I am, once getting, stuck in the whirlpool of Windows Update.
Why, oh why, does it send me a brand new update, only to inform me at the next iteration that it needs 78 security updates ? Couldn't it send me an already patched version in the first place ?
Quick survey guys: For pen testing needs - do most people use an existing distro like BT5 or customize their own favorite distro from scratch? What are the pros and cons to each approach?
@jmort253 My hunch is that a majority of the followers of this proposal weren't in for the security aspect nor for the repurpose aspect, but for the ESR meaning of hacker (i.e. “I'm too l33t to call myself a programmer”). — Gilles17 secs ago
I don't get him. Why is he hanging on for dear life to his proposal?
I have an input software. The data is stored in a file in C drive. The file is password protected. When I put in the password it asks whether I want to enable a content. I say yes. It says something about VBA macros. I say yes again. It gives me the data in a different format.
Now because of the ...
@Gilles They clearly tried to do too much. The Repurpose/MITHacker sides could have been interesting, but clearly the vast majority of interest was from the sec.se overlap segment.
@Polynomial I think not to cryptomigrate the CBC/AES one - it's not a heavy q about how crypto works, its some of the simplest basics every infosec pro needs to know.
@ScottPack people enjoy getting excited. Doesn't matter about what.
@AviD My point is that the majority of committers who have actually left a message are talking about how awesome it would be to cover topics that we already have here.
@ScottPack when the German language proposal was going up, I saw several commiter messages along the lines of "I dont know german and have no interest in it, but lets get this proposal going!"
@ScottPack or, as you noted, do know about us, and want to back another proposal anyway.
I have a question about public key encryption.
Say I have a string: "Hello, everyone."
If I am choosing to use a cipher to encode/encrypt this by just shifting the letters around X places, it is easy to figure out what the key is due to things in the english language like LL, OO, etc.
Taking a...
@AviD Sure, but they're false and misleading. It makes his question difficult to answer, because we have to spend time debunking each individual presumption. It'd be much easier if he'd just asked "how does asymmetric crypto work?" and let us give him the answer.
@AviD The other side of that is that those committers either forgot about us or made assumptions about our on-topicness. Like the SF guys who figure we're a 90% dupe of them.
@ThomasPornin actually I meant an actual frequent question addressing this, i.e. with a canonical answer, not a meta/faq.
while I dont think that q requires a whole book (at least not at the level he was asking), it is very much an "Introduction to Crypto" type question, not even "Crypto 101".
does crypto.se have any minimal boundary of "too basic" questions?
I know its not like Theoretical Computer Science, but then at sec.se we pretty much discussed being open even to the most basic of simple questions.
@ThomasPornin what about this one - it's definitely more crypto.se than here, but it's not a fantastic question, IMO.
The Enigma algorithm is a encryption method that was developed (I believe) by the Germans in WWII. It went a little something like this:
When a letter was typed on the keyboard of the Enigma machine, it was first sent through the first rotor, which would shift the letter according to its present...
I know the content is ontopic, for that matter it wouldnt be offtopic on sec.se either - it was more a question of how to handle such a wide , clueless, but legitimately basic q.
I think it needs a rewrite, and then figure out where it would be better, here or crypto. anyone wanna take a shot?
on the other hand, much as @Polynomial had the basics of SSL canonical question to feed you, perhaps we need a canonical "how is encryption works" type q too...
I'm confused though. An html link presumes an HTML document which doesn't matter what OS you are on. Are you talking about something other than HTML documents?
@RoryAlsop @JeffFerland @AviD This was proposed to close as NARQ, but my vote is for Too Localized. Your call, but we're up to 4 votes - want to top it off?
I have an input software. The data is stored in a file in C drive. The file is password protected. When I put in the password it asks whether I want to enable a content. I say yes. It says something about VBA macros. I say yes again. It gives me the data in a different format.
Now because of the ...
I can't respond to comments so...
