The Sims

Nope sorry not the game, some philosophy I've mulled over for a while.
So the Simulation argument is an interesting one to be sure, but absurd really.I recently heard the counter summed up very well;

"A simulation so convincing that is indistinguishable from reality is, for all practical purposes, reality to those that have consciousness in such a simulation. Besides, what would a simulated consciousness have to compare except perhaps a simulation that it constructed with its own  conscious "inhabitants"? Its an infinite regression." - Facebook quote

My other issue with it, is it is likely that it can never be disproved, which simply makes it a bad hypothesis at best. The reason it can't be disproved it usually put thus; if we can make a simulation that has conscious minds in it, then we are not the bottom, we could be the top, but are likely not. If we can't then we are likely the bottom. It is only really disproved on humanities demise or on our technical epitome minus consciousness creating simulations.


Another issue I have with it, is something I also like about it. The Post-hoc evidence that people "find" to prove that we live in a simulation. I like this as I can add to it and chuckle at the outcome. Things like if you have a simulation you would want to limit the processing power required, so you'd put in certain limits... like the speed of light (and information travel) being finite, or the other seemingly immutable laws. You'd have a simulation that would have a defined bit density (resolution), so the whole simulation could be stored in x number of bits... well we have that with the plank length/time being the smallest possible unit of space-time.

Regardless, I like playing around with the idea. Recently I saw the Doctor who episode  Extremis (Spoilers to follow).
Extermis is actually part of the overall story arc. Essentially revolves around the Doctor discovering he is in an Alien simulation of our universe as a way to model an easy way to take over the world. The Doctor determines he is a sub-routine and emails his findings out of the system (somehow) out to the real world and the real Doctor.

Incredibly interesting idea, each human consciousness being a subroutine. Sub-routines interact with other sub routines, but can also cause others to crash if they do the right thing. Heck a single subroutine given the right vulnerability could cause the whole OS (universe in this analogy) to crash out... fun. I guess this is basically the story of the Matrix trilogy, he's a subroutine that somehow gets super-user powers, not quite root though :)

To continue with the aforementioned post-hoc evidence for living in a simulation, I even thought of a few while writing this. You'd want your subroutines to consume the smallest amount of resources to do the job they needed to, ala you'd make consciousness occasionally stop for some period (aka sleep and varying levels of sub-conscious action), heck you might even make beings with consciousness that acts on cycles.




The other interesting thing I thought on from the Doctor Who episode Extermis, was the way they eventually determined they were in a simulation. The episode goes that a philosopher in ancient times worked out they where in a simulation by writing down some random numbers, then asking someone else to write down some numbers without seeing the list he wrote. The lists where the same. The tome this philosopher wrote was secreted away in the Vatican, as all who read it promptly commited suicide... I don't know why the committed suicide, as mentioned in my quote at the start if it feels real and you know no different, then it is real.
The Doctor explains the determination that they are in a simulation by saying, computers are generally bad at random number generation so over enough time subroutines such as these conscious ones will generate the same list of random numbers... like humans do now.

Humans are generally terrible at random generation of data, especially passwords. With something like the top few million password being used by 95% of people... So, perhaps we are living in a simulation and those with poor passwords are the subroutines given the least amount of CPU and RAM... the rest of us, might be given slightly more.
Now how do I perform some buffer overflow to get me more money :P

Peace out all, especially our future selves simulating this jalopy, or some Alien race that inadvertently simulated us when the main sim is happening light years away.

Election 2016

I put this together in late 2014, saving it for the federal election this year in 2016, it is really just some points that I picked up from looking at their policies, they may have changed since then and I will try and update.
Saw this which is a funny interlude; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HFd6zGUM3k

