Black Hat just ended and what once started as a super secret conference well attended by law enforcement agents in disguise now has the chief of Cyber Security for Homeland Security as the keynote speaker, the sister convention is DEFCON (which comes from the term for Defense readiness Condition for the Military) is going on now. DEFCON focuses on games and challenges for security experts, such as how quickly someone can hack into a specific computer.

True Crypt Should you encrypt your hard drive? On the plus side you could lose your laptop and not worry about important data falling into the wrong hands. On the negative side you could complicate data recovery if your hard drive crashes or you need to reinstall your operating system. Should encryption be used and what is plausible deniability ? How good is data encryption? Are there backdoors? PGP and Philp Zimmerman. Aspen Internet conference and Phil’s legal defense fund.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a dangerous legal precedent has just been set which endangers the laws concerning wire tapping of communication. The FBI has long requested and required that ISP (Internet service providers, the phone companies of the Internet) hold email in storage for a length of time and to allow equipment which can scan emails for “keywords” called Carnivore . This system was first deployed in 2000 but did not get wide spread usage for a few years. AT&T and others began working with the department of homeland security in by 2004 to trap all Internet traffic at the large network nodes which see almost all of Internet traffic. Border guards are allowed to take laptop, MP3 players, all electronic equipment at the border and not return them if they feel there is a need to examine your equipment. So it is with some sense of amazement that the US state department has issued a warning to Olympic Travellers about cyber spying by the Chinese government.

CMC Fall classes CIS 115 is Intro to Computer Information Systems (a web course) might be a good starting point. I am listed for three courses, Intro to digital video, Cisco Network Associate and Computer Technician for A+.