Security Now Episode #107
PIP & More Perfect Passwords
I chose to read the transcripts rather than listening to the podcast because the banter was distracting so the link above reflects that. I tried listening to several and found that I was really confused by what they were discussing. I don’t think I know enough yet to appreciate what they have to offer but by going to the transcripts I was able to pick out a couple of items that I could learn more about online. Because of this I provided page numbers rather than times.
I wanted to have a better understanding about OpenID (Gibson 5). It makes sense that it would be good to have one (or more) ID that is held in a secure site that I could use to gain access to multiple sites without giving out my personal information to each of them. It seems like a common sense idea but not every site has an OpenID option, at least not yet. From what I could tell, more and more companies are adding this option because of the growing need for users to secure their personal information. This information would not be stored on the user’s computer either so if the computer were compromised this information wouldn’t be. Users gets to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets their needs and most importantly that they trust. At the same time, their OpenID can stay with them, no matter which Provider they move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free. (OpenID.net)
I also learned about dongles and fobs(Gibson 8). Dongles are hardware devices that are attached to the computer for verification of software, also sometimes referred to as hardware keys. “Dongles evolved and have become secure cryptoprocessors that execute inaccessible program instructions that may be input to the cryptoprocessor only in encrypted form.” (Wikipedia) Still, they are not a perfect protection. Fobs are external security tokens often found on a key chain much like jump drives. They can be used to store passwords or to generate a one-time password that changes after each login, or changes after a set time interval. This fob may provide a “time-synchronized one-time password change constantly at a set time interval, e.g. once per minute. For disconnected tokens this time-synchronization is done before the token is distributed to the client, other token types do the synchronization when the token is inserted into an input device.” (Wikipedia)
Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte also discuss password generators that use a “monotonic counter, meaning a counter that only goes up, never goes down.” Mr. Gibson developed a system that “generates the thing [he calls] a "cryptoken," which is a nonrepeating token that is used in order to hand our individual ecommerce users a token that’s only good once (Gibson 11). This is something that I am still trying to understand but from his description it basically helps provide passwords that are virtually impossible to break. I don’t understand all the number crunching involved but the idea is that they are providing users with more security and confidence when online, which is something everyone needs more of.
April 26, 2008
April 10, 2008
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is something I didn’t know existed (I am embarrassed to admit) until I took my technology class at the university, though it is something I wish I had known about. The idea that all those sites I’ve bookmarked at home I can now access from any computer is great. It was always a problem if I was working on a project with someone else to write down the web address and then find it on another computer. And if I misspelled something then I wasted time searching for it all over again. Now not only can I access my sites but I can share them with anyone I want. Below are the social bookmarking sites we reviewed in class with an overview of the highlights and description of what they offer.
Digg –
Digg describes itself as a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. The website states that they’re “here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and [they’re] changing the way people consume information online.” This idea of working collectively gives each voice a chance of being heard. Although not every user will ‘digg’ each item placed on the website they’re “committed to giving every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing.” They have clear-cut rules about content and are dedicated to protecting members from spamming and other abuses. I would not specifically call this a bookmarking site though since if a submitted item does not produce enough interest then it is dropped. It is a good site for discussion and posting information that the user wants to make others aware of and get feedback on.
Del.icio.us –
This site seems to be one of the most popular as I see it linked to blogs and MySpace pages all the time. Del.icio.us lets users create tags to organize and remember bookmarks, which they feel “is a much more flexible system than folders.” For me, I like compartmentalizing things into folders with tags as a search option, but I am learning the merit of tags. Del.icio.us also lets the user create a description for each bookmarked site which is helpful as the list gets longer and more difficult to remember what each link was. Using a good description along with the tags helps the user remember and identify if the site is one they need for what they are searching.
Netvous –
“The idea behind Netvouz is that you should always have access to your bookmarks. Regardless if you are at your computer at home, at work, in school, at a friend's place or outdoors surfing from your cell phone.” This site lets users organize bookmarks in folders and tag each bookmark with keywords so they easily can find them. While this seems like just what I was looking for I seem to prefer del.icio.us for some reason. This site does have some great benefits though. It provides an automatic link checker that “cares about your links and regularly verifies that all your bookmarks are valid and alerts you in case they are not. And if a web site is moved permanently we automatically update your links to point to the new address.” Now, that’s service! You can also place an “Add2Netvouz” button to your internet menu to automatically bookmark sites without going to the Netvous webpage. Del.icio.us also offers this option, as does Furl (see below).
PennTags –
This site asks the question - have you ever bookmarked a web page and then cant find it again in your mass of bookmarks? PennTags allows you to add tags to your posts, helping you organize and find posts later. Again it is that idea of user generated social indexing, that makes sites like this interesting. You create your own tags so you are most likely to have a more successful search for the information that you are seeking. You can also create an RSS feed for tags in PennTags, so anytime that tag is used, you will be notified in your RSS feed reader. This is a great way to be notified if something that users are interested in is found by others. The users can then review and keep or delete that site in their own list. There did seem to be some limitations to this site though. PennTags was developed by librarians at the University of Pennsylvania and as far as I can tell you need to be a student or staff/faculty to contribute to this site. I tried to find a user sign-up page and all links took me to the university site which asked for information that wasn’t available to me.
