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July 06, 2003
The Sword of Damocles
I am reading 'Stealing the Network'. According to a resource that I have found, there is a popular password 'ou812'. Since I am not a fan of VanHalen, this is not one that would occur to me although I do get '8675309'.
My curiousity in computer security is elitist if not morbid. On those days that I enter one of my periodic bad moods, moods of vague dissatisfaction with what my life has become, I think of my cousin's choice - computer security and begin acting paranoid.
Paranoia is a constant companion for me. I owe the Feds lots of money. Every once in a while I miss a payment, generally coinciding with the breaks between contracts. At times such as these, my wife wistfully watches the Home & Garden channel, my daughters do cartwheels in the hallway and my son plays the same 7 keys on the Casio over and over and over. It only takes one bit of spam to remind me during such a period that I might not have a job, my wife hates me for not having a mortgage, my daughters are airheads, my son is an idiot and the IRS is about to take whatever money I have in the bank and garnish it. Ordinarily, I would have a drink, but then that would only bring on the heart attack.
The spam reminds me of course that there are millions of hungry bloodsuckers waiting for me to keel over, and if they could attack my firewalls, they would. Then of course there are thousands of hackers who can and probably have already. I am not fool enough to retain any credit card numbers on my machine, then again, there's nothing on them anyhow.
So I am reading 'Stealing the Network' so that I too can beome a predator and that I can stop writhing in agony over the unknown. The first step to sanity is knowing better than a million idiots what passwords not to use. But at the very least there is some comfort in being a black man so that if I use the name of an old girlfriend, 'Sindeetha' is not in the dictionary.
Posted by mbowen at July 6, 2003 03:40 PM
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