/dev/justinian

I’ve been a Wireshark devotee for probably a decade....

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:47:00 -0800

I’ve been a Wireshark devotee for probably a decade. I’m sure I’ll continue to be a huge fan for everyday use. I had heard stories about Microsoft’s Network Monitor being awesome a few years ago at GDC, but hadn’t actually tried it out until now.

I have to say, for developing custom protocol parsers (for debugging the mutliplayer game you’re working on, for example), it wins hands down. I might never write another Wireshark dissector again.

It’s hard times for dreamers

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:09:09 -0800

It’s hard times for dreamers

I Know Where You are and What You are Sharing: Exploiting P2P Communications to Invade Users' Privacy

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:50:12 -0800

I Know Where You are and What You are Sharing: Exploiting P2P Communications to Invade Users' Privacy:

Abstract: In this paper, we show how to exploit real-time communication applications to determine the IP address of a targeted user. We focus our study on Skype, although other real-time communication applications may have similar privacy issues. We first design a scheme that calls an identified-targeted user inconspicuously to find his IP address, which can be done even if he is behind a NAT. By calling the user periodically, we can then observe the mobility of the user. We show how to scale the scheme to observe the mobility patterns of tens of thousands of users. We also consider the linkability threat, in which the identified user is linked to his Internet usage. We illustrate this threat by combining Skype and BitTorrent to show that it is possible to determine the filesharing usage of identified users. We devise a scheme based on the identification field of the IP datagrams to verify with high accuracy whether the identified user is participating in specific torrents. We conclude that any Internet user can leverage Skype, and potentially other real-time communication systems, to observe the mobility and filesharing usage of tens of millions of identified users.

None of the core concepts in this paper seem particularly surprising: If you establish a connection with someone over the internet, you know their IP address. If you know an IP address, you can check whether that address is participating in a specific BitTorrent download.

The interesting part of this paper is that the authors are able to use Skype to inconspicuously gain a targeted users’ IP address. By basically dropping all TCP SYN packets during call initiation, UDP packets get through but TCP connections fail -the attacker gets the remote IP address, but the user is never notified of the “call”. The authors combine this method of tracking Skype users’ IP addresses with crawling of common BitTorrent trackers to link Skype users with what they are sharing over BitTorrent. Finally, they filter out false positives from users behind NAT devices by initiating a Skype call and a BitTorrent handshake simultaneously and analyzing the IP ID fields of the response packets.

This paper serves as yet another reminder that without special precautions such as using Tor (and even then..), your actions are not anonymous online. But not only does your ISP and your mobile carrier now have all this information about you, this attack can be carried out by anyone.

Holy crap, I flew a plane today!

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:58:57 -0700

Holy crap, I flew a plane today!

That looks hella fun. Let’s get this mofo wet!

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:18:00 -0700

That looks hella fun. Let’s get this mofo wet!

What's The Difference Between FM And AM Radio?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:20:06 -0700

fakescience:

http://nilretain.org/~justin/bandwidth_tests.html

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:02:21 -0700

http://nilretain.org/~justin/bandwidth_tests.html:

Here’s a link to the test data I mentioned in my previous post. It took me a little longer than expected to set up the Qwest/CenturyLink side of things. (Through no fault of theirs, though.. I just was lazy and didn’t want to move the bookshelf to get to the phone jack.) Data is just starting to come in now, but so far neither side looks that great. Only time will tell.

Bandwidth woes

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:52:00 -0700

Today at 17:00, I will be the proud owner of not one, but two internet connections. I’ve been a Broadstripe customer for the last few years, and the service has been absolutely terrible. Sadly, because cable companies refuse to compete with each other, Broadstripe was my only option for DOCSIS broadband. When we moved in to our house, we had Qwest DSL (now CenturyLink), but it was also terrible: at the time, we were paying for 7mbps, their highest speed, and getting maybe 3mbps on a good day despite several service calls. CenturyLink has supposedly been upgrading their COs and now offers 12mbps in our area. Broadstripe continues to offer 15mbps, but has obviously heavily over-sold their service without upgrading their network, as my throughput during peak hours has decreased over the years, and has really tanked recently.

So now I have both for a couple weeks, and I’m going to compare. Of course, no one should have to make such a decision based on how slow the connection feels, so I’ve been collecting data for a while now. Once I have the DSL service up and running tonight, I’ll put up a page with running comparisons, but here’s a look at the kind of graphing I’ve been doing with this data:

This graph shows the average bandwidth and latency (to my hosted server) for a given hour of the day over the last two weeks. That entire red line in the top graph has been sliding downwards lately. My comparisons page will also have a non-averaged graph of the last two weeks of data, which shows not only a downward trend, but a number of canyons where my throughput drops to around 2mbps. I’m very curious to see how CenturyLink does in comparison…

I’m glad everyone seems to agree with me about Torchlight...

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:04:16 -0700

I’m glad everyone seems to agree with me about Torchlight 2.

The view out of our room in Puerto Vallarta. I think this week...

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:50:33 -0700

The view out of our room in Puerto Vallarta. I think this week is going to go quite well.

And so I did. (I love that someone at our office printed this...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:05:05 -0700

And so I did. (I love that someone at our office printed this out and hung it by the elevator…)

Can’t sleep, evil smurfs will eat me.

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:10:05 -0700

Can’t sleep, evil smurfs will eat me.

Sneak n’ Peak: The original Atari voyeurism game? (Someone...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:05:05 -0700

Sneak n’ Peak: The original Atari voyeurism game? (Someone brought this cartridge into the office. Why they wouldn’t want to keep it, I can only guess..)

Every day, I walk by this and laugh. “Halp. Am stuck in a...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:02:26 -0700

Every day, I walk by this and laugh. “Halp. Am stuck in a walking loop.”

At this price, I am a steal.

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:28:33 -0700

At this price, I am a steal.

Bands and Hangers

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:38:14 -0700

Bands and Hangers

And now I want to go back and play SpyHunter.

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:01:06 -0700

And now I want to go back and play SpyHunter.

Photo

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:38:58 -0700

Hi.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:23:00 -0700

Hi.

Holy crap my phone camera works again. It’s been so long.

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:43:00 -0700

Holy crap my phone camera works again. It’s been so long.