* Posts by John

11 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2008

Serial killer may have been conjured by DNA blunder

John

I do Genetics me.

"Another issue is the statistics presented. A zero match would be enough to prove innocence but a 99.99% match doesn't prove guilt (even your brother will have a better match to you than that."

No match does not mean not guilty, it could mean several things:

- The sequence you're looking for in the DNA isn't present - try a different sequence.

- The DNA has been degraded with DNAse, and there's basically nothing left to identify.

- The person still comitted the crime, but this DNA isn't there's - find more samples!

And it doesn't work in a percentage-wize fashion. You wouldn't use inclusive matching to prove/elmininate a suspect, you would be exclusive - ie, you are either the person whos DNA this belongs to you or not. If the results aren't clear enough, then the lab will say so. They won't speculate.

(Fortunately, criminals leave more than enough DNA at the scene of the crime, which leads to very confident results, especially if the victim put up a fight - grow you're fingernails people!)

Your brother's DNA will be 99.99999% similar, but at the end of the day so is a chimps.

As you're only interested in that 0.000000001% difference, then you are technically only 50% similar (statistically) to your brother (50:50 chance of getting the same chromosome from your mother/father that your brother did) when it comes to the DNA that matters.

And if those odds arn't good enough for you, there are a whoooole bunch of other tests.

You can roughly tell a person's age from there telomere length, so if the brother is 60 and the suspect is 18, it will be very obvious that it isn't him - but a good DNA fingerprint test (which i assume you would use if someone's life is hanging on the results) will look for something in the sample that only one in a billion people will have - and perentage has nothing to do with it.

Just the random errors cells make when they undergo mieosis. These DNA replication errors are totally random.

Anyway, the point i'm trying to make is that DNA fingerprinting IS reliable and very effective if done correctly. You can't say that as 6 perps havn't been caught by fingerprinting, then the whole technique should just be dropped. It *has* caught hundreds of thousands of guilty people, and cleared thousands of other-wize convictable innocents.

Besides, it's not the technique that convicts people - a jury does that based on the evidence.

If they tried to convict someone who's DNA had appeared positive due to contamination, it would be quite obvious something has gone wrong.

"We found your DNA on the kitchen knife that killed your wife, and your family car which could have been used to transport the body was covered in it. A spade in your shed also contained your DNA, which could have been used to bury the victim's body."

"Err..."

"We also found sink and drain unblocker in your sinks and drains, presumably so you could eliminate the DNA evidence. What's more, our detectives noticed that you have Sky+ and have recorded several episodes of CSI Miami, dating as far back as season 1 recorded in 2003 - suggesting you have been planning the murder of your wife for at least 6 years..."

Forensics doesn't work like that. DNA fingerprinting is worthwhile, and really is very very accurate providing the source is of good quality.

So rest assured people, no one is going away for a crime they didn't commit simply because a lab assistant labeled a test tube incorrectly. If that ever does happen, a lab would quickly loose it's licence and go out of buisness when the inevitable re-trial comes around.

So i reiterate - grow your nails people!! xD

The Pirate Bay punts BitTorrent cloaking device

John

Sure

Some people seem confused about how this is going to work...

A secure VPN such as the one suggested won't allow people to find other user's IPs, as your VPN IP will be something like 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x, and gets translated as your 'real' IP by TPB's endpoint.

So people with real IPs will be talking only to TPB's VPN endpoint, and people who have the service too will use only internal IPs, like a regular LAN.

No one but TPB's VPN endpoint will get your IP.

Naturally, *all* traffic will have to be sent via VPN. Upload and download - all tracker info and all data.

If the RIAA is part of the swarm, they already know what you're downloading, they just need your IP.

On the other hand - your ISP will see a lot of traffic to TPB's server.

It can't prove that you are downloading illegal files, but in England anyway, i don't think it will be too long before ISP's are required to send this sort of 'evidence' about suspected copyright infringers to copyright holders, and warrant is given to search the persons PC.

