Ryan Brooks

Ryan Brooks

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Looking at More Blackmail Spam

Looking at More Blackmail Spam

I recently published a post about blackmail spam in which the spammer was (as far as I could tell) unsuccessful in their efforts to scam people. Unfortunately, another campaign dropped into my inbox over the last couple of days where the spammer has been much more successful. I'm

Taking a look at blackmail spam

Introduction Like many people, I receive quite a lot of spam email. Unlike most, I actually read it, because it's often interesting. I've had a number of email addresses, and between them I think at least one of my email addresses has been included in most

We Live In The Future

Random thoughts

We Live In The Future

I grew up on science fiction. I loved reading stories of The Future, where space travel was commonplace, where all energy was generated cleanly, and where we worked side-by-side with machine intelligences to accomplish tasks. Of course, that wasn't what most of the books were about;

Moving to Ubiquiti Unifi

Moving to Ubiquiti Unifi

It's no secret that I enjoy working with new technology and figuring out better ways to do things. For the last couple of years I've been dissatisfied with how my internal network was configured; I was using a basic, off-the-shelf, all-in-one consumer-

It’s always DNS

Random thoughts

It's always DNS

I host a few websites for myself and family on DigitalOcean. Up until recently, I've always just spun up a new droplet for each site, so they were all fully independent from each other; this was the easiest and most convenient way to get a new site up

Interesting Links

Memcached abuse opens door to massive DDoS attacks

A new reflection attack was unveiled today which can increase the size of a DDoS attack by 51,000-fold. It uses memcached, an object caching system designed to speed up web applications, to amplify attacks against a target. This represents a substantial increase from previous attacks, which have used

New Apache Web Server bug can reveal server memory to attackers

Another day, another vulnerability in a widely-used software package. Today's bug (dubbed Optionsbleed by Hanno Böck, the journalist who documented the vulnerability) can reveal passwords and other pieces of vital information to attackers. While not as big of a threat as Heartbleed, a similar bug which allowed

New WordPress Vulnerability Results in ~2 Million Defaced Sites

Interesting Links

New WordPress Vulnerability Results in ~2 Million Defaced Sites

The vulnerability was patched in WordPress v4.7.2 two weeks ago, but millions of sites haven't yet updated. This leaves them open to a vulnerability in the WordPress REST API, which can allow malicious actors to edit any post on a site. Ars Technica has a very

Interesting Links

Is it time to abandon antivirus software?

I've noticed a growing trend in more advanced computer users lately: some of them have begun advocating against using antivirus software. Instead, they suggest using browser extensions like uBlock Origin (which I use and recommend), combined with safe browsing practices, to remove the need for antivirus software altogether.

Random thoughts

New Host!

I've finally moved to a VPS on DigitalOcean, from my previous (free) shared hosting. I did this for a couple of reasons: first, while my hosting was free for a year with my domain name, that year was almost up. To renew my hosting for the second+ year,

Clinton’s Email Server

Interesting Links

Clinton's Email Server

Ars Technica did a nice job of creating an impartial write-up on why Hillary Clinton used an external email server, and how it was actually used. It sounds to me like there's an institutional history of using private email to conduct business, largely due to obstructive or

Uncertainty, the Fed, and the Economy

Uncertainty, the Fed, and the Economy

The New York Times published this opinion piece recently, discussing the Fed's continuing decision to delay raising rates. While the entire article is interesting, I believe that the final paragraph is the most insightful: Adding to the frustration is that Fed policy is not to blame for the

Hacking the Hackers

Hacking the Hackers

Have you ever heard of Hacking Team? It's an Italian company specializing in "digital infiltration" products for governments, law enforcement agencies, and large corporations. Simply put, they sell hacking tools. You might think, given their business model, that they would monitor their own security religiously. Last

Orchids at the Missouri Botanical Garden

Orchids at the Missouri Botanical Garden

The Missouri Botanical Garden's Orchid Show ended today. I went on a date there yesterday to visit the Garden and see the show. ((Luckily, my girlfriend didn't mind my bringing my camera along.)) I honestly didn't know that there were this many different types

What is asymmetric cryptography?

What is asymmetric cryptography?

Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman were jointly awarded the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award today. Their 1976 paper, New Directions in Cryptography, essentially created asymmetric cryptography. Today, asymmetric cryptography secures our online communications—from PGP-secured texts, emails, and files, to TLS and SSL-secured websites (including this one)

Random thoughts

Email server admins are underappreciated

Today I reconfigured a server I maintain for the Office of Residential Life and Housing. It broke yesterday because of a database issue, but I've taken this as an opportunity to rebuild and improve it with an included email server. I have it mostly up and running now,

Interesting Links

How Stories Drive the Stock Market

I came across this article today in The New York Times written by Robert Shiller. Shiller is a Sterling Professor at Yale University who studies macroeconomics, behavioral economics, and public attitudes regarding markets, so he's very qualified to discuss the role of stories in our economy. The general

The Panic of 1907

Economic History

The Panic of 1907

The Panic of 1907 crippled the financial markets, brought ruin to banks and trust companies, all but bankrupted the Treasury of the United States of America, and required the intervention of J.P. Morgan to end. And it directly led to the founding of the Federal Reserve System in the

Controlling and Ending Inflation

Controlling and Ending Inflation

This is another adapted essay from my classes. This particular essay was my paper for my Monetary Policy class in the spring of 2015. I've cleaned it up a little, and adapted it for a blog format, but it is largely as it was in the spring of

Do Nuclear Reactors Lower Housing Prices?

Do Nuclear Reactors Lower Housing Prices?

The Perceived Risk of Nuclear Power Does risk play a factor in the housing market? Obviously it does—if it didn’t, Detroit wouldn’t be in trouble right now, prices in high-crime areas would be the same as everywhere else, and we’d have subdivisions built on top

Of MOOCs and Learning

Random thoughts

Of MOOCs and Learning

Decades ago, dreamers imagined a world where the resources and tools for learning anything could be used by anyone. Where colleges, universities, and even ordinary people could share information and ideas, collaborate and learn. With the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, many people thought that that world