Welcome to my digital home! There are lots of articles you might find helpful buried in this site on topics such as modifying an Alfa Romeo 159, rebuilding a Lotus 7 (Robin Hood 2B), not to mention a ton of stuff on technology in general. It’s all here somewhere, so use the search function or navigate using the menu structure. if you want to talk, reach out via the contact function, I usually do answer!
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Alfa 159This post covers the exterior lighting modifications made to my 2008 Alfa Romeo 159 TI. If you are interested in the interior LED conversion guide, click here. This modification can be completed as a single project or as a series of smaller projects as the cost of components is still quite high due to some of the LED types in use. If you do choose to split the project I would suggest separating the turn signals / Indicators, Numberplate lights, sidelights and rear clusters into stand alone projects.
For an alternative approach to upgrade the “Third Brake Light” at position 9, click here to see the Cylon Project.
Each topic area is collapsed below for your ease of navigation so either “Show All” or Expand each sub-topic as needed:
The parts you need for this conversion are as follows:
4 x Type 380 (1157) RED 13-LED Superlux [BAY15D,380,1157,P21/5w] 12v (Positions 5,6,7&8)
1 x Type 382 CREE Q5 12V/24V HIGH POWER LED BULB for the reverse light (Position 8 )
1 x Type 382/P21W 5W CREE Q5 RED LED BULB for the fog light (Position 6)
2 x CANBUS Type 501/W5W/T10 24 LED Bulbs for the front side lights (Positions 1&2)
2 x CANBUS Type 501/W5W/T10 4 LED Bulbs for the numberplate lights (Position 10 )
4 x BAU15s 7507 Q5+12SMD=7W Brake/Signal Light 150° LED Bulbs Amber/Yellow PY21W for the front and rear indicators (Positions 1,2,5&7)
2 x 5 SMD LED AMBER ORANGE INDICATOR SIGNAL TURNING SIDE LIGHT BULB T10 W5W 501 for the side repeaters (Positions 3&4)
11 x 50w 10 ohm Aluminium clad wire wound resistors
2 x 25w 47 ohm Aluminium clad wire wound resistors
2 x 330 ohm 0.6w metal resistors
Lots of wire & plenty of heat shrink wrap
10 x Red Scotch clips
8 x Red 3mm male spade terminals
8 x Red 3mm female spade terminals
Estimated Cost: £170-200
Required Tools:
Soldering iron
Solder
Flux paste
Helping hands
Hot glue gun
Pro-Tip: You can remove the need to solder as well as reduce the overall effort if your prepared to increase your spend to buy the resistors pre-made from ebay. The example increase is DIY=£2 for a pair, whereas on ebay that would be £7-10 for the pair.
“CAN Bus”
Most modern cars make use of numerous computers within the vehicle all connected through something known as a Controller Area Network or “CAN Bus” for short. One of these computers is typically dedicated to looking after the internal electronics such as dials and gauges etc as well as the lighting circuits, in the Alfa its called the “Bodywork Computer” or “NBC” and one of its jobs is to make sure that if a bulb blows, you are warned when you get into the car with a friendly picture of your car and a warning symbol showing you which bulb has blown. This is a great feature, but unfortunately, it works against you when your swapping a traditional filament bulb for a new style LED replacement. The reason why is that a traditional bulb illuminates by putting a voltage across a metal element, essentially shorting out the circuit, causing it to heat up and emit light. This process creates a reasonably high load, measured in amps. LED bulbs work completely differently, essentially, they produce light by pushing electrons around inside a solid semi-conductor, which is a much more efficient process that creates significantly less load. This is where the problem comes! The bodywork computer puts a small amount of electricity on the bulb circuit to test that it has a connection and that the filament has not blown, so when you swap your old filament bulb for a LED one, you get one or two issues. The first issue is that the bodywork computer thinks the bulb has blown and lets you know, the second is that the small amount of power used to perform the test is actually enough to gently illuminate the LED, so it always stays on and never switches off, even when the ignition is off!