Liberal: Forgetting about the narcissism displayed by having their leaders face on display 5 times on their policy page. Also in the interests of Full disclosure, I've met Malcolm Turnbull, he seemed fairly nice.
Liberals policies though aren't great; Their environment policy says they will protect the reef, yet they have allowed holes to be blown in it for new ports to be built and allowed increased shipping damaging it possibly beyond repair. Repealing the mining tax and carbon tax (didn't make electricity more expensive despite their claim it did) also doesn't make good environmental or long term economic sense.
There polices don't talk about the bad things that have been snuck in to the last budget, things that are their policies, things that are going to hurt the low-middle class, students and people who can't afford their own healthcare. No-jab no-pay is their only outright good policy.
NBN, no FTTP, but FTTN and wireless last leg... I feel like they haven't actually engaged any of their IT advisors on this one, as they would have all said nope bad idea. Fiber is infrastructure of the 21st century as rail was for the 20th, yes fixed wireless has come a long way, but it can't compete with fiber for latency and robustness.
Their infrastructure policy doesn't discuss that they are ensuring this infrastructure is sold off, including Sydney's rail and tolls on all these new roads, reducing the public transport along these corridors.
Carbon tax repeal, stupid, every major country is doing it and then using the tax to create renewable jobs. GP co-pay and cuts across the board to medicate, Terrible. I am actually paid well but I go to a bulk bill doctor as I can't afford to spend $40 on healthcare and pay for food and rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I have no idea how those on less that I do it. I know the Libs have abandoned cuts to some medical treatment, but there are still sweeping cuts to nurses pays and GP rates.
Stop the boats... pahlease, most refugees and non-visa holding or overstays comes via plane, those that come by boat are actually usually the most in need of asylum. I guess Labor was pretty much going to do the same thing here. Manus/Nauru island is under investigation for human rights abuse, it is a disgrace.
Terrorism... "growing terror threat", still more likely to be killed by a marauding cow than a terrorist. Waste of money. Not to mention spending billions on Sub's we don't need, and shortrange fighters in a country with the largest continuous border in the world.
Mining tax, most of the profits of the minerals mined is actually going overseas or into the hands of the super-rich. A mining tax now could be used to build infrastructure and as a rainy day fund for when the mineral good times end, and they will.
Environment at the expense of profits.



Labor: Perhaps I spoke too soon, Shorten's face is all over the ALP page. So many policies they split
it out to a separate site.
Carbon tax, yep the tax is a good idea... implementing it as a fund that goes to low-middle income earners is interesting, it will put more burden on means testing by centrelink. Either go to a universal basic income or use it to build renewable infrastructure and reduce our need for carbon emissions, reduce energy prices to low income earners.
Investing in manufacturing. The reality of this is we are not the best country for manufacture, it can be done cheaper and better elsewhere, we need to invest in Science and technology, if we want to manufacture we should be doing automated manufacture like Japan, not trying to compete with low-wage China with manual manufacture the scale just can't get there due to population.
School chaplains, yeah this is a quarter of a billion dollar waste in my opinion. Counselors are much better equipped and trained to help children, especially vulnerable and special needs kids. But I guess Libs support this too. Yes I know counselors are more expensive, but you get what you pay for.
Jobs at the expense of the Environment, this seems to be an almost running theme. Great you want employment, what are those loggers going to do when there are no old-growth left, what are the miners going to do when there is nothing left to mine. As with Liberals there doesn't seem to be a sustainable long term plan here, just enough to get elected and stay in for a term or two (this seems to be the plan of most democratic governments worldwide).
Pandering to the religious right and left, Guillard went and talked to Muslim demonstration, further funded chaplains and deemed SRE/SRI a great idea, as well as increasing funding to private religious schools. Not the best track record.
They seem to mainly be going after penalty rates and Medicare, both things that need to be protected, some of their other policies are of questionable worth.


Greens: Anti-GMO, Anti-nuclear, anti-built up housing. Running theme is environment over everything else, even science and economics. I heard of one Greens member discuss closing Australias research nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, there would go our nucelar medicine industry.
They have had polocies previously against built-up housing which seems counter to being green, as surely it is greener to clear less land for houses and stack your humans up in apartments.
Full disclosure; I have met John Kaye and although we disagreed he was a great person. The honorable Mr Kaye recently passed away. I met him after a panel I attended, he gave me a lift in his very beat-up old hatch to the after do. I argued with him then that I like a lot of what the Greens stand for, but can't abide by the aforementioned anti-science. He argued the dangers of Nuclear energy, weapons and waste. Of course, weapons and waste are eliminated if you go Thorium, was my reply. He said why not go renewables, my reply because they will take too long to spin up, better to have a multi-pronged plan, traditional power plants (all-be-it nuclear) to handle the evening and other peak load, and then wind, solar and hydro to supplement, evidence based Nuclear is still the cleanest source of energy as there is energy wasted (and thus carbon emitted) in creating photovoltaics and wind power is not usually near centers of population. I will admit I was somewhat wrong here, a recent paper shows that renewables can supply base and peak loads for Australia fairly quickly, if government and the public push for it, still GMO and built up housing a big black marks for this party.

The Liberal Democrat party:This party gained 20 odd members in mid 2015 due to the Liberal party suppressing a conscience vote on marriage equality. So obviously they are fine with marriage equality. I am fine with some of their stances. They are however for lowering government spending, and everyone for themselves, which is very scary type of social Darwinism that Libertarians love to espouse.
Of course over-libertarian can be just as bad as over authoritarian, they oppose governments role in welfare, healthcare and schooling. Which will leave the most vulnerable behind, I think a society should be judged on how well it treats its most vulnerable.

