Inventor of the 555 timer passes away

That's a sad news. The 555 is one of the first ICs I have used when discovering electronics.

Inventor of the 555 timer passes away:



August 15th 2012, the news was reported that [Hanz Camenzind], the creator of the 555 timer, has passed away.  We are all familiar with 555 timer, but many of you may not be aware that [Hanz] also created the first class D amplifier. Actually, he had over 20 patents under his belt as well as a few books.
He is survived by His Wife, Daughter, and three Sons.

Fixed-wing drone from MIT

Only one word: wow!


Autonomous fixed-wing drone threads the needled in a parking garage:


We’ve got something of a love affair going on with quadcopters, but there’s still room for a little something on the side. This fixed-wing drone can pull off some pretty amazing navigation. MIT’s Robust Robotics Group is showing off the work they’ve done with the plane, culminating in a death-defying flight through a parking garage (video after the break). This may not sound like a huge accomplishment, but consider that the wingspan is over two meters and repeated runs at the same circuit brought it within centimeters of clipping support columns.
Unlike the precision quadcopters which depend on stationary high-speed cameras for feedback, this drone is self-contained. It does depend on starting out with a map of its environment, using this in conjunction with a laser rangefinder and inertial sensors to plot its route and adjust as necessary. We think the thing must have to plan a lot further ahead than a quadcopter since it lacks the ability to put on the breaks and hover. This is, however, one of the strengths of the design. Since it uses a fixed-wing approach it can stay in air much longer than a quadcopter with the same battery capacity.



[via Reddit]

Filed under: robots hacks

Royal mail in the a...

Another day, another malware. Detection ratio for this one is 1/42 @ 8/15/2012 7:06 EST.

Information about it on Virus Total

Buffer Overflow

Today's Dilbert is amazing! :-)

For an explanation on the real Buffer Overflow, here is a tutorial.

Cisco Switch Security (Introduction)

Networks are the core of all modern computer and information processing infrastructure. Regardless of the level of abstraction used - SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, cloud computing and so forth - networks and network devices still sit in the path of all data transfers.

Securing a network device means that steps will be taken to harden its configuration, ascertain no knowledge can be gained by interrogating the device, that only the authorized personnel will have access to its management interfaces and that it will contribute to the overall security scheme of the organization in a "security in depth" framework.

The result of a compromised network device can be extreme: not only the attacker has the ability to disrupt a corporation's communications, but also to modify the traffic path, sniff the transfers or even alter the data in transit. Scary? Yes and it is only a summary.

Several resources exist that describe how to secure network devices. One of them is the Security Configuration Guides as part of the NSA's Information Assurance program. Some of the steps in these articles are from that guide.

Over the next few weeks, different aspects of switch security will be examined:

• Section 1 treats of the management console and interface
• Section 2 addresses the security at the port level 
• Section 3 examines security at the VLAN level
• Section 4 deals with two additional layer 2 protocols
• Section 5 treats of logging and logs
• Section 6 deals with miscellaneous items

Safely storing passwords

A classic advice on the Internet is to have different passwords for different sites. The reason behind is that if someone manages to get your password for an application - webmail, facebook, linkedin or anything else - he may have a way to find some of your other applications. And if your password is shared, the attacker has access to them. But, with that advice comes the hassle - rather the pain actually - to manage all these passwords, with certain sites that ask you to change your key from time to time.

The solution comes with a "keyring" or password manager: an application that will securely store your passwords and credentials, and that will allow you to access them whenever you need. Its characteristics need to be:

• Secure, i.e. the information cannot be retrieved without your master password 
• Easy to use
• Portable, so you may have your password database on a USB thumb drive

Here are three options.

Excel/LibreOffice spreadsheet

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Maybe the easiest is to use an application you are used to: a spreadsheet. In this case, you may create one to store your sites, usernames and passwords, and protect the spreadsheet with a password.

Modern versions of Microsoft Office and LibreOffice come with a strong encryption - as long as the password you use is strong - that cannot be easily brute forced.

While the spreadsheet can be put on a USB drive, you will need all the machines on which you expect to read the file to have the relevant Office suite installed.

LastPass ****

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To use LastPass ****, you have to install a small piece on your computer and allow the device to access your database.

While the master database is stored online, each device gets a locally stored copy. That way, if you don't have an Internet connectivity or if the LastPass site is down, you still have some of your credentials available.

The con is actually that the master database is stored online: you have to trust that the security of the site and the master databases is adequate.

Password Safe

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This is a little more than a spreadsheet, as you also need to install the application on all your devices. It has a few interesting features, such as generating passwords for you.


There are many, many more options available, certain commercials (ironkey, Kaspersky), others free.


Happy surfing!

Falstad Circuit Simulator - Transistor Graph

Recently, and after almost 15 years without touching a component, I decided to go back to my roots - electrical engineering - and annoy again transistors and other diodes. To quickly test, I use a java applet on the Falstad website.

The components are idealized, and for instance, there is only one NPN transistor - forget about the BC547 A through C, the 2N2222 and other BD135 - whose only changeable parameter is its DC gain β, 100 by default.


A need I had was to have the graph U_CE/I_c for various I_b.  I decided to plot it myself.