HDCP Master Key Leaked

The High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) key was leaked onto the Internet. This master key can be used to decode encrypted traffic between certified / licensed devices. No encryption means that the content (mostly movies) can be copied, and/or played on non-licensed devices.
A while back, another copy-protection key was leaked. That key was for BluRay (BR+) titles. This HDCP key is the, so-called, mother-load.

Click to read more ...

Comment Spammers Do Research

Lately, the comment spam rose exponentially. The is done by automated scripts, usually from compromised PC around the world. This way the original spammer will remain anonymous.

The last couple of days I noticed weird search queries (Google search referrers) in my logging;

Looks like someone (probably in the Hong Kong area) is searching the Internet for specific blogs (I guess SquareSpace blogs looking at the query) that contain certain words / fiels, indicating that commenting is allowed. These keywords match 100% with the field / words in and around the blog comment area. Shortly after these searches, the comment spam came pouring in.

At the moment, the only remedy against these spam comments is to screen every newly submitted comment by an editor, since the automated spam detection on the Squarespace platform is basically worthless. Too bad, since they rock at everything else.

Apple iPhoto Photo Album

For the last 5 years, I've been using the Apple iPhoto application to create my holiday photo albums (five so far). Some might find them too expensive, but I simply love the Apple iPhoto integration, the available templates, and ordering process. Worth every penny in my opinion.

The 46 page photo album of the Spain holiday arrived today. Time between ordering and delivery was thee work days (five if you include the weekend). Excellent, fast, service if I may say so.

The album was created with Apple iPhoto.

Warning: crappy low-light iPhone photo :-)Thankfully, the real thing looks much better.......

The photos seen in the album in the photo above is a 7 photo panoramic overview of Granada, Spain. Taken from within Alhambra.

Tequila

Really haven't got the words for this excellent spoof on the average American (drug) ad.

I just hope that these kind of ads stay away from the local continent (and I don't mean the spoofs). Some things are better left on the other side of the Atlantic.

Adobe Coldfusion 8 and 9 Vulnerable to Hijacking

Adobe released a security bulletin regarding the Coldfusion web engine. Upgrade / patch your Coldfusion server if you like to stay in control of your webserver. The patch has been classified as important.

An important vulnerability has been identified in ColdFusion 8.0, 8.0.1, 9.0, 9.0.1 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX. This directory traversal vulnerability could lead to information disclosure (CVE-2010-2861). Adobe has provided a solution to the reported vulnerability. It is recommended that users update their product installation using the instructions provided above.

The patch/update get be downloaded here.

'Official' Nikon Hand Strap II Review

I was in the market for a hand-strap. Nikon offers a AH-4 hand-strap for their cameras, but that accessory is over $70 USD. Not something you buy without knowing if it 'suits' you. Sure, I could get the official AH-4, and find out after a couple of days that it's not my cup of tea. Chances are slim that the store will get it back with a full refund, since it's used.

So I started to look around for a cheaper option, and I found one (well, several) on eBay. This Nikon Hand-Strap II is supposed to be official in/from Korea, but even the Korean Nikon website only shows the original AH-4. So it's a (cheap) knock-off, but that didn't keep me from getting one.

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Microsoft Cryptographic Store and Passwords

We've been experimenting with with the use of user certificates for VPN access to the lab. Issuing, and using them isn't the problem. The problem is that there's no way of enforcing a password on the use of the private key. You can use private key protection on the certificate template, but that still doesn't enforce a password requirement. The user still has the option to choosing for the notification instead of a password.

Certificate Template - Request Handling OptionsThere's an option to enforce a password, but that's system wide for the Microsoft Cryptographic Service Provider, and we don't want to enforce passwords for ALL certificates. We just want to enforce passwords for this specific template.

Click to read more ...

Them Crooked Vultures @ HMH

On June 10th, the "Them Crooked Vultures [1]" played in the Heineken Music Hall (HMH) in Amsterdam. The band consists of;

• Dave Grohl on drums and vocals
  Former Nirvana, and Foo Fighters
• Joshua Homme, lead gitare and vocals
  Former Queens of the Stone Age
• John Paul Jones, every other instrument......
  Former Led Zeppelin

Them Crooked Vultures @ HMHAwesome 2 hour concert for a already legendary band that released only 1 CD so far.

iPhone 3GS, iOS4 and MMS not working

I ran into a problem with MMS after I upgraded to iOS4 on my iPhone 3GS. Somehow, it was impossible to send MMS messages on the KPN cellular network. Searching the Internet revealed that I wasn't the only one.

The general consensus to solve this issue was a restore of the iPhone and not to restore old settings, but start from scratch.

After doing this, MMS still couldn't be sent from the iPhone, so time to do some more research. It turned out that KPN must have change the MMS settings, since my old MMS settings weren't correct anymore. So try these settings BEFORE you restore your iPhone. It might save you a lot of work and time.

Note: the following settings are for the Dutch KPN Network, and probably won't work on other networks / carriers.

Old Settings

APN: portalmmm.nl
Username:
Password:
MMSC: http://mp.mobiel.kpn/mmsc
MMS Proxy: 10.10.100.50:5080
MMS Max Message Size: 300000

New Settings

APN: portalmmm.nl
Username: kpn
Password: kpn
MMSC: http://mp.mobiel.kpn/mmsc
MMS Proxy: 10.10.100.20:5080
MMS Max Message Size: <leave empty>

Notice the differences? Anyway, with these new settings, MMS worked again.

KPN does have a page dedicated to the iPhone (in Dutch), regarding the Internet, and MMS settings. Just check those pages for the lastest settings.

I've updated the original page on my blog with the new settings.

OS X Kerberos / Open Directory Logging

Ever since I switched to OS X server at home I use Splunk> to see what's happening 'underneath the hood'. This revealed that there's a lot (really a whole lot) of Kerberos logging going on. Each and every day I get thousands of log entries regarding krb5kdc which results in over 1 million log entries only for krb5kdc in little over a week.

These syslog messages only contain the following 'text';

krb5kdc[16179](debug): routing msg not interesting
krb5kdc[16179](info): got routing msg type 5(RTM_LOSING) v5
krb5kdc[16179](info): routing socket readable

Looks like that the debugging level is set to debug (why??). And why can't we change it? Others seem to have this problem as well.

Looks like that the following command seems to work:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/DirectoryServiceDebug "Debug Logging Priority Level" FALSE

After entering that 1 line I haven't seen any new logentries in the kdc logs. More info on that command can be found @ Apple.

Nevermind......