condone the idea. Evolutionary cannibalism is very wrong thing to do, but given very very extreme cases almost any animal/human will do it.)

What is life?

2007-02-07T13:28:00.000+01:00

Now for a philosophical post, What is "life"?
My definition of life comes from simple observations:

Life is the thing that goes east when the wind is blowing west.
Life is the thing that grows upwards even though gravity pulls it down.
Life is the thing that swims upstream even though the water runs downwards.
Life is a collection of order in a world that has ever increasing chaos (entropy).

In my definition, my computer is alive.
So each time you turn off your computer you will kill billions of bits.

Tenacious D

2007-02-04T23:12:00.000+01:00

Last weekend I saw a movie "Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny". It was a great movie from a band I like. Tenacious D (official site) is a band playing some music that is both good and funny at the same time. The movie was like Monty Pyton and the holy grail made into musical and the grail is a music instrument. I laughed all through the movie. To get a feel for the music here is a youtube link.

I am ordinary not interested in music or bands, and Mirca has posted a lot of music posts lately (with some good links to music), but somehow this post had to be made because the film was so good.

Now I am off to do something I also normally do not do: Watch football. But this time it is American football, and it is the super bowl.

There is no war on terror

2007-01-26T14:06:00.000+01:00

Finally someone who talks sense in the hunt for terrorists. Terrorists are criminals not enemy combatants.
The director of public prosecutions in England denys that Britain is caught up in a "war on terror" and wants legislative restraint in passing laws to deal with terrorism. This is great and we should have more people talking like that, another good quote is "The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement." There are more good quotes in the article so read it. The US new heat beam (Norwegian link) weapon is not the right way to fight them.

In security always look beyond the obvious problem and try to analyse what we are really protecting against. The politicians talk about freeing us from terrorists, but what is a terrorist?

Definitions of a terrorist/terrorism:
Answers.com has this definition for terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."
Wikipedia talks about the definitions of terrorism, there where 109 definitions when the US army counted them in 1988, and ultimately it is a political judgement. That means that in the end it is up to politicians find out who is the terrorist and who is not.

So how do you protect agings terrorists, well the best way is crime prevention and treating people with dignity, not locking people up and treating them as scum. Giving people a fair trial is also better than shipping them off to some island without any legislative oversight. If people can see that the system works and they can pursue their goals through legislative means with some measure of success, they will use that avenue to vent their grievances. If this avenue is closed then people will use other ways to get heard.

For success stories look at how the IRA and EPA have been brought to the negotiating table and made to put their arms down. In contrast look at how we are now handling the mess in Iraq.
On the other hand if a politician today can get a law passed calling for harsher penalties just by slapping the sticker terrorist on it, then they will use that word for all it is worth. Ultimately security is a game of power. Who has resources and power and who has not, and how is the power distributed. Look at the big picture of what is happening in the world today and see it as a power struggle. Who has power, how are they using it and to which goals are they trying to achieve.

The next time someone tells you that they have done something to increase security, ask yourself what they are really trying to protect. Maybe it is not your security they have increased. Do not take their promise of increased security as blind faith, but rather view the world through paranoid eyes.

Kanelboller and blogging

2007-01-26T13:09:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I invited people to my birthday party. Now there has been some posts about it from people at daimi. Gabi has a nice post but pictures can say more than a thousand words and Doina has some good ones from the evening. My favorite is this picture of the cinnamon buns when they are fresh and warm.

Also what should I post about?

In my last post Rune commented that there are naked girls on the Internet, this given as a suggestion of what kind of links I should post. Well, for one who has surfed the Internet for 12 years and likes to explore the interesting fringes of society, I know a variety of links. Some which would really make your head spin. I do that because I am intrigued by the multitude of people that exist in the world and the kind of interests they have.

Every person has a story to tell, most of us have little urges or quirkes that makes us special. With the advent of the internet, people can talk about these quirkes they have, in an anonymous fasion. Some have even made websites about it and communities have sprung up. Now some of these fringe groups have a thiving community online. So I can post links to a world you never knew existed.

But do you really want to know?
I sometimes wish I didn't.

PS: There is no need for me to post linkes to boyish fun or naked girls as that is beeing done by so many others (direct links are safe for work). The first link is break.com a great site if you want to see people do dum stuff and fall down.

Write yourself into being

2007-01-24T18:18:00.000+01:00

I have been procrastinating so I have not posted for some days:
But today a quote caught my eye: "Online... you have to write yourself into being". So if you do not have any presence on the net you are not alive.