In order to fix this issue you need to use more power than you need to actually run the LED so you need to add resistance to the circuit to absorb and use extra power and simulate load. Exactly how much resistance you need is a mathematical calculation known as “ohms law” which takes a number of variables and tells you how much resistance, measured in ohms, you need to add. When you add resistance to a circuit it creates heat as the excess power is turned into heat energy to be dissipated. For this reason its important to make use of a large wattage resistor (wattage is the measure of a resistors heat dissipation ability) so that you don’t either burn out the component or even worse, create a fire hazard.
For each of the bulbs I have used, I have first measured the amps that the original filament bulb runs at, and then the amps that the replacement LED runs at to determine the correct resistor to add. For most of my replacement LEDs I have needed to simulate around 1.2amps of additional load, which was achieved using a 50w, 10 ohm aluminium wire wound resistor, however for the two side repeaters I only needed to simulate around 0.3 amps, so I used a 47 ohm, 25w aluminium wire wound resistor. In this case, because the ohms was higher and the load to simulate was lower, I was able to use a smaller wattage which reduced the actual size of the resistor.
As a point of note, every bulb in the 159 except the reverse light and the third brake light, has a CAN-BUS sensing circuit on it, and as such, will need to be replaced with a CAN-BUS capable LED or have additional resitors added to that circuit.
Front Clusters
The front clusters can be quite difficult to work with as, depending on your engine, there may not be much room to work. As mine is the 2.4 JTDM engine, I have the least amount of room so small hands, patients and a high tolerance for pain are required. The 24LED sidelights require a small modification to them before they are installed as, despite being sold as “CAN Bus friendly”, they do not simulate enough load for the Alfa to be happy with, as such, additional load, all be it a very small amount, is required. The modification requires the addition of a 330 ohm 0.6w resistor to each bulb so that when it is installed, the computer is happy that the bulb is not blown. I achieved this by soldering the LED directly onto the bulb as per the following images. Once the bulbs are ready to be installed, the next job is to prepare two of the 10 ohm 50w resistors for the front indicators. This is done by soldering around 6-8 inches of wire onto either terminal of the resistors, heat shrinking the exposed connections, and then putting scotch blocks on the end, ready to be attached to the wires inside the headlight.
The installation process is fiddly and generally very annoying but essentially for the sidelight, follow the eLearn guide below:
For the indicator, the following eLearn guide shows you how to change the bulb, however, in addition to this, you need to scotch clip the resistor to the two wires connecting to the bulb holder and place it somewhere inside the light unit once complete. In general I use a heat transfer sticky pad to affix the resistor to a suitable surface to stop it moving around:
Rear Clusters
The rear clusters are by far the most involved and require the most effort. They are split into two sections per side, one fixed to each wing (Potions 5&7) and two fixed to the boot lid (Positions 6&8). As each light unit contains a number of bulbs to replace its easier to make a “loom extension” that sits in between the original connector and the light unit and adds in the extra resistors in bulk for the bulbs. As such the light units at Positions 5 & 7 require 3 x 10 ohm , 50 w, aluminium wire wound resistors each, while the light unit at Position 6 requires 2 x10 ohm , 50 w, aluminium wire wound resistors and the light unit at Position 8 only requires 1 x10 ohm, 50 w, aluminium wire wound resistor.
For Position 8 it is easier to just scotch clip a single resistor into place over the “tail light” connection, as this is the only live circuit that makes use of a CAN Bus check signal. The Reverse Light does not have any CAN Bus checking (we will assume because you would notice!), and despite the type 1159 dual element stop/tail bulb being used in this position, only the tail element is wired up. I assume this was a “design feature” to save you carrying two different bulb types for the rear, although I find it quite stupid personally. Position 8 wiring is illustrated below:
Position 6 requires two resistors installing and as such its easier to build an extension for that connector than actually scotch clip them in place. The extension looks like the following and is attached to the shell of the car using heat transfer sticky pads for optimum heat dissipation into the vehicles shell:
These rear clusters are accessed for this upgrade as per the following guide:
Positions 5 & 7 are both the same with a three resistor unit required. The following images show the unit and the installation:
Whenever I have installed a loom extension I have coated the connections in hot glue so that they cannot come loose during driving conditions and I have used the sticky pads to secure the resistors on top of the metal surround for the light unit for optimal heat dissipation into the body shell..
