RSA Day 2

Attended an interesting presentation by Tom Ritter about BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/), an open source package used to harness spare computer power on people's PCs (like the @SETI project). Ritter demonstrated how BOINC could be used to factor RSA keys, crack passwords and do server log analysis. As a security consultant he uses these tools to help organizations beef up their security. BOINC can be used to try and crack user's weak passwords in an organization. Nothing like showing up and telling a user "I just cracked your password in 1 minute and here it is: ......". Other interesting tools for hacking include "John the Ripper" (http://www.openwall.com/john/ ) and hashcat (http://hashcat.net/hashcat/).

Walking the show floor I came across a real-live WWII German Enigma Machine, used to encrypt communciations for the Wehrmacht. I even got to press the buttons and play with dials.



Then a talk by Ira Winkler on mobile threats. The biggest threat may be now and certainly will be in future, allowing workers to bring their mobile devices to work, bypassing any established security protections. These devices give security professionals nightmares given the non-secure dimensions of things like Facebook.

At the end of Day2, an interesting talk by David Brooks, NY Times columnist and author, talking about social connections and happiness. Interesting study on happiness found that if you win $1 million in lottery, your happiness goes up but 6 months later, you are at same level of happiness than before winning the lottery. If you have car accident and are crippled, happiness goes down, but 6 months later, you are at same level of happiness than before accident. So how can we be happier? Answer: become lost in activities - i.e. programming, playing games, playing music, time with family and friends. Study shows that folks who meet once a month to pursue some activity (e.g. club), report higher level of happiness than others.