Sex Party: Full disclosure; I have met Fiona Patten, she is incredibly nice, and extremely well spoken.
Some excellent policies there, including taxing religions that don't carry out charitable enterprises, and ending a lot of forms of discrimination. There is one specifically about making our science and research protected through election cycles. I just think there name will put a lot of people off voting for them, so while they can definitely get a few seats in the government, they will never likely lead the country. Though seeing Fiona in a debate against Family first election before last, I can say I wish she would lead the country.
That being said the old advertising example goes; SEX... now that I have your attention buy my crap. So who knows.


Pirate Party: Excellent policies, including a bill of rights, and basic income, awesome. My big issue is they are removing a heap of taxes (replacing the GST which is overly complicated with a consumption tax is OK, but it isn't enough money unless the tax goes to something like 35%) and increasing spending is not going to work. With their flatter tax the rich will get taxed more heavily, but likely just move their assets and wealth overseas to avoid this, also no mention of the mining tax which I fully support as Australia's nest egg, all-be-it this may now be too late, like someone starting to invest in their retirement at age 55... I did re-read their policies while updating this post before publishing and they have one around taxing international transfers, an interesting idea to be sure. I know it will only affect the rich, but it could also stifle investment from outside Australia and into Australia. That all being said, I really like the idea of a universal basic income and think it could drive creativity and novel solutions, and prepare us for a more automated future.

Secular Party: Full disclosure; I know a few of the founding members of this party.
Another set of excellent policies, I really like their policy that Complementary and alternative medicines that have not been proved to work will not get a medicare rebate, I also like their Taxes for the non-charitable aspects of religious institutions, and essentially a mining tax called the resource rent tax. I also like that they state explicitly that as part of policy they will investigate the viability of Nuclear.
Like the sex party I think the word secular and secularism will put people off, I know when I was young the USSR was pointed to as an example of a secular state, this made secularism in my mind as a child growing up in the 80's a dirty word.

Science Party: New one, only seemingly announced shortly before this election was called. On further investigation renamed from the FutureParty, science party is a much better name. People buy into science, to paraphrase NDT you only need to look at the religions of late to see that marketing Church of Science, and Scientology.
There policies look really good, infrastructure developments, charter city (awesome name too "Turing"), pro-nuclear, pro-renewables, pro-science obviously.
Again fair disclosure I have met at least two of their candidates.That all being said, it looks like only one of their candidates has funded their electoral deposit, hopefully they are all on the final ballot as they could get a decent turnout from varied voters.

Justice Party: One I wasn't actually going to pay any mind too. Started by Australias own Derryn Hinch, ex-current affairs show host, turned radio host.
His platform is a good one, mainly going after spousal abusers, sex offenders etc, moving for tougher sentencing. Euthanasia is a good one, so too is marriage equality. Not a huge list of policies, but they all seem good.

Special mention;
Health Australia Party: Don't let the name fool you when you vote, they are against vaccinations, and all for non-scientifically backed treatment... Oh yeah and they want a ban on chem-trails... something that there is no evidence exists. I want a ban on Leprechaun's sequestering Gold... They actually have some good policies on Gun control, Euthanasia, and energy production. Then policies that assume corruption inside scientific research, think fluoride needs to be removed from our water, and vitamins and disproved treatments be government subsudised.
I didn't want to give them bandwidth, so the link to their policy actually goes to the science parties article about them

Fair call here, there are a load of other parties, such as the Chrisitian democrats, Family first, the Kater Australia party (KAP), One Nation, the wikileaks party etc, etc. I am not likely to vote for any of these either they are single issue parties or just plain opposed to my views and like the smaller parties mentioned above none of these are likely to get more than a couple senate seats, with the exception of KAP, GLOB help us...

Update

Wow this blog is almost 13 years old... and it has gotten worse. Less updated and shorter posts, ah well. I have moved to posting more on the specialized topics on the right there.
I was looking back through some old posts from 2002, interesting how much I and my life has changed, two kids, still in love with Fiona, although now married, still work in IT, although focused on IT security as the blog on the right alludes.
Not much else to report, should really update this one at least every year or so :)

Oh I did see the below today, freaking awesome. I used to love my archery, always wanted a basic re-curve bow like the one used in the video, would love to try the way he shoots too.

Peace out all.

The state of the internet nation

This one is a little IT heavy, but is more an indictment on our society, so I decided to put it on my personal blog. Besides I have been blogging a fair bit at my other two blogs, links on the right.

So I was looking at the new top level domains (the current ones are .com, .gov, .net etc) that are coming out here;  and I though it was a bit interesting. There are a lot of car companies; who really needs domain.fiat or worse domain.alfaromeo, but also who needs domain.adac which was applied for by a German Car club.
But the thing that really got me, the lack of science type names in the list. There is no .lab for example, no .physics no .math. There sure are stupidly long ones like JPMORGANCHASE, NORTHWESTERNMUTUAL, and TRAVELERSINSURANCE. But no one thought a nice short multi-use one like .lab or .labs would be useful. Heck there is a discussion here, about it from 2000, 13 damn years ago.