Furl –
While once again this is a site that I have not heard of, I am really surprised that it doesn’t get more press. It seemed to have the most services of all the sites we covered in class. Like other sites when you save a web page, you can assign one or more topics to it. This site differentiates between topics and keywords. “Keywords aid you in finding the page later, but unlike Topics (or "tags") are not as obtrusive. Basically, the keywords you assign are search hints.” Users can also save comments on the page to provide descriptions of content. When users save an item, they can also save a clipping with it, “a quoted portion of the page that is separately displayed and can be used for summarizing the page or identifying the most important part of it.” This is an easy way for user to identify key elements of saved articles. You can apply a rating system to items from 1-5 (worst to best). Furl also builds a full-text index of all your saved pages creating a personal web search engine for users. Furl also provides something that Amazon.com has been using with great success, the recommendation. Based on your activity on the site, Furl will recommend other links and topics to users. They are color-coded to indicate how popular they have been with other Furl members. Another interesting service Furl provides it that they will save a copy of a web page and it is archived for the user. This means that users can access that page and read it any time they need to, even if the web site is down, or the page has changed on the original web site, or even if the page is no longer accessible for free. This is an exceptional service considering how the Internet changes so rapidly, and sites change, move or disappear frequently. The information can still be available to the user.
These social bookmarking sites would be great for online communities created for libraries too. I like the idea of folders because then the library could create different sections for different groups of users, e.g. children, youth/teens, adults, community info, etc. Also library users could add their own bookmarks and tags to help create a fuller taxonomy for the community of users.
Digg –
Digg describes itself as a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. The website states that they’re “here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and [they’re] changing the way people consume information online.” This idea of working collectively gives each voice a chance of being heard. Although not every user will ‘digg’ each item placed on the website they’re “committed to giving every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing.” They have clear-cut rules about content and are dedicated to protecting members from spamming and other abuses. I would not specifically call this a bookmarking site though since if a submitted item does not produce enough interest then it is dropped. It is a good site for discussion and posting information that the user wants to make others aware of and get feedback on.
Del.icio.us –
This site seems to be one of the most popular as I see it linked to blogs and MySpace pages all the time. Del.icio.us lets users create tags to organize and remember bookmarks, which they feel “is a much more flexible system than folders.” For me, I like compartmentalizing things into folders with tags as a search option, but I am learning the merit of tags. Del.icio.us also lets the user create a description for each bookmarked site which is helpful as the list gets longer and more difficult to remember what each link was. Using a good description along with the tags helps the user remember and identify if the site is one they need for what they are searching.
Netvous –
“The idea behind Netvouz is that you should always have access to your bookmarks. Regardless if you are at your computer at home, at work, in school, at a friend's place or outdoors surfing from your cell phone.” This site lets users organize bookmarks in folders and tag each bookmark with keywords so they easily can find them. While this seems like just what I was looking for I seem to prefer del.icio.us for some reason. This site does have some great benefits though. It provides an automatic link checker that “cares about your links and regularly verifies that all your bookmarks are valid and alerts you in case they are not. And if a web site is moved permanently we automatically update your links to point to the new address.” Now, that’s service! You can also place an “Add2Netvouz” button to your internet menu to automatically bookmark sites without going to the Netvous webpage. Del.icio.us also offers this option, as does Furl (see below).
PennTags –
This site asks the question - have you ever bookmarked a web page and then cant find it again in your mass of bookmarks? PennTags allows you to add tags to your posts, helping you organize and find posts later. Again it is that idea of user generated social indexing, that makes sites like this interesting. You create your own tags so you are most likely to have a more successful search for the information that you are seeking. You can also create an RSS feed for tags in PennTags, so anytime that tag is used, you will be notified in your RSS feed reader. This is a great way to be notified if something that users are interested in is found by others. The users can then review and keep or delete that site in their own list. There did seem to be some limitations to this site though. PennTags was developed by librarians at the University of Pennsylvania and as far as I can tell you need to be a student or staff/faculty to contribute to this site. I tried to find a user sign-up page and all links took me to the university site which asked for information that wasn’t available to me.
Furl –
While once again this is a site that I have not heard of, I am really surprised that it doesn’t get more press. It seemed to have the most services of all the sites we covered in class. Like other sites when you save a web page, you can assign one or more topics to it. This site differentiates between topics and keywords. “Keywords aid you in finding the page later, but unlike Topics (or "tags") are not as obtrusive. Basically, the keywords you assign are search hints.” Users can also save comments on the page to provide descriptions of content. When users save an item, they can also save a clipping with it, “a quoted portion of the page that is separately displayed and can be used for summarizing the page or identifying the most important part of it.” This is an easy way for user to identify key elements of saved articles. You can apply a rating system to items from 1-5 (worst to best). Furl also builds a full-text index of all your saved pages creating a personal web search engine for users. Furl also provides something that Amazon.com has been using with great success, the recommendation. Based on your activity on the site, Furl will recommend other links and topics to users. They are color-coded to indicate how popular they have been with other Furl members. Another interesting service Furl provides it that they will save a copy of a web page and it is archived for the user. This means that users can access that page and read it any time they need to, even if the web site is down, or the page has changed on the original web site, or even if the page is no longer accessible for free. This is an exceptional service considering how the Internet changes so rapidly, and sites change, move or disappear frequently. The information can still be available to the user.
These social bookmarking sites would be great for online communities created for libraries too. I like the idea of folders because then the library could create different sections for different groups of users, e.g. children, youth/teens, adults, community info, etc. Also library users could add their own bookmarks and tags to help create a fuller taxonomy for the community of users.
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