03-20-2000

The MailBag is a short one this week. I'll make up for it next week, I promise ;-)

I would never use biometrics because:

- For some biometrics, the criminal can chop off part of my body to gain
access. This can work for hands, eyes or heads.

- Criminals can easily record some biometrics. Voice, images of body parts
can be recorded.

Electronic tokens and smart cards with imbedded security chips are better
than simple passwords and do not have the goolish problems nor copy
problems of biometrics.

While password mania is a problem, I'd rather have my smart chip stolen
than my body part taken!!!

Saul Douglas Roe

I've actually read about several biometrics companies that were putting in safe guards to make sure that the bodyparts are "alive" before authenticating. We'll start seeing little signs hung up in offices now "This unit will not authenticate dismembered extremities".

<hr noshade>

Anon Submitted The Following:

With all the recent and past dos attacks towards your website, what have you been doing to keep them off your back? Seems like someone's been flooding you with echo replies for some time. Is there any real effect against your servers when they do this?

Usually there is no effect from these attacks at all. We have a Cisco 7500 series set up with IOS Enterprise Plus, which enables us to do fun things like tcp intercept, access lists, etc. Then we add in some other fun things on the backend, and life is good.

<hr noshade>

Dear, Mr. Vranesvich

I've been looking for a how-to text on hacking the gibson for quite some time now, with no luck.

Can you please direct me to a step-by-step article on how to hack the gibson and various other elite networks.

Thanks,

debris@attrition.org