#TROOPERS 2017 Day 2 Wrap-Up

[ironmandeficiency]

force sensitive

pairing: rex / reader

word count: 2017

summary: you’re a mechanic for the 501st & you go with torrent to 79’s during leave. you get drunk off your ass & start pushing things off tables, claiming that it was the force (it wasn’t). then, after a few minutes, it was.

rex didn’t know what he did to deserve any of this. he was just trying to have a fun night at 79’s and wind down after yet another visit to fellucia, the hellhole planet that tested his sanity, and reunite with some brothers he hasn’t seen in a while. in hindsight, there was no point in hoping that things would be quiet at the clone bar because the words “quiet” and “79’s” didn’t belong in the same category.

this, however, would have been above his pay grade if he actually got paid for this shit.

you were drunk off your shebs, to describe your condition briefly. in more vivid detail, you were splayed across the laps of him, fives, and hardcase with a smile that took over your face as you laughed at literally anything anyone said. you had an arm wrapped around rex’s shoulder and was currently using his pauldron as a pillow despite saying it was uncomfortable. there was a double-digit number of empty glasses in front of the area where you previously sat and rex knew well how miserable your hangover would be in the morning.

he also knew that tomorrow would be a terribly busy day for you and your fellow mechanics because the 327th was temporarily going to be bunking with them on the resolute, and they just got back from another hellhole rex didn’t have the displeasure of knowing. “alright, i think it’s time to get home-“

“but rex, look!” you swept your free arm across part of the table and knocked over the bottles belonging to fives and hardcase with a flourish. “i used the force! i’m force sensititive!! i need to go to the temple, as soon as i can!”

hardcase started laughing so hard that he nearly shoved you into the floor. the only way you don’t fall is the way rex and fives grip onto you and save you from the grimy bar floor. no one deserved to be on that floor. there was no telling what diseases someone could get from it.

“y/n, cyare, you’re drunk. we need to get back to base so you can get a head start on sleeping out this hangover.” why did rex have to be the voice of reason? it was so hard and emotionally taxing. but on the other hand, he thought with a hidden smile, it did give him some serious blackmail for when his vod’e needed to be straightened out.

you pouted, shifting yourself clumsily away from rex and snuggling closer to fives. the arc trooper didn’t mind it one bit, hamming it up with an arm around your waist as he pulled you into his lap. a small shriek accompanied fives burying his chin in between your shoulder and neck, the tickling sensation heightened by his goatee burning slightly into your exposed skin.

“fives! fives, stop! i- i can’t breathe! fives!” you were giggling and bracing yourself on his thighs, clueless to the wrath beginning to boil in the captain at the sight of you all over his vod. he quickly brushed it away and buried any evidence of his jealousy as he lifted you into his arms, trying not to glance at your inebriated smile that was now dangerously close to his.

“c’mon sweetheart, you’ve got a long day ahead of ya tomorrow.” fives said nothing as you were removed from his lap but with that knowing look in his eyes, he didn’t need to. the protective body language of his captain and the way you leaned into him were signs that pointed to something a little more than platonic.

you let yourself relax into rex, the plastoid armor not even a bother in your pursuit for comfort. you’d been in far less comfortable places as a mechanic; plastoid painted in five-oh-first blue was always welcome. footsteps carried you out of the bar and back home. “you’re soft, captain. anyone ever tell you that?”

rex flushed redder than a sith’s ‘saber at the affection in your words paired with your breath innocently panting against his neck (maker how he wishes it were anything but innocent). “no, i… can’t say that i’ve been made aware of that knowledge. is it a good thing?” he didn’t know where the last part originated from, only that he said it and it unfortunately couldn’t be forced back down his throat.

your smile seemed to bring him back to the planet, while the way you nudged his ear with your nose as you replied, “it’s a wonderful thing, alor’ad. absolutely wonderful.”

he smiled despite himself, allowing himself this time of bliss while he carried you out of 79’s and back toward the barracks. your mando’a was a little lacking in some places, but he loved to hear the way your tongue rolled over every syllable. especially when it was to him.

“rex, i did it again!”

“i’m proud of you, sweetheart.”

another clatter was heard around his quarters and rex didn’t know whether he should laugh or groan at the mess you were making as you claimed to be using the force. he knew that you probably should be staying in your bunk in the mechanics’ quarters for the night, but only a cruel man would leave your bunkmates subject to the giddy drunk that was his cyare. so he carried the burden gladly, looking forward to falling asleep beside you once you had tired yourself out.

you had only been in rex’s private quarters on one other occasion, and that first time was so brief that you hadn’t gotten the chance to see the small things that made it his and different from the same official-looking bunks that all commanding officers were given.

he had a wooden hat/cloak rack in the corner closest to the door that held his helmet and your prized bomber jacket. there was a bottle of unopened corellian whiskey on a caf table that rested in front of a worn couch that no one knew how he got into his room. all they knew is that it was comfortable & was a great place to talk about your problems with the blond man currently enduring your drunken antics with a smile.

you plopped down next to him on said couch, toeing your boots off clumsily and letting your feet prop themselves on the coffee table. they didn’t stay there for long. rex’s voice was chiding you right after but he did so softly, knowing that you wouldn’t have done that if in your right mind. “cyare, feet off the table!” he grabbed your legs and swung them over his lap, your angle changing to where your head was resting against the arm of the couch.

“i’m sorry, rexy,” you pouted as you wiggled around for a moment to get truly comfortable in the new position. “forgive me?” you gazed at him through your lashes, your foot now nudging his armored thigh playfully, a smirk growing as he jostled slightly at your efforts.

his grin mirrored yours after a minute and it could’ve powered the entire damn ship with how bright it was. “yeah, i couldn’t stay mad at’cha for long, anyway.” in your honest/drunken opinion, he didn’t smile like that often enough, and you resolved to do anything to bring that light back to his face. you didn’t know if you’d remember the vow by morning, so it was more of a sentiment than anything at this point.

hummed approval emitted from your throat, deciding to enjoy the comfortable silence that had now settled in the room. a gloved hand came up to rub your leg and your eyes drifted shut when he began to massage the muscle. rex took your head falling back a sign that his ministrations were effective and so he continued, secretly filling away the image of you on his couch so relaxed. you were always running yourself ragged trying to keep everything in working order for him and the entire five-oh-first that you deserved this peace, to let loose every once in a while.

then he heard a clunk as his helmet landed in your lap, the thing seeming to float all the way across the room as if you used- holy kriff, you weren’t lying.

“y’know what would be weird, rex? if the five-oh-first had gold paint and the two-twelfth had your blue.” you ran your fingers over the markings of his helmet, taking the time to admire the welding marks that signified the way he customized his phase 2 helmet. “don’t think your jaig eyes would pop out the same th’ do in blue. not sure why not, might just be because this is the only real color i’ve seen you in. blue suits you, i think.”

he wasn’t paying as much attention to your words as he would have been otherwise, but you just made his helmet float to you! he was warranted a bit of distraction, in his opinion. he chuckled when thinking back to it now, knowing that your mischief has probably caused at least one food fight in the mess because of course his gotabor’ika would use the force to start shit.

rex was in his head for a moment too long because your feet had returned to nudging his thigh, you clearly not satisfied with his attention being held elsewhere while you were trying to make conversation. drunk you took his silence as a cue to him being sleepy, and even though plastoid felt okay when you were being carried by the strong arms of your captain, it most likely wasn’t comfortable to sleep in.

getting your feet with a slight wobble (rex would have laughed) you stretched out the hand not holding his helmet toward him, signalling for him to hold your hand. “rex, we gotta go’sleep. bly’s coming tomorrow and i wanna say hi, an’ i can’t say hi if i’m sleeping off a hangover.” rex stood but didn’t take your hand, deciding to remove his armor first.

“your logic is flawless as usual, gotabor’ika. you go on ahead, i’ll get this stuff off and meet you there.” he’s slept next to you before, it wasn’t a new experience for him; the unfamiliar territory was that it was in his bed without the prying eyes of his brothers to watch him hold you as protectively as he ached to when you were assigned to join them on the field.

a little huff followed you making your way to his bed, once again flabbergasting rex as you used the force to move his blanket aside enough to crawl in. your eyes watched approvingly as he stripped down to his bottom blacks, your arms hugging his helmet like an extra pillow.

you didn’t put up a fight when his hands moved your arms away from the helmet, body already succumbing to the exhaustion that would be trailed by a nasty hangover. your eyes were fighting it, them being your only ally in your quest to admire the blond man now shimmying under the covers. his quiet little demand for you to scooch warranted compliance because it sounded so soft, like he was saying something with far more substantial than the six-letter command.

rex felt a hum vibrate in your chest as you tangled your body around his. you’d told him before that you got cold easily and the mechanics’ barracks being below the air filtration system made them colder than most of the ship. you were letting yourself get lost in the warmth of him, your mind becoming peacefully blank of everything but rex.

he simply smiled as your breath fanned across his bare chest, lightly blowing the light chest hair that adorned his body. in this bliss he’d nearly forgotten that you could apparently use the force until you used said force to tug the blanket up to your neck and tuck them around you both. eh, that force stuff can be a problem for future rex. all he wanted to do was stay in this moment with your weight resting comfortably against his side, not a worry in sight.

[blazefire-engine]

Chapter 13 Verse 3

Based on the additional route, Chapter 13 Verse 2, in which we saw Gladio and Ignis traversing Zegnautus Keep.  In this fictional piece, we will see Lightning’s perspective.  {Spoiler Caution}

AN: So I’ve had this in my files for a whiiiile.  I couldn’t bring myself to finish it, but here it is!  You might notice the writing is a bit different from my others (and plot points slightly off), and it’s because I wrote this in 2017.  

I thought this would never see the light of day! (Heh, get it? Light of day?  Because Eos fell into darkness for 10 years?   While this fic has been buried for almost 3... Heh...)

With slow, cautious steps, Lightning glanced around the corner.  Clutched tightly in her fingers was Blazefire Saber in gun form.  

Mere hours ago, the four of them escaped the daemon infested train and infiltrated the capital of Niflheim, Gralea.  During their escape, they managed to pull through miraculously unscathed, despite the fact their connection with the Crystal was somehow severed, disallowing the call to summon weapons.  They were delivered unharmed to the capital with the exception of one unfortunate casualty; the Regalia, having given its final push, bursted through Gralea’s gates.  

Events turned for the worst when they were separated from Noctis.  The Prince was weaponless but, by no means, defenseless.  However, the unknowns inside Zegnautus Keep is enough reason for the three of them to reunite with Noctis immediately.  

As they were about to enter the Keep, Ardyn intervened and somehow, with a snap of his fingers, returned their connection to the Crystal, allowing them to summon their weapons once more.  

Making their way in the mazy, military base, Lightning was separated from Gladiolus and Ignis.  No doubt it was Ardyn’s handiwork messing with the base’s operational controls and doorways.  

Rounding the corner and her weapon ready, Lightning let out a breath as no enemies were in the vicinity.  

She was grateful she chose to bring along her trusty gunblade.  While she could have opted for her Crimson Blitz or Overture, Blazefire Saber was unique due to its independence of the Crystal.   Her two other weapons were bestowed upon her with the Crystal’s connection.  The incident earlier made her aware that it is possible for the Crystal’s link to be severed anytime.  

The hallways seemed never-ending.  The amount of time that had passed was unknown.  After a period of silence, she sensed a change as she heard one of the doors hiss and footsteps echoed down the hall.  

Lightning spotted a crevice in the hall, big enough for her to hide in.  She slipped in and held her breath, her weapon ready once more.  

As the footsteps approached closer, she stilled and as a portion of its silhouette came into view, Lightning whipped out her weapon in blade form, appearing like a thorn on a rose.  

The figure raised both its arms.  Familiar and clad in black, relief surged through her as she wiggled out of the hiding space.  

“Noctis.”  She exclaimed, retracting her gunblade and returning it to its case by her thighs.  

“Lightning!”  He surged forward, wrapping his arms around her.  

Settling her head below his jaw, she breathed in and muttered softly.  “Thank, Eos, I thought I would never find you.”

“I’m alright.”  Noctis murmured in her hair.  “Why are you alone?”

“I was separated from Ignis and Gladio.  This place is a damn maze.”

“At least we’re together now.”  They separated from the embrace and he nodded towards her saber.  “And I see you have a weapon.”

“It’s a good thing I brought Blazefire Saber.”

“An interesting inscription.”  He eyed the writing, “‘Invoke my name.  I am Spark.’”

“Yeah.” Lightning looked at him briefly.  Odd.  She had asked him before, what the inscription meant, but he said he didn’t understand the language.  She felt an ominous presence behind her and looked back, but nothing was there.  

“You look rather perturbed.”

Her brows furrowed slightly at his words, but continued to glance back. 

“There’s this daemon, a foras, who I think keeps following me.”

“It shouldn’t be too much trouble for you then”  He winked and they began traversing through the keep.

Long minutes of silence passed as they walked through the halls.  Noctis taking point and Lightning guarding the rear.  It was then they heard an ear-cringing sound caused by a rogue axeman dragging its axe on the metal floor.  

With nowhere else to hide, the two slipped into another narrow, shadowed crevice in the wall.  The space just enough for them, however, the front of their bodies were pressed up against each other, breaths mingling into one.  

As the rogue axeman passed by without notice, Lightning let out the breath she was holding.  About to slip out of their hiding, Noctis blocked her with his arm and slowly tipped her chin upwards.  

“I’m so glad you are here with me.” He breathed softly.  

With his words, Lightning’s heart began to palpitate.  Her duty faltering, wavering, as she became more aware of their bodies, the feeling of his against hers, their breaths mingling into one.  She was sure he could feel her heart. 