This is why we can't have nice things, this is why the world is in a mess, because we spend money only to make money, any advancement is incidental and only made by people altruistic enough to spend their time and energy to better mankind.

Science is what made the internet, and now they are almost forgotten, which is kind of sad.

Oh and the below one is interesting, I am wondering why that applicant applied for it as Google will surely come down on them with all their might should they register something.youtube...

Proposed new domain name         Applicant
YOUTUBE                                  Charleston Road Registry Inc.

Peace out all, except scientifically illiterate, corporate shills...

Google goodness and Birthday

Sometimes Google is just too cool... I saw my phone had backed up a few of my photos and it had detected these photos seemed to go together and auto stitched them together. This from Geoffrey's recent birthday. Thank you Google.

Peace out all, especially those awesome software devs and support peeps at google.

Dystopia

Finally something to post that didn't fit in the other two blogs.

I was invited out to see a play, and it is a comedy about a dystopian future. I then realised how much I like dystopian future stories and decided to lookup a few
I realised not only have I seen a vast majority of these films, I have liked every single one I have seen... I even liked Waterworld...I am sorry that I was the only one Mr Costner.
I don't know why I like these films. Is it the sci-fi element, is it the world in ruin, is it that I want to see how not to fix things?

I don't know, it is very odd. I like the idea of a utopia as much as the next person, I will talk at length about utopian ideals like freedom of information and expression, that I believe everyone is intelligent in some way and that Gene Roddenberry and his utopian picture is glorious :)
So why do I watch anything dystopian that comes my way, as one of my mates used to say "team of therapists, round the clock, Morgan". Hmm, maybe I am just being subconsciously contrary?
Oh well now to collect then watch all the movies on that list I haven't seen, does anyone know where you can get "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" on DVD?

Peace out all.

Yikes it has been a while since I posted. Well to recap the long amount of time since then. We moved back from Brisbane in 2011 after things didn't work out with schools the way we had planned. I miss Brisbane to some extent and made friends up there after going to a board game group for twelve months. I am still with the same company, and despite being fairly busy still loving it. I guess one of the main reasons I hadn't updated this blog was that google decided to drop support for publishing from blogger to other platforms. I have moved my blog wholly over to google now, so I can ditch my cheap hosting altogether. This should also result in the site being a bit quicker than the cheap hosting I have, or the old days when I had this all hosted on my own server on the end of a slow DSL link. Geoffrey has started school, Anne has started pre-school and they are both growing into beautiful little people. You may notice a fair few of the links on the sidebar don't work, I am still working out some of the content heck it hadn't had an update since 2004 prior to Geoffrey being born, but they should be fixed eventually. You may also notice a new blog on the left there, if the subject's don't interest you then don't read it. Well that's it for this quick update. Peace out all.

Moving up north

Well its official I am moving to Brisbane. Work has approved the move, and we researched schools and suburbs, and looked at distances to my companies various offices and finally decided on a suburb and have signed the lease on a place and put down a deposit. We have also started packing (mostly Fiona's work) and gotten several quotes for methods of getting our possesions up there, and settled on one.
To those who want to drop in you already have my mobile and email, drop me a line.
I feel nervous but another chapter of my family and my life is about to start.
If you want to catch up before I go, give me a call/email/im/carrier pidgeon.
Peace out all

Random post funny

Taken from another friends blog here

RULES:

1. Put your iTunes / media player on shuffle.
2. With each given question, press next and that is your answer.
3. Write down the song name no matter HOW silly it sounds.
4. If you have any comments, write them in brackets below your answer.
5. Don't cycle through until you find a funny one (added this rule cause it sounds fair, and removed rule 5 as chain anything sucks)

a) If someone asks you out, you say:
Way to Go! - Rogue Traders
(heheh)

b) You see your crush. You think:
Clint Eastwood - Gorrillaz
(A bit harsh, Clint is an ugly man)

c) You stub your foot and yell:
Bicycle Race - Queen
(Not likely that I would stub it in a Bicycle race, no bike, and I don't race)

d) Your pants are full of:
Stand Up - Flobots
(That they are...)