The bulbs and loom extensions are then installed through the normal bulb change procedure:
Side Repeaters
The side repeaters have a limited amount of space to accommodate a bulb and as such the overall size of the bulb is an important factor. The chosen bulb is as large as the unit can house and also makes use of a multi-SMD architecture to provide a good directional light output. Aside from changing the bulb, additional resistance is needed to simulate the missing load of the original bulb. These resistors can be mounted in the engine bay, and cables run through the wing to join up with the side repeaters, where they can be scotch clipped to the existing wiring and then covered in ample amounts of insulation tape to avoid any moisture getting into the joins:
I used heat transfer sticky pads to stick the resistors to the top of the suspension pillars and ran the cable through the seem at the top of the wing down through to the side repeater hole for ease. This was a remarkably easy process and required only limited “fishing” for the cable.
Removal of the side repeater is a very simple process as per the following eLearn guide:
Number Plate Lights
The number plate LEDs are a simple swap of the original W5W type bulbs for the 4 LED versions. The 4 LED versions have been chosen for two primary reasons, firstly, I do not want it to be brighter than the original bulbs and secondly, the bulb housing do not have any built in reflectors, so its important to have the LEDs pointing the right way. The chosen bulbs satisfy these criteria well and provide a good light output. The upgrade is simple and the eLearn guide is below:
The finished product looks like this:
Third Brake Light
The third brake light employs a 10 x filament bulb light bar plugged into the back of the reflector unit, so to complete the LED conversion this is going to need to change. To do this, you will need to make a replacement bulb as no “off the shelf” direct replacements exist. I have built one called “The Cylon” which runs each LED individually and has some cool effects, but if you just want a simple LED replacement you can try the following approach. (warning, I have not done this so it needs verifying).
You will need to get 10 x 5mm round high power red LEDs with as wide a viewing angle as possible, like these, but do your own research to find the best ones you can. Once you have your LEDs you can use an on-line LED wizard to figure out the best way of wiring them up and what resistance you need to add. This will give you an output like this:
All you then need to do is remove the third brake light from the car, get out your soldering iron and hot glue your LEDs directly into the back of the reflector:
Once the glue is dry, make the connections as shown in the diagram, solder up all the parts and run about 18 inches of cable from the new unit to a “2 pin header row” that can be used to make a plug:
The completed unit can then be installed back into the car. There is no CAN Bus issues on this circuit so the light will just work like the original.
The complete/finished product is better displayed as a video and as such you can watch this one I made of the complete conversion:
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InfoSecCourtesy of the Institute for Information Security Professionals
As I mentioned in the opening CEO article, the inaugural Top Gun event in Manchester was a great success on many fronts. We had 20 participants, organised into the Red and Blue teams, plus 5 members of the Control Team, and the day just seemed to fly past, so intense was the concentration, interaction, ingenuity and fun.
We cannot give too much away as to the content of the case study or the processes we followed on the day, for fear that we might spoil some of the element of surprise for participants in future events. Suffice to say that those who were there threw themselves into the exercise and, accordingly got the most out of it, as well as proposing a few additional suggestions for developing and improving it for future players.
Let us however, convey the particular views of a member of one of the teams, and let them tell you what they thought of the event.
“TopGun, The Blue View. (Jay Abbott, PwC)
I have to admit, I was genuinely sceptical about the TopGun event as the idea of playing the Security equivalent of Battleships during one of my busiest times of the year was not one that featured far up the “to do” list, that said, I am genuinely pleased that I made the time to attend. We arrived with very little information about what was planned, and were immediately split into two teams, Red and Blue, The Red were of course the attackers, and Blue were the defenders and the teams split had been pre-planned by the organisers to ensure that a good cross section of skills rested in each team to keep things fair.
The remit was simple, we each were given suitable pieces of a puzzle, i.e. some deliberately sketchy information related to the organisation, typical of that you would find on your first day of work or your first information gathering exercise. From there it was a case of building a better picture of what you have and figuring out the best way forward (sound familiar?). At this point, the teams were physically split and departed into adjacent “war rooms” to prepare their respective strategies. We each could communicate with our “control” staff, who acted as the coordination of the event and holders of information. The co-ordination role was pivotal in the success of the event as they were able to coordinate the virtual attack and defence strategies in real-time to keep the feeling of real-life and to ensure that the game was fair.