“Noct.” She sighed and closed her eyes as his palm cupped her jaw.  How long has it been since they were alone?  How long has it been since they’ve touched intimately?  To be able to shut away the world, if only for a brief moment, and just be Claire and Noctis, not Glaive and King.  

He dived for a rough kiss, molding his lips into hers and their teeth clacking.  He pressed his body further against hers, trapping her within the small space. “Lightning.” He mumbled between frantic kisses.  

She continued to kiss him harshly, pouring out everything.  Everything that had happened since the beginning, King Regis, Insomnia, Altissia, losing Luna, Ignis’ unfortunate injury, losing Prompto, and the destruction of the Regalia.  The grief and pain that had numbed everyone, Noctis the most.  She didn’t know how to help him, if she couldn’t even help herself.  

The kiss continued, she wondered how Noctis wasn’t running out of air.  As her mind began to clear, the kiss began to feel different.  No longer passionate, but rather aggressive and almost violating.  She pulled back a bit to take a breath, but was soon covered again with his mouth, almost suffocating her.  As she felt his tongue about to roam over past her lips, her soldier instincts rang alarm bells in her head.  At that moment, she abruptly pulled away.  

“Noctis, no.” She panted, trying to calm herself and catch a breath.  She shoved him aside and escaped the crevice they were in.  She looked at him warily.  Her instincts still screaming at her.  She knew one thing for sure; the kiss scared her.  Terrified her.  

“I apologize, Lightning.” Noctis murmured as he stepped out of the shadows eerily.  “It wasn’t my intention to scare you.”

Her eyes slightly widened.  

Lightning.

He called her Lightning.

Not Claire.  

And at that moment, her mind ran purely on instinct.  

With a flick of a wrist, Lightning converted her weapon into saber form and had its sharp edge by Noctis’ throat.  

Her cold blue eyes stared against the prince’s, which were unusually calm. 

“Who are you?”

“Lightning, what’re you talking about?”

“Who are you?” She repeated the question, emphasizing each word.  Lightning, he never called her that, not after an intimate moment...

A smirk slipped on his lips.  “I see nothing escapes your notice, Lightning.”

It was still Noctis’ voice, but she can tell it was someone else.  

Ardyn.  She clenched her jaw, pressing the blade further.  The applied pressure tearing the skin of his throat.  A thin trail of blood began to flow.  

“Where’s Noctis?”  

“Traversing towards the keep.” He replied, unfazed by the sharp edge against his throat.  “He’s doing very well for someone without a weapon.  Of course, with the power of kings at his disposal… he shouldn’t have a problem.”

“He wore the ring.” She stated.

“All according to plan.”

“So you forced him to wear it?”

“Of course not.  It was his decision.”

“You separated him from us.  Singled him out... And somehow took and returned our ability to use the crystal’s magic… so who are you?  Really?”  She repeated the question the third time.  But it wasn’t the same implication as before.  As a soldier, she was specifically trained to read people and understand their intentions.  But this man had his own agenda.  What was his plans for Noctis?  

“What are you trying to accomplish?”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow.  “The Great Lightning can’t figure it out?”

“Enough word games.” With a snap of a wrist, her saber switched to gun mode. “You’ll be taking me to where Noctis is.”

As they travelled deeper into the keep, more daemons and troopers appeared and Lightning ticked them off one by one seamlessly, single-handedly while holding Ardyn hostage.

“Very good, Sergeant.” Ardyn crooned and praised in mockery.  “What a fantastic display of butchery.”

“Hn.” She flicked the daemon blood coating her blade. “Doesn’t matter how, as long as the job gets done.”

“Interesting.”  There was a gleam in his eyes that she could not explain.  “Your killing intent.  It's very controlled and calculated.  You make a remarkable soldier.”  She remained silent at his words as he continued on.  “Your crusade of carnage is very palpable.”

“Quiet.”  They walked until they reached a control room and at the other side, a hallway leading to another open space.  Lightning eyed the structure of the room, control panels looked untouched, almost pristine, which could only mean they are nearing to the heart of the keep.

As they strode forward, Lightning paused, eyeing the long hallway littered with dead shock troopers.

“In case there was any doubt: it’s a trap.”

At that instance and with her guard down, he shoved her into the hallway and an energy barrier arose between them, trapping Lightning in the hall.  

“I do thank you for the kiss.”  Ardyn kissed and blew his fingers.  “The Prince is quite lucky.”  With a tip of his hat and a bow, he walked away.

She heard crackling sounds behind her.  The bodies of shock troopers coming to life from the ground.  She cursed under her breath and immediately tried to eliminate them, but that wasn't her only problem.  The electric walls were coming closer and if she can’t get out soon, she would most definitely die at this place.  

“Dammit.”  She panted at the never-ending onslaught of troopers, sweat gathering at her brow, and the walls just kept getting closer.  Looks like the jig was up.  This was it.  After all they’ve been through, this is where it ends.  She could only hope that Noctis could reach the Crystal, stop the darkness to come, and return home to Insomnia.  

Within her final thoughts, she thought of Noctis and heard him say her name, Claire.  

But she heard her name once more over the crackling of electricity and realized that it wasn’t in her head.  

“Claire!” Noctis appeared behind the barrier, looking panicked and in despair.  

“Light’s in trouble!” Gladio yelled, scanning the operating room for something to get her out.  

The Prince scoured the walls.  “Hang on, we’ll get you out!”

Ignis shouted.  “There ought to be a kill switch nearby - find it!”

Gladio responded, searching desperately.  “And how do you know that?”

“I believe it’s the reason we were brought here.”

“Found it!” Noctis pressed it immediately and the crackling died down.  He sighed in relief.  “Shit.  That was close.”

Lightning stumbled out of the hall and into his arms.  “How did you all get here?”

Ignis responded.  “After we were separated, we received “help” from the usual suspect.”

“That bastard’s playing with us.” Gladio growled out.  “But at least we’re together.”  

“All but one of us.” Lightning stared at the hallway, which could’ve been her place of demise.

“Claire, you alright?” Noctis asked worriedly, cupping a side of her face.  She noticed the way he held her was gentler and wondered how on Eos didn’t she know it was an imposter a while ago.

“Yeah.” She breathed and held onto his wrist.  This was him.  The real Noctis.  “I am now.”

“Reunited with your retainers at last.” The sneering voice of Ardyn echoed in the PA system.  “How very touching.”

AN: Urgh. A bit rusty, but I wanted to share my take on Chapter 13 if Lightning was part of the gang.

Totes got inspired by that cutscene when Ardyn was Noctis.  And when Noctis had that deep voice… Ohhhh babyyy...

Also, is this still Lightis LOL I gotta say though, Ardyn/Light has some good potential, especially with lore involved…

[gilbertineonfr2]

TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up

This is my wrap-up for the 2nd day of “NGI” at TROOPERS. My first choice for today was “Authenticate like a boss” by Pete Herzog. This talk was less technical than expected but interesting. It focussed on a complex problem: Identification. It’s not only relevant for users but for anything (a file, an IP address, an application, …). Pete started by providing a definition. Authentication is based on identification and authorisation. But identification can be easy to fake. A classic example is the hijacking of a domain name by sending a fax with a fake ID to the registrar – yes, some of them are still using fax machines! Identification is used at any time to ensure the identity of somebody to give access to something. It’s not only based on credentials or a certificate.

Identification is extremely important. You have to distinguish the good and bad at any time. Not only people but files, IOC’s, threat intelligence actors, etc. For files, metadata can help to identify. Another example reported by Pete: the attribution of an attack. We cannot be 100% confident about the person or the group behind the attack.The next generation Internet needs more and more identification. Especially with all those IoT devices deployed everywhere. We don’t even know what the device is doing. Often, the identification process is not successful. How many times did you send a “hello�� to somebody that was not the right person on the street or while driving? Why? Because we (as well as objects) are changing. We are getting older, wearing glasses, etc…  Every interaction you have in a process increases your attack surface the same amount as one vulnerability.  What is more secure? Let a user choose his password or generate a strong one for him? He’ll not remember ours and write it down somewhere. In the same way, what’s best? a password or a certificate? An important concept explained by Pete is the “intent”. The problem is to have a good idea of the intent (from 0 – none – to 100% – certain).

Example: If an attacker is filling your firewall state table, is it a DoS attack? If somebody is performed a traceroute to your IP addresses, is it a foot-printing? Can be a port scan automatically categorized as hunting? And a vulnerability scan will be immediately followed by an attempt to exploit? Not always… It’s difficult to predict specific action. To conclude, Pete mentioned machine learning as a tool that may help in the indicators of intent.

After an expected coffee break, I switched to the second track to follow “Introduction to Automotive ECU Research” by Dieter Spaar. ECU stands for “Electronic Control Unit”. It’s some kind of brain present in modern cars that helps to control the car behaviour and all its options. The idea of the research came after the problem that BMW faced with the unlock of their cars. Dieter’s Motivations were multiple: engine tuning, speedometer manipulation, ECU repair, information privacy (what data are stored by a car?), the “VW scandal” and eCall (Emergency calls). Sometimes, some features are just a question of ECU configuration. They are present but not activated. Also, from a privacy point of view, what infotainment systems collect from your paired phone? How much data is kept by your GPS? ECU’s depend on the car model and options. In the picture below, yellow  blocks are ECU activated, others (grey) are optional (this picture is taken from an Audi A3 schema):

Interaction with the ECU is performed via a bus. They are different bus systems: the most known is CAN (Controller Area Network), MOST (Media Oriented System Transport), Flexray, LIN (Local Interconnected Network), Ethernet or BroadR-Reach. Interesting fact, some BMW cars have an Ethernet port to speed up the upgrades of the infotainment (like GPS maps). Ethernet provides more bandwidth to upload big files. ECU hardware is based on some typical microcontrollers like Renesas, Freescale or Infineon. Infotainment systems are running on ARM sometimes x86. QNX, Linux or Android. A special requirement is to provide a fast response time after power on. Dieter showed a lot of pictures with ECU where you can easily identify main components (Radio, infotainment, telematics, etc). Many of them are manufactured by Peiker. This was a very quick introduction but this demonstrated that they are still space for plenty of research projects with cars. During the lunch break, I had an interesting chat with two people working at Audi. Security is clearly a hot topic for car manufacturers today!

For the next talk, I switched again to the other track and attended “PUF ’n’ Stuf” by Jacob Torrey & Anders Fogh. The idea behind this strange title was “Getting the most of the digital world through physical identities”. The title came from a US TV show popular in the 60’s. Today, within our ultra-connected digital world, we are moving our identity from a physical world and it becomes difficult to authenticated somebody. We are losing the “physical” aspect. Humans can quickly spot an imposter just by having a look at a picture and after a simple conversation. Even if you don’t personally know the person. But to authenticate people via a simple login/password pair, it becomes difficult in the digital world. The idea of Jacob & Anders was to bring a strong physical identification in the digital world. The concept is called “PUF” or “Physically Uncloneable Function“. To achieve this, they explained how to implement a challenge-response function for devices that should return responses as non-volatile as possible. This can be used to attest the execution state or generate device-specific data. They reviewed examples based on SRAM, EEPROM or CMOS/CCD. The latest example is interesting. The technique is called PRNU and can be used to uniquely identify image sensors. This is often used in forensic investigation to link a picture to a camera. You can see this PUF as a dual-factor authentication. But there are caveats like a lack of proper entropy or PUF spoofing. Interesting idea but no easy to implement in practical cases.

After the lunch, Stefan Kiese had a two-hours slot to present “The Hardware Striptease Club”. The idea of the presentation was to briefly introduce some components that we can find today in our smart houses and see how to break them from a physical point of view. Stefan briefly explained the methodology to approach those devices. When you do this, never forget the impact (loss of revenue, theft of credentials, etc… or worse life (pacemakers, cars). Some reviewed victims:

TP-Link NC250 (Smart home camera)

Netatmo weather station

BaseTech door camera

eQ-3 home control access point

Easy home wifi adapter

Netatmo Welcome

It made an electronic crash course but also insisted on the risks to play with electricity powered devices! Then, people were able to open and disassemble the devices to play with them.

I didn’t attend the second hour because another talk looked interesting: “Metasploit hardware bridge hacking” by Craig Smith. He is working at Rapid7 and is playing with all “moving” things from cars to drones. To interact with those devices, a lot of tools and gadgets are required. The idea was to extend the Metasploit framework to be able to pentest these new targets. With an estimation of 20.8 billions of IoT devices connected (source: Gartner), pentesting projects around IoT devices will be more and more frequent. Many tools are required to test IoT devices: RF Transmitters, USB fuzzers, RFID cloners, JTAG devices, CAN bus tools, etc. The philosophy behind Metasploit remains the same: based on modules (some exploits, some payload, some shellcodes). New modules are available to access relays which talk directly to the hardware module. Example:

msf> use auxililary/server/local_hwbridge

A Metasploit relay is a lightweight HTTP server that just makes JSON translations between the bridge and Metasploit.

Example: ELM327 diagnostic module can be used via serial USB or BT. Once connected all the classic framework features are available as usual:

./tools/hardware/elm327_relay.rb

Other supported relays are RF transmitter or Zigbee. This was an interesting presentation.

For the last time slot, there was two talks: one about vulnerabilities in TP-Link devices and one presented as “Looking through the web of pages to the Internet of Things“. I chose the second one presented by Gabriel Weaver. The abstract did not describe properly the topic (or I did not understand it) but the presentation was a review of the research performed by Gabriel: “CTPL” or “Cyber Physical Topology Language“.

That’s close the 2nd day. Tomorrow will be dedicated to the regular tracks. Stay tuned for more coverage.

