Learning how to pick locks is almost as much an art as it is a science. Locksmiths describe lock picking as the exploitation of a lock’s machinery to open a lock without a key. To understand the process of picking locks, the prospective picker has to be acquainted with how locks and keys function. The …
In the study of cryptography the terms plaintext and ciphertext are used to describe the plain language message or information and the resulting encrypted message or data that results from the use of a cipher or encryption algorithm. The resulting ciphertext is not readable by either a human or computer without the correct cipher to …
A buffer overflow occurs when a computer application attempts to assign data to a data structure past the point that the structure is designed to store information. In the classic case, a buffer is a sequential memory section that is assigned to contain information. The type of information can vary from an array of integers …
Wardriving is the physical act of seeking out a WiFi network with a mobile device or laptop while driving a vehicle. The original term was derived from the movie, War games, that used “war dialing” during the course of the story told in the movies. In the movie, random phone lines connected to a modem …
The word forensic comes from the Latin word forensis, which means “before the forum,” and refers to something “of, pertaining to, or used in a court of law.” In this day and age, it almost always refers to a method of obtaining criminal evidence in order to use it in a court of law. Forensic …
More consumers are purchasing laptops for personal and business use. Unfortunately, the number of stolen laptops has increased with this rise in laptop purchases. Most consumers do not plan for the possibility of being robbed, and lose a significant amount of personal and sensitive data as a result. The police never find many of these …
Simplex locks, now manufactured by Kaba Ilco, are simple push-button combination locks. Simplex locks are used to protect equipment rooms, labs, and FedEx-type boxes. Simplex locks are used whenever having a large number of keys would create logistical problems. Simplex Lock Combinations The Simplex lock would be a normal 5-button combination lock, except for one …
Adware is a close relative of spyware. Adware is software that is installed on your computer to show you advertisements. Adware can slow your PC by using RAM and CPU cycles. Adware can also slow your Internet connection by using bandwidth to retrieve advertisements. In addition, adware can increase the instability of your system because …
A botnet or robot network is a group of computers running a computer application that only the owner or software source controls and manipulates. The botnet may refer to a legitimate network of several computers that share program processing amongst them. Usually though, when people talk about botnets, they are talking about a group of …
PKZip utilizes a proprietary stream cipher that is vulnerable to a known plaintext attack, as Eli Biham and Paul C. Kocher describes in A Known Plaintext Attack on the PKZIP Stream Cipher. In ZIP Attacks with Reduced Known-Plaintext, Michael Stay describes an improved known plaintext attack that works against files that non-PKZip zip programs such …