Monthly Archive for October, 2009

A Good Book

Published on Sunday, October 25, 2009 in Forensics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Toward the end of the first year of my undergraduate degree I read a book by Neil Barrett called Traces of Guilt, which describes the author’s involvement in computer-related crime as a security consultant and expert witness. It is written as a series of case-studies showing Barrett’s involvement in criminal cases ranging from paedophilia to murder, as well as private consultancy work such as dealing with a sociopath systems administrator at a wealthy holding company.

Despite the subject matter, it is surprisingly accessible (After all, it was my mother that recommended it to me!), but still contains enough technical information to keep a computer science student interested.

I read it again recently and even though five years have gone by since I first picked it up, very little of it seems dated. It’s definitely worth a read for anyone with an interest in computer-crime.

Traces of Guilt got me thinking about computer security from the “other side”, and is probably part of the reason that I’m studying computer forensics today.

Encryption and Lack of Evidence

Published on Thursday, October 22, 2009 in Forensics. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I think this is quite interesting.

From The Register:

An Australian man who set up an elaborate network of hidden cameras to spy on his flatmates has escaped jail time after police were unable to crack the encryption scheme protecting his computer.

…

But the files were encrypted, and the 39-year-old Wyllie refused to divulge the password. The inability of police to review the files – combined with the fact that a camera he used was unplugged when the raid was commenced – meant prosecutors lacked the hard evidence they needed to prove the man had secretly taped his flatmates.

I’m under the impression that RIPA could be used over here to compel a suspect to give up the password, but it’s quite hard to find information on when Part 3 of the Act has been used, so perhaps I’m mistaken.

Playing with Windows 7

Published on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

One of the benefits of being back at university is that I can take advantage of the CIS department MSDNAA subscription. This means that those studying computer science or something similar can download licensed copies of Microsoft products like Windows XP Pro, Windows Server and Visual Studio (although not Office). Windows 7 Professional was on the list and I missed the public beta, so I thought I’d give it a go on my old laptop.

My laptop (1.73GHz Pentium M, 1 GB RAM) is just above the listed minimum system requirements so I was a little concerned about even running Windows 7, but after a week it seems to be holding up pretty well.

Installation went smoothly. The only crash I’ve had was after the first time I plugged in an ethernet cable, but after a restart Windows automatically downloaded the drivers for the rest of my hardware. A few friends of mine had bad experiences with driver support so far, so my success may just be down to having older hardware without many flashy features, but when it works, the hardware detection is pretty slick. Startup is a little slower than XP, but after logging in the system is just as responsive, with no noticeable lag in the desktop. The networking features are still a bit of a mystery to me, but they detected the multitude of proxies that are needed to do anything useful on the campus network. Which is nice!

Overall I’m pretty impressed with it so far, especially running on such relatively low-spec hardware. I’d say it’s comparable to Windows XP, but I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me want to give up my linux partition.

tl;dr – Windows 7, it’s not terrible.

The Road

Published on Thursday, October 15, 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

There was a feature on Channel 4 News tonight about a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.

I really quite enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction (Think Threads, rather than Mad Max though), and The Road was the only novel I read while I was traveling that I enjoyed enough to actually buy a copy when I got back home, but I’m a bit surprised that it’s been adapted to film. From what I remember there are a couple of sequences in the book where something happens and the Man and the Boy have to react very quickly, but for the most part they’re just trudging along the road trying to find food and purposely avoiding other people.

From what the feature showed it looks like the film captures the scenery pretty well. A lot of bleak woodland and industrial wastes. There’s almost nothing about what it was that destroyed civilisation – the feature mentioned climate change – but it doesn’t really matter. The story isn’t about that.

It seems a strange choice for a film, but I’ll probably go see it anyway.

Clever Pigs

Published on Friday, October 9, 2009 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Schneier linked to a pretty cool video today.

Basically, the pigs are fed by a system that reads an RFID tag on the pig’s collar. The tag is read, the gate opens and the pig gets some food. The system tracks which tags have been read that day, so the pig should only get one meal. But some pigs don’t like wearing the collars and scratch them off, leaving them on the ground for a clever pig to pick up. If the clever pig has picked up an unread tag, it gets more food, if not it tries again.

Pigs defeating RFID-enabled feeding system.

Updating the Philips Freevents X51 BIOS from a USB drive

Published on Thursday, October 1, 2009 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’ve owned a Philips Freevents X51 laptop for around three years now without major incident. It’s small, lightweight, and well supported by linux (for the most part). There is however an issue with support from Philips. It’s non-existent.

I’ve had Windows installed on it for a while now (mostly to play Civilisation!), but now I’m back at university I need a linux box to play with. And here’s the problem. Since I last installed linux on it, syslinux (or isolinux) has changed and no-longer boots, meaning that the installation media for most new distributions doesn’t load.

I’ve tried creating custom CDs with an older version of syslinux, booting from USB and even a network installation with no success. The only thing left to do is re-flash the BIOS and try again.

Updating the BIOS in your computer is not something to do for fun. It involves  re-writing the code that instructs your computer to start up.

Only follow these instructions if there is no practical alternative.

If something goes wrong, there is a strong possibility that your motherboard will cease to function. Forever.

I take no responsibility for anything that goes wrong. The only reassurance I can give is that it worked on my Philips Freevents X51 laptop. You have been warned!

OK, still reading? Then I’ll begin…

Philips don’t actually make the X51. It is a re-branded Twinhead F12DT (This should be printed on the bottom of your laptop). Luckily, Twinhead do provide some support.

These instructions will walk you through the creation of a USB drive which will boot into FreeDOS and allow you to run the BIOS update application.

You will need:

Right, let’s go.

  1. Install WinImage and the HP Flashdrive Format Utility.
  2. Create a new directory, call it bootdisk or something similar.
  3. Start WinImage and open fdbasecd.iso. Extract the files to bootdisk directory. Make sure the “Extract all files into the same folder” box is checked. If asked to overwrite files, click yes. You won’t need WinImage again.
  4. Insert your USB drive and back-up anything that you want to keep.
  5. Start the HP Flashdrive Format Utility. Select your USB drive from the drop-down menu. Set the filesystem to FAT.
  6. Check the “Create DOS startup disk” box, and select “Using DOS system files located at:“, browsing to the bootdisk folder.
  7. Click Start. This will wipe your USB drive. You won’t need the HPFFU again.
  8. Extract the updated BIOS archive to the root of the USB drive.
  9. Reboot the computer and boot from the USB drive. FreeDOS should start up. I was asked to re-enter the date/time, this may not matter.
  10. Run the AFUDOS BIOS update program with the following command: afudos /if12d108.rom (Do not turn off or reboot the system while doing this. Very Bad Things will happen! It should only take 30 seconds or so to do its thing)
  11. Once finished Step 10, restart the computer and enter the BIOS setup screen (Delete key). I found that the white Philips screen had been replaced with a black Intel screen. Don’t panic.
  12. If all has gone to plan, you will now be running AMIBIOS version R1.08, built on 01/10/07.

I haven’t noticed any changes in the day-to-day operation of my laptop, but the updated BIOS does allow new versions of syslinux to boot. I don’t plan on updating the BIOS again, ever.