[The post TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up has been first published on /dev/random]

from Xavier

[garudabluffs]

Timeline: 7 years of Cuomo's alleged sexual misconduct

A timeline of the allegations based on the attorney general’s report shows incidents often occurred within days or weeks of one another and that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo asked multiple women similar...

The allegations in this timeline are based on the findings of an investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo disputes that he sexually harassed or inappropriately touched women.

Around May 2014 Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo kisses Ana Liss on the cheek and slips his arm around her lower waist at a work party. He frequently flirts with her and comments on her appearance on other occasions while she works as an Empire State Fellow.

Jan. 6, 2016 At an event in New York City, Cuomo spends time with Lindsey Boylan, who works in state economic development, and wraps his hands around both sides of her hands in a way she thinks is "creepy."

Nov. 1, 2016 A senior Cuomo aide emails Lindsey Boylan's boss to ask if she'll be at an event Cuomo is attending. Cuomo had previously emarked on Boylan's appearance, and her boss said he thought Cuomo had a crush on her.

Dec. 12, 2016 The first time he meets Kaitlin, a lobbyist, the governor pulls her by the hand into a dance pose for a photo and then tells her he is going to have her work in state government. (Kaitlin is identified in the report by first name only.)

Around Dec. 14, 2016 Cuomo notes to Lindsey Boylan her resemblance to Lisa Shields, who he had dated a decade earlier, and then calls her "Lisa" later.

December 2016 Cuomo tours Lindsey Boylan around his office and shows her a cigar box from former President Bill Clinton. She wonders if it is a reference to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Dec. 21, 2016 Although she did not share her contact or apply for a job in the Executive Chamber, Kaitlin is offered an interview at the governor's direction.

December 2016 Kaitlin is offered a job with her requested salary of $120,000 and she accepts the position.

Dec. 31, 2016 At a subway opening in NYC, Cuomo singles out Lindsey Boylan and her husband for a greeting among a crowd, which her husband feels is odd.

Feb. 14, 2017 Through his staff, the governor sends Lindsey Boylan along with other female senior staffers a rose on Valentine's Day. She finds it creepy.

May 2017 At a conservation event, Cuomo meets Virginia Limmiatis, touches the letters on her shirt over her breasts and then whispers next to her cheek, "I'm going to say I see a spider on your shoulder." Limmiatis tells her sister about the governor's behavior about two days later.

Around October 2017 On his plane, Cuomo suggests to Lindsey Boylan they play strip poker. She does not think it is a literal offer, but an inappropriate sexual inneundo. Cuomo staffers claimed the governor never made the remark, though state development official Howard Zemsky told investigators that he remembered the governor saying it, and that it had been directed at Boylan.

Nov. 4, 2017 Trooper #1 meets the governor in New York City while escorting his motorcade. They have a short conversation, and the next day there is talk of her joining his detail.

Later in November 2017

Trooper #1 was at first told she was not eligible to apply to serve on the governor's security detail due to a minimum requirement of three or more years in the State Police. Then a trooper asks her to apply because the minimum had been changed from three years to two specifically for

Around December 2017 Cuomo makes suggestive comments and remarks on Kaitlin's appearance while she is working for him, but over time she feels she fell out of his favor. She is then "pushed onto" another state agency by the Executive Chamber.

January 2018 Trooper #1 joins the governor's State Police Protectice Service Unit.

January 2018 Lindsey Boylan tells a government lawyer she was not subjected to sex discrimination, harassment or retaliation while working in the administration.

July 2018 Lindsey Boylan repeatedly tries to resign from state government including after one incident where top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa yelled and cursed at her.

September 2018 Cuomo offers to give Trooper #1 a tour of his residence in Mount Kisco unless "it (is) against protocols" and snickers.

Sept. 26, 2018 Lindsey Boylan meets with a government lawyer after a conflict arose between her and another employee. Although the lawyer says she is not being asked to resign, fired or pushed out in any way, Boylan resigns. Cuomo later tells investigators she called him for help but he did not answer.

Early 2019 At work, Gov. Andrew M.Cuomo asks executive assistant Alyssa McGrath if she speaks Italian. She says no and he grins and says a phrase she later learned means she is beautiful. He later says things to her in Italian she did not understand.

Early 2019 The governor looks down Alyssa McGrath's shirt as she leans over and then comments on a necklace under her shirt. Cuomo later tells investigators he did not recall this incident.

May 16, 2019 Cuomo asks Charlotte Bennett, an executive assistant, about her previous relationships and whether she "honored her commitments." Later he asks her to sing "Danny Boy."

Summer 2019 Cuomo asks permission to kiss Trooper #1 in his driveway. She says "sure." He kisses her cheek.

Aug. 9, 2019 Cuomo asks Charlotte Bennett to lift weights with him in his mansion gym and asks whether she has a boyfriend.

Aug. 13, 2019 Cuomo asks Trooper #1 "Why don't you wear a dress?" while they are driving. After she mentions the remark to another trooper, Trooper #1's superior says that comment "stays in the truck."

September 2019 Cuomo grabs the rear end of State Entity Employee #1 while posing for a photo with her at a work event. She immediately tells her supervisor who does not respond. She subsequently tells her family about the incident with the governor and has a discussion with Human Resources about how to report sexual harassment without revealing her specific allegation. Cuomo has denied this happened.

Sept. 14, 2019

At a wedding, Cuomo places his hand on Anna Ruch's back, where her dress has a cutout, and she pulls his hand away. He says, "Wow you're aggressive." He then kisses her cheek as she turns away. This is their first meeting.

Sept. 23, 2019 Cuomo sweeps his hand from Trooper #1's belly button to her hip, while she holds the door open for him. In testimony, Cuomo denies this happened.

Oct. 4, 2019 The governor sings the chorus of "Do You Love Me" by the Contours to Charlotte Bennett several times. He later tells investigators he doesn't recall singing it to her ("I don't even know that song," he says).

Oct. 14 2019 Cuomo asks Charlotte Bennett to do push-ups in front of him. She does approximately 20.

Mid-to-late October 2019 Cuomo asks to kiss Trooper #1 again. She tells him she is sick and he looks disgusted.

November 2019 Executive Assistant #1 starts to assist the governor in the office and at the Executive Mansion. He comments on her appearance and clothing and called her "flirtatious."

November 2019 Cuomo comments on Charlotte Bennett's hair, which is in a bun, and then repeatedly calls her "bun."

December 2019 At a holiday party, Cuomo told Trooper #1 "don't tell anyone about our conversations."

December 2019 At the Executive Chamber holiday party, the governor kisses Executive Assistant #1 and Alyssa McGrath on the cheeks and then poses for a photo with his hands firmly around their ribcages, right below their breasts.

Dec. 31, 2019 At the Executive Mansion, Cuomo asks Executive Assistant #1 for a selfie and grabs her rear end, rubbing it for five seconds while she takes the photo. Cuomo told her not to show anyone the photos.

Jan. 19, 2020 Charlotte Bennett talks to Cuomo about her sexual assault and why it motivates her to work in politics. She finds some of his comments insensitive but appreciates his interest.

January or February 2020 Cuomo says he wishes he could go out in Saratoga Springs with Executive Assistant #1 and Alyssa McGrath, who is getting divorced. In his testimony, Cuomo denied he said this.

Early 2020 The governor asks executive assistant #1 and Alyssa McGrath if they plan to "mingle" with men on their Florida vacation. He calls them "mingle mamas."

March 2020 After Cuomo changed the requirements to get a candidate on the ballot, Lindsey Boylan, who is running for office, texts his staff the change was "not helpful" and she "will find ways to respond." Cuomo's team later accuses Boylan of going public with her harassment allegations for political reasons.

March 17, 2020 State Entity Employee #2, a doctor, performs a COVID-19 test on Cuomo during a news conference. Prior to the event, he makes a comment she believes is a sexual inneundo and stands close to her. During the event, he says she made her gown "look good."

Mid-May 2020 The governor provides feedback on a speech on sexual assault that Charlotte Bennett plans to give and repeatedly says "You were raped" while pointing at her. She feels uncomfortable. He later says he wants to find a lady and drive off into the mountains with her.

June 5, 2020 Cuomo tells Charlotte Bennett he is lonely, wants a girlfriend in Albany and asks her when was the last time she had a "real hug." He also asks her about past relationships and if she'd been with older men, saying he'd date someone age 22 and up.

June 6, 2020 Alone in Cuomo's office, Cuomo tells Charlotte Bennett she looks like Daisy Duke in her jean shorts and asks if she had found him a girlfriend yet. Cuomo denied some but not all of these allegations.

June 10, 2020 Charlotte Bennett reports the governor's behavior to his chief of staff Jill DesRosiers, who offers to find her a new position. Bennett is transferred to the health policy team.

June 29, 2020 Charlotte Bennett tells other staff in the Executive Chamber about the harassment. One staffer then speaks to Jill DesRosiers about the allegations.

June 30, 2020 Charlotte Bennett talks to Jill DesRosiers and counsel Judy Mogul about her experiences with Cuomo after another staffer spoke up about what Bennett said. They advise her how to make a complaint, but do not say they would make a report.

July 1, 2020 Judy Mogul tells Charlotte Bennett she determined a report to the Governor's Office of Employee Relations, which investigates sexual harassment, is not needed. Bennett was "terrified" of an investigation.

Late July or early August Charlotte Bennett takes medical leave and then decides to quit her job because she was anxious and did not want to work for the governor. Senior staff offer to find her another job in state government.

November 2020 In his Capitol office, Cuomo asks Executive Assistant #1, “(H)ave you ever had sex with anyone other than your husband?” She says she had not.

November 2020 Cuomo grills Alyssa McGrath on the phone about her ex-husband, personal life and whether she was seeing anyone.

Nov. 16, 2020 Cuomo pulls Executive Assistant #1 in for a close hug and then grabs her breast over her bra at the Executive Mansion. Cuomo has denied touching her breasts in his testimony.

December 2020 The Times Union asks the New York State Police about Trooper #1 joining the governor's detail and whether she met the eligibility requirements. The Executive Chamber gives a misleading response and denounces the inquiry as sexist.

Dec. 5, 2020 Lindsey Boylan tweets in part, “Most toxic team environment? Working for @NYGovCuomo” and “I tried to quit three times before it stuck. ... That environment is beyond toxic.” She follows with more tweets on Dec. 8 suggesting she'd say more if other women came forward.

Dec. 8, 2020 Charlotte Bennett writes to Lindsey Boylan about the governor's harassment: "The verbal abuse, intimidation and living in constant fear were all horribly toxic — dehumanizing and traumatizing. And then he came onto me. I was scared to imagine what would happen if I rejected him, so I disappeared instead. My time in public service ended because he was bored and lonely. It still breaks my heart."

December 2020 A Cuomo aide, Rich Azzopardi, calls Ana Liss to ask if she'd spoken with Lindsey Boylan and requests she tell him if Boylan reached out.

Around Dec. 15, 2020 Cuomo writes the first draft of the letter that denies Lindsey Boylan's allegations and impugns her credibility. Then aides work on it. The letter later shifts to a positive letter of support for Cuomo that they attempt to get staff to sign. It is never published.

Mid-December 2020 Cuomo senior advisers probe various former staff for their own sexual harassment allegations and to see who might support Lindsey Boylan or speak to the news media.

December 2020 After Kaitlin tweets messages of support for Lindsey Boylan, a former staff member calls Kaitlin and surreptiously records the call at the insistence of top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, who is looking for evidence of whether she is working with Boylan.

Mid-to-late December 2020 Cuomo asks Executive Assistant #1

not to “talk about anything to anyone else”

because “people talk around here” and he could “get in a lot of trouble.” She tells him she will not say anything.

+ 19 more > clocks

READ MORE https://www.timesunion.com/state/article/cuomo-sexual-harassment-report-timeline-16367561.php

"good enough for government work" raising the bar?

[wbwest]

New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/08/25/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-82517/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 8/25/17

  In movie news, there was quite the controversial casting this week, as the color lines blurred for some comic book adaptations. First up, it was announced that English actor Ed Skrein would be portraying Japanese character Ben Daimio in the upcoming Hellboy reboot. Now, according to what I’ve read, Daimio’s Japanese heritage heavily influences the character, so this whitewashing of the character doesn’t seem to be in the best interest of the character. I mean, after the problems with whitewashing in Doctor Strange, Ghost in the Shell, Aloha, The Great Wall, and Ni’ihau, you’d think Hollywood would avoid shit like this. Yes, movies are made to make money, but it’s not like Skrein is a bankable star worth slotting into the role, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Usually this is done for the film’s STARS. Damon, Johansson, Stone. This is a secondary character, so it really wouldn’t have hurt them to seek out an Asian actor. Normally I’m just like “Well, Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood”, but this decision just doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Next up, 24: Legacy’s Anna Diop has been cast as Starfire in Warner Bros’ Titans series, slated to air on DC’s upcoming digital service. Some folks are saying they should’ve cast a Latina, but she’s gonna either be painted or CGied in orange, so it’s not like it’s gonna matter at the end of the day. Personally, if they wanted authenticity, I think they should’ve cast an actual orange alien princess. Right now there are just too many unknowns for me to get excited about this. I mean, DC announced the digital service without a lot of information. What’s gonna be on it? What will it cost? How much of the DC library will be available to be housed on it? As for Titans, this is the show TNT passed on. Ya know, the home of such illustrious shows as The Librarians and The Last Ship. I mean, they’re basically just about a notch up from what we got in the 90s from Universal’s Action Pack lineup. If Titans couldn’t fit anywhere on that schedule, then it probably just isn’t “ready for primetime” yet.

