Email Security what an Oxymoron

I have always realized that any and all information you send over email should be sent as though it is public information.  I used to work for a rather large company (that features main frame computers) where they were very stringent on the idea that any email sent that was private, or company confidential, needed to be encrypted.  We had an in-house standard, which was a mutation of the very popular PGP encryption.  This allows you to have two special keys; a public key and a private key.  You would encrypt your email with the private key, send it to those who needed to read it, and they, having your public key from a company public key vault, would be able to decrypt and read it.  Very effective.

So why do I write about email security and encryption, well about a year ago, the email account that I have used for over ten years was hacked.  I started getting weird emails from myself pushing advertising.  But it gets worse!  Everyone in my contacts list received the same type of email, from me, pushing this same advertising.  The entity that broke into my email used it to send junk mail to all of my contacts.  Needless to say, I sent emails to all my contacts letting them know what had happened and to ignore the "innocently looking" emails from me with the ominous link to click.  Lucky for me, the solution to this problem was to change my email account password.  That fixed the problem, preventing whomever it was from accessing my account. 

Earlier this week I received the following email:

Dear Valued Customer,

Today we were informed by xxxxx, our national email service provider, that your email address was exposed due to unauthorized access of their system. xxxxx uses xxxxx to send marketing and service emails on our behalf.

We deeply regret this has taken place and any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information. We were advised by xxxxx that the information that was obtained was limited to email addresses only.

Please note, it is possible you may receive spam email messages as a result. We want to urge you to be cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown third parties. We ask that you remain alert to any unusual or suspicious emails.

As always, if you have any questions, or need any additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us at customersecurity@xxxx.com.

Sincerely,

xxxxxxxx

This email was from a client who had my email address stored in their system.  I also received similar emails from Hilton and Marriott.  Since I do consulting work, I have quite a few clients and I typically stay at either Hilton or Marriott hotels when possible (rewards programs).  After receiving these emails, I realized that an email service provider had been hacked.  I did a bit of investigation and discovered that the company that was breached is an outsourcing company that has over 2500 companies as clients.  The notification emails claim that only customer email addresses were compromised.  Hopefully that is the case, because getting any deeper would compromise credit card information and date of birth information.  Here are links to two more articles about the breach: one and two.

If you, like me, have been affected by this breech, it is important to never open any email that you don't recognize the senders address.  If you do open the email, do not click on any attachments or links contained within the email.  For ideas of what to do in this type of situation, look here.

Lastly, I need to give a promotion for a company that seems to really get it in the security arena.  If you want to transfer something say, from New York to San Francisco, and you want it to get there with 99.999% reliability and if for some reason it doesn't get there have the transfer insured for complete replacement then InterComputer has the technology for you.  A lot of other companies rely on the security of SSL, InterComputer takes security to a whole new level, plus insures each and every transfer.

Till next time,
Bill

So You Want To Build Your Own Nuclear Reactor

After last night's impressive win by Uconn over Butler, I am back in the saddle at work this morning, having fallen back to earth and ready to roll.  In my (and the world's) continuing interest in the problems at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, I was checking my e-mail when I noticed an innocently looking piece labeled, "Building nuclear reactor at home - from scratch."

I don't want to go into the details of how to do this, since the author of the blog, Svarychevski Michail Aleksandrovich does a very good job.  Read it here.  I will borrow a picture of the finished project, below.

On thing that stands out in the project is that it uses a tritium capsule, at the core, which can be bought at a web distributor.  According to the author of the blog, formally radioactive items are prohibited to be sent by mail, but apparently this company and others do it anyway.

Here are come comments about the Tritium vial that you can buy on the web:
This vial contains a minute quantity of the nuclear isotope Tritium (an isotope of hydrogen with two extra neutrons), whose minute amounts of beta radiation cause the internal phosphor lining to glow. Tritium, in such a small amount as this, is entirely safe. You could eat it and suffer no noticeable damage whatsoever. (Maybe you'll lose a few stomach cells? You shouldn't be on the internet if you eat the radioactive objects you buy off it anyways)

Yes, it emits beta radiation, which is so weak a piece of paper can stop it. Yes, Tritium is used as a fission booster in multi-stage thermonuclear weapons to multiply weapon strength several-fold. Before you start posting topics on how you could make a nuclear weapon out of this, you should consider the fact that Tritium only exapands the capability of an existing weapon... you need a fully functional plutonium or uranium nuclear weapon BEFORE you start using tritium. Smoke detectors have more dangerous isotopes in them (Americium 241, if you have an ionizing smoke detector) than this vial does.

