About
This is the homepage for James Brokaw. I'm a Lieutenant in the United States Navy, currently stationed in Washington State. I'm a avowed snow lover, part-time ski instructor, and year-round backcountry enthusiast. The header photo was taken of me atop Cowboy Mountain. Other hobbies include hacking, juggling, and generally being geeky.
This page exists primarily to serve as a homepage and link list for my web server, but it's set up as a blog, and I'll post interesting thoughts and ideas here.
Tag cloud
Archives
01 Dec - 31 Dec 2008
01 Nov - 30 Nov 2008
01 Oct - 31 Oct 2008
01 Sep - 30 Sep 2008
01 Aug - 31 Aug 2008
01 Jul - 31 Jul 2008
Links
Log into Hedgie
Hedgie Photography
Hedgie Photography Blog
Ladyhedgehog's Web
Waiting for War
Alpha Centauri on Linux
Links off Hedgie:
Slashdot
Quadradius
Hack A Day
Beermapping
GovTrack
Search!
Last Comments
Tim Williams (Open Source Inves…): Looks like CAUSS.org solv…
LordHedgehog (What is a Hacker?…): L – Yes, they’re going to…
Lady Hedgehog (What is a Hacker?…): Oh, dear Gods of Print! …
L Towles (What is a Hacker?…): I’ve been looking forward…
L. Towles (Chapter One Relea…): My quick impressions – th…
Lady Hedgehog (Chapter One Relea…): More! Please?
As I sai…
The Swamp Fox (Hedgie.com gets a…): Hey, Hedgie, looks good. …
RSS Feeds
Monday 29 December 2008 at 9:43 pm
My cat chewed through the cable of my Guitar Hero World Tour bass pedal. While there is a cheat code that automatically plays the pedal as required, and thus lets me continue playing, it does mean I can’t earn any cash for playing songs. And with replacement pedals selling for $50 on eBay I couldn’t bear to buy a replacement. I could call Red Octane and try for a warrenty repair, but it’s really hard to explain how a cut cord is a manufacturing defect. So, I repaired pedal, and took photos in case anyone else has the same problem.
(continue down this rabbit hole)
Tuesday 23 December 2008 at 6:10 pm
So I got word today that the Navy has decided to let me stay in, despite my pacemaker. This is good news. Who wants to lose thier job two days before Christmas?
Sunday 30 November 2008 at 12:53 am
Last summer Kaminsky outlined a flaw in DNS that could be used to make DNS cache poisoning attacks easier. The public comment period for the introduction of DNSSEC has ended, but it hasn’t been implemented yet. This weekend, I found myself unable to visit Yahoo! services when all the DNS entries came out wrong. Was it a DNS poisoning attack, or just a misconfiguration? I don’t know, but I wasn’t about to spend Sunday without my live Fantasy scores updating. Here’s how I worked around the problem, and how you could “fix” an attack against your favorite servers, too.
(continue down this rabbit hole)
Sunday 09 November 2008 at 01:28 am
No matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to convince some people just how powerful open source research is. Google is your friend, I say. Unless you’re trying to hide something, of course. But RJMetrics has put together a great demonstration of what you can discover by searching the Internet, and how he did it. It’s very enlightening, and hopefully inspiring enough to get you to solve whatever mystery has been bugged you lately.
(continue down this rabbit hole)
Friday 07 November 2008 at 10:34 pm
In an update to yesterday’s post, it appears the new exploit doesn’t actually allow recovery of TKIP keys, but does allow decryption of shorter packets. Decryption of packets doesn’t sound too useful, but it does still allow injection of small downstream packets. Small downstream packets include… DNS and ARP messages. So while the exploit itself remains pretty much useless, it can provide that little hole to insert the lever of poisoning. The fact remains that users of WPA are vulnerable to attack. More details here.
The root source of the exploit? While WPA2 requires AES, WPA doesn’t require it… meaning DES is still in the standard. Whoops.
Quickies
» TinEye
TinEye is in open beta, meaning anyone can get an account. It is to images what Google is to text — it searches not for words (like Google Images does) but for the image itself. Upload an image, and it will find copies and varients across the web. Good for locating stolen copies of copyrighted images, or sources of photoshopped pictures, etc. Very powerful and interesting web tool for graphics!
» Free Fun Games
Here’s another high-quality free game, better than most store games — Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game similar to Warlords. Try the Wesbowl multiplayer variation for unique fun!
» Looking for good beer?
When it comes to beer, its quality over quanity. But how do you find the gems amongst all the Coors? Try Beer Mapping, the Google Maps of beer.
» What I'm Playing Today
Okay, I’ve been playing this for years. I’m a lifetime member of Quadradius (username Hedgie). You can play for free; members get some extra options and extra powerups appear in member-only games. Try it out, and if you see me, say Hello.