Category Archives: Tech

Technology in general

*THE* classic Unix horror story

Posted on by

*THE* classic Unix horror story | WSU Linux Users Group

If you’ve never used Unix or Linux, you may want to pass on this one. For the rest of you, this is a reminder of why the line “Think before you type” is presented to first time users of the sudo command. At some point along the way, just about everyone on a *nix system has a minor encounter with rm’s nefarious -rf flags. Thankfully mine was nowhere near this severe.

I happened upon a similar article on reddit after the one above that details how to recover files on a Linux EXT3 partition.  Like the developer mentioned in the article, this is something up until now I believed to be nearly impossible.

So, the moral of the story:  NEVER, EVER use “rm -rf,” unless you have absolutely no alternative.  (and in that case, think long and hard before hitting enter)  “Think before you type;” those are words to live by.

Research reveals HDD encryption not strong enough

Posted on by

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » New Research Result: Cold Boot Attacks on Disk EncryptionEd Felten and other researchers have discovered an interesting way to defeat a number of current hard disk encryption methods. What it boils down to is that the keys required to decrypt the data are stored in main memory where Felten and team have focused their attack. Apparently if you’re fast enough, or use a refrigerant, you can recover data stored in memory by removing power from the system and rebooting with a specially crafted OS.