We Are Doing Security Wrong

My friend’s email password was compromised. Is he the weakest link? Possibly, though recent personal experience shows he may have been sold out by the companies he deals with.

One of my former co-workers wrote me this morning under the subject: “VERY URGENT!!!!!Help & a favor.”

I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. we had to be in Turkey for Tour.

OK — it didn’t come from my friend. It was just made to look like he is writing.

i will be indeed very grateful if i can get a short term loan from you ($2,600). this will enable me sort our hotel bills and get my sorry self back home.

I didn’t follow up. Had I replied I would have been led to send the money via Western Union in a way that’s untraceable.

These emails go out because people fall for them!

passwordMy friend’s email password was compromised. Is he the weakest link? Possibly, though recent personal experience shows he may have been sold out by the companies he deals with.

Yesterday eBay asked me to reset my password because of their security problems. This follows Target’s faux pas which led to our credit cards being reissued (and the hassle that followed).

Companies screw up, but I’m obligated to help clean their mess.

In most cases, if a hacker gets hold of your email account he’s got everything! Passwords can be reissued and ownership of a specific email account is all the ID you need!

This is crazy.

Google and a few others have begun offering 2-step verification to cut back on fraud. I tried Google’s offer and switched back. It was an incredible hassle.

Passwords were good protection when the Internet was young and its users mostly trustworthy. That’s no longer the case. We live our lives online. We need a better way.

I’ve Got Turkeys For Neighbors

A few days ago Helaine celled from the front door. She was gazing at something never seen in Flushing. A flock of wild turkeys was exploring the neighborhood.

I don’t know how smart or dumb turkeys are, but at last view they were heading toward the house of a neighbor who has a yearly pig roast.

I am not a country boy. We had no yard. We had no garden. The last part of my commute home was an elevator to the fifth floor.

Our home in the Mount Carmel section of Hamden is the antithesis of my childhood home apartment! Now, on my way home from work, I see more animals (by far) than people!

A few days ago Helaine called from the front door. She was gazing at something never seen in Apartment 5E. A flock of wild turkeys was exploring the neighborhood.

I don’t know how smart or dumb turkeys are, but at last view they were heading toward the house of a neighbor who has a yearly pig roast. Stay thirsty my friends.

Skype To Turkey

I’ve never really been impressed by Skype before, but it was mainly good tonight.

fm-skype.jpgI was just chatting with my friend Farrell on IM. The “International Man of Mystery,” is currently in Turkey. Our conversation got a little cumbersome for texting, so we decided to shift to Skype video.

I fetched a webcam from my office, brought it downstairs and plugged it into a USB port on the laptop. When I started Skype, it recognized the camera. As soon as I hit the ‘send video’ link, it did. This is reasonably painless.

I’ve never really been impressed by Skype before, but it was mainly good tonight. We briefly disconnected, but linked up again quickly. Mostly, it was as if Farrell was actually in the room.

He has a Mac with a built-in camera. Set-up and operation was even easier for him.

Is Skype used much for business video conferencing? How high do airfares need to go before this program catches fire? There’s a lot more potential here and I’m probably only scratching the surface.

The Ex-Pat Life, or Farrell Meisel – Man Of Mystery

He called me to offer me a job. It was August 1980. It was the same day I met Helaine. We’re still friends. Helaine and me too.

My first contact with Farrell Meisel was on the phone. He called me to offer me a job, in Buffalo, hosting PM Magazine. It was August 1980. It was the same day I met Helaine.

We’re still friends. Helaine and me too.

Farrell’s no longer in US TV. Nowadays he brings his TV expertise to foreign station owners.

He launched the first commercial channel in Russia, for Ted Turner, following the fall of the USSR in 1992, has done consulting in Turkey, ran a huge cluster of radio and TV networks in Singapore, inaugurated Alhurra, the US government funded Arab language TV station for the Mideast, and ran a TV station in Warsaw, Poland. I’m sure I’ve left something out.

At the moment, his consulting hat is on again. He’s in Bucharest, Romania.

Farrell is an ex-pat, the slang term for a foreign national abroad. He seems most comfortable in that role.

To me, the ex-pat life is a throwback to the 50s, with more structure and formality than modern day America. It is a life where there is still customer service and where men are addressed as “sir.”

Obviously, this is all a guess. I don’t even have a valid passport.

Yesterday, Farrell sent me some observations from Romania. I asked him if I could share?

