Categories
Seal Flipper Pie
This historically significant dish may not be as common as it once was amongst Canadians but historically it was as common to Newfoundlander’s as well as other Northern and Atlantic Canadians as pizza is to culture today. It is still favoured and considered a delicacy by traditionalists and those still involved in the seal hunt today.
The dish is basically served like any type of meat pie. Containing meat (seal), root vegetables and gravy in a pastry crust.
Posted in Food
Leave a comment
Attacking Wireless Human Interface Devices
In keeping with the physical security and human interface device themes being discussed at a large number of security conferences, forums and blogs recently I thought I’d add my two cents to this style of attack.
When wireless keyboards first became popular, I, like the rest of the security community became very skeptical of their practicality in terms of security. The whole of broadcasting our keystrokes over the air and in plain text sounded like both a security nightmare and a key-loggers wet-dream. A similar feeling went through me when I first got my hands on the Teensy micro-controller and discovered it could act as HID device. I`ll admit I first thought about automating tasks and designing custom controllers for video games, although security came in a close second.
There are several projects online which attempt to decode wireless keyboard data to reconstruct and log the keystroke data, and recently projects using HID devices to send malicious keyboard data to a connected target machine using the logged-in users credentials (Such as the USB Rubber Ducky or PHUKD) have hit the security world like wildfire. Why not combine the two ideas for a more remote, semi-anonymous attack?
Posted in Ramblings, Security
Leave a comment
IT Consulting Business
Over the past couple months on top of doing several school courses and working full-time during the week, I also worked as independent contractor for a consumer electronics company teaching customers how to use various devices.
After many headaches, little free time and shit pay I decided enough was enough and decided not to renew the contract (Although I did manage to earn some decent savings and Christmas money). A friend of mine who is a programmer analyst, and myself have decided to go into business doing IT consulting (what we’re good at anyway, and had usually given away to people for free).
We started a small company, Broadside Solutions, doing both home and business IT services. We do everything including and not limited to: PC repair, home network setup, office setup, purchasing equipment, software installation, network security and analysis, data backups, server and network administration, and web hosting.
Our rates are going to be very competitive compared to some of our commercial competitors, as this is a small business done in our spare time, but still lucrative and definitely more flexible than working for someone else. Plus we get to run IT by our standards (which is much higher than most of the local businesses) as security and IT is our passion.
Check us out, and please get in touch if you require any IT service that we can provide.
http://www.broadsidesolutions.com
Posted in News, Ramblings
Leave a comment
Laser Data Communications
In high school I created an analogue audio transceiver using a laser pointer (see project here). For a University course I decided to step things up a notch and transmit digital data back and forth between two devices.
The project uses two atmel avr atmega644p processors (although any with a hardware UART will work) and the atmel stk500 development board for programming and serial communication.
Posted in Electronics, Projects
2 Comments
Twitter’D
For my Web Applications class (Comp 3715) we had to create a web application that would be useful in real world scenarios or that did something interesting or unique.
My project was Twitter’d (A play on the word Maitre’D), a web app for managing reservations in a hotel / restauraunt scenario. The unique feature (and reason behind the use of the word twitter in the name) is that using a premade twitter account for the applications, twitter users could use an @Mention to the account to make reservations easily! The host could then use the web application, which is meant to be used locally or on an intranet, to approve these requests over twitter or to make reservations manually. The application would also tweet each time a reservation was made, stating the number of reservations that were remaining in total to inform people whether or not they were booked for the night or still available.
(Click below for technical details and to download the project files)
Posted in Programming, Projects, Web
Leave a comment
Client-Side Form Validation in JavaScript
While working on an assignment for my Web Applications course I began to rekindle my annoyance with JavaScript and to simultaneously question the patience and the amount of free time possessed by JS developers.
In working on an instance of client-side form validation in JavaScript I began to remember why I prefer to stay away from web development and stick to desktop applications. Finicky browsers, little to no error reporting, and the limited ability to debug all made what would have been a normal half hours worth of work into two hours of tweaking and searching for a single syntax error.
A big thank you going out to Stephen Poley at Web Matters for his intuitive example and well documented code. It helped a great deal when dealing with some browser peculiarity, such as the need for a non-breaking space in some cases.
Anyway heres the completed form with JavaScript validation. Its a simple loan payment and interest calculation using a formula that was provided by my professor (So don’t complain that the calculation isn’t right, we were stuck to that formula).
Client-Side Form Validation in JavaScript Demo
Heres a more detailed breakdown/listing of the files:
Posted in Programming, Web
Leave a comment
Telus Pushes Down Android 2.1 Update.. Finally.
This morning I awoke to a sight which I never believed I would witness during my 3 year contract and ownership of my HTC Hero, the android 2.1 update notification.
While most people in the United States and Europe would be complaining about waiting for the next long awaited update to android 2,2 or higher, us HTC hero owners here in Canada were falling behind the times. Telus, the sole distributor for the Hero had delayed the 2.1 update for over a year and gave no explanation as to why. Meanwhile all their other pre-2.1 phones had long since received their updates, and newer models all came with 2.1 pre-installed.
So far 2.1 looks great. Apps, calls, and the home screen all run with less lag, I have the ability to download a wider range of apps and have access to new features. I’ll probably spend the better part of the day playing with it.
Posted in News, Ramblings
Leave a comment
P2P Chat System
For the socket portion of my networking class I created a peer-to-peer chat system. The system consists of a server which listens for clients, and attempts to match them based on order of connection. The client connects to the server, if there are no peers waiting it gives the server its information and waits on a port for a peer to connect, if there is a peer waiting it simply connects to that waiting peer and begins communication.
Server: ChatServer.java
Client: ChatClient.java
Posted in Programming, Projects
Leave a comment