At the end of the day, as long as there are IPs which identify you on the internet, you can and will be identified on the internet. End of.

John

Shotgun!

I don't like this place any more. Everyone thinks i'm a criminal..

Is there anywhere i can go live where copyright is no more legally binding than calling shotgun?

I doubt i could afford to re-locate at the moment, what with the recession and all.

Perhaps i could pop over to Sony BMG and ask for all the £££ i've given them over the years for there music. I'll just say i never actually gave them my money, i was just leasing it to them, and infact it still belongs to me. I'm sure they'll see where i'm coming from.

How the Feds shook hands with an internet pedophile

John

So

Cool Mo Fo - remeber when you ran that 'beta' client with a backdoor bound to it? I sure do.

I remember people saying it was a practical joke, and they didn't mean anything by it.

So what makes you think people wern't out to backdoor/frame Digerati - just for kicks?

There are only three types of people in the backdoor 'scene'.

The Elitist

The Inquisitive

and the Plain Malicious

The elitists made most the backdoors (not all, shapeless is a nice guy... ksv can be a bit full of himself sometimes though)

The people like Digerati, myself, and many other good men/teenagers where inquisitive. Just wanted to learn about all sorts of things and help others.

Sometimes, this 'nice' quality is seen as a weakness by people looking to progress the ranks of fame by being a total douche. Putting someone down is the best way to get noticed amounst teenagers.

The rest where all just plain malicious and/or elitist. Always flaming, always backdooring others, always looking for beta/undetecteds... trying to get noticed.

What i'm getting at here, is that if you see anyone shouting "Digerati is a ****ing pedo, he should die in a fire. I always knew he was evil! etc etc", they're just trying to get attention.

If anyone has any actual evidence or is a witness to any of the stuff that's been mentioned, then they can have a say.

ZeroFool has been known to talk to Digi whilst all this was going on - and if he says that Digi wasn't as bad as he's being made out to be, then that's enough evidence for me.

I know Digi has been in the 'scene' since i have been - since J3N7iL.net was up. That was, erm, like 8 years ago...? maybe longer? I started when i was 13 and i'm 21 now..

Only a year or two ago all this stuff about him came out all at once - people started seeing him do stuff, started seeing him say things... all of a sudden.

People don't change instantly, Digi was never any of the things the zip file said. He was a nice guy who helped people learn more... that much is fact from just listening to him.

The rest is just different people's subjective views. It's all nonesense as at the end of the day, as no one really 'knew' him did they..

John

More colour

There are plenty of other possible reasons why we're hearing that he had underage pictures on his computer...

We all knew Digi was a big supporter of Tor. If a forensic team take a look his hard drive they're going to find a whole bunch of stuff in swap which wasn't 'his'.

Perhaps he was somewhat of a porn horder. 1000 pictures when you've got several terrabytes of data off usenet isn't suprizing. Perhaps the ratio of porn involving minors to people of age would be more useful.

Maybe his machine was hacked, and this whole thing (the porn, him offering beta backdoors for op, etc etc) was set up by the people who wanted him gone.

The most important question really is where did El Reg get this info from? Because it seems to mimic the leaked zip file version of events and structure exactly.

This zip file was 'leaked' by the admins of Taunet... so not exactly a credable source you would think.

I'm not siding for or against Digi at the end of the day. All I'm saying is I would take everything said here with a pinch of salt. It all stems back to bickering teenagers.

John

some color.

I, unlike most people in taunet and ssg, actually knew Digi quite well. I used to spend a lot of time talking to him about computer security. You might even say that he was somewhat of a mentor to me.

Digerati wasn't a pedophile or a gay, he wasn't even a security enthusiast like myself. He was simply a loner.

I got the impression that he, like most people in taunet, didn't fit into the 'real world' quite like most people do, and he turned his attention to the alternative, the cult, the non-mainstream. He only felt that he belonged amongst those who also wanted to belong.

