A secure blanket

Published 27 August 2009

You shouldn’t trust the Internet. It is dangerous and because most people do not fully comprehend the technology and inner workings, it is hard to understand how and when you are in danger. And yet, as we become more and more reliant on Internet, we clearly need to use it. The Internet was invented by people with large ideological ideas which completely trusted each other. Yet it was conceived to withstand a nuclear bomb and keep on functioning. It appears that the threats we encounter are quite different though. As you are using Internet banking and started to buy stuff on-line, it seems ‘they’ are out there to steal your money or, worse, your identity.
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categorie(s): security, technology, work | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

unstash in Java

Published 8 March 2009

It has been ten years ago – 1999 – since the (in)famous unstash-script came out. It was a cryptic PERL script, which could read IBM’s stash files and deliver you the ‘encrypted’ password.

I was in need of the script, as I lost a password from a cryptocraphic key database and got stuck as I had no PERL installed. So I decided to create a Java-version of this script, because Java is always available when you are installing most IBM products. You may use it to your liking.

For an explanation how it works and a link to download the jar-file, please read on!

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categorie(s): security, technology, websphere, work | Tagged , , , , , | 44 Comments

Passwords are not safe

Published 4 January 2008

I was recently confronted with a new password policy: my password needed to be a combination of 8 to 12 characters with only numbers and letters. And the numbers were not allowed to be at the beginning or end. My solution was a combination of a standard word with my zip code. But I am not convinced that it is a good password. I will not be able to remember it easily, as it differs from all my other password.

The more you work with computers, the more passwords you generate. I have to remember so many passwords that I use a program to store most of them. It is not the best option but I can only remember so much.

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categorie(s): security, technology, work | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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