TO SUM UP:
1) This is indeed radioactive. It cannot harm you, customs will not detect it, nothing will detect it because the radiation is so weak it cannot even penetrate the vial it resides in. A slate pooltable will irradiate you more than this product will.
2) Tritium has a half life of about 10 years. Your vial will be half as bright in 10 years.
3) You cannot make a nuclear weapon, and you cannot harm anyone else with this product unless you stab them in the eye with it.
4) Don't expect this to be too bright, it's the cheapest and smallest of 3 sizes of vials DX sells. I have the medium sized one and it is quite impressive, although you will not see it glowing anywhere other than in darkness.

Funny thing about radioactivity and products that are even minutely related to it.  Do you remember glow in the dark watch dials?

These watch dials work the same way the little vial does, discussed above.  When was the last time you saw one of these in a store?  How about somebody wearing one?

Lastly, here is a link to an excellent photo-essay of a visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  Chernobyl was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in the world's history.  You can find out more about Chernobyl here.  The photo-essay takes you to Chernobyl and the evacuated town of Prypiat.  See it here.

Till next time,
Bill

Brain Teasers, My Fiends

A lot of controversy has made the Internet with large hi-tech companies such as Microsoft and Google which are said to use brain teasers and logic puzzles as a part of their interview process.  I have to believe that this is true since several of the people that post these puzzles claim to be ex-Microsoft or such employees.  So get cozy by the fire, pull up your most comfortable chair and lets have some fun with a few of these puzzles!

If a bear walks one mile south, turns left and walks one mile to the east and then turns left again and walks one mile north and arrives at its original position, what is the color of the bear?

What the heck?!?  Color of the bear?  But if you look further into the deep recesses of the question, you might realize that the color of the bear is trivial.  There are possible solutions that could be interesting, however.  In addition to the north pole, there is also the south pole with additional climate circles close by.  Maybe now the bear could be white, brown, who knows.  Just make sure your can substantiate your story.

So your child is celebrating their birthday and you go to get the cake.  Mysteriously there is one rectangular piece missing.  You want to cut the cake in exactly half to freeze half, but use the other half for the party.  What do you do?  If you are like me, you just grab a knife and make a guess, but that is not the correct answer!

What you do is join the centers of the original and the removed rectangle.  Then cut in a straight line from side to side.  The cake will be perfectly divided!

Your best friend brings you three baskets of fruit.  (The baskets are covered up.) One of them has apples in it, one has oranges, and one is a mixture of apples and oranges.  You notice that each basket is labeled, however your friend tells you that as joke the labels lie.  (So the basket labeled ORANGES most certainly doesn't have oranges in it, or could be a mixture.)  He will allow you to uncover one basket to see what fruit is in it.  The task is to pick only one fruit from it and then correctly label all three baskets.  If you do so, your friend will give them to you.  What do you do?

Since there are only two combination's of distributions in which all the baskets have wrong labels.  By picking a fruit from the one labeled  MIXTURE, it is possible to tell what the other two baskets have.  So, if the fruit in the MIXTURE is an orange, then we know that basket has oranges in it.  Apples will be in the basket marked ORANGES and the one marked APPLES will have the fruit mixture.

You have 8 balls.  They all look alike, maybe they are all white pool cue balls?  One of them is defective and weighs more than the others.  You have a balance to measure the balls against each other.  In two weighings how do you find the defective one?

Choose 6 balls and weigh 3 against 3.  If they weigh the same, you have another weighing for the remaining 2 balls and you can find the heavier one.  If they don't weigh the same, from the group of 3 which was heavier, choose any 2 balls and weigh them.  If they weigh the same, the remaining ball is the heavier one, otherwise you just found the heavier one by weighing the 2 chosen balls.

You have just invited your cousin Cheko to come and work for you.  You work it out with him to work for seven days, agreeing to pay him a gold bar each day.  The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces.  You must give Cheko a piece of gold at the end of every day.  If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay Cheko?

Here is how you do it and keep your end of the deal too!  Break 1 piece and 2 pieces, leaving 4 remaining pieces.  Do the following each day:
Day 1 - pay 1 piece (1 total piece)
Day 2 - take back 1 piece an give 2 piece(2 total pieces)
Day 3 - pay 1 piece (3 total pieces)
Day 4 - take back 1 and 2 pieces and give 4 piece (total 4 pieces)
Day 5 - give back 1 piece (total 5 pieces)
Day 6 - take back 1 piece and give 2 piece (total 6 pieces)
Day 7 - give back 1 piece (total 7 pieces)

One train leaves Los Angeles at 15mph heading for New York.  Another train leaves from New York at 20mph heading for Los Angels on the same track.  If a bird, flying at 25mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?