e) Your favorite video game is:
Coin-Operated Boy - The Dresden Dolls
(I think this game would not be pg-13)

f) Your t-shirt says:
I'll Kill Her - SoKo
(hahah, awesome song though)

g) Your favorite video consists of:
Toy Soldiers - Martika
(I actually like the movie toy soldiers)

h) This is what's crawling up your pant leg:
We are the Champions - Queen
(Champions, oh oh)

i) You like him / her because of:
Do you hear the people sing - Les Misérables

j) Your friend has:
One Four Five - The Cat Empire

k) What you'll be when you grow up:
This Is How You Remind Me - Nickelback

l) The song that'll be played at your child's birth:
Sweet Lullaby - Deep Forest
(hehe what a coinkidink)

m) Your "summer song":
Black Bugs - Regurgitator

n) Your friends' pants are full of:
Grace Kelly - Mika
(I bet they wish)

o) You like to:
I Go Off - Diana ah Naid
(Another funny, I am pretty placid)

p) Your mom changed her name to:
Walking on the sun - Smashmouth

q) You changed your name to:
Killer Queen - Queen
(well it is my favourite queen song)

r) Your battle cry:
House of the Rising Sun - The Animals

s) Your porn movie will be titled:
Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell

t) Your wedding song:
Good Time - Leroy
(ah how true)

u) Your new last name is:
Castle On a Cloud - Les Misérables

v) Your genitals are called:
No Aphrodisiac - The Whitlams
(A bit harsh)

w) Your pet cat is named:
Doctorin' the Tardis - Timelords

x) Your pet dog is named:
Red and Black - Les Misérables
(A red and black dog would be interesting, I think I wouldn't name it so obvious though; Kerberos)

y) Your new nickname will be:
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

z) When posted, you will title this:
Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
(Oh god that is a classic ending)

Well that was mildly amusing.
Peace out all, I will post more normal stuff promise.

Another post in only a few days very surprising, well I have a bit to say and forgot to say it the other day.
I had a wonderful Christmas, and lots of fun with the kids. I thought I posted about it but obviously not.
Fiona got me a Doctor Who sonic screw driver and an incredible present of a portrait of Geoffrey, painted by our favourite painter (Fred Marsh), it was a picture of possibly my favourite picture of Geoffrey to date.
We ate lots of seafood over Christmas but managed to put on little weight which was good.
We also managed to get a really good Family Photo with Santa Claus, and I think Geoffrey gets Santa and Christmas are good things now, especially with the inundation of presents he received, don’t worry Anne got her fair share as well.
Then after the initial Christmas orgy of presents, Fiona got me another present, I don't know why I deserved it but she got it anyway, a Flickr Pro account, so go to morganstorey.com and click on MobileBlog to be redirected there. I upload photos from my phone all the time so it is sure to be updated, more often than my blog has been :P
In other news and on to the topic of this post, public humiliation. I read an interesting blog post the other day here.
To surmise though it quotes Paul Graham, programmer, entrepreneur and venture capitalist who says:
One of the most interesting things we’ve discovered… is that [people] are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating.
So on that note, I am going to let the world know of my intentions in a plan to humiliate myself into succeeding.
By the end of next year I hope to have my CISSP; an extremely high certification in IT Security. Not only that but before then I hope to have the following certifications; CCNA, CCNA:Security, CCSA, CCSE, LPIC 1, LPIC2 and LPIC 3:Security, OSPC, Security+, CEH, and finally Upgrade My MCSE to MCITP:Enterprise.
I have told people this off hand, but never written it in public, and let the world know. I am doing these only really for self satisfaction, and to get my knowledge recognized. It does however take time to fill in the gaps. So after 6 months of being to tired, busy, or interested in what my rack is doing or what is on TV, I started back on my boring CCNA the other night.
Wish me luck.
Peace out all.

Hot, damn hot...

So damn hot at the moment. My Google weather toolbar says it is only 30 degrees, but I think that is taken from the city so it isn't comparable to anywhere that isn't directly on the water, least that's my excuse for my whinging and I am sticking to it.
We have made some radical changes to Geoffrey and Annes diet's, and seen dramatic changes. It all started because my new boss while I was down in Melbourne told me that his son is Gluten intolerant, and most of the symptoms bar the height matched Geoffrey.
So Fiona looked into it. Glue ear is one of the big symptoms, so we are rather annoyed that no one in the process of him getting his grommets in his ears suggested maybe changing his diet or even getting him checked? We can get him checked but it requires putting him back on the gluten, with the radical change in his personality, his rash clearing up and him seeming happier than he ever has since cutting it out, I think we will wait to do the test.
Geoffrey has gone back to a kindy that we found and is really enjoying it, his teachers are wonderful, and he really enjoys it there I think, so much so is that he gets upset on days when he isn't going, of course he doesn't want us to leave when we drop him off either.
Anne is also really coming along, yesterday on the way home for work she said Geoffrey, I turned to Fiona and said did she just say Geoffrey, she replied that she did, and then she said it again, confirmation. Geoffrey wasn't as impressed as he will be in years to come when he realises he is her first two-syllable word, with Mummy and Daddy being close firsts.
Anne has also started to assert herself and really show off her personality. She is very tough and not afraid to stand up for herself if Geoffrey is in her way. That being said Geoffrey has showed his softer side a lot. If she cries he hugs her, or cries to, if Geoffrey and Fiona are going to play he will hold the gate/door open and hold his hand out to Anne.
I had an interesting moment the other night, while trying to get to sleep in 30+ degree heat, I was thinking about the age old riddle. If you where in a boat with your young child, it capsized and you where the only one of your family not incapacitated, who would you save?
Pre children to the above quandary I would have answered; my Partner. I think even when Fiona and I were considering children I would have answered the same thing. Well my answer the other night was opposite, a very interesting change I would think. It comes back to that saying only a parent knows.
I am going to start posting this on livejournal as well as here, as people are too lazy to get a blogger account to comment here.
Peace out all.