From a blue perspective it was business as usual, we had a budget and an environment to protect, we had to evaluate the skills in our team, establish specialism’s that could work in key streams, and run the entire thing like a project.
All in all it was a very worthwhile day that created a great deal of discussion and provoked much debate. What I personally took from the day was something that I see all too often, but is perhaps not as obvious to all, to quote Paul Dorey on the day it is summed up in the phrase “Security is Asymmetric”. Put simply this is the fact that someone attacking an organisation need only find one hole or vulnerability in order to succeed, while those protecting the organisation must try to plug every hole and mitigate every vulnerability to be secure.”
Event wrap-up discussion and lessons learnt – great work everyone!
The participants captured their comments on an evaluation form and we are reviewing and acting on those comments. They also scored the event out of a scale of 1 to 5, and rated the event at 4.3 overall, but with specific scores of 4.5 for facilitation and presentation, and 4.6 for opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas. A great success by any measure.
Thanks to all involved, and to PwC, our hosts for the day.
Courtesy of the Institute for Information Security Professionals
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InfoSecFirst of all, legislation doesn’t die, it just becomes BAU. PCI is still a pain for most, but as a race, us Humans are fickle creatures who like our topics and news to be current, so the latest and greatest will always be at the top of the agenda.
PCI on the other hand has a few cards left to play, first we see the move from 1.1 to 1.2, and although the content is still uncertain, it is likley to include calrifications of “what they actually meant” and additions. Aside from the revisions now and future to the PCI-DSS, PA-DSS, and other relevant standards are likeley to appear to help ensure that those organisations we entrust with our data, do the minimum to keep hold of it.
of course, we have seen some clarifications and “movement” on the existing standard, as well as finally, some teeth being displayed by the PCI through fines.
In my view, PCI is by no means dead, or even old news, its just part of the legislative landscape that is a part of business today, not to be ignored.
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RH2B Build DiaryI was hoping when I rebuilt the suspension that the brakes were ok. Well they looked ok, and the car seemed to brake fine so I didn’t think I needed to do anything to them until the winter. Well, turns out that they were a little less than perfect and caused an MOT fail!
According to the Brake test, there was a 46% difference between NSF and OSF, whcih was a bit of an issue! I am a little unsurprised though as during the suspension rebuild, suspending a caliper on cable ties and occasionally knocking it off was more than likely to have upset a 15 year old braided hose! The fix was simple, rebuild both callipers with new seals and pistons, put new brake lines on, and flush the whole system.
Calliper Rebuild Kit
First up was a “Bigg Red” Calliper rebuild kit, cheaper than expected, coming in at £27 delivered! This gave me a new set of seals and a new piston for each calliper. The pistons that came out were pitted so a rebuild kit that included pistons was key. While the callipers were apart is was an ideal time to spray them with my favourite Auto-K Calliper paint, so I set about doing that. While the wife was out one day, I took advantage of the oven and decided to cure the paint to 200c (needed for the paint to harden) off the car and before I rebuilt everything.
My version of a happy meal
Before paint, I put the pad carrier in a vice and filed smooth all the pad glide surfaces to remove many years of corrosion and paint. After I painted them again, I removed the overspray with a file on this area and before putting the pads in coated the entire slide area in copper grease.
Filed pad glides
The new braided lines were supplied by GBS through Kit Spares, and again, were great value for money. A full set (4 lines) was around £60 delivered, which considering they were branded Goodridge and very high quality, is excellent Value for Money. I have only installed the front lines for now as the rear callipers were fine, but i’ll do the rear end in the winter!
Braided lines
The brake fluid was old and had lots of corrosion in it. When I flushed the system through the furthest calliper tons of black floaty bits came out. I am pretty sure this fluid had been in the car for several years! It took about 1.5l of fluid to fully flush & bleed the system, but boy was it worth it.
The final product went back together very easily and an MOT retest showed perfect front brake bias so I cant argue with that! Another job I wasn’t expecting ticked off!
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GeneralBeing a technologist and a DJ, I often find myself torn between the need for blinking LED’s and a product that adds value. Take for instance my need to utilise MP3’s rather than Vinyl. Its a simple requirement in so much as i just want to:
a) mitigate many, many boxes of 12″ vinyl
b) get easier access to the latest music
c) play tracks of my own creation without having to have them cut to 12″, and finally
d) retain the look and feel of my 1210’s with all their analogue loveliness!