The answer isn't as bad as it may seem.  You need to setup an algebraic equation and make an assumption of how many miles it is from New York to Los Angeles, lets say 2800 miles.

Train 1 = 15*T
Train 2 = 20*T
Combine terms:
15*T + 20*T = 2800 miles
35T = 2800 miles
T = 80 hours
So now you know how long it will take before the trains collide, but what about the bird?
Quite simply put, the bird needs to fly 80 hours, and at 25mph,
80 * 25 = 2000 miles

Here is a good on that you can do with all the leftover medical drugs in your medicine cabinet.  You have 5 jars of pills.  Each pill weighs 10 grams, except for contaminated pills contained in one jar, where each pill weighs 9 grams.  Given a scale, how could you tell which jar had the contaminated pills in just one measurement?

Answer:

1. Mark the jars with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
2. Take 1 pill from jar 1, take 2 pills from jar 2, take 3 pills from jar 3, take 4 pills from jar 4 and take 5 pills from jar 5.
3. Put all of them on the scale at once and take the measurement.
4. Now, subtract the measurement from 150 - ( 1*10 + 2*10 + 3*10 + 4*10 + 5*10)
5. The result will give you the jar number which has contaminated pill. 

If you have an infinite supply of water and a 5 quart and 3 quart pail, how would you measure exactly 4 quarts?

This is how you could do it:
1. Fill the 5 quart pail.
2. Fill the 3 quart pail from the five quart pail leaving 2 quarts in the 5 quart pail.
3. Empty the 3 quart pail and fill with 2 quarts water water in 5 quart pail.
4. Fill 5 quart pail.
5. Pour water from the 5 quart pail until you fill the 3 quart pail, leaving 4 quarts water in the 5 quart pail.

Last one for today.  Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night.  Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for 17 minutes.  The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it's only strong enough to support 2 people at any given time.  Each of the campers walks at a different speed.  One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross.  How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?

Here is the answer:
A = 1 minute
B = 2 minutes
C = 5 minutes
D = 10 minutes

A (with flash light) and B cross first = 2 minutes
A (with flash light) comes back = 3 minutes
C (with flash light) and D cross = 13 minutes
B (with flash light) comes back = 15 minutes
A and B (with flash light) cross = 17 minutes

Had enough fun for one day?
Till next time,
Bill

The Dangers of Audio Visual Work

I read the newspaper with trepidation when I saw the headline that the Provo Fire Department had released their report as to why the Provo Tabernacle burned down.  As I read the article, I felt bad for the hired Audio/Video company that had caused the fire.  The evening of the fire they were rehearsing Lex deAzevedo's Gloria. 

According to the report, the lighting technician had removed two ceiling 300 watt light fixtures and placed them in the attic.  (He was suspending a truss to hold temporary stage lights.) He was supposed to remove the lights from the fixtures for safety reasons.  However, according to the report, the technician placed one of the fixtures on a wooden speaker box in the attic.  At 7pm, that light came on with the rest of the ceiling lights when the rehearsal began.  The light reached 600 degrees in about 30 minutes, the speaker box was on fire by 9:30pm.  By 11:00pm the practice was over.  By 2:30am the building was burning and not able to be saved.

As I was reading the report in the newspaper, I thought back to a mistake that was made when I was working a summer in Audio/Video for Brigham Young University.  I was asked to provide sound reinforcement for a rendition of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

This play was being performed as the end of a wildly successful BYU Youth Theater Summer Workshop.  I was asked to run the audio after another engineer has already setup the speakers, mixer, microphone and cables.  This production took place on the outdoor patio of the beautiful Harris Fine Arts Center.

In the photo, the patio is right through the latticework on the right side of the photo.  The stage was setup close to the building, which was actually under the extended roof.  The chairs for the audience were setup in a semi-circle around the stage.  The speaker for the sound reinforcement was hanging over the lip of the roof, being aimed toward the audience.  The play was presented to sold out audiences (mostly parents) for Friday and Saturday evening performances.  I was a sight to see.  Since my position was prominent with relation to the stage, the director of the play had requested me to dress up in Egyptian attire.

There I sat, on a high stool, working the mixing console for lights and audio dressed as King Tut himself!  So the plays went on each evening without incident.  By the way, the youth actors were amazing!