Makes the blood boil.

So if I haven't already ranted at you in some way shape or form, you may not know of the Australian government's short-sighted plan to add us to the ranks of oppressive regimes such as Iran and China. In fact that is unfair as Iran's proxy is considered to be looser than the one Senator Conroy wants to implement.
The long and short of it is that Conroy wants to restrict what pages are available to Australian internet users. Sure it is for the kids (won't someone think of the children)… But as I have said to people I would rather my children see the entirety of the disgusting underbelly of the internet than have one single thought provoking site blocked. Not to mention the degradation to performance in a country that is already considered one of the worst in the world for connectivity. In Sweden groups appealed to the government saying 100mbps is welfare. Here most people are still on 1/200th that speed, and with Conroys plan that 1/200th would lose anywhere from 2-80% of its speed, welcome back to dial-up days.
There are a plethora of sites that are likely to be blocked because they aren't "kid" friendly. June next year you will probably see the below when going to user content generated sites such as Youtube and Facebook:

Here is a news flash senator; kids get hold of porn even if you restrict it, even in the pre-internet days. So what your doing will only have negative effects. Parents with no IT knowledge will have a false sense of security and not monitor their kids browsing habits, these same kids will find ways round your precious filter, and these methods that will become popular may even make it harder for parents and educators to monitor their usage.
The filter will slow down internet access and again the people with little IT knowledge will have no idea how to get around it for legitimate sites that are blocked. Then there is the cost which you are expecting ISP's to mostly cover off their own bat, which will increase internet costs in a country that already pays too much for too little.
Way to go Senator you deserve your award:

I feel lost; I don't know what to do. I feel as though someone has decided freedom of information is a bad idea, so let's mandate it. Then what do you do. Once the book burning starts it is hard to stop.
I have emailed the Senator and his opponents, and the letters are in the mail.
I urge everyone to look at the following sites and take action: http://nocleanfeed.com your silence is all they need to pass this and then you are no better than them.
Peace out all, except Conroy and his supporters who can just unplug their computers, televisions, and burn their books for the same effect they are trying to mandate.


PS: I am starting up a dedicated security Blog as I want to separate the two, this of course crosses both blogs so expect to see it on both. My new Security blog is linked on the left or here: http://security.morganstorey.com

Lets get Physical

On the way back from a very interesting an informative Microsoft Security Summit the other day and I noticed something that caught my eye.
Too many people concentrate on the hardware and software, and leave gaps. Gaps in the physical security, or gaps in the training of staff.
This photo shows off both.

Seems a cleaner at the train station near me had left the door open to the area that she kept her cleaning supplies, the same area that had a rack with server, fibre switch, ethernet switch, patchpanel and other miscelania. Whats that you spy, yep the rack door is unlocked too. Click click and a bad guy is on the network, just plug in a wireless router and see what traffic you can capture, doesn't matter if this network is firewalled the best in the world, or even airgapped, game over.
Back on the security conference I attended it was very interesting, it was all covered under an NDA, except the bit at the end which I already talked about. I am starting a security group in Sydney, sponsored by Microsoft. So Jeff Alexander let everyone know, I had a heap of business cards handed over for people that wanted to be kept in the loop, it is very exciting that we have this much interest already.
Well Peace out all, and please lock your racks and don't put them in a room with a sink for the cleaner to use.

Sydney IT Security Group

So I had a chat with Jeff about starting up a Security group in Sydney similar to counterparts in Canberra,Melbourne, and Brisbane.
It is really a great opportunity and I have been looking for a security group in Sydney for years now, making do with going to security topics at other groups. I don't think it will detract from these other groups just expand on the security theme, going places other groups may not want to go as they are too focussed.
I'd like to get some comments here on what people would like to see and what night etc, but people rarely comment on my blog. So I will setup a site for the group shortly and we can duke it out there.
Peace out all.

