Posts by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
(DIR) Post #AutcTvZuIcEpBfCx6G by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-06-06T21:20:52Z
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@mattblaze I've gotten several such letters, too, asking me to sign a "national interest waiver" support letter. Generally, these letters are from people who do AI or the like, fields I know little about. My answers have been the same as yours. I don't *think* it's a sting…
(DIR) Post #AuuPTTCUhaiCvgfU5Q by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-06-08T03:58:26Z
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Worth reading Steve Vladeck on Trump’s action: https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-california-national
(DIR) Post #AvMNoNh90EQCGwRxYG by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-06-20T21:55:43Z
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If you understand the functional purpose of this getup, you’re an old-timer like me who was willing to work around stupid restrictions. (Hint: often, the lever part of a nail clipper could achieve the same ultimate goal.)Oh yes—that’s an RJ-11 phone jack, not an Ethernet port.What’s it for!
(DIR) Post #AvMNoQFFWOtIBIQDzM by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-06-20T22:25:45Z
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@MRutenberg Very close—but what was my routine use for that? (And it had nothing to do with wiretapping.)
(DIR) Post #AvMNoS0mx8Vnf1fhj6 by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-06-21T01:14:24Z
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@MRutenberg Your first guess is close enough that I'll give the answer now.Take a close look at the tab on a phone cable (or on an Ethernet cable, which you're more likely to have lying around…). There's a wider part closer to the body of the jack, and then a narrow part. The wider part is what holds the plug in the jack; the narrow part sticks out, so you can push the tab down and remove the jack. That implies that if you cut off the narrow part, you can insert the plug into the jack but it will be hard to remove—unless you have something narrow enough (like the tip of a nail clipper lever) to reach into the slot and depress the tab.As it happened, some hotels did truncate the tab, though I'm not 100% certain why—perhaps they thought that guests were going to steal the phones. But some of us really needed to plug our own gear into the phone line, back in the days when hotels didn't have Ethernet, let alone WiFi, and you had to carry a modem with you. (Some laptops had built-in modems, or you could carry a PCMCIA modem, a now-obsolete technology I won't bother explaining tonight…)So: you can't unplug the phone from the wall, because of the truncated tab on the plug. But if you had a screwdriver in your travel kit (which of course I did), you could unscrew the jack from the wall, attach your own jack to the wires, and you're in business. (I'll let @mattblaze describe the hardware in his own travel kit. Let it suffice to say that he carried far more than me.)
(DIR) Post #AvUwnNhFCScj1NG1GC by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-06-25T18:51:42Z
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So many Columbia University IT systems have been offline for >24 hours, possibly due to a cyberattack: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/06/24/columbia-nypd-investigating-hourslong-university-it-outage/.
(DIR) Post #AwVxLNIBDBUwH0gEBE by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-07-25T21:47:35Z
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@angusm @jack_daniel @pluralistic Yup. (Years ago, I was at a NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) meeting where a nearby street had a line of backhoes parked. I think it was a warning.)
(DIR) Post #AxNPYfhBO7gDD3CMwi by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-08-20T22:50:24Z
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@mattblaze The article spoke of unsanitary conditions during processing. I'm trying to figure out just what seafood processing plant would need to have Cs-137 around…
(DIR) Post #AxNmGSqIja0N51kbZo by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-08-21T02:30:13Z
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Just think—if we hadn't switched to semiconductor RAM, memory management could have been done by a core daemon, as opposed to the demon core. Gives new meaning to a process's storage requirements blowing up…#obscureReferences
(DIR) Post #AyHD9dGrhGHvjqZbTU by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-09-16T17:55:35Z
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For some reason, this Doonesbury cartoon, from 1982, keeps coming back to me: https://www.washingtonpost.com/doonesbury/strip/archive/1982/8/26
(DIR) Post #AzDOFDEfybKP9Ww06y by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-10-14T18:44:51Z
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My spouse and I now have an interesting experiment going: which enhances your 5G reception more, getting a Covid shot and a flu shot in the same arm on the same day, or getting one in each arm? Confounding factors: we have different length arms, and I'm not sure which is a better match for 5G wavelengths. Also, I use a computer a lot more, which means that the extra microchips I've just been injected with will help me a lot more.
(DIR) Post #AzHJvDlcfW3PpCOeSu by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-10-16T12:23:27Z
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First, look for the plaintext. Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/science/kryptos-cia-solution-sanborn-auction.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t08.hHO4.Nom2O2iLBDGZ&smid=url-sharehttps://flipboard.com/@newyorktimes/arts-jltl7u4lz/-/a-Y5DCdUkHSneTRVSTNfDP8w%3Aa%3A3195393-%2F0
(DIR) Post #AzLBf1OkrkD7pTIwrY by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-10-18T15:13:50Z
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Best sign I’ve seen thus far: “United we ribbet. Divided we croak.”
(DIR) Post #AzLILyM8eTeQZSwd5U by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-10-18T18:42:25Z
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What I wore today… (Aside: I bought this during W's administration, and hoped I'd never need it again.)#NoKings
(DIR) Post #AzLIM0W8cGq1H3ddx2 by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-10-18T18:45:41Z
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@wendynather I got it from someone at an IETF meeting, way back when.
(DIR) Post #AzPWhpQqghMzFsIsSm by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-10-20T18:17:47Z
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@mattblaze N-version programming, where N=1
(DIR) Post #B06RvO7VL52DVduTAG by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-11-08T04:01:02Z
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Steve Vladeck on the apparent complexity of Justice Jackson’s administrative stay in the SNAP case: https://open.substack.com/pub/stevevladeck/p/190-snap-wtf?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
(DIR) Post #B06i1hUdozT4b9lPuK by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-11-08T04:18:53Z
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@ricci They’re taking hostages; it’s that simple.
(DIR) Post #B0TTM8dc0KaaoYU2fQ by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-11-21T14:33:59Z
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Prediction: Trump will harangue and threaten Mamdani, who in turn will end up walking out.https://journa.host/@w7voa/115588144742413596
(DIR) Post #B0gL4FKrNanbt31j5E by SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange
2025-11-27T20:26:53Z
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@ricci You never used classic APL, did you? If you think about it, a - overstruck with a : looks like a ÷, which was a symbol on the APL keyboard. Guess what? It was accepted as such. For that matter, if you overstrike an F with an L, it looks like an E—and since classic APL used hardcopy terminals, what you saw on the paper had to be what you got, so that worked, too. There were others…