:: Intrepid Spaniel ::

This is a fun event. I attended last year and learned a lot and had a good time. Highly recommended. Here’s the announcement.
–

South East Idaho’s 2nd Annual hands on computer security event will be here April 12 at the Newberry building. Registration begins at 14:00 and the games start at 16:00 and run to roughly 1 or 2am. The cost of entry is $10 or $5 with two cans of food.

This year the challenges include:

* Programming challenges
* Reverse Engineering Challenges
* Capture the Flag (or a variant of ctf at least)
* Web Challenges
* Video Game Challenges
* And more…

All skill levels are welcome. The emphasis of this event is on teaching and learning (although winning is fun too). If you are a beginner, there are a lot of easy challenges and there is a lot of help. If you are an expert, some of these challenges should still be very very difficult… As long as you are computer literate and have some interest in computer security, this event should be a lot of fun - and you will probably learn some things to.

There are some cool prizes this year like R/C Pirate vs. Ninja, Alber Einstein Action Figures, Computers, Penguin Mints, USB Memory Watch, The Zombie Survival Guide, and more.

For more information go to http://wargamez.org or reply to me.

Want to help make this event a success? Post fliers (some can be found http://wargamez.org/pages/posts/fliers–200816.php), tell your computer-minded friends and co-workers about it, and most of all show up!

–
Rich Lundeen
http://webstersProdigy.net

Tricia Elbl has put together a new May newsletter for the Nickell family. She asked me to put it online, but I was reluctant to put everyone’s contact info out there in a searchable place where spammers and identity thieves could find it.

First, if you’re just here for the file, here is the newsletter, and to access it you will need to type “letmein” without the quotes in order to, well, let you in.

Here are some of the options I considered, I decided on #3.
1) put it in a folder and tell search engines not to index that folder. (not perfect, spammers could still ignore that and grab the info)
2) chop out the address and phone info, and put it online. (that really makes it less useful)
3) create a password protected file, and include the password online. This might make it less useful, since the file won’t be very useful without the password, but if I post the password with the file, a human could type it in, but search engines can’t index it, and automated spam tools won’t bother. It won’t stop a determined scammer, but it is pretty unlikely someone would go to that trouble with all the low hanging fruit out there. If you are a scammer, move along, nothing to see here..

Let me know what you think… a good balance, too much of a pain?

We know we SHOULD backup or important data, but it somehow gets put to the bottom of the TODO list.. it’s not glamorous, but there are times when you’d really be glad you did back it up. So if it is easy, secure, and FREE*? Why not.. (Read more…)

Stolen from Johannes Ullrich at http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1318 because I think his information is spot on usually and a good way to deal with the ever increase complexity of online passwords and accounts.. Simply categorize your accounts by the risk of disclosure, and try to make them fit in one of the categories below.

(Read more…)