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Bletchley Park is not dead yet and I am very happy to hear it. Called

“the crucible of the UK computer industry”

Bletchley Park is where some of the most brilliant code breaking was done during WWII.  Without funding the site may ultimately crumble and be closed and that would be a shame.

If you don’t know the story of what went on here the novel ‘Enigma‘ by Robert Harris does, I think, a convincing job of recreating the atmosphere of the place.  The film version was so-so.  If you don’t read novels at least the film will give you a taste of the place.  To learn more visit bletchleypark.org.uk or, better yet, visit in person.

McAfee’s SiteAdvisor™ website states:

“We test the Web to help keep you safe from spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.”

McAfee grades sites with either a big green check or a big red X. So to test a suspect site called SuspectSite.com fire up your favourite search engine and search for the terms “site:siteadvisor.com suspectsite.com” or just visit http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/suspectsite.com.

Suppose for a moment that you need to download some warez for testing purposes and you are concerned about malware. You could use SiteAdvisor to weed out the known infested sites thus reducing the risk of getting a rootkit during your test. As always, “don’t try this at home”. But if you do, then at least use virtualization and/or completely flatten your OS after your test.

Thanks SiteAdvisor!

In the mid 1990s I read Michael Crichton’s futuristic novel ‘Rising Sun’. In it the main character has the following discussion on video manipulation :

“But if they’re exact copies–”

“It’s nothing to do with that. All forms of photographic evidence including video, are no longer admissible in court.”

“I haven’t heard that,” I said.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Sanders said. “The case law isn’t entirely clear. But it’s coming. All photographs are suspect these days. Because now, with digital systems, they can be changed perfectly. Perfectly.”

After reading the novel I publicly predicted that one day photo realistic movies would be made without using human actors. A few months later I became aware of William Gibson’s novel ‘Idoru’ which features just such an artificial celebrity. Then, when working on my 2004 term paper “Sousveillance and Surveillance: Eroding Privacy”, I saw that others (Kimberly Amaral quoting Gregory Stone) had been saying the same things outside of fiction:

I don’t think you can use photography or video anymore as evidence. It’s too easy to manipulate…I don’t see how it’s going to stand up anymore

How close is all this stuff? Can video or photographic evidence still be trusted? Have a look at ‘Emily’ by Image Metrics (also discussed here) and see Microsoft’s latest research (also discussed here)

I have been interested in data forensics for as long as I can remember … and forensics naturally leads to Anti-forensics. I think Anti-forensics applies to video just as it does to hard drive contents.

Google released a Beta version of their new open source browser called Chrome. For a while today the BBC even linked to the story from their main news page. I haven’t tried Chrome yet but it will be very interesting to see what they have developed.  A couple of points strike me so far:

1. Will you be able to opt-out of automated updates to the software? (Part 12.1 of the Terms of Service says “The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google.”)
2. From the video on the BBC page Chrome’s main window looks a lot like Opera’s speed dial feature

As always, I will be very interested in the security and privacy implications of the new application.

The National Legal and Policy Center posted a PDF document showing just what a good one-stop-shop Google search is for finding information on someone. In this case the creepy collection of information includes photos of, and location information for, the home of a Google executive.

There is a slight problem though. The redaction was botched and the address can easily be read by simply removing the black boxes.

Was this a convenient oversight to better make the point?