Time-based One-Time Passwords with an Arduino

Time-based One-Time Passwords with an Arduino:
from Hack a Day by Mike Szczys

Get your feet wet with Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) security by building your own Arduino OATH system. OATH is an open standard authentication system that provides a platform to generate tokens, making your login more secure than a password alone would.
The TOTP approach is what is used with many companies that issue hardware-based dongles for logging in remotely. This security may have been compromised but it’s still better than passwords alone. Plus, if you’re building it around an Arduino we’d bet you’re just trying to learn and not actually responsible for protecting industrial or state secrets.
The hardware setup requires nothing more than the Arduino board with one button and a screen as a user interface. Since the board has a crystal oscillator it keeps fairly accurate time (as long as it remains powered). It will push out a new token every thirty seconds. The video after the break shows that the Arduino-calculated value does indeed match what the test box is displaying.



Filed under: arduino hacks, security hacks

Should I Change My Password? Tells You If Your Email Has Been Hacked, Notifies You When More Hacks Happen [Security]

Should I Change My Password? Tells You If Your Email Has Been Hacked, Notifies You When More Hacks Happen [Security]:
from Lifehacker by Melanie Pinola

In light of yesterday's Yahoo password breach and new news now that Nvidia and Phandroid forums have been hacked too, you might want to check Should I Change My Password? just to be on the safe side. The site checks your email against any recent hack. More »

Contest To Crack William Gibson Poem Agrippa

Contest To Crack William Gibson Poem Agrippa:
from Slashdot
An anonymous reader writes "A new cracking contest to cryptanalyse a William Gibson poem. The electronic poem ('Agrippa') was written back in 1992 and self-encrypts after being displayed once. The person who successfully cracks the encryption will win a copy of every published Gibson book."

The poem/program binary was recovered in 2008, but it looks like no one has managed (bothered?) to crack the code.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iFixit for Android and iPhone Puts Repair Guides and Troubleshooting Help in Your Pocket [Downloads]

iFixit for Android and iPhone Puts Repair Guides and Troubleshooting Help in Your Pocket [Downloads]:
from Lifehacker by Melanie Pinola

iOS/Android/WebOS: We've long been big fans of iFixit's useful repair guides and teardown manuals, and now you can easily access the site's content on the go. The free mobile apps allow offline browsing of the thousands of how-to repair guides. More »

Create a Custom Search Engine for Low-Bandwidth, Text-Only Sites [Bookmarks]

Create a Custom Search Engine for Low-Bandwidth, Text-Only Sites [Bookmarks]:
from Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy

Google's marching into the future, but sometimes you're stuck in the recent past-with a slow connection, or a computer or device chugging along at not-so-modern speed. Luckily, Google still offers its older image search, mobile translator, and text-only cache options around, if you know the URL. More »

HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf All-in-One printer rated as best value by Wirecutter

The HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf All-In-One Printer Gives You Great Bang for the Buck [Stuff We Like]:
from Lifehacker by Whitson Gordon

We all need a printer every once in awhile, but for most of us, it's hard to care which model you end up with. Our friends at the Wirecutter have done the work for us, narrowing down the best printers for quality, speed, and price. More »

Outlook Configuration Analyzer 2.0 adds 75 new rules

Outlook Configuration Analyzer 2.0 adds 75 new rules:
from BetaNews by Mike Williams
Microsoft has released Outlook Configuration Analyzer 2.0, an excellent tool for troubleshooting a host of common Outlook 2007/ 2010 issues.
As before, the program works by scanning your current Outlook setup and looking for known problems (file sizes, DLL versions, missing updates, whatever it might be). But this release adds 75 new rules, helping it to detect more issues than ever before.
New support for automatic updating now sees the program’s rules maintained online. Outlook Configuration Analyzer 2.0 will detect and download new rules as they’re added, so its usefulness should improve over time.
And the package now comes with a couple of command line tools aimed at system administrators. CalCheck examines Outlook Calendars for problems, while OCATcmd.exe can be used within scripts to scan either the local or network computers.
As with the previous version of the program, its results aren’t always a huge surprise. On our test system, for instance, the Configuration Analyzer just reported that we were missing a few updates, and had some “orphaned files in the Outlook Secure Temp” folder.
If your Outlook setup is misbehaving, though, the program could provide useful information. And if nothing else, you will get a very detailed report on its configuration: installed updates, Outlook addons and their load time, Office security policy settings, application events (including recent crashes) and a whole lot more.
On balance, then, the Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer 2.0 makes a welcome addition to every Office owner’s troubleshooting toolkit. Grab a copy and give your system a scan, see what it might uncover.
Photo Credit: sommthink/Shutterstock