Name: Christopher Lewis
Location: Burlington, VT

Part time philosopher, full time coder. I dabble in many things. One day I will probably write half a novel about it.

I'm not much of a photographer, but I like to play one on Instagram.

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The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable

via Adrian Chen at Gawker:

Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit “check out.” He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins—untraceable digital currency—worth around $150. Four days later the drugs, sent from Canada, arrived at his house.

“It kind of felt like I was in the future,” Mark said.

Between this, the actions of Lulzsec, and the antics of Anonymous, I’m sensing a growing underworld far beyond the reach and control of our existing state-run policing agencies. I wonder what William Gibson’s perspective is on all this, he basically predicted all this would happen.

I doubt Silk Road will last for much longer now that the secret is out, but I’m sure there are a number of other sites just like it that we simply don’t know about. The use of Bitcoin here requires an entire analysis all its own; we’ve simply never had such an untraceable currency before. I’m hoping this doesn’t completely destroy its reputation though, I’m genuinely excited to see it take off.

Read more here.

Tags tech web news security drugs

 Source Gawker

Session Hijacking Demo (Target: facebook)

A friend of mine created this demo recently. Don’t be fooled by the soothing music, this video is terrifying. Think a strong password is all you need to maintain your identity? Witness how easy it is for a hacker to hijack your account - while you’re using it. All that’s needed is public unsecured wifi, which is pretty much everywhere these days.

It doesn’t matter what kind of computer you use, what version of Windows you’re running, or even what AntiVirus you have installed. In fact, this could work on anything connected to the web - even your new fancy friggin’ iPhone 4G. Even better: the same intrusion technique can be used for hijacking accounts at any number of other sites (pretty much any site that uses cookies to store session information).

Take it in. Be paranoid, it might just save you from having your identity stolen while you sip that chai tea at your local café.

Tags facebook security privacy