On Passwords and Security

06 Aug 2016

Friends, especially friends who haven’t changed their password in a while:

This morning, I received a notification that an unrecognized device had attempted to access my account from South Korea. As I am not in South Korea, this was quite unnerving, but not unprecedented. This had happened before, several times, but the attempts had stopped when I enabled Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on my account. In my complacency, I assumed that this meant that I didn’t need to change my password.

Today, I woke up to this new account login attempt, and I wanted to figure out why. I headed to haveibeenpwned.com (which, normally, I wouldn’t trust, but the man who made it is publicly known to be a security researcher) and learned that the password dump of the LinkedIn hack 4 years ago was recently released, and that my account was one of those in the hack.

In the past few years, I have migrated over to a password manager and now use unique, strong passwords (none of which I need to remember) almost everywhere I have an account. If I hadn’t made the switch, I’d be freaking out right now, trying to remember which accounts I’d need to log in to and change (and inevitably failing - I have dozens of old accounts that I haven’t used in forever that would have kept my old, weak password).

The exception is Facebook, where I stuck it out with the old, easy-to-remember and easy-to-crack password, and trusted that 2FA would cover me if the security lapse that caused the previous attempts ever came back to haunt me. It did cover me, but now that I know why the login attempts (from a few years ago and from this morning) have happened, I have no excuse not to make the effort to switch over.

And frankly, you have no excuse either.

Change your password. Enable Two-Factor Auth. Use a password manager.

Be safe on the internet, friends.

One Port to Rule Them All: USB Type-C and the New Macbook

13 Mar 2015

While the rest of the world spent Monday afternoon gawking at Apple’s $17,000 watch, it was the company’s other new release that caught my eye. The new Macbook sports an improved keyboard and trackpad, a 12-inch screen, and a $1,549 (CAD) base price. More interesting than what it’s gained, though, is what it’s lost: besides being thinner and lighter than the 11-inch Macbook Air, the new Macbook has slimmed its port count down to two. The headphone jack remains, but USB, Thunderbolt, and even the MagSafe charging port have all been axed and replaced by a single new port, alone on the left-hand side of the machine. It’s called USB type-C, and it’s going to be everywhere soon.

What’s so important about another new cable, you ask? For starters, it’s reversible, which means you’ll never need to jam the connector in the port to figure out whether or not it’s upside down. It’s capable of running a 5K (!) display on its own. It can transmit enough power to charge all but the beefiest of gaming laptops. And it does all this in a package slightly larger than a Lightning or micro-USB, which means it can be everywhere from printers and desktops all the way down to phones and wearables. It’s not hard to see how important USB type-C is once you realize just how many different connectors it’ll make obsolete.

If you look at the picture above, you’ll see that the USB type-A cable has four gold contacts; two are used for power while the other two transmit data. This physical layout hasn’t changed once, even though USB transfer speeds are hundreds of times faster than they were when the cable was designed twenty years ago. Drawing on twenty years’ worth of engineering advances, efforts to similarly future-proof the type-C cable have resulted in a smaller, more robust connector which houses no fewer than twenty-four contacts.

With all the extra hardware, the new plug’s capabilities far surpass those of the old. One new party trick is type-C’s ability to transmit large amounts of power and data at the same time — in opposite directions. Consider this scenario: you have an external monitor on your desk at home, plugged in to a wall outlet. When you connect your dying laptop to the monitor at the end of the day, the USB type-C connector will provide you with an additional display while simultaneously charging your laptop. If that isn’t the future, I don’t know what is.

Of course, there has to be a drawback. USB type-C isn’t backwards-compatible with any existing USB connectors, which means we’ll have an awkward phase of adapters reigning supreme while everyone transitions over to the new connector. Until then, I foresee myself having to clarify “no, the reversible one, not that one” plenty of times when asking a friend if they have a USB cable on them. Considering the future benefits, this is a small price to pay for the new connector’s future-proofing.

For now, other USB port types will continue to exist. Along with its two type-A ports, the Chromebook Pixel 2 has one type-C port on each side of its case and a power brick with a type-C cable. The reason for this, which is so obvious that I’m ashamed I didn’t catch it, is so you can plug the power cord into either side depending on which is more convenient for you. Once other laptop manufacturers start to copy this layout, you might never be irritated by a power cable again.

Instead of all the cables you have laying around, imagine a future where all you’ll need is a few double-sided type-C cables, maybe with an adapter thrown in. Perhaps the Lightning port will go the way of Thunderbolt, making the next iPhone the first of its kind to house a USB port. The true promise of USB type-C is that it’ll eventually be able to replace everything.

The only exception? That damn headphone jack.

Hello World!

08 Mar 2015

I have a creative itch that I really need to scratch. And until now, I either couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Something was always holding me back – the medium was wrong, or I didn’t have full control, or I was just feeling lazy or burnt out that day. Not any more. Now that this website is up and running, my last excuse is gone.

I want to write.

I’ve had thoughts swirl around my head for days, begging to come out. Sometimes, if I was sufficiently motivated, those thoughts would turn into an unsatisfactory note or post somewhere. Maybe I got halfway through a draft before running out of steam. Most likely, the idea never made it to paper or screen at all, and is still somewhere in the recesses of my brain.

This post is the first piece of evidence to show, hopefully, that’s all in the past. I’m not sure what I’ll write about, but I do know that I haven’t ruled anything out yet. You can head on over to the About Me page to get a feel for who I am – it’s pretty safe to say that anything I mention there is fair game to be written about, and sooner rather than later. That itch is rather pent up after all this time.

This is the start of an experiment, but it’s still only the start. Thank you for reading this, and I hope you’ll come back for more. And future Andrew, when you make your way to this post again, I hope it’ll be out of pride for what it started.

Here’s to new beginnings,
Andrew