The Saturday night performance ended roughly at 11pm.  When parents and kids had finished hugs, congratulations, party, etc., it was well past midnight.  As I was cleaning up the audio and lighting equipment, it dawned on me that I didn't know if I would be able to remove the suspended speaker by myself.  After I had cleaned up everything else, I went to the roof, located the rope that was holding the speaker in place and, without untying it, tried to pull the speaker up over the lip of the roof.  To no avail.  The weight of the speaker and the angle of the rope was too much for me alone.

So I called up a good friend, because by this time all the stage had been disassembled and taken away and the parents and kids had all left.  It was just me!  My friend came down and we both went out on the roof and pulled the rope.  The speaker inched up.  Right before it was going to come over the lip of the roof there was a loud SNAP!.  My friend and I fell backwards on the roof as the rope broke, sending the speaker plummeting to the cement below.   Man! what a crash!  I am so glad (lucky) that we were doing this at 2AM in the morning.  We immediately ran down the stairs and out onto the patio.  The speaker had cracked its case, pulverized the large woofer, the round frame being split in several places.  Needless to say, the speaker was destroyed.  After loading what was left of the speaker into the van, we went back on the roof the untie and remove the rope.

As I sit here and think about what could have happened during one of the performances (the audience was right under this hanging speaker), I shudder.  I was so blessed that that speaker did not fall during a performance.  Also very blessed that no one was walking across the patio when the speaker fell.

While I am reminiscing about my time as an Audio/Video engineer, I will leave you with a quick, humorous snippet.   I was doing the sound and lighting for a play in the BYU experimental theater in the same building.  This is a theater in the round setup with the sound and lighting controls up in the ceiling.  We had a professional actor (actor guild stuff) playing the main character in the play.  Part of the play had this lady laying in a bed with a phone close to her.  The play called for her to take some phone calls.  I had a phone on the top of my mixing console.  At different times during the show, I would lift the handset and call the phone on the stage.  On the first night of the show, I bumped the phone off the mixing console.  The phone fell with a crash to the suspended floor, but worse, the phone on the stage rang!  The professional actor didn't miss a beat, picking up her phone, having an impromptu conversation, and hanging the phone back up.  Needless to say, after the show was over, I apologized.  I fixed my problem for the remaining shows by duct taping the phone to the mixing console.

Till next time,
Bill

Today is April Fools Day!

I was going to blog about gardening today, but since it is April Fools Day, I thought I would cover some of the jokes, pranks, and other items that I have seen and read about today.  First of all, I get into work this morning, just settled in to some serious programming and the fire alarm goes off.

Thinking it is a prank, I continue working until our wonderful building administrator comes by, in her equally beautiful fluorescent fire drill suit and rather energetically demands that we leave the building.

So we leave.  However, today is a most beautiful day, so I had no problem going outside.  We ended up staying outside for at least half and hour while the building inspectors did their thing.

When we were finally allowed back into the building, I sat and wondered if this was a real fire scare or just somebodies silly April Fools joke...

Google is always good with their April Fools jokes.  One of my favorites was aimed at people who like to print out their e-mails to read.  They could print their e-mail to a service which would send it back to you via US Postal service with minimal advertising included to cover postage.  This year they did a take off of the Microsoft Kinect where they created Gmail Motion.  The advertised it when you logged in to your Gmail account as a Beta product.  Basically it allowed you to use the camera in your laptop or computer to track different body motions to interact with your Gmail account.  When you selected the button to Try Gmail Motion, you would get an April Fools pop-up window.

Another good April Fools joke occurred when I was working for a fledgling, small, software company.  My co-worker came and told me that there was a fire and to look out this window to see it.  When I did, this very scary monster appeared in the window, which caused me to jump a mile.  The sad part about this was that they were videotaping my reaction and posted it on a company server.  (They did this to several employees.)

Yesterday my oldest son modified my daughters mobile phone to make it display Justin Bieber whenever he texted her.  He plans to send her a few texts today.  Now if there were only some way to have Justin Bieber's image come up with the text!

But I think the worst April Fools joke that I actively participated in was physically moving a fellow workers office.  We were working in a sub-set of the building that had two doors that entered a smaller common area that had six offices in it, three on each side and a conference table in the middle.  One office was vacant due to an Engineer leaving the company.  The night before April Fools several of us moved a colleagues office into that vacant office.  We setup everything we moved a closely as possible to how it was in the original office (this Engineer had a LOT of stuff in his office).  When he came in April Fools morning and unlocked the door, his face just dropped.  He didn't say anything.  We all started laughing.  It was Great!