He was always very friendly, very kind to new comers - he was just a nice and slightly childish kinda guy. I bet all this involvment with the law scared him shitless.

He asked for my photo once when he was probably around 17, (he's only a few months older than me, I know because he applied to Uni when I was 18). I sent him one and that was that. A webcam shot of me sitting at my computer - fully dressed obviously - and that was that. He never asked to see me naked or anything. I think he just wanted to know what sort of person I was.

You have to remember a few things here with this story:

The adverage age of the backdoor scene (where he came from) is early to late teens. Every one is 13-20.

If he was gay, I certainly don't think he was a pedo.

Secondly, he was a loner in real life. If you where gay he would probibly say he was too just to be your friend.

All teenage boys like talking about sex... so he made #diggerpenis for people to do that.

Basically, when your in the world of teenage hackers, no source of information is reliable. Most accusations will be an attempt to gain scene respect/notoriety, and personally I still think that this is what it's all been about. Just as soon as someone says pedophile people actually start listening.

Belgium wants in on European web blocklist

John
Flame

You can't spell blogging without logging.

The biggest problem with society and it's view on internet anonmity is that they don't know how valuble all this behavoiral data is.

Forget filters and cencorship - your data will one day be logged. This is just a prelude.

Every site you visit, every article you read, every comment you left - perhaps even how long you read certain pages for - can be used to build up profiles of people and populations.

People aren't all that complicated as they'd like to belive. Stimulas goes in, reaction comes out.

You control the simulus... you control the reaction.

Targeted ads specific to you?

Bah, don't worry about it - wait untill there are ads targeted at you and everyone who is in your geographical area. Then you're screwed.

"Oh hey, have you heard about the xyz?"

"Yeah man, i read about it on the internet, apparently it's really good"

"Yeah i read something about it somewhere too. We should all talk about this product/idea more, and let the irrational, social part of our brain determing how we feel about this!"

Anonimity is the only real answer to the future of the internet as we know it.

Everyone who is a provider of services will want to log everything about you. Every end-user will either prevent it as best they can, or pretend it isn't happening and hope it goes away.

I would recommend to anyone reading this now - if you have a few minutes spare, go and get yourself a shell account on a server in a country which doesn't (yet) care who you are.

Route all your personal information through there. Be one of the statictics which didn't get recorded. Join the anonymous revolution!

Fire. Because it's an uprising.

Breakthrough paint blocks top-end spectrum

John
Boffin

Encryption?

I can't imagine the millitary using a wireless technology to exchange data, where both parties have to be a meter or so away and any physical barrier at all can cause problems.

Cables or physical transferal of data would be much safer, and probibly quicker too.

And even if they did - for example it became super-trendy to have your monitor and your PC talking to each other on 100Ghz - the bandwidth avalible would be huge, and massive amounts of encryption would be easy to impliment, even if it was rather pointless.

Now, a wireless technology that allows me to stream high quality media from my iPhone to my wireless headphones / headscreen might be useful - but it won't be paint that prevents it from working. It would be DRM and crippled protocols. Cheers Jobs.

Science. Because you can never have too much.

US woman says Ubuntu can't access internet

John
Paris Hilton

To dumb to study.

Although we can all make fun of the girl for not knowing what Ubuntu is, and her ridiculous excuse for missing TWO terms at college (i'm guessing this is like Uni right?) the truth is that some Tech Support guy had this girl on the phone - and yet he recommended Ubuntu to her!

He would have know immediatly that she didn't know the difference between an ethernet cable and a power cable. So why did they think she could handle a whole new OS?

Ubuntu is by no means a difficult operating system to master.. but it's a bit crule dumping this girl in at the deep end. Everyone i know who has Ubutnu has dual-booted at first.

I suppose buying a new car at a dealership is a nice comparison:

Salesman - "So you want a new car?"

Girl - "Yes, i have a fair bit of money.. what would you recommend?"