Speaking of aimless Warner Bros decisions, they announced 2 different Joker movies this week. First up is an origin tale, directed by Todd Phillips of Old School fame, and produced by Martin Scorsese. Hmm, one of those things is not like the other. I mean, why would Scorsese touch something helmed by the dude who gave us Road Trip? And who even WANTS a Joker origin story? First of all, it’s reportedly not even going to be part of the DCEU, so why confuse the audience with a story that won’t even really “count” in the grand scheme of things? Nobody needs a standalone origin of a take on a character they’ll likely never see again. This is just as foolish as Sony’s Don’t-Look-For-Spider-Man-To-Appear Venom movie. Next, the guys behind This Is Us (SO hot right now!) and Crazy, Stupid, Love are working on a Bonnie & Clyde-style Joker and Harley film, with Jared Leto and Margot Robbie reprising their roles from Suicide Squad. Since this would sort of negate the empowerment that Harley gained by the end of Squad, it’s believed that this actually means that the planned Gotham City Sirens film, also slated to star Robbie, is now dead. Honestly, I could do without either of these movies. I found Leto’s take on Joker to be…interesting, but Less is More with that character. Plus, I don’t really think the DCEU would be strengthened by this sort of movie. It’s not the world-building they need to be doing right now, as they haven’t even figured out the core of their star characters like Batman and Superman yet.

In TV news, Christopher Sebela’s comic Heartthrob has been optioned as a TV series by Felix Culpa – a production company launched by actress/Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough. Now, comics are optioned every day, and the final product never comes to fruition, but I hope this series sees the light of day. I’m actually a big fan of the comic, which is published by Oni Press. Set in the late 70s, it focuses on Callie, who’s received a heart transplant while the process is still in its infancy. Given a new lease on life, but still told she’s basically living on borrowed time, she decides to change her life when she meets Mercer, a charming guy with a shady side. She immediately falls for him, and he teaches her how to be bad, like rob banks and commit other crimes. She gets off on the rush. Pretty soon, however, she realizes that Mercer isn’t real. No, he’s actually the ghost of the guy whose heart is now in Callie. So, it’s a Bonnie & Clyde story where Clyde’s calling the shots from the afterlife. The book is published in “seasons”, so the first 5-issue miniseries wrapped up back in early 2016, while season 2 is hitting stores now. If you’re looking for a new comic not from the Big Two, I highly recommend it.

In music news, Taylor Swift did a whole social blitz to announce that her next album would be called Reputation, and would be released Nov 10th. On top of that, the first single was released last night, with rumors that the video will premiere at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. Ya know, the same awards hosted my Taylor’s enemy Katy Perry. Yeah, that should be pretty interesting to watch. Anyway, the new song is called “Look What You Made Me Do”, and I’m not too impressed. It lacks a real hook, while the chorus itself is basically spoken. I feel like it has all the ingredients for a great song, but it’s not living up to its full potential. If this is an indicator of what to expect on Reputation, though, I’ll admit I’m curious. It can’t be worse than Perry’s Witness.

Speaking of Katy Perry, we got the premiere of her video for “Swish Swish”, which was reportedly her diss track against Taylor Swift. After a lot of backtracking and sucking up, though, it seems Katy wants to put that feud behind her. That’s why this horrible video does everything it can to take the bite out of a song that was never really that biting to begin with. I mean, just look at it – Molly Shannon? Terry Crews? Even Nicki Minaj was clearly CGied in, as I’m sure she didn’t wanna be anywhere near this shitshow. The sad thing about the Perry/Swift feud is that Katy bailed on it the minute she realized the Swifties were a more powerful lobby than she had thought. Nobody was feeling her SNL performances, and Witness didn’t exactly fly off the shelves. She realized that she can’t really survive by making enemies, so suddenly she became conciliatory to save her ass. Plus, it’s kinda lame that this blood feud started just because Taylor stole a few of Katy’s dancers for her tour. Anyway, you’ll never get those 6 minutes back. You’re welcome.

I had the pleasure of joining my buddy Zac for his new podcast, The Zac Shipley Show. He’s treating these first few episodes as pilots for ideas he’s wanted to try, so our ep was called Streaming Pile, where we talked about the worst things we could find on streaming services. I talked about a Star Trek: Voyager episode where formerly perky pixie Kes returns all middle-aged and bitter. You should check it out, and give a listen to his other episodes while you’re there!

Song of the Week

I’ve been a big Maren Morris fan since she released “My Church”, and I was really into her next single, “80s Mercedes”. With this song she continues not to disappoint, as I love the groove on this thing. Listen to the bassline. It’s not a dance song, yet you can do a MEAN two-step to it. Hell, I think you could even do a casual version of The Hustle to it. This will definitely go to #1 given time.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

NBC’s planned reboot of Xena: Warrior Princess – which would’ve featured a full-on lesbian relationship between her and Gabrielle – is officially dead, as they said “it didn’t warrant a reboot”. Man, if only other studios would realize this about some of their projects…

Director James Gunn mentioned in a Q & A session that the 3rd Guardians of the Galaxy film would set up the next 10-20 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yup, you’re just now realizing your own mortality. I’ll give you a minute to deal with that.

Speaking of Gunn, he’s attached to write the pilot for (and possibly direct) a reboot of 70s series Starsky & Hutch. This adaptation is supposed to be similar in tone to CBS’s upcoming S.W.A.T. and not comedic in tone like the 2004 Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson movie.

Surprising every critic in Hollywood, Netflix has renewed the maligned comedy Friends From College for a second season.

Known for controversial publicity stunts, Alamo Drafthouse is reportedly organizing a Clowns Only screening of the new adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

We got a new poster for Thor: Ragnarok. So many colors!

Michael K. Williams has reportedly been cut from the Star Wars Han Solo film, as Ron Howard’s reshoot schedule conflicted with another role that Williams had accepted.

There are, like, 8 different Knight Rider reboot treatments floating around Hollywood, but the latest rumor is that one of those productions is looking at John Cena as Michael Knight, with Kevin Hart as the voice of K.I.T.T. Of course, it would be a comedic adaptation, a la the popular Jump Street franchise.

Super Troopers 2, the sequel to one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen, will hit theaters April 20th, 2018.

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson will star in Nasty Women, which is a female-led reboot of the Michael Caine/Steve Martin classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Independence Day: Resurgence‘s Jessie T Usher will star in Son of Shaft, with Samuel L. Jackson potentially reprising his role as John Shaft (from the 2000 reboot film), the nephew of the original John Shaft, played by Richard Roundtree, who is also in talks to join the movie. Man, that gave me a headache.

Always on the cutting edge, here’s Sesame Street’s parody of 2017’s song of the summer, “Despacito”

According to the creators, the Netflix series Stranger Things will most likely end after its fourth season

The actress formerly known as “Andrea Zuckerman”, Gabrielle Carteris, has been re-elected to a 2-year term as the President of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)

Ryan Gosling will host the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, with musical guest Jay-Z, on Sept 30th.

Jamie Bell is developing a Jumper TV series, based on the 2008 film about teleporters

Suicide Squad 2 is reportedly being fast tracked, but I hope they fast track it right into the garbage. I mean, I enjoyed the first one, but I don’t need a sequel.

I like Nick Kroll, even though I never saw even a second of Kroll Show. Anyway, he’s got a new animated series about puberty called Big Mouth coming to Netflix and after watching this teaser I am ON BOARD!

We’re a month away from the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery, and it was revealed that it will be rated TV-MA, for Mature Audiences. Now, it doesn’t mean there’ll be tits and phasers, but it does mean they can tell more complex stories. That said, I still feel like they don’t truly understand the source material.

After a scathing essay from his ex-wife went public, accusing him of adultery and other generally shitty behavior to women, Joss Whedon went underground and the fan site, Whedonesque, shut down after 15 years.

We got a new teaser for Netflix’s The Punisher. With the rate I’m getting through these Marvel shows, I’ll probably get to it just before Evie goes off to Hogwarts.

There was a national solar eclipse this week, which was the first occurrence since 1918. I’m sure you might’ve heard something about it. It was kind of a big deal. Folks were pimping out special cardboard glasses on Craigslist for insane amounts of money, and the American President made news by looking directly into it. It seems that it had a strange effect on different folks. For example, Netflix viewership went down 10% as people went outside to view the phenomenon. Not everyone understood what was going on, bless their hearts. At work, a frantic parent called in and said “Y’all watching the news? You hear about this eclipse? Is it serious?!” Apparently she thought it posed some sort of danger to her kids and the school. No, ma’am. It’s just a beautiful sky ballet. Anyway, the eclipse was EVERYWHERE. I didn’t get to see totality, but it was still nice to stand outside for a bit on a nice day. What am I saying? I hate the outdoors! Well, it was nice to not have to work for a few minutes. You couldn’t escape the Eclipse Fever at the start of the week, so that’s why the Solar Eclipse of 2017 had the West Week Ever.

[harley623gaming-blog]

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[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Chris Pratt singing to his 'cheat meal' scones is all of us

Being a movie star means being willing to physically transform yourself for money. And if you're Chris Pratt, it also means occasionally falling into a state of food-based (or lack of) delirium that only serenading a scone will cure.  

The latest installment of the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 actor's Instagram series #WhatsMySnack is here, and it's his best yet.

SEE ALSO: Giggle like Chris Pratt at delightful 'Guardians of the Galaxy' bloopers

Pratt may be deprived of his usual snacks during filming, but he'll be damned if he doesn't make the most of what he's got. Just look at the pure joy he exhibits, eating a scone for his "cheat meal."

It's inspirational. We know you can relate. 

TURN THE VOLUME UP ON YOUR DEVICE for this all new critically acclaimed episode of #WHATSMYSNACK #cheatmeal edition. Starring Chris Pratt. Set on the River Thames in post World Two England, Chris Pratt plays lonely CIA agent Drake McGuiness, a man with a dangerous secret and a crippling addiction to dessert. Score by The Beatles. WRITTEN by Chris Pratt. PRODUCED by Chris Pratt. EXECUTIVE PRODUCED by Chris Pratt. ASSOCIATE PRODUCED by Chris Pratt. Special thanks to a CHRIS PRATT. Cinematography by @annafaris No animals were harmed in the making of this video. But 7 cranberry, currant, butter, jam, clotted cream scones got BF'd pretty hard. All rights reserved. #WHATSMYSNACK is a registered trademark. Copyright infringement is punishable by up to 500 years in prison and a $250 trillion fine. Piracy is not a victimless crime.

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Apr 7, 2017 at 3:16pm PDT

Such a poignant portrayal of a truly universal experience. We give it a 10/10. Shout out to cinematographer par excellence, Anna Faris.

But the scone song is just the latest in a long series of #WhatsMySnack video goodness.

#WHATSMYSNACK It is said that when you fast you have visions. It goes back to the Bible and probably before. It's a spiritual experience to say the least. I'm not fasting per se but I am definitely at the point in this diet where I've began metabolizing my own brain for energy. Not to brag. If your body gets so hungry you start eating your own brain matter for energy, keep going! You're almost there! It means the love handles are next! And then you will be complete. You will have arrived at the destination. And forever you will be happy. Just kidding. Don't do it. Not worth it. Go get some Doritos or skittles. Both of which have Starlord's face on them right now!!!

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Apr 5, 2017 at 10:13am PDT

#WHATSMYSNACK today I got cucumber and egg wrap. It's basically exactly like a sandwich but instead of bread you use thinly sliced cucumbers and instead of meat you use sprouts and chopped up eggs and instead of flavor you get nutrition. 😔 Like I always said, eating is no longer the fun part, flexing my butt cheeks in the mirror is. Cause no dimples. No rolls. Just cut ass butt cheeks. LIVE WITH IT!!! #jurassicworld2

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 29, 2017 at 7:11am PDT

#ChrisPratt here. Little embarrassed by my last episode of #WHATSMYSNACK so I'm posting a more manly version to even it out. #peace #onelove #SnackLife #jurassicworld2

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 18, 2017 at 6:26am PDT

Hot new full length episode of #WHATSMYSNACK

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 16, 2017 at 4:11pm PDT

In fact, the series has been going since the Jurassic World 2 days. 

#JurassicWorld2 #WHATSMYSNACK watch me eat cat food like a good little boy

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 16, 2017 at 6:11am PDT

Now that is commitment. 

We applaud you, Chris Pratt. Eating healthy snacks like a trooper, since 2015.

WATCH: This chocolate museum would even make Willy Wonka jealous

[talesoftheinquisition]

Pretty and Useful

And here is my piece for day 2 of Stormpilot Week 2017. I chose domestic fluff for today because I love domestic fluff and just fluff in general. So this is fluffy with just a light edge of angst as there is contemplation of the First Order and the horrible things they do and a tiny bit of bad language.

Poe is a slob, Finn prefers thing to be tidy, the First Order are bastards and Finn learns that pretty and useful are good things to be.

Finn huffed out an exasperated sigh as he stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the mess that was everywhere in the room he shared with Poe. The only part of the room that was clean was the bed Finn used and its general vicinity and the path that lead from the door to BB-8’s recharge station. Everywhere else there were clothes, towels, droid parts, X-Wing parts and assorted random knick knacks because Poe loved the damn things and couldn’t walk past them if he was in a market.

“What a mess,” Finn muttered as he looked around, a plan of attack forming in his mind.

He was still on medical leave with strict orders from Dr Kalonia to do nothing that would put strain on his newly-healed back. That kind of leave and that much care from medical personnel was still an almost baffling novelty and he recalled the pinched looks that had appeared on Poe and Dr Kalonia’s faces when the word decommissioned had crossed his lips. To be honest, he probably would have stayed with the Resistance purely for the fact that they all cared about each other so much if Poe and General Organa hadn’t given him plenty of other reasons to stay.