These requirements put me in the digital DJ space, with the key players being Traktor and Serato. As you will have seen in previous posts, I had 100% decided to go with Traktor, simply because it had the ability to run 4 live sources through it, that as well as the fact that the Audio 8 interface is pretty solid, and very versatile. The thing is, an Audio 8 interface is great if your moving from gig to gig, but these days, I work for a living, so the chances of me playing out are slim, so why spend £500 on TraktorScratch V3 when I can get one of these instead 🙂
The Korg Zero4 is simply amazing. It has a multitude of effects, versatility and that all important ability to plug straight into the PC and run Traktor. Now, I already have a Pioneer DJM600, which is an impressive mixer and still considered one of the best on the market today, but, this mixer just exudes quality and functionality. For starters its a Korg product, so your in the realms of world class engineering, but then its got so many features it is unreal.
Take a look at this, this is the per channel effect section of the mixer:
Then, to complement that you have the same set of effects on the master channel! so theoretically you could apply LFO LPF to Channel A, LFO HPF to Channel B and a Phaser to the master out, all during the same mix. That would sound pretty impressive. Here are the main channel effects:
Now, I really want to find out exactly what the effect “Decimator” sounds like!
To top all that off, you get a fully featured BPM locked Sampler:
So all in all, you get an awful lot of toys for your money. Incidentally, the Korg is retailing at £750, only £250 more than the TraktorScratch V3 Package. You will of course need to get a set of control records at £15 each, and a copy of Traktor V3.2, but despite that, I think its an investment worth taking. So much so, that it is one I am seriously contemplating.
The only downside of course, if I ever end up in a situation where someone says, hey, come play a set fro us, its gonna be difficult to turn up with a whole mixer rather than a simple box to interface!
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LiveMixesAnoter day another mix…… back in the style of electro madness!
David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland – When Love Takes Over (Electro Extended Mix)
Melleefresh, Deadmau5 – Sex Slave (Original Mix)
Costello – Girls Speak Louder (Donique Mix)
Alexis, Darmon, Eran Hersh, George F – Girls Who Like Girls (Original Living Room Club Mix)
Larry Tee Feat. Roxy Cottontail – Lets Make Nasty (Afrojack Remix)
Jewlez – Get Down (Original Mix)
Pain, Gubellini – Shake It Up feat. Darook Mc (Maurizio Gubellini & Stefano Pain Main Mix)
Martin Solveig – Poptimistic (Bingo PLayers Vox)
Mowgli – London To Paris (Original Mix)
Laidback Luke, Lee Mortimer – Blau! (Original Mix)
Funkagenda – H3lix (Original Club Mix)
Wolfgang Gartner – Latin Fever (Original Mix)
Starkillers – Bitch Ass Trick (Original Version)
Incidentally, this is my first recorded mix on the APC40 with Ableton 🙂
https://jabawoki.com/wp-content/mp3/Jabawoki_DirtyFriday_05032010.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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InfoSecPeople often ask me whats the best way to get into security as a career. There are of course many views on this subject, but I don’t believe there is a clear answer. So rather than try and map out a path, lets look at some of the elements involved and some options.
The first thing I want to say on the subject is that Security is more of a state of mind than anything else. I have a saying, to be good in security you need to be sceptical with a healthy dose of paranoia! This point of view will serve you well when it comes to security as it will allow you to be objective and not accept things at face value. Secondly, you need an inquisitive nature and a thirst for knowledge, To be the best at security you simply need to be able to hunt out the truth and learn the latest concepts and techniques very quickly. Finally, you need to be a good generalist, I realise this point is contentious, but I truly believe that you need to have a good general grasp of everything technology related as well as your preferred specialism in order to cover the breadth of security. Of course you can be an expert in your chosen specialism, but you must have a grasp of how “everything” fits together in order to be good.