This question is language-agnostic. When people say 'ssl certificate'
or just 'certificate' they are usually referring to an x509
certificate, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509"
Very well. In that case, then, let me clear up a few misconceptions you seem to ...
it was originally flagged as not an answer... which is pretty much so.
btw, and I'm admittedly saying this as pretty much an outsider to this whole bloggy thingy, it seems to me that the current format of a new meta q for each qotw post is highly inefficient, and not as effective as it could be.
have one, single qotw post. everyone and anyone can suggest q's to it; voting as per usual. every week, the top voted answer (question) is popped off the top of the queueue, and deleted.
or, not necessarily the top-voted, but weighted according to that.
that way you dont have to keep so much track, we dont have to keep looking for new questions (if it was appropriate last week, it will probably be good for next week too...), and there will probably always be enough in the queueueueue to choose from.
sure, every once in a while, we should cull the consistently low-voted posts. and yeah, mods will see a whole big pile of deleted answers.
still, I think a much better process, for some not-insignificant value of "better".
@ThomasPornin hmm, I guess we'll be hearing @TomLeek's shouts any minute now.
Instead of RDP-ing into a Linux machine on another continent, I am now RDP-ing into a WinXP VM which runs on the Linux machine which is on another continent.
WinXP is much more integrated with RDP; the interface is still insufferably slow, but it is still quite better than previously.
I lost font antialiasing and half my RAM in the process, but I am still quite happy with it.
@RoryAlsop I'll try to do something a bit higher level (not "how SSL works" but "why does it work at all ?")
Anyone has good tips on how to make a WinXP use less RAM ? I have 512 MB for the VM, and I want to leave as much as possible for the Hog (i.e. the Web browser).
@RoryAlsop it's quite funny to see people turn their heads when you say you have never done book keeping in your life
@ScottPack I didnt choose the auditor life, the auditor life chose me
@RoryAlsop but it's nice to meet all the new people, get to know new people. Since I worked there for 2 months a senior from financial audit and me had a nice conversation, they really want to have better ties with ITRA
@LucasKauffman Had a chat with one of our auditors yesterday. Even though he is a CPA he's never worked outside of audit, and this is his first job wearing a tie.
@JeffFerland Good, 2 more misses and you would have had to reload.
If I have a system with one component A and the TCB is {A} and I have another component B with a TCB of {B}, if I were to place the two components together would the new TCB of combined components be {A, B}?
In other words, is the TCB of {B} independent to its external surroundings and therefor...
Hrm. This is an annoying situation. Mr. Smith does a task on a monthly basis, which occasionally has an adverse effect on some systems. We'd like him to modify that task so that it does not impact those systems in future months. He says he can do that, but would need us to remind him every month. Would setting up a recurring Task in Outlook, assigning it to him, and adding a Reminder to it be too passive-aggressive?
A colleague has a task that he does monthly, which recently has had an adverse impact to some of my systems. I've asked him to modify his task so that it will not include those specific systems any more. He's said he can do this, that's not a problem.
However, the unpleasant part is that he sa...
The encryption app that we are using seems to generate the same output for the same input. That is bad right?
I'm not smart enough to understand the scheme being used though.
616099D42B067FE178D7878638BD78CD3001E6814D3493D201066EF011A844BBCC6F876E484CAF47B68B33E252BCF8E6
though I think there is an underlying question there, that would be a good q. however, it is not what was asked, and there is not enough context to get it right ourselves.
I have a question about public key encryption.
Say I have a string: "Hello, everyone."
If I am choosing to use a cipher to encode/encrypt this by just shifting the letters around X places, it is easy to figure out what the key is due to things in the english language like LL, OO, etc.
Taking a...
I can't respond to comments so...
This question is language-agnostic. When people say 'ssl certificate'
or just 'certificate' they are usually referring to an x509
certificate, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509"
Very well. In that case, then, let me clear up a few misconceptions you seem to ...
If I have a system with one component A and the TCB is {A} and I have another component B with a TCB of {B}, if I were to place the two components together would the new TCB of combined components be {A, B}?
In other words, is the TCB of {B} independent to its external surroundings and therefor...
A colleague has a task that he does monthly, which recently has had an adverse impact to some of my systems. I've asked him to modify his task so that it will not include those specific systems any more. He's said he can do this, that's not a problem.
However, the unpleasant part is that he sa...
The encryption app that we are using seems to generate the same output for the same input. That is bad right?
I'm not smart enough to understand the scheme being used though.
616099D42B067FE178D7878638BD78CD3001E6814D3493D201066EF011A844BBCC6F876E484CAF47B68B33E252BCF8E6
