TSA Body Scanners

The TSA is now requiring airplane passengers to submit to a full body scan machine. Supposedly a TSA employee in the back room will view the images. Passengers did have the ability to opt out of the scan and receive a pat down. However the new TSA policy is to give you the full feel up during this pat down. Madness has ensued.

You know this is wrong when even the pilots are complaining about the new procedures. They worry about the radiation from the body scan. And some pilots hate being felt up when they opt out. Don't you love it when the TSA comes up with crazy rules like this?

When I fly, I will just obey and go through the scanner. So what if some chump in the back gets to see my privates. I don't want nobody feeling up my junk. The rest of the American public may not be willing to take this any more though.

Making it in Prison

I just checked out the latest issue of Phrack magazine. This one is issue 67. Inside the thing, they refer to it as issue 0x43. Ha ha. Put your numbers in hexadecimal huh?

The best article this month is "How to Make it in Prison". It seems to be written by an insider with insider knowledge. Here is a summary of the tips:

* stay clean
* do not join a gang
* fight those who challenge you
* hide all personal info
* do not do favors without payment

You really should check out the Prison article yourself if you plan to do any hard time.

DDoS Wars

This is too funny to be true. Hackers from the 4chan site declared war on Tumblr. Their goal was to launch a denial of service attack on the rival web site. Their weapon of choice was the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC). The LOIC is a prog that you can use to flood a web site. The source code is actually available on SourceForge.

The funny thing is that you should be able to set up a filter to block any effects from the LOIC. Well any web site worth their salt should be able to defend against such child's play. Tumblr decided to launch their own counter offensive. They called upon their members to blast 4chan. The end result of this war was that both sites went down hard. LOL. You got to love some of the propaganda each site used to rally their users to join in the DDoS battle. This is great stuff if you are looking for a chuckle.

Canoe from Plywood

I just read a sweet instructional on how to build a canoe out of a single sheet of plywood. This thing is a working floating canoe. Sure anybody can slap a thing together out of a sheet of plywood. But this one was designed so that an amateur can actually float in it and not tip over.

The bad boy goes over trade offs involving thick and thin plywood. He then goes on to give you the specs to build the darn thing. He also gets technical on how to maximize the boat size without making it unstable. Check out his main page on other boat construction skills. Tight.

Making Money

It is all fun and games to get technical and figure things out. But you got to eat right? How much can you realistically make in the security industry. Let me tell you this much. You got to get a government security clearance. That opens all kinds of doors, including the high pay.

Real security admins make between $70k to $90k. And these are the normal mid level peeps. I am not talking about the senior administrators. Mid level admins top out around 6 figures. These are real wages being made by real people I know.

It almost makes you want to drop the programming game and get into cyber security.