He pushed those thoughts aside and took a step forward. Tidying the room wouldn’t count as putting strain on his back, not if he took it slowly and was careful, and honestly he just couldn’t live with this mess anymore. How Poe found anything in here was beyond him!

He started picking up clothes and checking to see if they needed to go to the laundry. He’d have felt guilty about going through Poe’s things but the man had been very firm about the fact that the room was Finn’s as much as it was his. In fact, since Finn had nothing but what he’d been wearing and even some of that had been ruined after his failed tussle with Kylo Ren, Poe had pretty much said that he was willing to share everything he had with Finn, not just his clothes. There had been something about the way Poe had said that that made Finn think that there was a level of meaning there that he didn’t quite understand. He suspected he would understand it eventually though.

As he methodically sorted through the clothes, putting the dirty ones in the amusingly unused hamper and the clean ones away in the cupboards or dresser, he pondered the mystery of Poe. Not that Poe was that mysterious but some of his behaviour was. Finn knew that had more to do with his upbringing in the First Order than anything to do with Poe. It certainly didn’t seem like he was a mystery to the other pilots. They seemed to spend most of their time teasing Poe and making comments that they probably thought Finn didn’t understand.

He snorted with amusement as he folded shirts and put them away. He wasn’t sure why everyone in the Resistance thought he was some sort of virginal innocent. Dr Kalonia didn’t, though from the gleam in her eyes, she seemed to be enjoying that misunderstanding as much as he was. The First Order took kids from a young age and raised them through their hormonal teenage years. They’d never forbidden sex. They’d simply made sure every Trooper had a contraceptive implant and then given them education about sex that had stripped anything emotional out of it. Pretty much the First Order’s modus operandi about everything. So Finn wasn’t an innocent when it came to the mechanics of sex, he just wasn’t used to being allowed to get his emotions involved.

And Force but were his emotions involved when it came to Poe. He’d been confused about all of it at first and had spoken to Dr Kalonia about it. She’d directed him to one of the Resistance’s counsellors and he’d been working through not just his feelings about Poe but everything else the First Order had done to him as well. So he knew that his feelings had nothing to do with gratitude – though he was certainly grateful to Poe for believing and trusting him so readily on the Finalizer. He was going to have to ask Poe about that at some point.

That was beside the point though. The counsellor had gently guided him through working out what his feelings were and had given him some advice for how to handle things in the future. Not that he’d actually acted on any of that. Not out of lack of interest but more because he… wasn’t quite sure how. Or even if he should. He’d observed that Poe’s behaviour towards him was a little different than how he behaved towards the others. Not in a bad way, definitely not in a bad way based on the sly, teasing comments he’d heard directed at Poe that usually left the pilot spluttering and blushing. But despite that, Poe never did or said anything that indicated he wanted to act on that behaviour or what the comments were implying. Poe was always strictly platonic, even when they were alone in their room.

Finn sighed as he started picking up the rest of the detritus in the room and separating it out. He knew he was using that as an excuse. He’d had a very confusing conversation with Snap and an even more confusing one with Jess just this week and if he’d understood what they were saying correctly, they both thought that he and Poe were already together and that somehow that made him the expert Poe-wrangler on base and could he please come and wrangle Poe before he drove them crazy and they ended up committing some sort of Poe-related homicide. He’d been so startled he hadn’t really thought about correcting their misapprehension about his and Poe’s relationship and had just gone and lured the pilot away from where he’d been with the promise of food and the chance to explain his favourite holovids to Finn.

The door opening abruptly startled him out of his thoughts and Poe burst in, already peeling himself out of his flight suit.

“Finn! Hey, buddy. Ugh. Why did I volunteer to help train the newbies? Snap is so much better at it than I am and…” Poe broke off and looked around the room in surprise, half in and half out of his flight suit. “Hey, it’s clean. You cleaned.”

“Uh, yeah,” Finn said, feeling a bit embarrassed. “I hope that’s okay.”

Poe finished pulling off the top half of his flight suit, letting it hang at his waist. Finn was surprised to see the faint flush on his cheeks.

“I probably should have warned you that I’m a bit of a slob,” Poe said sheepishly. “You didn’t have to clean this up. You should have just told me to do it.”

“No, it’s alright.” Finn sighed. “I’m bored,” he admitted.

Poe chuckled. “Yeah, you must be if you actually cleaned.” He looked around. “Wow, there’s a lot more space in here than I thought.”

“You also have a lot more of this stuff than I ever thought possible,” Finn said with some exasperation as he waved a hand at the little knick knacks he’d lined up on the shelves.

The sheepish look returned to Poe’s face as he surveyed the three shelves of little bibs and bobs he’d picked up here and there. “I really do, don’t I?”

“Why do you buy them? They’re not… useful.”

Poe gave him a startled look. “Not everything has to be useful, Finn.” He stepped over and picked up a tiny stone statuette of some sort of aquatic animal that shone with rainbow iridescence. “Some things aren’t meant to be useful, they’re just meant to be pretty to look at.”

Finn joined him and took the statuette when it was offered to him. It was some sort of fish and he had to admit that it was very pretty, both from the intricacy of the design and the shifting colours of the stone it was made from.

“I guess I’m not used to that yet,” he said then elaborated at Poe’s raised eyebrow. “Things being kept when they’re not useful.”

From the way Poe’s lips thinned, he knew the other man was remembered the conversation they’d had about Finn’s fears of being decommissioned because he wasn’t being useful during his convalescence. He’d actually learned a few new curses from Poe that day.

“I mean, I get it now,” he said hurriedly. “Well, I’m starting to get it. I just… they didn’t really let us have personal belongings either.”

“Yeah, I figured that bit,” Poe replied, taking back the little statuette and placing it back on the shelf. “That’s why I said you could use anything of mine that you wanted.”

“Just as well we’re about the same size,” Finn joked. “Though your shirts are a bit tight.”

Something flickered in Poe’s eyes before they calmed again. “Not just the clothes,” he said with an odd intensity.

Finn frowned. “What?”

“I mean…” Poe let out a huffed breath and looked frustrated. “I don’t know what I mean. I just… I want you to have… things.”

Finn stared at him for a moment then started softly laughing. “Poe… you’re ridiculous.”

Poe smiled wryly. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

Poe gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder as he grinned. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

They teetered on the edge of a precipice then, both of them grinning at the other as a charged tension grew between them. They’d been here before, Finn realised. More than once. But every other time, one or both of them had pulled back, not willing to upset the equilibrium they’d achieved. Finn suddenly decided he didn’t want to pull back this time.

“I know something I want,” he blurted, his heart hammering in his chest.

“Yeah? What’s that?” Poe asked.

“You.”

Poe stared at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “Me?” he squeaked, pointing at his chest. “Really?”

Finn licked his lips and started laughing again. He closed the gap between them and wrapped an arm around Poe’s waist before dropping his forehead on to the other man’s shoulder.

“You’re not allowed to be the insecure one here, Poe,” he mumbled into the fabric of the filthy white t-shirt Poe was wearing under his flight suit.

Poe seemed to jolt into action. He wrapped his arms around Finn and pressed a kiss onto his temple. “You… Finn…. This…” He drew in a deep breath then said a little hesitantly, “Finn?”

“I like you, Poe,” Finn said as he raised his head. “I don’t have… I’m not really… I like you. A lot.”

Poe’s smile was wide and utterly gorgeous. “Me too, buddy. I like you, I mean. A lot.” He frowned slightly. “But… are you sure?”

Finn made an exasperated sound. “Am I sure I like you? Yes! Do I want to do something about it? Yes!” He hesitated. “I’m just not… exactly sure what to do. I mean… I know what to do. I’m not… I’m not a virgin. It’s just… never been anything more than sex before.”

Poe’s eyes were wide and shining with something Finn couldn’t quite place. “And it is now?”

Finn nodded. “Yeah.”

Poe grinned and his hands tightened where they were gripping Finn’s shirt. “Me too.”

They stood there and grinned at each other then something abruptly changed and the air between them became charged with electricity. Neither of them knew who moved first but in a flash they were together, their mouths seeking each other’s as they clutched at the other’s clothes. The kiss was hot and hard but Poe quickly gentled it, slowing it down until they were exchanging long, soft kisses and their tight grips on each other turned to caresses and then finally they broke apart, though only far enough to rest their foreheads together.

“Hit the jackpot when I found you, buddy,” Poe murmured.

Finn didn’t move, didn’t even open his eyes, just revelled in Poe’s touch and closeness. “Hmmm?”

“Pretty and useful.”

It was said with fondness and teasing and affection and Finn could do nothing more than laugh as he hugged Poe.

“Actually I think I found you,” he said as he gave Poe a quick peck on the lips.

“I suppose I’m also pretty and useful,” Poe said, conceding the point.

Finn shuffled Poe backwards, the myriad of knick knacks rattling as Poe’s back hit the shelves. He braced his hands on the shelf on either side of Poe’s head as the pilot grinned at him.

“You’ve got me. What are you going to do now?”

Finn pretended to consider that question for a moment before he started to lean in for another kiss. “I’ll think of something.”

[rozebucket98-blog]

Mystery in Allenstown

For most people in New Hampshire, the story began in the fall of 1985 in the little town of Allenstown, population 4000ish and best known for being home to Bear Brook State Park.

It was there, on the outskirts of the park, that brothers out hunting discovered the remains of a woman and a girl wrapped in plastic near a 55-gallon barrel.

 The bodies were found on private property where a small camp store with an apartment above it had once operated. Bear Brook Store had burned in July of 1983 but the shell of the building remained, along with a mobile home, a camper, and various vehicles, barrels, and appliances scattered across the property. The hunter, himself the father of a young daughter, who spotted a foot sticking out of the plastic was so traumatized by his discovery that he said it took him ten years to go back into the woods.

 As NH did not have its own Medical Examiner's office, the bodies were flown to Maine to be examined. These sketches were released in the media and authorities covered a lot of ground hoping to identify what was assumed to be a mother and daughter. However, investigative efforts did not lead to answers and eventually, the two bodies were released for burial. Chief Connor organized a graveside service in the parish cemetery that was presided over by the town's Catholic priest and a Methodist minister.

 They were buried together in a steel casket so that they could be exhumed easily if someone came forward to claim their bodies. The owner of Epsom Memorials donated a granite stone for their grave and carved a rose and figures of the woman and child holding hands.

  Over the years, while investigators followed the leads that came in, Allenstown residents experienced a deep unease around the questions that lingered. Who were those girls? Who could have bludgeoned and dismembered and discarded them like trash?

Town officials wanted the Bear Brook Store property cleaned up and there was a Danger Notice attached to the 1997 tax record for map 407, Lot 023 that stated, "Posted Unfit." The following year, an assessment card states "mobile home uninhabitable" and "vacant vandalized." It is chilling in hindsight to read the accompanying dump site report which lists: abandoned vehicle Chrysler 4 door sedan (rust), HTG appliance (illegible), enclosure falling down, with wires and pipes, several 55 gallon drums some with trash in them, construction debris, old machines (axles, lawnmowers) strewn about, approx. 30 feet in from the road.

Fast forward fifteen years and

State Police Sgt John Cody was assigned to the case. New Hampshire did not yet have a cold case unit and troopers were assigned old cases to work.

On May 9th of 2000 while examining the area, Cody located another barrel about 100 yards from where the first one was found, and discovered that it, too, contained human remains. They were found to be the remains of two little girls. This led to the exhumation of the 1985 victims in order to have DNA comparisons done. The testing found that the woman was related biologically to the oldest child (who was found in the barrel with her) and to the 2-3 yr. old girl found in 2000. Authorities came to believe that the four victims were killed at or near the same time in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The realization that one child was not related to the other three victims was puzzling and led to speculation about the whereabouts and well-being of her mother. Later, isotope testing done on the victims showed that the woman and the two girls related to her may have lived in the areas highlighted in green on the map below (State abbreviations added by me)

The information was released for the first time that the two little girls had also been killed by blunt force trauma to their heads. The jolting images shown in May of 2016 of the caved-in skull of a little girl generated renewed speculation about what kind of individual was capable of this kind of violence against little children.

Little did we realize then that we were less than a year from getting our first glimpses into a back story that would bring together investigators on both coasts and yield a whole slew of new questions.

~ ~ ~

The first hints came on December 28th, 2016, when a story broke in New Hampshire about a woman named Denise Beaudin who moved away from Manchester with her infant daughter and her boyfriend Bob Evans in 1981 and was never heard from again. The article was entitled "35 years later, authorities call Manchester woman’s disappearance suspicious."

Although the story didn't mention anything about the Allenstown cold case, the name "Bob Evans" set off alarm bells for a number of Allenstown area folks. This was the same name that we (Oakhill Research) had been asking about for several years. In fact, ever since July 28th, 2014 when Ed Gallagher, the owner of the Allenstown property where the barrels were found, told us that he thought that one 'Bobby Evans' left the barrels on his property.

We went to the January 26, 2017 press conference in Concord NH with a a multitude of questions. Also attending were former Allenstown residents Paul Chevrette and Ron Sayles. Speaking that day were Michael Kokoski (Supervisor in the NH Cold Case Unit), Jeffery Strelzin (Senior Assistant Attorney General Chief, Homicide Unit), and Ryan Grant (Detective Captain in the Manchester Police Department).