Pretty lights

More on DNS I know. May as well be another person beating a dead horse. But I give you pretty: http://www.doxpara.com/?p=1206
It is a video of the patched and not patched world wide. It intrigues me that there is a blinking light on the map of Australia about 3 hours north of Adelaide, I doubt it is Alice Springs, to south, maybe Coober Peadie if my geography serves.
Onto some more supposition by me (mainly in reply to Dan [the guy who discovered the Researched the DNS flaw] here);
I agree with what has been said, that we need more security on an inherintly in-secure network. But some (percieved) anonymity and some plain text is good, and what the internet is all about.
Could you imagine every site moving to https, for starters what is the point, who needs to read my blog through an encrypted channel? Really why, I don't really have any direct post functionality, and only a handful of readers, it is not like I am directing them to blindly do anything either.
Onto DNS, I was thinking the other day of another way to fix the issue. Deploy a port knocking technique on the reply based on the query, so that ports would have to be knocked in the correct order on the DNS server pre accepting back the lookup. Similar to the way a person gets into a safe, knowing the numbers isn't good enough you need to know the sequence. This would stop NAT being an issue as the DNS server can make the request out on all ports getting an auto map back on these ports. And would be more secure as the attacker would have to guess the right ports to knock on the way back, or read the request and then generate the reply and reply back, but if they can do that they are already in the middle and its game is over.
What do you think?
Peace out all, especially Dan, good job.

DNS woes continue... sorta

So as I said, and the original discoverer Dan said, it was just a patch. Not a fix, not a be-all and end all solution. A temporary patch. We already know some nat devices break the patch's fix. But from the looks here and here it can be broken. The first link even details how, but there is a caveat. It is not easy, and a lot of bandwidth with low latency is required.
The first article explains how they did it over Gige in 10 hours. So most DNS servers that are doing resolves for clients, are probably not even on 20mbs of bandwidth, and latency 10+ times that of ethernet, not including the clients themselves causing some load. So you could say it would take 10+ times longer to do this over the internet, so 100hours. Someone will hopefully notice at around hour 20… But it isn't that simple, what if some baddie hits a server with a mere 100 clients... (Most botnets are 10 times this size). Chaos again. We need a better fix. I mentioned before some kind of signed DNS, I am the first to admit I have gaps in my knowledge as I have never heard of DNSSEC, now I that have listened to the Blackhat talk I have heard about it. I had a quick look at wikipedia and the official site and it is interesting. Of course windows servers only support it as a secondary, also the glaring-hole of non NSEC3 servers allowing enumeration of sites is just plain silly. Seriously just hash The users request domain “Not Found” and add it to the RFC, done.
I think it should include the option for encrypting replies, may as well, could be useful for higher secure organisations.
This is a very real and very now threat, there are at least two pieces of software out there to attack it, one being the very good, but very newbie friendly metasploit.
Well I am pretty much just re-iterating and expanding on my comments on darknet but there you go.
Peace out all.

Geoffrey talking, and going loopy

So Geoffrey gave me a heart attack today (not literally) Fiona came in to have lunch with me and we went to the park. It was a lot of fun and really shows how he will talk if he wants something, "up again" kept coming when he wanted me to pick him up to the flying fox.
But the scary bit was when we were having fun, I was pushing him on the swing, when he decided to flip forward just after I had pushed back, he flipped over fortunately caught by the chain as he was in the little kids swing. I lunged forward and caught him... phewww.
Other than that is was a lovely lunch, Marion brought beautiful ham sandwiches and soft-drink, and Geoffrey and I ran around the play equipment like madmen.

