de Bruijn sequences (also known as Ouroborean rings in Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, p. 44) are an interesting topic that have a surprising connection to moving across a square, and the security of most phone unlock screens. These sequences make a compact listing of all the possible values, in a repeating (cyclical) string of values.
Continue reading “de Bruijn sequence, security, and the surprising reason your phone requires pressing enter on the lock screen”TigerVPN with a Non-broken Open-source App
If you got set up on the TigerVPN years back you may have noticed that their Android app no longer works. It’s an often-reported issue. Ironically, the not-officially-supported setup documented here does still work. A similar quick setup can get you set up quickly on Android:
Continue reading “TigerVPN with a Non-broken Open-source App”Chrome 93 brings a different way of thinking
If you are using Chrome 93, you may have noticed recently the “Your connection is always secure unless Chrome tells you otherwise” in the location bar. This raises an interesting question – should the system be telling you that any site that you visit is secure? Should we be trusting Chrome in this regard?
Continue reading “Chrome 93 brings a different way of thinking”Setting private user home directory on Ubuntu
Recently it was announced that Ubuntu 21.04 will have private home directories. This would affect new users and new installs, but you can easily change this on your computer (or any Linux/unix computer) after checking your current setting…
Continue reading “Setting private user home directory on Ubuntu”Analyzing a Zoom(link) hack:
Once in awhile a service may get compromised script or item in it – in a recent case, a Zoom link will actually take you to some random site as part of some sort of adware campaign??? However a closer look shows it is very important to test your links on email or sites:
The link I saw recently actually had a very odd looking script – script in a production service is generally minified sometimes, but won’t be oddly obfuscated or base64-encoded. The suspicious part of this script starts out in the <body> with an odd looking launchBase64:
Continue reading “Analyzing a Zoom(link) hack:”Easy VPN with DigitalOcean and ShadowSocks
If you are often in a cafe or library with shared internet, it’s best to go through a VPN so any unencrypted traffic isn’t detected by any local hackers – while there are many vpn packages, it is easy enough to make your own and connect to it with shadowsocks. This can give you good performance even on a $5/mo digitalocean server!*
Continue reading “Easy VPN with DigitalOcean and ShadowSocks”Back to School and watch out for security and your preinstalled sofware!
This may be a back-to-school like no other in recent history. Kyle Rankin, chief security officer of Purism, has an interesting article about privacy as schools start online this year. While many schools use Google docs or Chromebooks, it is important to use your school account which is legally not allowed to be tracking as much.
(If you do use Google docs for education please also check out Autocorrect remover which makes writing much better for English learners!)
Continue reading “Back to School and watch out for security and your preinstalled sofware!”