OK, so where do you begin? Well, for starters, you need to have a long hard think about what you want out of life. What I mean by this is, are you a “techy” or are you a “manager”? I realise you can be both (as I am), but when your starting out, the subject is so broad you need a direction to head. If your a techy, then you probably heading down the threat, vulnerability and controls path, with topics such as ethical hacking, intrusion detection and firewalls on your learning list. if however, your more of a manager, your probably heading down the opposite path towards topics such as strategy, assurance and governance. Once you have figured this out, you can start to look at the material, courses and support networks available for each road to help you get going.
One important factor that should always be included however is your own personal growth and development. What I mean by this are the softer skills such as communication, empathy, leadership, coaching etc. All of these skills are fundamental to your success and should be developed in equal measure with your chosen subject specialisms. The biggest issues I face as an employer in this sector is finding good security people with excellent soft skills. Its too easy in this game to get trapped in a world of regulations or bits ‘n’ bytes, and forget that all your knowledge is pointless if you cannot make use of it and educate the world.
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InfoSecSo here we are again, a few months on, and just when so many were licking their wounds after the last infection, along comes another. Guess what, if you had your eyes shut my sympathy is not going to be that forthcoming!
Malware has come along way since its anarchistic pre-pubescent beginnings, and is now a fully fledged teenager, displaying all the fire, passion and unpredictability you would expect from one. Once upon a time, you could be sure your malware was simple in its intention, written by an unorganised person or persons, with the typical agenda of notoriety or malicious damage. Although bad, quite easy to deal with.
Modern malware however is a whole new ball game. Written to order, with a menu of “features” available from stealing data to placing a sleeper inside the system, all with standard issue mass infection mechanisms anti malware detection programming, the latest in self defence techniques and with the underlying drive of a typically well organised or at least very motivated source.
Yet despite this significant step change in what we are seeing as the attack, as a world of experts I am still not seeing a change in the controls, strategies or defence tactics of many organisations. This I find astounding. How anyone who is considered a responsible person in an organisation can sleep at night thinking that a firewall and a few layers of Anti-Virus is going to cut it as the total form of protection is seriously miss-informed. Equally, those companies out there pedalling the silver bullets of the security world ” ultimate anti-malware solution (TM)” are doing nothing but compound a problem that will continue to evolve and get more sophisticated.
The simple fact is that ANY malware solution on the planet today from any vendor works on the same detection methods. They look for something they have seen before or something that looks like something they have seen before and block it, It’s that simple. And for that reason alone, you cannot rely on that control alone as the only form of defence. Equally, the firewall and all that other perimeter based paraphernalia you invested in, don’t get me wrong, all well and good, but its not going to stop this stuff. Why? Web 2.0, Social Networking, Unified Communications, Chat, Mail, you name it. Any medium of communication that can facilitate the transfer of a file, and that includes just good old browsing of the web, will bring malware to your door, invited in so to speak, through all that perimeter protection, and straight to the desktop.
The truth is, the only way to protect yourself against this stuff is to stop thinking it’s “the good old days” and get with the times. The only way you’re going to stand a chance of surviving one of these incidents is by thinking about the entire control landscape and how they interact with each other. A good model for this is Defence in Depth as that provides a very good method of visualising the controls at each layer of your environment and allows you to map attacks through the controls to see if they would be successful or not.
This simple visualisation strategy can bring value beyond your wildest dreams, giving you the opportunity to stop, think and adjust what you’re doing, justify investment, demonstrate control and rationalise spend. All very important concepts for the times. There is a world of products, vendors control choices and equipment with pretty flashing LED’s on it. The only way to figure out which ones will help you is to understand what you have, what you need and why.
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InfoSec……can be reverse engineered by mankind.
Its a simple mantra, but one that has served me well in security.
Think of of this way, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, someone, somewhere is more intelligent! When it comes to security this is never more true. As we all know, security is asymmetric, in so much that the effort required to secure something is significantly more than that required to break into it. Given this point, it makes the mantra even more relevant! If security was symetrical, you would have a 1:1 effort relationship, however, as its not, (we will for the purposes of this article assume its 2:1, i.e. double the effort required to secure), it would theoretically take less brain power than it took to create the control to break it.
Obviously I accept that this is a very simplistic representation of the point, but one I think is valid.
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LiveMixeshttps://jabawoki.com/wp-content/mp3/Jabs_20092001_Summer_House.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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