Social Engineering

I think possibly the equal first security threat facing all business today is that of Social engineering. I say equal first, because a lot of insider threats would probably fall under this banner. The employee, lets say his name is John calls up the helpdesk, he tells them his name is Sam, and that he has forgotten his password. You of course see where I am going with this, the helpdesk happily resets Sam's password, John knows Sam is out to a long lunch and has access to files he doesn't. He logs in as Sam, gets the files he needs and then logs out, maybe even leaving a post-it on Sams screen saying the helpdesk had to reset his password to blah, so the helpdesk doesn't get another call and get suspicious.
John know has all the files on his cheap USB disk, or in hard copy and does with them whatever it is nefarious people do with data to make a buck.
I have seen mitigation techniques for the one I mentioned above, all users have a password reset word, something they wouldn't have as a password and stored in plain-text for the helpdesk to see. This will mitigate it, unless John says he forgot it and to send someone down, the helpdesk guy may not know John or Sam, and as long as John is in Sam's office still acting like he owns the place he will probably get away with it.
Social Engineering is scary for another reason in that even non-technical users can do it. I remember I had a client once who had a relitively new employee call up asking for some permissions to files he needed for work. I knew his role was to do with those files and I knew his voice over the phone (as funnily enough he had moved from one client to another). Still I decided to call his manager to get the ok. She didn't give it, and was a bit distrubed that he had asked for the access. Horray one for the good guys.
Have a look here at how easily some guys doing a sprite commercial pulled off some non-harmful social engineering.
Here is a very thourough article on the subject.
And here is my first shirt design on cafepress, totally on topic.
Really though combine some social engineering with technical knowledge the smarts to think of the good-guys mitigation techniques and the connections to make money off your exploits and you have a major foe to be reaconed with.
I think in future we will need to audit our people as much as we do our security systems. Having someone who won't suffer the repricussions of the law come in randomly and do spot checks would keep people on their toes, but it also comes down to having the personal touch, knowing people by name, by their voice, by their face. Maybe the solution is smaller decentralised IT departments, say one for each department and at least one at each site, this lessens the body of knowledge but increases the likelyhood of the staff member knowing the other. I don't know, someone will come up with a solution eventually.
I have decided to use tags to seperate the posts, so no more personal stuff in the security tagged posts.
Peace out all.

Off to the zoo

So today we went to the Zoo and Geoffrey let something interesting go. He knows how old he is about to be. When asked when he felt like it he replied with are hearty THREEEE. Ahh it is good to see. It has been about six months since his operation and he is picking up new things everyday.
Anne is walking and has added to her repitore of Mama and Dada and Baba other interesting little noises and words. She got a new little outfit that was terribly cute, a pair of stockings with a bustle at the back, to go perfectly with her little yellow dress with pedicoat. We had lots of fun at the zoo before the down-pour began.
Speaking of downpours I heard it snowed again in NSW, just south of Wollongong last week. That makes two 100+year events in the last few weeks, the weather certainly is variable at the moment. I heard a good saying the other day "Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get", it certainly is what we have been getting lately: Short bursts of rain, followed by nice hot days, when will it end.
Peace out all

DNS Vulnerability

There has been some speculation and even backlash on the internet about the recent DNS vulnerability, I posted about it here. Interestingly some people are saying that the vulnerability should have been disclosed when discovered.
This is plain silly. To put it in simple terms with a car analogy (I love car analogies); if a saftey tester discovers that every single Toyota Corolla on the market (the number one selling car, 35million world wide) bursts into flames (props to fight club, note: Corollas don't afaik) if you crash at exactly 35 kilometers per hour. If he just posts this on his blog a few things will happen; everyone will know in about two seconds. The next day 35million Corolla owners will demand a refund, either destroying or severly damaging Toyota and its employees, and hooligans will wander around car parks with sledghammers hoping to hit one with the lucky 35kph speed.Basically what I am saying in a rather confused and overly long analogy is if this had been disclosed pre-vendor patch-release their would have been lost confidence in the whole internet, there would be lost jobs and money from the lost
confidence alone. Then the real fun would begin, prior to the patch being released someone would write a script to take advantage of the vulnerability, this script would then be morphed into several gui tools, and every script kiddie and his bot army would take down sites worldwide for fun and profit.
I am not saying it would have been an internet dooms-day, it could have, but the internet is pretty robust. But it would have been very damaging had the vendor patch not been released, there would have been loss of income and loss of jobs.
I agree with the way it was done, but maybe it could have been done a little sooner if you do a google search DNS cache poisoning is not new in the slightest, have a look at the wiki article. Birthday attacks are a common similar variant, I have even been involved with a cache poisoning issue a couple of times, first back in 2003. Both times I couldn't capture the culprit, there was just too many packets to wade through, but the problems were solved.
I do agree with what I have now read, maybe we need to move across to some kind of signed DNS, either SSL Dns or some kind of signed cert, like gpg and its signed keys.
We could setup the root servers all with a cert or signed key that all DNS servers are set to trust, just roll it into an update or new DNS installs then slowly cut over, then if you want to say use your ISP's servers as forwarders you could simply implictly trust the key or they could buy a signed cert (I can hear Verisign/Thawte licking there lips from here).
Supposedly due to some disclosure there maybe a script kiddie tool out soon to exploit this vulnerability, and with most NAT devices (see routers) turning patched servers into vulnerable ones and some of these routers not being patched/patchable it is only a matter of time. So everyone PATCH your servers please.
In other news, today was a snow day...yay. That won't be exciting for most northern hemisphere residents, but us here in the southern hemisphere, rarely see snow. We would have got about an inch or two, so Geoffrey and Anne saw snow for the first times in their lives; see my Flickr here, and see the video I uploaded to my Youtube here.
Peace out all, even those naysayers that say snow ain't cool.