Working as a system administrator requires a lot of memory power with all the servers that I am managing at work. Not to say the huge amount of passwords that go with it. And I must admit that my memory is not to be trusted (hey, even Einstein once suggested not to trust your memory!) with these credentials that if compromised or forgotten, will mean death to my career.

Anyway, my boss from our California office gave me a little piece of technology that I carry around with me and though I have read it a few times before, I never got the chance to own one. I am talking about the IronKey, a military-grade secure flash drive that is designed to protect the stored files.

This drive claims to be the most secure drive in the world. It’s design lies in its hardware-based AES encryption that resists any attempt to bypass the password, and provides a tight security for the drive. It also protects your encrypted data from brute-force attacks by initiating a self-destruct process if the password is typed in incorrectly after the tenth try. Any attempts also to tamper the casing will trigger the drive to self-destruct the data, making sure that no one will get the data even if physically tampered.

The bundled software also provides the security needed to access the files by asking for a password to unlock the USB drive. Locked drive means no read-write access whatsoever. Secure backup is also provided so encrypted backups of the contents can be created without compromising the data.

All in all, IronKey is perfect for confidential files and should be the standard of all USB flash drives.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Here is an excerpt from Linus Torvalds that should keep everyone involved in Open Source communities moving. Once again, a lovely quote from Linus himself:

From: Linus Torvalds linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [stable] Linux 2.6.25.10
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel
Date: 2008-07-15 16:13:03 GMT (4 days, 17 hours and 27 minutes ago)

Linus

Thanks to http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/706950

Popularity: 8% [?]

Technology has indeed evolved into something bigger and more sophisticated. One example is the newest airport scanner installed in 10 biggest airports in United States, which can see everything underneath the clothing. This newest piece of technology scanning machine can see right through the clothes, intimate body parts and everything.

According to USAToday.com, these body scanning machines can detect even the sweat underneath clothes. Unlike ordinary body scanning machines, this one can see plastic and creamic materials that can be used as weapons but undetectable by ordinary scanners.
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Popularity: 6% [?]

If ever you need to write a script that needs you to scan the details of an SSL Certificate of a particular website, you can use this nifty one-liner to get the information that you need.

Security Certificates identify your site as a legit site and offers more secure connection by encrypting the data as it passes along the Internet highway. If the data is encrypted, chances are, the data being transmitted is less likely to be sniffed by malicious hackers.

If you manage hundreds of websites, each with its own SSL certificate that expires on different dates, you will need to create a script that will scan the certificates and capture the expiration dates and there is a nifty Linux command that can do this. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10% [?]

Being a systems administrator, it my job to deter mischievous users who plans to cyber-attack any of our servers and boy, it is easier said than done. Hackers are always a step ahead and a vulnerability will attract malicious hackers into your innocent server like ants to sugar. And so I purchased a book that will help me understand a little more about hacking.
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Popularity: 4% [?]