Every city I’ve visited or worked in is unique, special and odd in its own way. It’s not a criticism, but a simple observation. You’d think, with all the traveling, I would have seen it all.

Bucharest has surprised me, too.

There aren’t enough parking spaces and lots in the city, so drivers create their own parking places!

For example: they just park in the middle of the street. That’s right, why park on the side when they can just park their car in the middle of the street or in front of another car, blocking a car?

They also park on side walks. Not just one or two cars, but several. Last night, there were three rows of cars parking on a side street, horizontally around the corner from my apart-hotel. Not in an assigned spot, but on the street.

I found it amazing that my driver, Nelu, could squeeze the company’s VW Passat through the narrow space between cars.

It is simply brilliant. Now I know why Romania is in the EU!

I laughed in amazement and had to explain to to Nelu why I was laughing. He said, “but, sir, this is Bucharest. Since the revolution we have no rules”.

Bucharest has a tram system like many classic European cities. Many of the routes are over unruly green grounds (the grass not cut due to underfunding by the government), but several parts of the routes are on pavement. Since traffic is so bad, and there are only 2 lanes on each side of the main streets, what do drivers do? Simple: They drive on the rails in front of or behind the trams!

This morning was the best. There must have been at least a dozen cars naturally driving on the center medium on one of the main lines in the center in the city . And the trams could not go anywhere.

I must have my camera ready later today or in tomorrow’s rush hour. Simply perfect.

Bucharest, Romania traffic

Bucharest, Romania traffic

Bucharest, Romania traffic

The Antenna I Can’t Part With

The rumor was, the guy who designed the antenna, an MIT grad student whose name I won’t mention, was really working for the CIA. Having the ability to monitor local radio stations from afar… let’s say Albania from Turkey, for instance, was a valuable tool in the Cold War.

altazimuth_loop.jpgI was just up in the attic a few minutes ago. I was looking for something that was actually right next to me!

While there, I caught sight of the ‘thing’ in the photo to the left. As any fool can plainly see, it’s an NRC DIGFET Altazimuth loop&#185.

OK – what’s that? You’re entitled to know.

When I was growing up… in fact, until the early 70s, I was a BCB DXer. That’s a person who listens to distant stations on a plain AM radio.

I heard the easy ones easily. It was those stations between the stations, the really long hauls with weak signals, that interested me.

There was (actually there still is) a club for these dweeby shut-ins desperately trying to identify what they were hearing: the National Radio Club. Its DX News, published by volunteers pounding on manual typewriters, was my source of knowledge… albeit months old by the time it got to me.

The loop antenna made it possible to eliminate local stations, allowing the distant ones to come right in. I know it sounds impossible, but by turning the antenna to just the right angle, vector math nulled the strong signal.

The rumor was, the guy who designed the antenna, an MIT grad student whose name I won’t mention, was really working for the CIA. Having the ability to monitor local radio stations from afar… let’s say Albania from Turkey, for instance, was a valuable tool in the Cold War.

While working in Charlotte, NC at 50,000 watt WBT, I could turn the antenna to hear KFAB in Omaha. They were both on the same frequency, with KFAB purposely sending very little signal in my direction!

I used that antenna to listen to the Radio Dakar in Senegal on 764 kHz and the BBC on 1214 kHz from my dorm room at Emerson. The signals weren’t great and I didn’t really mind.

In Cleveland in the early 70s, I caught a station ID from KORL 650 kHz in Honolulu while WSM in Nashville was off-the-air for weekly transmitter maintenance. I only heard a few seconds, but they included a jingle for “People Power,” their talk format slogan at the time.

Since I wanted to be in radio, having this amazing antenna allowed me to listen to disk jockeys and radio stations not normally available.

The antenna still works. Until Major League Baseball began streaming games on the Internet, we used it to hear the Phillies on 1210 kHz, even though there’s a station here in Hamden on 1220 kHz!

I really have no use for my ugly antenna anymore. I do nearly no AM listening, and haven’t BCB DX’ed in years.

There’s not a chance I’ll throw it away. You might not understand why. I’m the only one who has to.

&#185 – NRC is National Radio Club. DIGFET is short for “dual inverted gate, field effect transistor.” It’s a low noise amplifier to increase the signal strength. Two were used in a push-pull configuration. Altazimuth referred to the antenna’s ability to turn and tilt in order to find the perfect spot to null out a station.