Salesman - "Well, the best car we sell right now is this TVR Tuscan. It's fast, it's lightweight, and it's different. Only problem is when it breaks your ****ed"

Girl - "Okay, err, do i have to change gears? I'm used to an automatic Nissan Micra"

Salesman - "Hah! Nissan Micra? You make me laugh! I laugh at you're insufficent knowledge in all things car related! Here love, get yourself strapped in this bad boy and you'll have a great time."

Two days later..

Girl - "I drove into a tree, and my life is ruined."

Salesman + Anonomous Reg users in harmony "Hah! Women! They're so f**king stupid! I'm going to make a blog on why women are so ****ing stupid!"

House key copied from photo

John

Why does increase in awareness = Increase in obnoxious-ness

Everytime there's a thread on physical security, there always seems to be three types of answers:

1 - I don't care for technique abc, technique xyz is much better / worse

2 - I've known this all along. Publis-Sector security is a myth. The end is nigh.

3 - That's so scary, I'm selling my house and living on a boat so no one can steal my stuff.

This can be a good thing mind you, because there all valid points.

Sure, there are lots of techniques out there, bump keys, picks, bricks, pizza.. whatever. Most of them more effective than this (you can bump a Medeco/Chubb M3, and you can overlift a Multi-Lock, but you cant get a profile of either from one dodgy picture).

And it's true there is no such thing as public security now-a-days.

While your home with all your posessions in it is your life, no criminal is going to open your locks to steal an iPod and a few photo albums when they could be down the road breaking into the accounts department of Debenams.

And sure, living on a boat would be more secure than living on an estate (provided the 21st century pirates stay in Sweden)

But for gods sake people stop being so god-damn self-rightous!

Lots of people are learning the basics of security now-a-days. Good. Knowledge drives technology.

But please, no one cares that you know what a bump key is, or how you managed to open a Yale in 20 seconds using a plastic bottle, a rubber band, and three crumbs from under the sofa.

Your arrogance makes you lie to make up for your shortcommings in actual knowledge, so we hear things like:

- Dimple keys being the modern standard. They're not. They're just regular locks with the pins on the side. You can pick/bump them just as easy (or over lift the advanced Multi-Locks)

- That copyright laws forced a change to dimple. Nonsense. You can still copyright a regular keyway. People are still producing restricted keys after all.

- That all keys are unsecure. Not true at all, many locks have never been broken (without perminent damage like drilling anyway)

- There is a machine that can copy any key using just a blank bit of metal, but it only works 70~80% of the time. I don't even know where to start on that one.

Everyone treats security like some god-damn competition >_<

Noel Edmonds defies BBC's jackbooted enforcers

John

John

How to avoid paying your TV licence:

1 - Buy a projector.

2 - Use Internet TV. (Dispite what people say, non-CRT computer screens don't have occilators)

3 - Stick your receiver (freeview?) in a faraday cage, and use an external ariel.

4 - Be Noel Edmonds.

But i know what the guy means though, those TV Licencing letters are incredably un-British.

You'd expect:

"Dear Valuded Customer, we have noticed you are using your telly to watch are humble television broadcast. If you wouldn't mind, could you pay your TV Licence so we can continue providing this service? Pretty please?"

But no, when staying in Uni halls last year i got a letter more along the lines of :

"Dear Mr. Uzbeckistan (not me, he lived in the room two terms before me),

Where the fuck is out fucking money? Eh? Where is it?

We (may) have detected you where using your TV, probibly to watch BBC3's comedy shows, because it's fucking brillient as always.

Either that, or you where checking out Sara's from Big Brother 9 great arse on BBC1. you dirty cunt.

If you don't send us the money quick-snap, Jonny and the boys will be paying you a little visit, and you don't want that now do you.

To sum up:

You've probibly watched the telly,

You havn't paid us any money,

We want your fucking money,

Where's the fucking money?

"

The guy before me didn't have a TV.

I know this because my room had no power sockets.

They just had it on record that someone new is living in room 209, and they thought they'd try there luck.

Some poor bugger is probibly getting letters to me now. Oh well :P