More from the interview
"There are sort of four properties and one key practice that are fundamentally different online. The key practice is that you have to write yourself into being. " "There are four functions that are sort of the key architecture of online public and key structures of mediated environments that are generally not part of the offline world. And those are persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences."
Persistence -- what you say sticks around.s
Searchability -- you can search for what has been said.
Replicability -- anything you say can be copied and pasted.
Invisible audiences -- you do not see your audience.

Quotes taken from this story, which is an interview of this Ph.D. student/blogger.
Further random clicking from blog lead to gallery of very cute cats and kittens. (Warning: Cute overload. Not safe for male readers.)

Procrastinating

2007-01-15T12:34:00.000+01:00

Procrastinating (definition: The act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off to a future time, delay).
Procrastinate (definition: To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness. To postpone or delay needlessly.)

Why can't we get stuff done, even when I know it has to be done?
This is a common problem and research has shown that procrastinating is a growing tend. So if you are feeling that you can't get stuff done you are not alone.
The second paragraph of the story: "After 10 years of research on a project that was only supposed to take five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier."

This was my 15 minute of procrastination for now. I will procrastinate some more at 3 o'clock when people are invited to the ground floor to eat the rest of the cinnamon buns (Norwegian: Kanel boller).

Tomorrow: How to get stuff done.

Vista is crippeled

2007-01-14T13:23:00.000+01:00

Many of you who study security might now have heard about "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" (this is the paper which included an "executive executive summary" which read "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history") made by Peter Gutmann.

This has been further explored in two podcasts about DRM on "Security Now!" (made by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte).
The first podcast (66min) talks about the evolving history of DRM (digital restriction (rights) management).
It is followed up in the next podcast (50min) by talking about the content protection system in Windows Vista and includes an interview with Peter Gutmann.

After listening to these two podcasts you really get a feel for how insane the DRM now has become. As you are putting all this effort into trying to create a barrier between the user and his legally purchased content, a content that most users are just content watching. It is creating a cryptosystem where the user is both the receiver of the content and the attacker. An idea which is in it self flawed, but still the large content producer pour millions of dollars on it. While only making more pirates out of us ordinary people, as we desperately try to make our hardware work.

On the other hand I just love hearing about the crypto used, which includes AES, elliptic-curve cryptography and public-key encryption with off line revocation mechanisms. The effort put into this system is phenomenal and it is well thought out, but the goal that they are trying to achieve is crazy.

This post is based on 2 posts from boingboing.

Funny roleplaying movie

2007-01-14T01:53:00.002+01:00

I arranged a party today. There we got into discussing roleplaying, how it is done and so on.

It can be illustrated quite well with this youtube movie (in two parts, total 12 minutes long) where you see a group of gamers meeting. It is well made and fun, although I should warn that one of the players throws in a rather unexpected twist to the story close to the end. The movie is in french with English subtitles.
Part one
Part two

An explanation of some roleplaying facts for the non-roleplayers among you:
What we have in the movie is a guy meeting his old gaming group, he has a relaxed view of gaming while his friends are more (too) serious about their game. The players play characters and they have a GM (game master) that controls the whole game, he is sitting behind a game master screen in the movie. We are also shown clips of the fantasy world, the world that the game master and players imagine in their head.
Then sometimes players do very strange things which trows the story into disarray, and other players just have to react to that. Like in the real world, where sometimes people do stuff or things happen to you (or other people) that throws your life into disarray.
As a final arbitrator of things in the games are the dices, they tell you if you have been lucky or not. A really good throw at the right time might mean you win the lottery, a really bad throw at the worst possible moment means you can be hit by a lightning from a clear sky.

Friday humor

2007-01-12T16:21:00.004+01:00

As I surfed boing boing yesterday I came across this nerdy mini series. I have only seen 3 of the 8 episodes so far (they are each about 5 minutes in length), but so far they have really been funny.

If you want to know how nerdy the series is. Then let me tell you that the first episode is about a master programmer. He spills soda on his keyboard and gets sucked into the Internet where he meets the two persons: "bit" and "byte". The series includes references to Tron and Star Wars.

The power of videos

2007-01-10T23:53:00.000+01:00

The moving picture (video) is a powerful force.

Bruce Schneier has a good post today on the psychology of security. Where he says: "people are more persuaded by a vivid example than they are by statistics. The latter might be more useful, but the former is easier to remember. That's the context in which I want you to think about this very gripping story about a cold-blooded killer caught by city-wide surveillance cameras."

Well the link to the story brings you to a 10 minute piece about how they caught the man, and although it was the cameras that are the focus of the story. A break in the investigation came only when they got a tip (based on pictures for the cameras).

