INTEROP Las Vegas 2008, April 27th - May 2nd

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 04/10/08 at 09:04:40 am

Interop Las Vegas 2008

Times like these I wish I lived closer to the southwest so I could attend all of these big events. Interop Las Vegas is one of the largest business IT conferences in the country with over 250 sessions that cover everything from IT security to unified communications. The exhibition hall alone includes over 500 vendors including their major sponsors Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Dell, Intel, Novell, and Google among countless others. Also, this year there will be keynote speakers from all of the major players of the industry including Microsoft, Citrix, McAfee, Motorola and Cisco Systems.

If you find yourself in Vegas at the end of this month right now you can pick up a free expo pass on the Interop website, and by using priority code CMCLNL01 you can save 20% on a Conference Pass.

OpenDNS: A true gem in DNS speed, reliability, and security.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/23/08 at 02:02:44 pm

OpenDNS isn’t a new service, in fact the startup launched back in 2006 and it’s had plenty of coverage from all of the big tech sites including Slashdot, TechCrunch, and Wired News but I guess I hadn’t paid attention to what the service was all about until just recently. OpenDNS is a free service that gives users an alternative to their ISP’s DNS services by offering servers with an unusually large cache and an aggregated list of sites deemed guilty of phishing and adware that it in the end can make our web surfing faster and safer. The service is as simple to set up as changing the DNS settings in your router or PC to the one’s OpenDNS provides.

If you register a (free) account with OpenDNS you get a ton of other options such as customizable content filtering, site blocking, statistics, shortcuts, and typo correction. Now my nightmares of accidentally opening up my collection of online gambling bookmarks in front of my boss can be a thing of the past!

The bulletproof uptime and speed of OpenDNS is what really caught my attention. Up until now I’ve been using DNS IP’s that belong to Level3, a leading telecommunications provider. While Level3’s servers are reliable, they aren’t technically “open” for public use and you don’t get the control and features that an actual DNS service like OpenDNS has to offer. The speed of OpenDNS comes from the extreme lookup caching they have set up. You would think that DNS caching would be a nightmare for an admin/developer type like myself but OpenDNS has thought of this with its ability to easily manually refresh a cache of any particular domain through the online interface.

The bottom line is OpenDNS offers features you wouldn’t imagine possible from a typical DNS server and for people like myself who have reliability problems with their defaulto ISP provided servers OpenDNS acts as a perfect alterative.

Side Note – Paul Stamatiou recently wrote a short entry about the community and some of the new features behind OpenDNS, check it out.

Word Of The Day: Compromised.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/04/07 at 11:12:00 pm

Have you ever felt that your personal security has been compromised before it actually was? Before anything actually happend? I’ve been dealing with that feeling this week all because of a stupid move on my part. I registered with a seemingly shady website with a semi-high security password that has been used for bank accounts, credit cards, email, server logins etc. and after I made the mistake I spent days changing passwords and credentials for EVERYTHING just to cover myself. My personal security felt compromised and even though nothing bad actually happened I still had to take action.

I’m the type of person that uses just a select number of complicated logins for most everything. It’s risky… but convenient. I’ve tried using algorithms and things in the past but they never worked out well, especially for websites that require more secure keys then others – for example, for some reason my bank’s rewards program website requires a more secure password then the account login itself on the main bank website. Retarded.

So what about you, the reader? Can you think of a time where you personal security whether it be passwords or something more tangible such as your home or financial items like your credit cards or something felt ‘tainted’ and at risk? It’s a scary feeling isn’t it?

GlennWolsey.com – Hacked.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 11/15/07 at 10:11:22 pm

I visit Glenn Wolsey’s website every once in a while, he’s a popular 15 year old Blogger from New Zealand that does product reviews, specifically Apple stuff. Anyway, I stumbled upon this tonight –

I thought it was funny.

Paranoidly Paranoid

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/21/07 at 04:02:37 pm

I believe that everyone has their own security standards. Whether it’s personal security, software security, home security… everyone has an idea of what measures should be taken. However today I’m referring to password security. Namely, passwords that are used around the Internet. What’s good enough? How many passwords should I maintain? How advanced should the password be?

My little project for the day was going through each website or service that I use and completely change the password(s). I do this about once a year, over 2006 I used a light algorithm where I would take the first word of the website or company’s name and follow it with a word and a single number. The problem is that not all of the passwords were changed over to this standard, and some had to be the first two words, or part of the first word and it was hard to remember them all.

Today I decided to go back to a small set of passwords to access most everything. I believe the risk of someone wanting to break into everything that is Mark Langenfeld is pretty low, and the passwords I have decided to use are secure enough to where it couldn’t be guessed, but for my own reasons I can easily memorize. However even if they’re secure, using just a couple keys like this seems risky, or is it?

I’m finding that many websites these days require the user to have a fairly secure login. In fact, it’s hard to not have a good password. My financial institution’s rewards program requires a password of a certain length, with a minimum of two numbers, two letters, and one uppercase letter. That’s not even the bank website, it’s just the rewards program.

I came across a great article on Wired.com today that takes a group of kids on Myspace for an example, and what they were using for a login. I could care less about Myspace but the results were surprising, I highly recommend reading it.

Where’s Marko ?

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 10/16/05 at 08:10:36 pm

I didn’t want to spend time retyping a post so I’m going to paste the following from a thread on Dream.In.Code.

It’s likely no one has noticed my absence yet because I’ve only been gone for a day, but you may see it more in the coming week, here’s why…

Some of you may know I have been “Borrowing” my neighbor’s (car dealership next to my house) open access point as my primary means of internet. Well.. I come home from work yesterday to find that my neighbor has decided to get some smarts and encrypt his network with not just basic WEP encryption, but 128 bit WPA encryption. One of my special areas of knowledge is network security and I knew right away I was screwed. This kind of security on a low traffic network is nearly impossible to crack.

Some people have asked why I would depend on something like this; why not get a high speed connection of my own?

I live in a small town in northern MN; there is no conventional high speed solutions out here. In fact the only internet options I have are DirecWay satellite, and a local company called Genesis Wireless.

Genesis is a WIFI hybrid based ISP, they put up non line of sight towers around the town and using their modified WIFI hardware you’re able to connect to their network. The problem with Genesis Wireless is that their prices are horrible and their uptime is even worse. I know this first hand because the neighbor has them. So choice number 1 is Genesis, they want 149.00 down for install and 50 a month for 200 kbps down 56 kbps up speeds.

DirecWay is faster but more money. If you get a good install they can be somewhat reliable.. I think. Their speeds are more like 500kbps down and 56 kbps up, they have a weird Fair Access Policy so if you try to download more then 200 MB at a time, they will cut you off for a few hours. Also with the satellite latency you can’t play online games. DirecWay wants $ 100.00 down and $ 100.00 a month and you get tied into a 2 year contract.. So that’s option number 2..

Open Kensington laptop lock with toilet paper roll, tape, and pen (VIDEO)

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/08/05 at 08:05:55 pm

In this video a guy demonstrates just how easy it is to open a Kensington laptop lock using a roll of toilet paper, tape, and a pen. It’s really scary to know that a roll of toilet paper is all that it takes for someone to take your laptop…

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