Helping diagnose and recover hard drives, one customer at a time.

I don’t understand how these huge roaches end up getting in our apartment. Good thing it doesn’t happen that often.

Colored glass windows at the Highline Park in New York City

This weekend at The Next HOPE conference Michael “theprez98” Schearer, a security researcher, gave a very interesting talk about SHODAN. SHODAN is a search engine which searches “banners” of systems. This means it’s basically a search engine of services on the internet. For example, with SHODAN you can find all servers running a specific version of Apache in a specific country. You also have the ability to export results in XML for a nominal fee. Check out the video of theprez98′s talk below. You can also find the slide-deck for theprez’s talk here. Please check your ethics before misusing SHODAN.

SHODAN for Penetration Testers (The Next Hope) from theprez98 on Vimeo.

This past weekend was The Next HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference presented by 2600 Magazine. I myself am an avid lock enthusiast and enjoy the challenge of manipulating locks. Below is a video of the Lockpick Wizard competition sponsored by Locksport International. The object of the competition was to pick as many locks as possible in 8 minutes, while unable to see the locks and tools. Contestants had to place their tools and locks inside the burlap sack and pick away. The second round was done blindfolded. In hindsight I wish I’d have joined in the fun, but alas I chose to be a spectator on this one and record the spectacle. (Please forgive the blue tint in the video… apparently Qik is broken on the iPhone 4 at this time. I hope they fix it soon.)