The Daily Nerd (November 10th, 2013)

The Daily Nerd (November 10th, 2013) #

Changing the Paradigm: Exoplanet Interview with Dr. Sara Seager

Astronomers have now discovered one thousand extrasolar planets, reaching a milestone in modern astronomy. (See a recent Universe Today article on the subject.) While many have contributed to this achievement, Dr. Sara Seager of MIT has played a large role over the past two decades by contributing vastly to the field of exoplanet characterization. Her theoretical work led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere.

How I compiled TrueCrypt 7.1a for Win32 and matched the official binaries

TrueCrypt is an open-source encryption software capable of on-the-fly encryption on file-, partition- or disk-based virtual disks. It supports various ciphers, including AES, Serpent, Twofish or some combination of them; provides a full disk encryption (FDE) feature under Windows environment with pre-boot authentication; and even allows plausible deniability. Hence TrueCrypt seems to be a perfect solution to protect sensitive files. However, the recent news about the NSA programs enables all conspiracy theorists to imagine the worst of all. What if TrueCrypt was backdoored? What if the binaries provided on the website were different than the source code and they included hidden features? We show in this article how to reproduce a deterministic compilation process specific to TrueCrypt 7.1a for Windows that matches the official binaries, and relieve the world from at least some concerns.

Schneier on Security: The Limitations of Intelligence

Trade off between knowing, letting know that you know, and reverse engineering information received to know in advance the course of history

Newly Released Security Cam Video Shows Chelyabinsk Meteorite Impact in Lake Chebarkul

Security camera video showing the impact of the largest piece of the Chelyabinsk meteorite striking Lake Chebarkul during the Feb. 15, 2013 Russian fireball. Credit: Nikolaj Mel’nikov