But what made me write about this is that also today I read another piece of information. A Norwegian newspaper talks about when the tables are turned and the police are the ones beeing filmed: Politifolk filmes på jobb (Cops filmed at work) (Includes a link to a youtube video). The article starts of with the chief of police saying he is critical of the phenomenon, but further in the article he also aknowleges that this gives people a new way to control the police.

The last piece of video I saw today was a very moving video testemony from coworkers of a man detained at guantanamo. If you are convinced that everyone in guantanamo is a terrorist, you will not think so after viewing that video testemony.

So if you want to make a statement do it with a video camera.

Nerdcore

2007-01-10T13:09:00.000+01:00

I am a nerd and proud to be a nerd. There is no way around it, but I was born 10 years before nerds started to be cool. Now the movement to make nerds a part of everyone's reality is starting to get traction as the internet becomes all pervasive.

today's new word: Nerdcore - being a nerd and rapping about it.
A documentary that is going to come out about it: http://nerdcoreforlife.com/
A youtube trailer of the documentary.

Even Dagbladet (Norwegian paper) liked to something about it today, but they linked movie called Nerdcore rising.

And for today's science I bring you a computer simulations of life inside a cell.

Not posting for a long time

2007-01-10T12:51:00.000+01:00

After a good start with some postings, you find out that nobody is going to read you lousy blog anyways so you just stop. Now I am in Denmark and I am surfing the net a lot in my quiet evenings. So I can post my funny or crappy links here instead of spamming all my friends with links.

A little hectic

2005-06-20T15:38:00.000+02:00

This post will be removed for a more thoughtful blog posts when time permits. That means Tuesday or Wednesday.

Blogs to watch

2005-06-16T17:37:00.000+02:00

The two security blogs to check out regularly:
Bruce Schneier's blog http://www.schneier.com/blog/
Stupid Security http://www.stupidsecurity.com/

One blog on mobility and a good place to find anecdotes for new technology uses, often interesting.
Smart mobs http://www.smartmobs.com/

And of cause my daily dose of internet madness
http://boingboing.net/

Setting up

2005-06-15T17:04:00.000+02:00

Site has been remodeled.
Choosing templates, description, header and so on is easy. Getting something you like is harder. Getting something everybody else can live with too is even harder. Open for suggestions.

My privacy

2005-06-14T18:03:00.000+02:00

If you are going to get a blog and posting things there for other views (as if I am ever going to get viewers on this blog) is that you have to post regularly and you have to post about interesting things. I am not getting into the fun stuff just yet, but rather building a good archive a basis for this blog..

One of the first things you have to consider when creating a blog about security is what level of security am I going to choose. That equates to how much privacy am I going to give up. For me I cannot post totally anonymously because I have chosen to identify myself as tordr on this blog. It is a name I have used on line for some years now and I do not want to create a new one. I would be anonymous if my identity was and or what, but tordr is a quite distinct set of letters. Therefore my true identity should be available through google in under one minute. For anyone still guessing: I am a Norwegian interested in cryptography, computer security and privacy, also a gamer.

(Edited 10.1.07)

So think about what you publish and how or if it can be traced back to you.

First post

2005-06-13T18:38:00.000+02:00

This blog is created to look at security. That means the general security in our daily lives and also computer security. It is also a list of daily links that I find interesting and/or funny.

The title of this blog is "A look through a paranoid eye", this is because you have to be careful about the information you read and what information you post on the net. Material on the net is always biased in one form or another, so always think about that before accepting things you read as facts.
This blog was started in 2005 but only today gets it's first post.

(Edited: 10.1.07 This blog is going new ways)

Viewing the world through paranoid eyes.

Attack on speed cameras and automated tolling systems

My Internets are dead

How to get rich quickly (2/2)

To be off by a bit is easy, to miss by 100km takes some effort to do

Snow in Tronheim

How to get rich quickly (1/2)

Vrrmmm!

Changes in lifestyle

Financial blogs I read

Personal finance

Voting in Norway

Ever lost?

Random videos

Good bye Denmark, hello Norway

Back from holidays

Thriller

See Metallica using only 9 charracters

Great Metallica concert

Girls are evil and selling a Metallica ticket

Stupid Norwegians

Ideas change lives

Bush watch not stolen

Video of pickpockets

More funny videos

Friday humor

Danes are hard to understad

How to live together

Caring for your introvert

I am not a casino

Eating, vegetarians

What is life?

Tenacious D

There is no war on terror

Kanelboller and blogging

Write yourself into being

Procrastinating

Vista is crippeled

Funny roleplaying movie

Friday humor

The power of videos

Nerdcore

Not posting for a long time

A little hectic

Blogs to watch

Setting up

My privacy

First post