Almost a year ago I wrote a post titled The Concept of Infectious Disease Eradication. It was all about how the everyone has come together to fight to rid the world of certain diseases forever. The only time this has been accomplished was with smallpox from 1950 to 1979, but we are getting very close to doing it again with polio.

Armies of volunteers are mounting a heroic effort to get rid of polio forever. We haven’t had polio in the United States for many decades, so you may not even be aware that it is even still around. But it is a terrifying disease that leaves many paralyzed and is still hanging on in the poorest areas of the world. The picture above is of four people in an iron lung to allow them to breath.

There are millions of volunteers delivering the 30 cent treatment to every child in the most remote and destitute communities. Highly recommended and inspirational video:

Every website these days has a log in – it is mandatory to be “social” and allow comments or other user interaction. Popular sights like ESPN, IMDB, Weather.com, PedanticPosts as well as more obscure sites like PassiveAggressiveNotes and HotOrNot. But you can’t have just anyone comment, no no no, they must be validated as an actual person, capable of entering a username and password.

Do you know how your passwords are handled? It’s obvious not every site has the same policy – some websites require at least 7 character passwords, some don’t allow special characters, some require a number or uppercase letter, and some have no requirements whatsoever. Do you trust every website equally with your password? Should you?

Almost all websites have databases which contain the data needed to run the site and store the user information. One important part of the user information is the password. But hardly any website will store your literal password – if your password is “r0xysUrfrGrl” and “r0xysUrfrGrl” was stored in the database, anyone with access to the database would know your password. This would mean that you would have to trust every website administrator with you password. And if a hacker every got ahold of your database (which we will see is quite possible) then they would have everyone’s passwords. Ouch.

Instead, it is common to store a hashed version of the password generated by an algorithm. An example of a dead simple algorithm would be to simply reverse the order of the letters and then replace the vowels with the vowel’s number (i.e. a=1, e=2, etc.). So the password “BeerBuzz” becomes “zz5Br22B”. Not too bad, I doubt you could look at “zz5Br22B” and guess what the password is. Keep reading…

This is the first post in the Intro to Hacking series. In future posts I will go into technically how hacking works and how you can protect yourself, but first I’ll whet your appetite with some interesting stories.

Hacking is a broadly defined word with so many different meanings: writing clever computer code, creating an ugly yet effective solution, finding a shortcut, playing a practical joke, or the act of breaking into a computer. Guess which one I am interested in? Well I guess I’m interested in all of them, but I will be writing about breaking into computers. This subject is chock-full of incredibly entertaining stories and interesting things to learn.

There are a zillion different types of hackers. Some are good guys (white hat), some are bad guys (black hat), some it’s even hard to tell (grey hat). Some know only one way to hack and some are computer wizards who seemingly have no barriers holding them back (1337). And some technically know very little about computers and instead rely on tools built by others (script kiddies).

AIM Punters
I remember my first introduction to this world. The year was 1996 and I was finally online. America Online. AOL. And the best part about AOL was the ability to chat instantly with friends or strangers thousands of miles away. Oh the possibilities!

What does this have to do with hacking? Back in the early days of AIM (AOL instant messenger) the program wasn’t exactly robust. There were tools called punters (or IM-bombs) that exploited these weaknesses – you could use them to kick another user off AIM or even make their entire computer crash (they worked by sending HTML code or tons of invalid characters that would cause the other person’s computer to explode like the fembots in Austin Powers when he touches himself). Did I have any idea how it worked? No, and that’s the best part! The barrier was so low – all you had to do was download a program and you had incredible power over your buddies (or strangers). These AOL punters were a likely starting place for many script kiddies.

Anonymous
The motivation for this post was a hack that was recently in the news. It was so bad ass I felt compelled to share it with a larger audience. Keep reading…

There has been a lot of buzz recently around the possibility that Coke’s secret formula has finally been revealed to the public. Is it true? Does it matter?

Did you know only two Coca-Cola executives are allowed to know the recipe for creating the sugary syrup that goes into Coke? And that those two execs aren’t allowed to fly on the same plane for fear that it may crash and the formula will be lost forever?

But don’t think Coca-Cola is unique. There are similar stories for Dr. Pepper’s 23 flavors, KFC’s blend of 11 herbs and spices, and many others. Did you know KFC’s 11 herbs and spices are mixed at two different locations and then combined at a third so that the mixers don’t learn the formula?

Does it actually matter? I love all the secrecy, but I hate to break it to you, Coke isn’t successful because of their product. It’s their brand. It’s their advertising. It’s the memories.

And Coke knows this. All the secrecy is good publicity, so they aren’t about to publish the formula in the New York Times. But they know their true assets. As any good product manager knows, it is not all about the product.
 

• Snopes.com on the Coke secret formula
• ABC news on the possibility of the formula recently released. Check out the second page for other food industry secrets and rumors.

Photo: Morgan

Isn’t “cellar door” the most beautiful combination of words that have ever existed in the English language? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this before!

The cult classic film Donnie Darko introduced this concept to many of us; that the phrase “cellar door” is thought to be the one of, if not the, most beautiful sounding phrases in English (independent of the meaning). But of course this idea predates the 2001 movie. So where did this idea come from and who thinks about this stuff?

No one knows who first discovered the beauty in “cellar door.” Over the last hundred years it has popped up all over the place – it’s difficult to tell if each author thought of the idea themselves, or if the phrase was already commonly known. We do know that the first written use came in a 1903 novel with a character who “grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning.” But the idea is believed to significantly predate this forgotten novel.

It has been said that “cellar door” was Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite phrase, and the word “Nevermore” in The Raven was used because of its similar sound. Was he possibly the originator? Doubtful. It looks the origin is going to have to stay a mystery…

The reason “cellar door” is used as an example of the most beautiful words in English isn’t because it objectively sounds better than any other words. It’s because its beautiful sound is in such stark contrast to its actual meaning. A cellar door is an ugly object and a perfect word.

What are some other examples of dissimilarity between meaning and sound? One that I can remember discussing on the school bus as a youngster is “gang”. Gangs are incredibly intimidating and are made up of scary men. Say the word gang five times. G-aaaaaaa-ng. Not so scary now, are they?

• New York Times – On Language: Cellar Door
• Wikipedia – “cellar door”