James Banogon

Guidelines in building a Hollywood operating system

Posted on January 10, 2010 in Humor

1. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

2. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.

3. When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

4. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file — and there are no undelete utilities. Corollary: Deleting a file instantly removes all copies of said file from disks, memory, frame buffers and caches across all computers in the universe.

5. If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.

6. No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.

7. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren’t labeled.

8. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.

9. Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY.

10. Whenever a character looks at a terminal, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.
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Hackers find new iPhone vulnerability

Posted on July 30, 2009 in Technology

A join up of security experts has found vulnerability in the iPhone that permits a hacker to take control of an iPhone through an SMS attack.

Researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner gave details about the security hole at the Black Hat cyber security conference in Las Vegas. They said they have already informed Apple about the bug a month ago but the problem has not been patched, according to Forbes, which said Apple has refused to comment on the issue.

The iPhone, they said, can be controlled by a remote hacker through a string of mostly invisible text messages bursts. That would give someone control over the phone, text messaging, browsing, mic and camera functions. There is also a comparable fault in Windows Mobile phones.

The attack exploits the lack of protection in the phone that would thwart code in the SMS from inserting in an executable file in the phone’s memory. Users who were under attack would only get a text message with a square in it.

A 2nd vulnerability would also let a hacker take the phone off the network through a type of denial of service attack through SMS. Android phones were also vulnerable to this, but it seems that Google has already patched the hole.

So what iPhone users ought to do? MyMobiSafe founder Eric Everson said it’s very implausible that they will be targeted. He said the attack would need hundreds of text messages sent to the targeted phone. He said if any of the text messages are erased before the attack is done, then the hack won’t be effective.

Just to be safe, if you happen to obtain an SMS with a square in it, turn off your phone or switch it into airplane mode.