Open Phishing

Posted on by John

(via Rod Begbie)

Marco Slot has written up a “Beginner’s Guide to OpenID Phishing” to demonstrate how vulnerable the popular distributed identity system can be to impersonation / person-in-the-middle attacks.

The real problem, of course, is the reliance on username/password based authentication schemes, and the ease with which a login form (for the OpenID provider itself) can be spoofed – even dynamically spoofed so that the phishing site can be reacting in real time to whatever provider you’ve used.

OpenID is a great system we’d all like to see succeed, but in it’s current form it must be used rather cautiously and with an eye out for attacks like those Marco describes.

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Zimbra Desktop?

Posted on by John

I ‘ve blogged thought I had blogged before here about Zimbra and their demos of “desktop” or “disconnected” functionality.

Today, TechCrunch announced “Zimbra Desktop to Launch: Full Offline Functionality” – saying the launch will be announced “later this week.”

The alpha appears to be available already: Zimbra on your Desktop.

According to TechCrunch:

Zimbra Desktop will be available cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and cross browser (Firefox, IE, Safari). The Zimbra web application and all user data is stored on the client computer (the database is Apache Derby). Data is synced real time when in online mode.

Zimbra Desktop does not include drag and drop functionality into the browser (for, say, dragging an attachment into an email), although the company says it will be included in a future release.

All Zimbra source code, including Zimbra Desktop, is open source – I expect other web developers to be taking a close look at how they are architecting things.

They’re using Apache Derby to store data client side and then synchronize/replicate with the server.

This may be just the nudge I need to finally leave Thunderbird behind altogether – right now I use Zimbra when connected and then Thunderbird to pull down mail so I can have it when offline.

SXSW Day Four – Bruce Sterling’s Annual Rant

Posted on by John

The last panel of SXSW Interactive was Bruce Sterling’s Rant. (Audio here).

Sterling is a favorite son of Austin, and was clearly basking in the throngs of adoring fans.

He spent most of his time on a few specific subjects.

First, a plea for people to look seriously at Reed Hundt’s organization (Frontline Wireless) which is looking to convert some of the spectrum currently used by broadcast TV and use it to blanket urban America with broadband Internet. (“There are divorcees in Korea with better access than we’ve got – it’s embarassing” – “No one watches broadcast television anymore anyway”)

Second, a discussion of, for lack of a better term, web 2.0. He spent quite a bit of time talking about Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins.

He spent a lot of time on Benkler’s Wealth of Networks – while distancing himself from it as the work of east cost academics and intellectuals. (Sterling plays the good ol’ boy a bit too thick for my tastes – there’s an odd, post-modern strain of good old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism in his jabs at Yalies and chrome-dome academics – but maybe that’s just because I see myself in them?)

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SXSW Day Four – WorldChanging

Posted on by John

Seeing Alex Steffen from WorldChanging.com speak was a very nice way to (begin to) wrap up SXSW, reminding me that there’s more to creativity than just cool games. (Though SPORE was really cool).

Creativity – in its broadest sense – is critical to our ability to make positive change in the world. It is really that simple.

I won’t even try to do his presentation justice – just go listen to it.

Three quick favorite brilliant ideas:

  1. The Play Pump / Roundabout
  2. The Life Straw

Check out worldchanging.com for more.

Alex’s advice: Green your inner geek. Figure out how to do the thing that you love doing – whatever that is – in a way which is more sustainable – and share that passion with others.

We need new and better ways of doing things, certainly, but we also need better models of how to share those ideas.

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