 To assist in relating the story, the presenters distributed an informative summary of events that recounts how these cases on the east and west coasts were finally connected in the story of the man once known in NH as Bob Evans. The authorities presented a succinct timeline to help the public navigate what was known about Evans as well as a handout that listed aliases/characteristics/unconfirmed travels etc. that might have shed light on his true identity. They released pictures at the press conference as well as maps of Evans' travels and made the Power Point of the presentation available.

~~~ In brief, we learned the following:

The name 'Bob Evans' appeared to be an alias and his identity was still unknown. DNA testing revealed that he was the biological father of one of the little girls found in 2000 in a barrel, the child who was unrelated to the others. Her actual identity was still unknown and police were concerned that her mother might have been another victim.

The identities of the woman and the other two children were still unknown but DNA testing showed that Evans was not related to these two children, nor was Denise the woman in the barrel. Authorities now believed that it was likely that the victims found in Allenstown were all killed prior to December of 1981 when Evans disappeared from Manchester with Denise. A possible clue to the adult victim's identity might lie in the story shared about a mystery woman named Elizabeth.

Police feared that Evans likely killed Denise at some point and although he had also killed his own daughter, he spared the life of Denise's baby daughter Dawn. In a story that seemed surreal, we learned that Evans changed Dawn's name to Lisa and later gave her away to strangers. In an ironic twist, it was Lisa's own search for her identity that proved to be the catalyst for unraveling Evans' legacy of lies. She was recently reunited with her relatives in Manchester NH. Her survival was a happy note in a sordid story, although her mother's whereabouts are unknown.

The beginning of the end came for Evans when he was arrested in California in 2002 for the murder of his partner, Eunsoon Jun. He was living under one of his many aliases, when authorities, investigating Jun's disappearance, found her bludgeoned and partially dismembered body under a pile of cat litter in their home. A home he continued living in after he killed her.

'Bob Evans' died of natural causes in High Desert Prison in California in 2010. He left many mysteries in his wake, perhaps none more puzzling than that of his own identity. Who was this man who behaved so savagely to the women and children in his life? Where did he come from?  How many other victims did he leave scattered across the continent?

To have pictures and video, new victims, and a string of aliases now attached to the Allenstown killer was an odd turn of events when his identity was still unknown. All over the country, investigators, genealogists, and websleuths began trying to figure out the real identity of the bogeyman who now had a face.

Seven months later, the NH State Police issued a press release. 'Bob Evans' was in fact one Terry Peder Rasmussen. DNA had confirmed a match with a son of his. Exactly how the son had surfaced on the radar of authorities has not been disclosed. There was no opportunity for the media to ask that question as this time around, the detectives did not hold a press conference in conjunction with the release of new information. Suffice it to say, within minutes of the release of Rasmussen's name, websleuths around the country were scrolling through his family's Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace pages, fascinated to learn more about the history of this man of mystery and murder. An uneasy dance unfolded on the Websleuths forum where researchers posted information about him and administrators warned them about not posting information about his relatives, themselves victims of his mayhem.

The reaction from the people of Allenstown was a far cry from that of the websleuths. Learning that Rasmussen had four adult children, siblings to the little girl in the 2000 barrel, Oakhill Research was contacted and asked if there was a way that the people of Allenstown could reach out to his living children. To say that they had never forgotten the little girls in the barrels and had never stopped praying that they would be identified. To say that they had tended the grave and visited it over the years until the day family could come forward. To say that their hearts went out to Rasmussen's children for the difficult spot they found themselves in and that the people of Allenstown would now say prayers for their peace and comfort as they had for the other victims.

Works Cited: http://oakhillresearch.blogspot.de/

                     http://oakhillresearch.blogspot.de/2010/12/the-missng-theories.html

 Dig Deeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrNG9u3nncs

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpglC3B9FF8

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4F7yRA3Vms

*Dedicated to Maggie*

[realjamespat]

Courtney, Cuppy, Archie & Carrie

Here is Part 1:

https://jimjax4.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/part-1-of-my-interview-with-yukon-mens-courtney-agnes-girl-power-the-tanana-alaska-way/

  We all have a story.  It doesn’t matter if we think we are exciting or not; all of us have a story.  Courtney Agnes is no different.  People probably see Courtney as a tomboy who is just like one of the guys, but she is much more than that.

Courtney is a self proclaimed “girly girl”.  “I just don’t have any fashion sense” she admits.  Courtney is a good athlete as is displayed by her talents in sports.  She is also a highly skilled artist in bead work and crafting, creating amazing clothing and jewelry.  This skill was encouraged by her grandmother Carrie who always seemed to supply her with amazing material to work with.  How about Courtney’s Native Craft’s for an online store name?  Her love for her culture and the Athabascan way of life is embedded in her heart through generations of tradition and respect for the land and what it provides.  She works at keeping that way of life alive in the future generations to come.

Jim Jax: Describe your relationship with your dad Pat and how has it changed since you were a kid?

Courtney Agnes:

I was always my dad’s baby. I even told mom and dad that they couldn’t have anymore kids because I had to be the baby forever.  From the first moment I had him wrapped around my finger.  He was the one to get up with me in the middle of the night when I cried and he would spoil me rotten.  I am now getting paybacks with my two girls and my husband, Archie.  I find that Cuppy and Carrie pull the same tricks that I used to do when I was their age with their dad and I feel like my mom did back then. Nowadays, I get really upset when my dad leaves town without telling me.  He also really relies on me to help him around the dog yard, or to even ground him in his busy life. We really enjoy doing things together, like planting his huge garden that’s almost as big as the bottom section of my house.

Courtney, Braedon & Pat

Jim Jax: What type of amenities do you have at your house.  I.E.  Television, cable, wifi/internet, running water, electricity, etc…..

Courtney Agnes:

I lived my entire life without running water until I moved out of Tanana.  About half of the homes in Tanana finally got hooked up to the water system in 2006-07. My home has cable, wifi, and electricity; all of the comfortable amenities. The only thing I miss about city life are the readily available fresh groceries. We have to plan for shopping excursions and freeze, dry, or blanch veggies and fruits to make them last.

Courtney Practicing her Guilty Look

Jim Jax: I always think about the normal every day things.  As a teen and a young woman, how hard was it to date with so few men around, and what activities as a young person did you have to do to meet people? 

Courtney Agnes:

When I was a teenager, I was kind of awkward and geeky.  I always had straight A’s and had my nose in a book (I have bad eyesight from it).  I wasn’t really interested in boys; nothing serious anyways; and I wasn’t really that popular.  That really didn’t bother me though. Living in a remote village, it’s kind of common to play sports or travel, or to date someone if you already hadn’t found someone to hang out with in your own village.  Most people are related to each other in our small rural populations, so it’s easier to date outside of your hometown. I always played basketball just to get out of work and chores, so I met new and interesting people that way.

Courtney is all smiles at a dog mushing race

Jim Jax: What is your favorite food to eat that you can only get in Alaska?

Courtney Agnes:

My family and I just got back from a vacation in Hawaii, and I have to admit the girls asked for moose meat as soon as we got home.  Luckily my best friend had moose roast in her fridge in Anchorage while we hung out there for allergy appointments to appease the girl’s cravings.  I’m pretty sure I couldn’t ever live without moose soup either.  The only other food that I couldn’t live without is Yukon King Salmon.  I’m sure it’s because I grew up eating it, but no other salmon compares. All of the people that I grew up with here in Tanana are pretty picky about the salmon that we eat, and pretty much don’t really like any other kind.

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(Above: Some of Courtney’s Jewelry)

Jim Jax: What was your scariest moment while filming Yukon men.

Courtney Agnes:

The scene when I shot the black bear was the absolute scariest moment while filming.  It was slightly raining when I was stalking the bear, and I kept hearing him but I couldn’t identify where the sound was coming from.  We were walking through a small stream, so I had to also focus on being quiet when I moved. It is pretty hard to do with rain gear and rubber boots on. Ryan (camera man) had seen him first and he was headed straight for him, although the bear had never seen us. The instant that I saw the bear, I pulled my gun up to shoot, but he walked behind a huge clump of willows so I had to wait for the shot.  I got him with one shot to the neck and he was only 20 feet from Ryan. So in short, the bear almost ate Ryan.  Although he was packing, it still could have gone way wrong if I hadn’t waited for a good shot.

(Above: Alaskan wild blueberries and kippered fish)

Jim Jax: Your husband doesn’t get to be on camera much; explain what kind of person he is. 

Courtney Agnes:

Archie is a really quiet guy and he’s often gone for his job.  He works on an oil rig up north in Alaska.  He usually works 2 weeks on and then has 2 weeks off, but he has to add 2 travel days to the days he’s gone so we basically get him 12 days per 28 days. He sacrifices so much to provide for us to live here in Tanana.  It’s a really tough work environment that he has to leave us for and we really appreciate him.  He’s an avid outdoorsman like I am, but way shyer than me. He also lives for speed.  He used to race boats in the Yukon 800 race, and now races snow machines in the Iron Dog across Alaska. Both are physically brutal races, but he races them for the physical and mental aspects of it. He’s an amazing dad to our girls, he’s very patient and kind, but he’s also a pushover when it comes to them.

Courtney’s Scarecrow look

Jim Jax: What is the thing you like most about filming Yukon Men and what is the worst thing about filming it.

Courtney Agnes:

The thing that I love most about filming Yukon Men is that I am paid for doing things that I normally do anyway on a daily basis.  I mean, we always have to get food, wood, fuel, and get ready for winter, so it’s kind of easy to just do both at the same time.  It’s kind of like killing two birds with one stone.  The hardest thing about filming is being away from the girls. I’m a pretty hands on mama.  They really have a hard time going to sitters and not being in their own familiar environment, although we do have an amazing support system here in Tanana.

Cuppy, Courtney & Carrie

Jim Jax: With the new road comes a whole new group of people coming to the area.  Do you ever worry that things will never be the same and it may get harder to survive? 

Courtney Agnes:

I really worry about what kind of people the new road will bring in.  There was a straggler in Manley Hot Springs 20 years or so ago, (which is now 50 miles away from us on the road) who shot and killed 9 people and threw them in the Tanana River.

(Courtney is talking about the famous 1984 mass murders by drifter Michael Allen Silka in Manley Hot Springs.  He was a military marksman and he shot and killed 9 people.  One was a trooper who was flying overhead in a helicopter.  After murdering a neighbor he befriended people in Tanana saying he was a mountain man.  He often camped near the one of the docks.  People were impressed with his skills and he said he wanted to make roots in Tanana.  His victims included a trooper, a pregnant woman and a 2 year old child).

My husband’s family also has land not even one mile away from the road, and we worry about encroachment from trespassers. What people don’t really understand is how resilient Tanana people are, and we will fight for our way of life.

Jim Jax: What hobby or personality trait do you have that would surprise viewers of the show. 

Courtney Agnes:

I really hate being idle, so I’m always doing one thing or another.  I really love to play basketball, I grew up playing with 6’ or taller guys who had the mentality that you had to be tough to even try to play with them.  I remember getting elbowed or punched in the face and getting told not to cry when I was like in the 10th grade.  Being pretty short (5’5”) enabled them to practically jam the ball down my throat so I had to figure out ways to shoot and score around them. When playing in tournaments in Fairbanks in later years, teammates would tell me, “I don’t know how you get in there and shoot like that”.  Sometimes a ref asked me why I hadn’t ever played college ball (I was too shy).  The only other thing I can think of is that I really am quite girly.  I love make up but I have zero fashion sense.

Jim Jax: What message do you hope to communicate about your way of life to those that enjoy the show. 

Courtney Agnes: 

When I was in high school, my late Grandmother Carrie used to always tell me to learn to live off the land.  At the time I really did not understand what she was trying to tell me, so I basically disregarded her advice.  It wasn’t until I moved back home and started to hunt, fish, and trap on my own that I learned what she meant.  She was trying to explain a simpler but rewarding lifestyle where she learned intrinsic life values from living off of the land.  This would allow me to be able to care for my family while living off the land.  It is an inherent value in keeping our traditions and culture alive that I will always appreciate.

Jim’s Jamz:

I’d like to humbly thank all of those in the Discovery Yukon Men family for their kindness and trust they have shown me in telling their stories.  Thank you to the fans of the show for their support.  I so enjoy their passion and dedication to the show.  Thousands of people have read these articles and I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I liked writing them.

Even with all of the amazing positive feedback I’ve also received negative responses too.  I’ve been contacted by various publications and websites speaking out against me for writing about Yukon Men.  I’m small potatoes I’m sure but there have even been petitions started to stop the show.

First off I’m not naïve.  Most reality shows are extremely faked and staged.  People always say they know that yet they act like it’s real.  Out of all of the shows though, Yukon Men is right up there with being a real as it gets.  Are some of the scenes enhanced?  Of course they are.  Ask hunters how exciting it is walking in the freezing cold for hours looking to hunt something.  They you must ask yourself how real was it for George Roberts to lose his life in a snow mobile accident?  Ask if it was real when a young pilot Seth Fairbanks died after his plane went down?  A while earlier he helped find a stranded Joey Zuray who was slowly being surrounded by water and ice.  While the most popular network shows lie to know end; (yes I’ve talked to some of the actors and behind the scenes people and you have no idea), Yukon Men tries to keep an integrity that is rarely seen anymore on television.

The struggles are real.  And while many crews on other shows stay for short times and move on, the film crews for Yukon Men have spent significant time in the area and have tried hard to win the respect of the communities.

Like I said, I’ve seen petitions to try and cancel the show in the past due to the hunting and trapping scenes.  In reality these are not trophy hunters cutting off heads or antlers of animals and leaving the meat.  These aren’t people laughing and partying after killing an animal for show so they can take selfies so strangers will increase their likes on Instagram or Twitter.  These are people who for generations have respected their surroundings and gratefully used the land to survive in one of the most difficult places in the world to live.

