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October 11th, 2005

Skype’s encryption

Filed under: Security, Computer Security, Technology — arikb @ 6:58 pm

If you haven’t heard about Skype, go check it out. Skype is a PC< -->PC and PC< -->POTS VoIP application.

In their web site, they claim that all their calls are encrypted (more…)

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September 28th, 2005

In Israel now

Filed under: Privacy, Israel, Technology, Physical, Travel, World View — arikb @ 2:30 pm

Well, I’ve landed. On the 18th actually.

The flight here was strangely eventless. Frankly, I expected more “security”. Ever since September 11th, and even before, there was a lot of “security” around flights to Israel, but this time everything went so smoothly I was surprised. (more…)

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August 3rd, 2005

Bluetooth-equipped cars vulnerable to eavesdropping

Filed under: Security, Privacy, Technology — arikb @ 7:15 pm

I’ve written a blog entry in the SecuriTeam blog about the recent bluetooth-eqipped car eavesdropping problem.

Check out the blog and my entry.

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May 19th, 2005

Israeli time zone woes

Filed under: Israel, Technology — arikb @ 2:38 pm

A coworker asked me about time-zone today:

Subject: Our special time zone: Jerusalem 2005

This is causing problems.

When I invite someone from a different office to a meeting, he receives the meeting time one hour earlier than what I write.

And my answer to that:

That’s not because of our unique timezone. The only thing ‘unique’ about it is that it will switch back to non-daylight saving automatically.

There are two ways to deal with DST in Israel.

  1. Shift your clock one hour forward.
    Advantage: All future and past metings are aligned correctly.
    Disadvantage: You’re not working with UTC, so you can’t sync with NTP anymore.
  2. Change your timezone.
    Avantage:That’s the way to do it. The entire world does it and it works well, except for Israel. It keeps you on UTC, so you can send meetings to the rest of the world and they’ll be okay. Disadvantage: in Israel specifically, the dates for the time-zone change change every year, so you need to readjust it manually, hence the creation of our Jerusalem 2005 timezone.

What you are encountering is a case when you send an invite from a computer with a correct UTC (yours) to a computer with a shifted UTC (for instance Cellcom). Appointment setting is always done in UTC (so you can set up international appointments) but the other system’s UTC is different than yours, so it sets a different time. It is inevitable.

If we would have switched to a shifted-UTC scheme (which is, IMO, a bad thing) the particular company you’re working with will be okay, but companies that work with the time-zone method will get the appointment an hour early. It’s a bloody mess.

I hope this clears things up.

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