Put a Computer In It, Part…A Jillion

Got an email just now, from the marketing department of a company that makes some server software that I occasionally use. The notification of new email popped up on my screen, with a snippet of the body saying that cyberattacks are increasing in sophistication and volume, so I should…presumably, the rest of the email wasContinue reading “Put a Computer In It, Part…A Jillion”

Put a Bird on It

I have been nerdsniped by the dratted Russian hackers. Those darned “hackers”, causing trouble and getting people all excited about security. So now I’ve got to deal with thoughts and suggestions in my peripheral awareness, and remind myself that I’ve already done the work of threat modeling and risk analysis for my data and forContinue reading “Put a Bird on It”

Stupid Email Tricks

I’ve been working on adding play-by-email support to my turn-based game server. The first problem I hit was that the PGP signatures on the server’s messages were invalid when I checked them on my email client. This led to lots of debugging and unit tests in my crypto utility. That’s not really wasted effort, butContinue reading “Stupid Email Tricks”

Once Again, Most Documentation Sucks

I have been having fun, recently, programming a couple of services that run in Google’s App Engine. One thing they do is maintain some data in that cloud’s version of a database, so one of the important aspects of the services is controlling just who, exactly, is allowed to see or modify the data. I’veContinue reading “Once Again, Most Documentation Sucks”

Why Crypto?

I know a few people who are concerned about their online privacy, but who don’t have a good handle on what to do about it. There is always some story about some company leaking private data, or some government spying on people, or some “hackers” stealing information for nefarious purposes. So people are worried, butContinue reading “Why Crypto?”