As long as I write about Yukon Men I will continue to send the message that the Athabascan lifestyle tries to teach.  Respect and love for your family, with an appreciation and love for what the land provides and gives you through a subsistence lifestyle.  And lastly the constant reminder to never forget the great skills and pride that has been taught to you through previous generations.  Like I said, we all have a tale to tell so let’s always respect and appreciate where we come from.  And may we always respect each other’s story.

  “Part 2 of My Interview With Yukon Men’s Courtney Agnes; Girl Power the Tanana, Alaska Way” Here is Part 1: We all have a story.  It doesn’t matter if we think we are exciting or not; all of us have a story. 

[nicholasbickford]

I know what you're thinking: "Wow! No one has EVER - in the history of book parades - gone dressed as an Alice In Wonderland character!" But I chose the Queen of Hearts for a few reasons - one of them because I wanted to finally use the fantastic IKEA Lattjo Queen crinoline and skirt I bought ages ago (which is no longer available by the looks of it). And secondly, because it IS a popular character and I think it's pretty darn easy to make it look fantastic without having to sew anything or buy too much. All I bought for this outfit was a packet of cards and two plastic tablecloths for the skirt from Kmart. A grand total of $7 was spent as I had the rest of the stuff at home already. I realise part of what makes this look good is the puffiness from underneath it - a tutu or frilly skirt should do the trick and if you have a girl, chances are you have one of those lying around your house already! The collar I discovered on Pinterest in various incarnations and is so simple but so effective! Bravo to the clever person who came up with the original idea! 

So what does one need for the Queen of Hearts? A skirt, a crown, some heart lips, rosy cheeks, heart-shaped staff and a very fabulous card collar. And Layla's royal pain-in-the-butt princess attitude goes a long way too...

Queen of hearts plastic tablecloth skirt tutorial

You'll need... A white round plastic tablecloth, $2 from Kmart or pretty much any bargain/party shop (For memory the size was 2.1m) A red rectangle plastic tablecloth, $2 from Kmart (or other budget/party shop) Thick elastic A hot glue gun A sticky velcro hook-and-eye dot Scissors Coloured paper in black, red and gold (I just spray painted a sheet of paper with gold spray paint before cutting it up into hearts) A large safety pin A tutu, frilly skirt, net or hoop for underneath

Step 1: Unfold the round tablecloth until it's folded into a quarter, as above. In the pointy corner which is the centre of the tablecloth (the bottom right in this picture), cut across it to create a hole in the middle. 

Step 2: Unfold so it looks a little like a white plastic donut! You might need to make adjustments here to make it bigger if you were cautious with your original cut - you'll want to be able to step into the hole and pull it up around your waist with plenty of room to spare. 

Step 3: Carefully fold back the edge of the hole so it forms a seam big enough to easily thread the elastic through afterwards. Use your hot glue gun to gently glue the seam in place. Don't leave it on the plastic too long - it will burn a hole in it! But the glue itself does a pretty good job. Continue all the way around back to the beginning but leave a bit of a gap to allow the elastic through.

Step 4: Attach a safety pin to the end of a piece of elastic and thread through the seam gently. Work out what will fit comfortably around your child before tying it off and cutting. The skirt will gather slightly. Pop it on your child - they'll be your mannequin for the next few steps.

Step 5: Unfold the red tablecloth and lay it out on the floor. Cut off a strip longways - about 40cm thick and put aside. This will be your ribbon to hide all fake-sewing sins!

Step 6: Wrap the larger piece of the tablecloth around your child, covering the top of the white skirt. Pinch at the meeting place and have your child hold.

Step 7: Stick on the sticky velcro dot to secure.

Step 8: Cut from the velcro dot down along each side on a diagonal, curving at the bottom.

Step 9: Fold the skinnier piece of the red tablecloth you had set aside into a neat strip and wrap around the waist, covering the top of both skirts. Tie into an oversized bow at the back. 

Step 10: Cut out paper hearts in various sizes and colours and stick in place on the front of the white skirt that is visible. 

♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠

Queen of Hearts card collar tutorial

I'm sure this doesn't actually need a tutorial as it's pretty easy, but here is what I did anyway! 

You'll need...

A packet of playing cards, $3 from Kmart

A hot glue gun

White ribbon

Step 1: Fan out several cards until you have a rainbow! I wanted more than just the number showing so placed them individually in place to create this shape. Once you're happy with the placement, begin gluing them together.

Step 2: Glue gun the ribbon over the bottom edge of the cards on the front. It's not pretty but it won't really be seen anyway (and is really hard to do neatly!)

Step 3: Do the back as well for extra strength and neatness (and also to avoid potential paper cuts!) Glue the very edges of the ribbons together where they first meet. Tie around the neck gently - it will naturally sit upright as you tighten and tie off into a bow.

♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠♥♣♦♠

For the rest of the costume... 

Crown

A cereal box is my secret source for all things costumes. I once made a Star Wars Clone Trooper costume for Zak out of cereal boxes! They're the perfect stiffness while being thin enough to easily work with. Anyway, I just cut out the zig zag crown, spray painted it gold and glue-gunned it into place. It just sits on top of her bun - no comb; no headband; no bobby pins!

Staff

Again, a cereal box with glued-on red paper cut into two hearts and glued back-to-back with a bamboo stick sandwiched in-between!

Make-up

Red face paint was painted onto lips in a heart shape with a really fine paintbrush. The same paint was mixed with moisturiser for the rosy cheeks. A red lippy would also work, obviously! We used gold eyeshadow on the eyes too. 

Layla and I both love how her costume turned out. She originally was going to be the Cheshire Cat and was just going to model this one for me for the blog, but as soon as she put it on she changed her mind! Not sure how she'll go sitting in class with that huge skirt on though! Ha! 

Want more? Check out a cute and easy crayon costume from The Day The Crayons Quit here

[viralhottopics]

Chris Pratt is all of us when serenading his ‘cheat meal’ scone

Being a movie star means being willing to physically transform yourself for money. And if you’re Chris Pratt, it also means occasionally falling into a state of food-based (or lack of) delirium that only serenading a scone will cure.

The latest installment of the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 actor’s Instagram series #WhatsMySnack is here, and it’s his best yet.

SEE ALSO: Giggle like Chris Pratt at delightful ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ bloopers

Pratt may be deprived of his usual snacks during filming, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t make the most of what he’s got. Just look at the pure joy he exhibits, eating a scone for his “cheat meal.”

It’s inspirational. We know you can relate.

TURN THE VOLUME UP ON YOUR DEVICE for this all new critically acclaimed episode of #WHATSMYSNACK #cheatmeal edition. Starring Chris Pratt. Set on the River Thames in post World Two England, Chris Pratt plays lonely CIA agent Drake McGuiness, a man with a dangerous secret and a crippling addiction to dessert. Score by The Beatles. WRITTEN by Chris Pratt. PRODUCED by Chris Pratt. EXECUTIVE PRODUCED by Chris Pratt. ASSOCIATE PRODUCED by Chris Pratt. Special thanks to a CHRIS PRATT. Cinematography by @annafaris No animals were harmed in the making of this video. But 7 cranberry, currant, butter, jam, clotted cream scones got BF’d pretty hard. All rights reserved. #WHATSMYSNACK is a registered trademark. Copyright infringement is punishable by up to 500 years in prison and a $250 trillion fine. Piracy is not a victimless crime.

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Apr 7, 2017 at 3:16pm PDT

Such a poignant portrayal of a truly universal experience. We give it a 10/10. Shout out to cinematographer par excellence, Anna Faris.

But the scone song is just the latest in a long series of #WhatsMySnack video goodness.

#WHATSMYSNACK It is said that when you fast you have visions. It goes back to the Bible and probably before. It’s a spiritual experience to say the least. I’m not fasting per se but I am definitely at the point in this diet where I’ve began metabolizing my own brain for energy. Not to brag. If your body gets so hungry you start eating your own brain matter for energy, keep going! You’re almost there! It means the love handles are next! And then you will be complete. You will have arrived at the destination. And forever you will be happy. Just kidding. Don’t do it. Not worth it. Go get some Doritos or skittles. Both of which have Starlord’s face on them right now!!!

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Apr 5, 2017 at 10:13am PDT

#WHATSMYSNACK today I got cucumber and egg wrap. It’s basically exactly like a sandwich but instead of bread you use thinly sliced cucumbers and instead of meat you use sprouts and chopped up eggs and instead of flavor you get nutrition. Like I always said, eating is no longer the fun part, flexing my butt cheeks in the mirror is. Cause no dimples. No rolls. Just cut ass butt cheeks. LIVE WITH IT!!! #jurassicworld2

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 29, 2017 at 7:11am PDT

#ChrisPratt here. Little embarrassed by my last episode of #WHATSMYSNACK so I’m posting a more manly version to even it out. #peace #onelove #SnackLife #jurassicworld2

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 18, 2017 at 6:26am PDT

Hot new full length episode of #WHATSMYSNACK

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 16, 2017 at 4:11pm PDT

In fact, the series has been going since the Jurassic World 2 days.

#JurassicWorld2 #WHATSMYSNACK watch me eat cat food like a good little boy

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Mar 16, 2017 at 6:11am PDT

Now that is commitment.

We applaud you, Chris Pratt. Eating healthy snacks like a trooper, since 2015.

WATCH: This chocolate museum would even make Willy Wonka jealous

Read more: http://on.mash.to/2oSmQi8

from Chris Pratt is all of us when serenading his ‘cheat meal’ scone

[gilbertineonfr2]

TROOPERS 2017 Day #4 Wrap-Up

I’m just back from Heidelberg so here is the last wrap-up for the TROOPERS 2017 edition. This day was a little bit more difficult due to the fatigue and the social event of yesterday. That’s why the wrap-up will be shorter…  The second keynote was presented by Mara Tam: “Magical thinking … and how to thwart it”. Mara is an advisor to executive agencies on information security issues. Her job focuses on the technical and strategic implications of regulatory and policy activity. In my opinion, the keynote topic remained classic. Mara explained her vision of the problems that the infosec community is facing when information must be exchanged with “the outside world”. Personally, I found that Mara’s slides were difficult to understand. 

For the first presentation of the day, I stayed in the main room – the offensive track – to follow “How we hacked distributed configuration management systems” by Francis Alexander and Bharadwaj Machhiraju. As we already saw yesterday with the SDN, automation is a hot topic and companies tend to install specific tools to automate the configuration tasks. Such software is called DCM or “Distributed Configuration Management”. They simplify the maintenance of complex infrastructures, the synchronization and service discovery. But, as software, they also have bugs or vulnerabilities and are, for a pentester, a nice target. They’re real goldmines because they content not only configuration files but if the attacker can change them, it’s even more dangerous. DCM can be agent-less or -based on agents. This is the second case that was the target of Francis & Bharadwaj. They reviewed three tools:

HashiCorp Consul

Apache Zookeeper

CoreOS etcd

For each tool, that explained the vulnerability they found and how it was exploited up to remote code execution. The crazy story is that all of them do not have authentication enabled by default! To automate the search for DCM and exploitation, they developed a specific tool called Garfield. Nice demos were performed during the talk with many remote shells and calc.exe spawned here and there.

The next talk was my favourite of today. It was about a tool called Ruller to pivot through Exchange servers. Etienne Stamens presented his research on Microsoft Exchange and how he reverse engineered the protocol. The goal is just to get a shell though Exchange. The classic phases of an attack were reviewed:

Reconnaissance

Exploitation

Persistence (always better!)

Basically, Exchange is a mail server but many more features are available: calendar, Lync, Skype, etc. Exchange must be able to serve local and remote users so it exposes services on the Internet. How do identify companies that use an Exchange server and how to find it? Simply thanks to the auto-discovery feature that is implemented by Microsoft. If your domain is company.com, Outlook will search for https://company.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml (+ other alternatives URLs if this one isn’t useful). Etienne did some research and found that 10% of the Internet domains have this process enabled. After some triage, he found that approximatively 26000 domains are linked to an Exchange server. Nice attack surface! The next step is to compromise at least one account. Here, classic methods can be used (brute-force, rogue wireless AP, phishing or dumps of leaked databases). The exploitation in itself is performed by creating a rule that will execute a script. The rule looks like “When the word “pwned” is present in the subject, start “badprogram.exe”. A very nice finding is the way Windows converts UNC path to webdav:

\\host.com@SSL\webdav\pew.zip\s.exe

will be converted to:

https://host.com/webdab/pew.zip

And Windows will even extract s.exe for you! Magic!

Etienne performed a nice demo of Ruler which automates all the process described above. Then, he demonstrated another tool called Linial which takes care of the persistence. To conclude, Etienne explained briefly how to harden Exchange to prevent this kind of attack. Outlook 2016 blocks unsafe rules by default which is good. An alternative is to block WebDAV and use MFA.

After the lunch, Zoz came back with another funny presentation: “Data Demolition: Gone in 60 seconds!”. The idea is simple: When you throw away some devices, you must be sure that they don’t contain remaining critical data. Classic examples are HD’s and printers. Also extremely mobiles devices like drones. The talk was some kind of a “Myth Busters” show for hard drives! Different techniques were tested by Zoz:

Thermal

Kinetic

Electric

For each of them, different scenarios were presented and the results demonstrated with small videos. Crazy!

What was interesting to notice is that most techniques failed because the disk plates could still be “cleaned” (ex: removing the dust) and become maybe readable by using forensic techniques. For your information, the most feasible techniques were: Plasma cutter or oxygen injector, nailguns and HV Power spike. Just one advice: don’t try this at home!

There was a surprise talk scheduled. The time slot was offered to The Grugq. Renowned security researcher, he presented “Surprise Bitches, Enterprise Security Lessons From Terrorists”. He talked about APT’s but not as a buzzword. He gave his own view of how APT’s work. For him, the term “APT” was invented by Americans and means: “Asia Pacific Threat“.

I finished the day back to offensive track. Mike Ossmann and Dominic Spill from Great Scott Gadgets presented “Exploring the Infrared, part 2“. The first part was presented at Schmoocon. Hopefully, they started with a quick recap. What is the infrared light and its applications (remote control, sensors, communications, heating systems, …). The talk was a suite of nice demos where they use replay attack techniques to abuse of tools/toys that work with IR like a Dunk Hunt game, a shark remote controller. The most impressive one was the replay attack against the Bosh audio transmitter. This very expensive device is used in big events for instant translations. They were able to reverse engineer the protocol and were able to play a song through the device… You can imagine the impact of such attack in a live event (ex: switching voices, replacing translations by others, etc). They have many more tests in the pipe.