Have a exillerating April Fools day and make someone smile!
Till next time,
Bill

Broadcasting and Poverty

If you have read any of my other posts, you would know that I really, really, really love electronics, audio, and radio/television.  In addition to my Electrical Engineering degree, I also have a minor in Broadcast Communications.  This is not a mistake.  I thoroughly enjoyed being an engineer for my High School radio station.  I also totally ate up working with Brigham Young University's KBYU television while in college.

Right out of college I investigated working with KBYU, but ended up taking a job with General Dynamics in Southern California.  This would be the first of three attempts to work in the broadcasting industry and at KBYU.  Reason for not pursuing this time, amount offered.  I really had a hard time believing that KBYU would offer me so little -- not enough to survive, meet my living expenses.  Strike one!

I had a great four years working for General Dynamics on their F-16 projects.  However, I had an opportunity to move back to my old stomping grounds and work for, then, networking leader Novell.  (My experiences at General Dynamics will have to be savored in a future post.)

During my tenure at Novell, I again investigated working in the broadcasting industry, again with BYU Broadcasting.  This time a position to engineer and program BYU Radio.  The powers that be were very interested in me, but at what turned out to be the final interview, they asked me what I needed to make, and I gave them a very low-ball figure.  The conference room of six men all laughed at me, indicating that only their upper management made that kind of money.  Strike two!

After my time at Novell, I worked for a few other high tech companies doing mostly computer programming/software engineering.  I had read that BYU Broadcasting (what they call the conglomerate of KBYU TV, BYU TV, BYU TV International, BYU Radio, and Classical 89 FM) was looking for a CTO.  I made some inquiries and ended up chatting with the General Manager of BYU Broadcasting, the head honcho himself.

Not to belabor the point, but I ended up also talking to the gentleman who ended up getting the position.  The gist of the matter was that you need to start out at KBYU in a very low paying job and basically work your way up, or you need significant broadcasting experience (i.e. start out with a low paying job and work your way up).  Now the CTO position pays a respectable salary, almost as much as an average programming position.  I have to assume that the General Manager also makes decent money, but you are talking about the highest, executive level, people making about as much as a typical software developer.  (The executives at a typical software house make from the several hundred-thousands to millions a year!)  The average salary for the workers at BYU Broadcasting is much, much lower.

So strike three as you would say it!   I went back to my programming.  However, I discovered that BYU Broadcasting was re-vamping all of their websites, I checked out to see if they were hiring and discovered that they were.  I just happened to be in-between jobs at the time.  The contract paid roughly half of what a comparable contract would pay, but oh well.    I had some fun doing websites and programming an application for the iPhone.  Would I call this a strike four, not necessarily.

So now BYU Broadcasting has this awesomely great new broadcasting facility, currently the best in the world!  Also with a fabulous Hi-def TV production truck to go with it.

Having toured KSL Channel 5's facilities in Salt Lake City, and having been acquainted with BYU Broadcasting's facilities in the Fine Arts Center on BYU Campus and out in the old Billings building (tomb) in south Provo, this building is simply amazing and 25 years over due.

Having been familiar with the coming to be of the Fine Arts Museum on BYU campus, I was acquainted with the way that BYU does fund raising for these types of projects.  The building will not be built until all the money has been raised.  Fund raising for the museum took roughly five years.  I suspect the same was true for the BYU Broadcasting building.  It is nice to know that there are good people (philanthropists) in the world today that will help in these endeavors.

So I guess that a broadcasting career is not in the cards for me in this lifetime.  I suspect that a person cannot expect to have everything that they want in this earth life.

Till next time,
Bill

Close to God

This is a very short post about a wonderful couple named Jeff and Kelly Johnson, but not so much about them as their daughter Bridgette Claralynn.  Bridgette was born with a disease where her intestines do not absorb the nutrients that she needs to survive.  (I bet I am slaughtering this description.)  She has had multiple surgeries, numerous doctor visits and Mom and Dad have practically become practicing doctors.  Jeff and Kelly used to live close to me, but about six months ago moved into a bigger home in the same city.  I was saddened when they left my neck of the woods, but realize that they will be a shining light to their new neighbors.  Jeff and Kelly author a blog about all of Brigette's challenges here.  This is a real service to other children who have been diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s disease.  Below is a picture of Bridgette that I "borrowed" from their blog.

I can guarantee that if the world was filled with more Jeff and Kelly Johnson's, it would be a much better place!

Till next time,
Bill