Hi-Tech Arena

By:    Jacob Siegal ,  http://bgr.com This week began with a  massive report detailing the NSA’s extensive spy operations  in the United States, but the revelations didn’t end there. Jacob Applebaum, co-author of  the original  Der Spiegel  report , took the stage at the 30th annual Chaos Communication Congress to discuss the specifics of the operations even further, including the existence of a device called “NIGHTSTAND,” which has the ability to infect a wireless network “from as far as eight miles under ideal circumstances.” Use of the device is employed by the NSA when a wired connection cannot be established. The leaked document also states that an attack by the device “is undetectable by the user.” Applebaum says that he has heard of instances where the  NSA  has attached the hardware to drones in order to exploit the personal electronics of large groups of people. There are no documents to directly back up this terrifyi...

SSH tunneling can be used to secure copy (scp) files to the clusters from your local  computer (and vice versa) without having to copy them on to the intermediary bastion host. This page contains instructions on how to use SSH tunneling on the HPC clusters to secure copy (scp) the files. You can do one of the following two methods to secure copy (scp)  the files from/to clusters to/from your home computer through tunneling. 1.     Put these lines in your ~/.ssh/config file on your personal linux machine. If you don't have this file "config", create one. Host hpctunnel HostName hpc.es.its.nyu.edu LocalForward 8020 usq.es.its.nyu.edu:22 LocalForward 8021 bowery.es.its.nyu.edu:22 LocalForward 8022 cardiac1.es.its.nyu.edu:22 User UserName Host usq HostName localhost Port 8020 ForwardX11 yes User UserName Host bowery HostName localhost Port 8021 ForwardX11 yes User UserName Host cardiac1 HostName localhost Port 8022 ForwardX11 yes User U...

A virtual private network (VPN) is a method of computer  networking--typically using the public internet--that allows users to  privately share information between remote locations, or between a remote  location and a business' home network. A VPN can provide secure information  transport by authenticating users, and encrypting data to prevent unauthorized  persons from reading the information transmitted. The VPN can be used to send any kind of network traffic securely. VPNs are frequently used by remote workers or companies with remote offices  to share private data and network resources. VPNs may also allow users to  bypass regional internet restrictions such as firewalls, and web filtering,  by "tunneling" the network connection to a different region. Technically, the VPN protocol encapsulates network data transfers using a  secure cryptographic method between two or more networked devices which  are not on the s...