The last talk was “Blinded Random Block Corruption” by Rodrigo Branco. Rodrigo is a regular speaker at TROOPERS and provides always good content. His presentation was very impressive. They idea is to evaluate the problems around memory encryption? How and why to use it? Physical access to the victim is the worse case. An attacker has access to anything. You implemented full-disk encryption? Cool but many info are in the memory when the system is running. Access to memory can be performed via Firewire, PCIe, PCMCIA and new USB standards. What about memory encryption? It’s good but encryption alone is not enough. Controls must be implemented. The attack explained by Rodrigo is called “BRBC” or  “Blinded Random Block Corruption“. After giving the details, a nice demo was realized: how to become root on a locked system? Access to the memory is more easy in virtualized (or cloud) environments. Indeed many hypervisors allow enabling a “debug” feature per VM. Once activated, the administrator has write access to the memory. By using a debugger, you can use the BRBC attack and bypass the login procedure. The video demo was impressive.

So, TROPPER 10th anniversary edition is over. I spend four awesome days attending nice talks and meeting a lot of friends (old & new). I learned a lot and my todo-list already expanded.

  [The post TROOPERS 2017 Day #4 Wrap-Up has been first published on /dev/random]

from Xavier

[lbcybersecurity]

TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up

TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up

This is my wrap-up for the 2nd day of “NGI” at TROOPERS. My first choice for today was “Authenticate like a boss” by Pete Herzog. This talk was less technical than expected but interesting. It focussed on a complex problem: Identification. It’s not only relevant for users but for anything [The post TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up has been first published on /dev/random] from TROOPERS 2017 Day #2…

[gilbertineonfr2]

TROOPERS 2017 Day #3 Wrap-Up

The third day is already over! Today the regular talks were scheduled split in three tracks: offensive, defensive and a specific one dedicated to SAP. The first slot at 09:00 was, as usual, a keynote. Enno Rey presented ten years of TROOPERS. What happened during all those editions? The main ideas behind TROOPERS have always been that everybody must learn something by attending the conference but… with fun and many interactions with other peers! The goal was to mix infosec people coming from different horizons. And, of course, to use the stuff learned to contribute back to the community. Things changed a lot during these ten years, some are better while others remain the same (or worse?). Enno reviewed all the keynotes presented and, for each of them, gave some comments – sometimes funny. The conference in itself also evolved with a SAP track, the Telco Sec Day, the NGI track and when they move to Heidelberg. Some famous vulnerabilities were covered like MS08-067 or the RSA hack. What we’ve seen:

A move from theory to practice

Some things/crap that stay the same (same shit, different day)

A growing importance of the socio-economic context around security.

Has progress been made? Enno reviewed infosec in three dimensions:

As a (scientific) discipline: From theory to practice. So yes, progress has been made

In enterprise environments: Some issues on endpoints have been fixed but there is a fact: Windows security has become much better but now they use Android :). Security in Datacenter also improved but now there is the cloud.

As a constituent for our society: Complexity is ever growing.

Are automated systems the solution? They are still technical and human factors that are important “Errare Humanum Est” said Enno. Information security is still in progress but we have to work for it. Again, the examples of the IoT crap was used. Education is key. So, yes, the TROOPERS motto is still valid: “Make the world a better place”. Based on the applause from the audience, this was a great keynote by an affected Enno!

I started my day within the defensive track. Veronica Valeros presented “Hunting Them All”. Why do we need hunting capabilities? A definition of threat hunting is “to help in spotting attacks that would pass our existing controls and make more damages to the business“.

People are constantly hit by threats (spam, phishing, malware, trojans, RATs, … you name them). Being always online also increases our surface attack. Attacks are very lucrative and attract a lot of bad guys. Sometimes, malware may change things. A good example comes with the ransomware plague: it made people aware that backups are critical. Threat hunting is not easy because when you are sitting on your network, you don’t always know what to search. And malicious activity does not always rely on top-notch technologies. Attackers are not all ‘l33t’. They just want to bypass controls and make their malicious code run. To achieve this, they have a lot of time, they abuse the weakest link and they hide in plain sight. To resume: they use the “less effort rule”. Which sound legit, right? Veronica has access to a lot of data. Her team is performing hunting across hundreds of networks, millions of users and billions of web requests. How to process this? Machine learning came to the rescue. And Veronica’s job is to check and validate the output of the machine learning process they developed. But it’s not a magic tool that will solve all issues. The focus must be given on what’s important: from 10B of requests/day to 20K incidents/day using anomaly detection, trust modelling, event classification, entity & user modelling. Veronica gave an example. The botnet Sality is active since 2003 and still present. IOC’s exists but they generate a lot of false positives. Regular expressions are not flexible enough. Can we create algorithms to automatically track malicious behaviour. For some threats, it works, for others no. Veronica’s team is tracking +200 malicious behaviours and 60% is automated tracking. “Let the machine do the machine work”. As a good example, Veronica explained how referrers can be the source of important data leaks from corporate networks.

My next choice was “Securing Network Automation” by Ivan Peplnjak. In a previous talk, Ivan explained why Software Defined Networks failed but many vendors improved, which is good. So today, his new topic was about ways to improve the automation from a security perspective. Indeed, we must automate as much as possible but how to make it reliable and secure? If a process is well defined, it can be automated as said Ivan. Why automate? From a management perspective, the same reasons come always on the table: increase the flexibility while reducing costs, to have faster deployments and complete for public cloud offering. About the cloud, do we need to buy or to build? In all cases, you’ll have to build if you want to automate. The real challenge is to move quickly from development to test and production. To achieve this, instead of editing a device configuration live, create configuration text files, push them to a gitlab server. Then you can virtualise a lab, pull config and test them. Did it work? Then merge with the main branch. A lot can be automated: device provisioning, VLANs management, ACLs, firewall rules. But the challenge is to have strong controls to prevent issues upfront and troubleshoot if needed. A nice quote was:

“To make mistake is human, to automatically deploy mistake to all the servers use DevOps”

You remember the amazon bad story? Be prepared to face issues. To automate, you need tools and such tool must be secure. An example was given with Ansible. The issues are that it gathers information from untrusted source:

Scripts are executed on managed devices: what about data injection?

Custom scripts are included in data gathering: More data injection?

Returned data are not properly parsed: Risk of privilege escalation?

The usual controls to put in place are:

OOB management

Management network / VR

Limit access to the management hosts

SSH-based access

Use SSH keys

RBAC (commit scripts)

Keep in mind: Your network is critical so automatic (network programming) is too. Don’t write code yourself (hire a skilled Python programmer for this task) but you must know what the code should do. Test, test, test and once done, test again. As an example of control, you can perform a trace route before / after the change and compare the path. Ivan published a nice list of requirements for your vendor while looking for a new network device. If your current vendor cannot provide you basic requirements like an API, change it!

After the lunch, back to the defence & management track with “Vox Ex Machina” by Grame Neilson. The title looked interesting, was it more offensive of defensive content? Voice recognition is more and more used (example: Cortana, Siri, etc) but also on non-IT systems like banking or support system: “Press 1 for X or press 2 for Y”. But is it secure? Voice recognition is not a new hipe. There are references to the “Voder” already in 1939. Another system was the Vocoder a few years later. Voice recognition is based on two methods: phrase dependent or independent (the current talk will focus on the first method). The process is split in three phases:

Enrolment: your record a phrase x times. It must be different and the analysis is stored as a voice print.

Authentication: Based on feature extraction or MFCC (Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Correlation).

Confidence: Returned as a percentage.

The next part of the talk focused on the tool developed by Grame. Written in Python, it tests a remote API. The different supported attacks are: replay, brute-force and voice print fixation. An important remark made by Grame: Event if some services pretend it, your voice is NOT a key! Every time you pronounce “word”, the generated file is different. That’s why the process of brute-forcing is completely different with voice recognition: You know when you are getting closer due to the returned confidence  (in %) instead of a password comparison which returns “0” or “1”. The tool developed by Grame is available here (or will be soon after the conference).

The next talk was presented by Matt Grabber and Casey Smith: “Architecting a Modern Defense using Device Guard”. The talk was scheduled on the defensive track but it covered both worlds. The question that interest many people is: Is whitelisting a good solution? Bad guys are trying to find bypass strategies (red teams). What are the mitigations available for the blue teams? The attacker’s goal is clear: execute HIS code on YOUR computer. They are two types of attackers: the one who knows what controls you have in place (enlightened) and the novices who aren’t equipped to handle your controls (ex: the massive phishing campaigns dropping Office documents with malicious macros). Device Guard offers the following protections:

Prevents unauthorised code execution,

Restricted scripting environment

Prevents policy tempering and virtualisation based security

The speakers were honest: Device Guard does NOT protect against all the threats but it increases the noises (evidence). Bypasses are possible. how?

Policy misconfiguration

Misplaced trust

Enlightened scripting environments

Exploitation of vulnerable code

Implementation flaws

The way you deploy your policy depends on your environment is a key but also depends on the security eco-system where we are living. Would you trust all code signed by Google? Probably yes. Do you trust any certificate issued by Symantec? Probably not. The next part o the talk was a review of the different bypass techniques (offensive) and them some countermeasures (defensive). A nice demo was performed with Powershell to bypass the language constraint mode. Keep in mind that some allowed applications might be vulnerable. Do you remember the VirtualBox signed driver vulnerability? Besides those problems, Device Guard offers many advantages:

Uncomplicated deployment

DLL enforcement implicit

Supported across windows ecosystem

Core system component

Powershell integration

Conclusion: whitelisting is often a huge debate (pro/con). Despite the flaws, it forces the adversaries to reset their tactics. By doing this you disrupt the attackers’ economics: if it makes the system harder to compromise, it will cost the more time/money.

After the afternoon coffee break, I switched to the offensive track again to follow Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schuss who presented “Exploring North Korea’s Surveillance Technology”. I had no idea about the content of the talk but it was really interesting and an eye-opener! It’s a fact:  If it’s locked down, it must be interesting. That’s why Florian and Niklaus performed a research on the systems provided to DPRK citizens (“Democratic People’s Republic of Korea“). The research was based on papers published by others and devices / operating systems leaked. They never went over there. The motivation behind the research was to get a clear view of the surveillance and censorship put in place by the government. It started with the Linux distribution called “Red Star OS”. It is based on Fedora/KDE via multiple version and looks like a modern Linux distribution but… First finding: certificates installed in the browser are all coming from the Korean authorities. Also, some suspicious processes cannot be killed. Integrity checks are performed on system files and downloaded files are changed on the fly by the OS (example: files transferred via an USB storage). The OS adds a watermark at the end of the file which helps to identify the computer which was used. If the file is transferred to another computer, a second watermark is added, etc. This is a nice method to track dissidents and to build a graph of relations between them. Note that this watermark is added only on data files and that it can easily be removed. An antivirus is installed but can also be used to deleted files based on their hash. Of course, the AV update servers are maintained by the government. After the desktop OS, the speakers reviewed some “features” installed on the “Woolim” tablet. This device is based on Android and does not have any connectivity onboard. You must use specific USB dongle for this (provided by the government of course). When you try to open some files, you get a warning message “This is not signed file”. Indeed, the tablet can only work with files signed by the government or locally (based on RSA signatures). The goal, here again, is to prevent the distribution of media files. From a network perspective, there is no direct Internet access and all the traffic is routed through proxies. An interesting application running on the tablet is called “TraceViewer”. It takes a screenshot of the tablet at regular interval. The user cannot delete the screenshots and random physical controls can be performed by authorities to keep the pressure on the citizens. This talk was really an eye-opener for me. Really crazy stuff!

Finally, my last choice was another defensive track: “Arming Small Security Programs” by Matthew Domko. The idea is to generate a network baseline, exactly like we do for applications on Windows. For many organizations, the problem is to detect malicious activity on your network. Using an IDS becomes quickly unuseful due to the amount and the limitation of signatures. Matthew’s idea was to:

Build a baseline (all IPs, all ports)

Write snort rules

Monitor

Profit

To achieve this, he used the tool Bro. Bro is some kind of Swiss army knife for IDS environments. Matthew made a quick introduction to the tool and, more precisely, focussed on the scripting capabilities of Bro. Logs produced by Bro are also easy to parse. The tool developed by Matthew implements a simple baseline script. It collects all connections to IP addresses / ports and logs what is NOT know. The tool is called Bropy and should be available soon after the conference. A nice demo was performed. I really liked the idea behind this tool but it should be improved and features added to be used on big environments. I would recommend having a look at it if you need to build a network activity baseline!

The day ended with the classic social event. Local food, drinks and nice conversations with friends, which is priceless. I have to apologize for the delay to publish this wrap-up. Complaints can be sent to Sn0rkY!

[The post TROOPERS 2017 Day #3 Wrap-Up has been first published on /dev/random]

from Xavier

[lbcybersecurity]

TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up

This is my wrap-up for the 2nd day of “NGI” at TROOPERS. My first choice for today was “Authenticate like a boss” by Pete Herzog. This talk was less technical than expected but interesting. It focussed on a complex problem: Identification. It’s not only relevant for users but for anything

[The post TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up has been first published on /dev/random]

from TROOPERS 2017 Day #2 Wrap-Up