Fun hacks, WP plugins, photography, and PKI junk. Languishing since 2008.
Archive for December, 2008
Folder Actions in OS X
Dec 31st
Awhile back I started getting annoyed at the process of manually moving files around after downloading, so I decided to investigate one of Apple’s more hidden features…Folder Actions! For those who don’t know, folder actions are configurable scripts that can be attached to folders and run whenever the contents of the folder change. They can do anything from copying mp3s you download from Amazon MP3 automatically into iTunes to converting documents automatically into PDF.
In a fit of boredom I have made a screencast showing how to make a simple folder action. If you’d like to follow along yourself, here is the More >
SSL Is Not Broken
Dec 30th
This morning an important and ingenious method of compromising the chain of trust for PKI was published. Naturally the internet is in a tizzy about the implications of this break, but misinformation rules the day.
SSL is in no way broken, but CAs still issuing MD5 certificates simply MUST stop as soon as possible. There are really two components to this (extremely clever) break:
1) a further reduction in the time required to compute a useful MD5 collision which the authors of the paper have not yet detailed.
2) CAs not using randomized serials to increase the entropy provided to the hash function.
If #2 is More >
I Caved
Dec 28th
I gave up and added this blog because Twitter was too constraining. I suspect I will almost never update this, but at least I can dump some useful info here for google users to consume.