For quite awhile I’ve been interested in setting up a low-power machine to do my home server tasks and allow for some geeky linux experiments. After doing the initial cost-benefit analysis it didn’t appear that I’d be able to build anything that would be cheap enough to give a reasonable return on investment, in terms of power consumption. However, after months I finally came across the MSI Wind PC barebones at NewEgg.
My amazing wife bought it for me as a gift, and I’ve been nipping at the bit to get this thing going. This little guy has a low-power Intel Atom processor on-board and appears to be plenty of power for my needs. Also, I won’t need to purchase any additional hardware. I already have 200-pin DDR2 RAM that I pulled from my iMac, and I have a few SATA hard drives laying around to choose from. To start I’ve configured it with a 2.5″ laptop hard drive since it will consume less power and be less “loudy” (something a college professor of mine used to say – still cracks me up). I may add a larger drive in the 5.25″ bay for some storage if I need it later. I opted to leave it without an optical drive, since I can easily install GNU/Linux from a USB drive. I’ve installed a server configuration of Ubuntu 8.10 so far. When idle, the server only consumes 21 watts.
Here are some of my plans for the server, which I may write about in the future:
- Run a VPN server for my home network, possibly OpenVPN
- Build a web-based Wake-on-LAN system so I can wake up my iMac from an iPhone shortcut on my home screen, even while on Edge connectivity
- A backup relay, to upload important data from my network to an off-site location
Posted on December 29th, 2008 by brian
Filed under: Tech | 1 Comment »
Could someone acquire your corporate data by accessing iPhone backup data that resides on a user’s computer?
This question came up during a discussion a few days ago and I felt compelled to find the answer. Apple included the ability to remotely wipe an iPhone when they released version 2.0 with Exchange support. They also gave the ability to force the use of a passcode lock. But does that mean your corporate data is secure?
Each time a user syncs their iPhone with iTunes, the contents of the device are backed up onto their computer’s hard drive, in which your employer’s IT department has no control over. This means that someone could potentially obtain this data from their computer, which may not be password protected, encrypted, or have basic security controls like patch compliance or a firewall.
I wanted to dig into the backed up content to see what was hidden there for an “attacker” to find. I used a tool called the iPhone Backup Extractor. It allows you to extract the backup data for specific iPhone applications. For this topic, I was only interested in the Mail and Calendar apps, since that’s all I sync with my employer’s Exchange server. The data for the default Apple applications was all located under the application “Other”. To my surprise there was no information stored in the Mail folder other than some configuration information. This, at least, is excellent news.
However, inside the Calender folder I found a SQLite database file. I simply opened it up with a text editor to see what was easily visible. Right away I noticed information that was obviously from appointments on my work calendar. Since I only used a text editor, I was unable to determine if any attachments were included in the backup.
It appears that the answer to the question above is yes, however this would depend if there is any sensitive information in the synced calendar (and potentially contacts, since I didn’t evaluate it). One problem here is that in the event of a lost or compromised personal computer, the employer’s IT department probably wouldn’t be informed, and would have a hard time determining what was in the backup.
Posted on November 24th, 2008 by brian
Filed under: Security | 2 Comments »
So, I just had a lucid dream this morning. It was pretty incredible. It wasn’t my first one, but the first of my adult life.
[cue the dream sequence]
My wife and I had just showed up at my parents’ house and I noticed my old dog walking around in the front yard. “But Jessie is dead!”, I said. We walked around to the back yard to let her in there and were greeted by their current dogs. Charlie, however, (the oldest Wire Fox Terrier) was twice his normal size. At this point I realized I might be dreaming. So what do the lucid techiques tell you to do? Check your watch multiple times, or do something that will check reality. Well, I didn’t do anything practical like that. I just jumped in the air a little and some guy appeared and disappeared in a flash. Very strange, but then I knew I was in a lucid dream. Sadly the dream didn’t last much longer, but I did get to experiment with a few things…
[end dream sequence]
How was I able to determine so quickly that I was in a dream, and why did I not wake up at the first instance of disbelief? I wonder if it had to do with it being late in the morning and I probably should’ve been awake anyways. Did it have to do with my brain getting a little more conscious in the later morning?
I felt like I might be talking outloud in my dream, but I have no way to know if I was. I didn’t appear to have disturbed the dog that was 2 feet away from me.
Now I’m waiting for another.
Posted on October 29th, 2008 by brian
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Just flew into Connecticut this morning… It’s very beautiful this time of year. This is my first time out here, and I really like it.
Posted on October 22nd, 2008 by brian
Filed under: Travel | No Comments »
Earlier this week I was listening to episode #154 of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. I believe it was Dr. Dean Edell that said he likes to ask the following question when people claim to be open-minded about a specific topic:
What evidence could I present to you that would make you change your mind?
He emphasized that an open-minded person should be able to answer this. However, blind faith in something probably isn’t going to allow for one.
Personally, I find comfort in the scientific method and transient truths based on empirical evidence. Why is it so bad to reevaluate beliefs based on new evidence? Is it an issue of stubbornness?
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast is available on iTunes.
Posted on July 24th, 2008 by brian
Filed under: Science, skepticism | No Comments »
