Article: Stealth wallpaper keeps company secrets safe | New Scientist

I’ve always been big on security. For a couple years, I was even seriously considering starting my own business as an electronics surveilance expert. My education in electronics gives me a great understanding of this relatively simple field, and movies like Sneakers just egg me on.

Now a company in England is offering something I’ve thought about before: wallpaper that will block wireless signals in a specific spectrum. The article elaborates:

A type of wallpaper that prevents Wi-Fi signals escaping from a building without blocking mobile phone signals has been developed by a British defence contractor. The technology is designed to stop outsiders gaining access to a secure network by using Wi-Fi networks casually set up by workers at the office.

It is the work of moments for an employee to connect a paperback-sized Wi-Fi base station to a company network. That person can then wander around the office with their laptop while remaining wirelessly connected to the internet.

But it is also the work of moments then for an outsider to breach that company’s computer security using the Wi-Fi connection. Unless the Wi-Fi base station is protected by security measures that most amateur users would not bother to set up, it gives anyone up to 100 metres away the chance to bypass the corporate firewall and wirelessly hack straight into the network.

Until now, the only way to ensure people are not illicitly gaining access to company secrets has been to turn offices into a signal-proof “Faraday cage”, by lining the walls with aluminium foil, and using glass that absorbs radio waves in the windows. This ensures all electromagnetic emissions are absorbed, but it also means that no one can use a cellphone in the building.

The technolgy is simple to design, but slightly harder to manufacture – at least, it was before now. Anyone familiar with Faraday’s work knows that radio signals are waves of energy that travel in a straight line from the antenna. Each frequency has it’s own wavelength, which is described by a physical measurement. This wallpaper is designed with cross-shaped ‘holes’ designed to only allow specific wavelengths through those holes, blocking all others. Since the FCC has regulated what services can use certain wavelengths, it is a simple matter to calculate the size of hole you need to block a certain signal.

It is true that part of the WiFi spectrum is also used in some cordless phones, but this won’t be an issue, since the phone’s base station will be inside the wallpaper ‘cage’. You just won’t be able to take the phone with you when you step outside for a smoke.

At about $900 (500GBP) a square meter, however, I doubt you’ll be seeing this offered at your local home improvement store.

As some of you know, I spent a couple years while I was in ‘Vegas working for a company that ran video arcades. One of the biggest benefits of this job was being able to play all the new games for about a week to stress-test them before we put ’em out in the field.

Back when Time Crisis came out, I thought it was the best shooter-game I’d ever played. Having that ‘hide’ pedal was a superb twist on the idea of a shoot-’em-up. Last night, I came across the next generation from Konami: Police 911

The basis for this game is that you’re a Tokyo beat cop called in to assist against a Yakuza gang. SWAT is already on-site, but they figure they could use all the guns they can, so your sorry but is going in too – with a sidearm only. Oh – did I mention no body armor? Yup. You better know how to duck, chombatta.

Like Time Crisis, this game walks you through the scenario location by location, allways putting you someplace where you have the use of some sort of cover, whether it be a wall, a bar, or a line of riot cops with shields. Where TC has a pedal for you to step on to toggle between views, P911 has a sensor grid in front of the game to track your actual movements. When you duck, so does your character. The game is exceedingly accurate at this – your point of view only changes as much as you duck, instead of being a simple toggle. This also gives you more options for play, since you can also move right and left to take advantage of cover or optional firing angles. (Hint – early on, there’s a little window to your right with a bottle in it. Shoot through here to take out one of the three thugs coming at you, instead of leaning left and getting hit by all three.)

The only bummer the game has is that you are going after gangsters toting a single .40 calibre sidearm with a limited number of clips. Yep – after a certain number of reloads, you have to stuff your magazines while crouching behind a trash can in the middle of a firefight. Goes towards the realism, I guess.

One other thing, folks: stretch before you play this game. I run up and down stairs all day in my house, and my upper thighs are still twitchy after only one game last night.

Greyduck and I finally got around to putting together the entertainment center given to us by the EMC and her husband. In the words of Buffy or Willow, “it’s giganamous!”

It has enough room for all the widgets we have attached to the TV though, so it’s a good thing. Strangely enough, there are no lateral supports on the bottom 1/4 of the unit though, so it’s a bit wobbly. We’ve got it wedged into the corner at an angle so it can’t move much until I can fit some braces to it. I don’t know what they were thinking – it’s an obvious design flaw.

If they would just ask me about these things… :)

You’ve heard me talk before about the benefits of having a Linux live CD handy for doing repair work – today I’ll tell you about the best one for rescuing a Windows system: Knoppix.

From the website:

“KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.”

So, your Windows system has crashed, you can’t get it to reboot, and you need to rescue whatever data you can before you accidentally destroy it “repairing” Windows. Drop this CD in the drive, reboot – instant operating system.

The really handy thing here is that the system is set up to automatically detect and mount all the partitions on the hard drive. You can transfer them by all the regular means – floppies, network, even CD-R (provided you have more than one CD drive – you can’t pull the Knoppix disc once launched). In the rare event that the problem is a file error, you can set the windows drives writable and replace the files in question rather than doing a re-install.

I used the Ratboy’s computer for a test run, and it found all three of his drive partitions with no fuss.

Knoppix is based on Debian, so while it’s a version number behind in things like the kernel (2.4) and KDE (3.1), it’s rock-solid, which is what you really want for a rescue disc. Get yours today from one of the download links on the site – your best bet is the BotTorrent feed.