Unfortunately, there are some bad news for you...
Did you receive an email telling you that some "hacker" gained access to your computer, email address, and made recordings of you enjoying some solo carnal pleasures? Ignore it. Delete it. It's a scam!
Yacht Dice Game Scoresheets
Yacht (or Yahtzee as the trademark calls itself) is a quiet dice game that can be played with some friends and a glass of wine without the need to think too much. After searching for quite some time looking for any decent scoresheets, I decided to just make my own Yacht (or Yahtzee) scoresheets. And now they are available for anyone to download should they want.
Basic Port Scanning Exercise with Capture the Flag and Deduction
Designing engaging exercises when students do not yet possess a lot of knowledge can be difficult. I show how I draw on students' prior knowledge, along with basic introductory concepts, to design an elemental (but fun) port scan exercise in an introductory security testing module. While "capture the flag" is a security industry standard for exercises, it can require a lot of in-depth knowledge to properly implement and complete. Using basic computer science concepts such as ports and ASCII values, I designed a simplified capture the flag exercise where students can make use of deductive reasoning to complete the game.
Dear Password Pt. 4
Over the course of this rant, I have investigated abhorrent password practises and how they affect our users; despicable “enhancements” to passwords; and the contemptible use of parts of humans in our...
Dear Password Pt. 3
In the last two posts I ranted about passwords and then asked if there is something better. If you are immediately thinking “use passphrases instead of passwords”, please consider that humans are stil...
Dear Password Pt. 2
Last time I started ranting about passwords and how it might be better if we attach a price to them. I ended off by saying a more complex password will lead to “more expensive passwords”. Today, I go ...
Dear Password Pt. 1
If it’s on Facebook, it must have happened. If it’s on Twitter, someone will disagree. If it’s on Wikipedia, it must be true. Then why, on Wikipedia, is there a section stating that “The Password is D...
Calculating GPS Distance in PHP
During the initial design and implementation phases of ForenCity, I have to test out whether the player is actually inside a scene. This current implementation only allows us to configure a GPS point for a scene and test whether the player is inside a specified radius.
Edit and Read PDFs in PowerShell with iTextSharp
Apart from having to send personalised emails using PowerShell, I have also needed to interact with PDFs using PowerShell. My most common use case is reading in marks from a marksheet (a PDF form). I create a template PDF with fillable form fields and then, from there, create individual ones to send the students or colleagues. Doing this by hand for 40 or 50 marksheets can be tedious, so I have come to rely on PowerShell once again. I have found iTextSharp to be the best tool to use in PowerShell.
Sending Email with Outlook in PowerShell
One thing I very often find myself doing is sending personalised emails to a large group of students (or colleagues). Now, I can always use a MailMerge or something similar, but I've found that a simple PowerShell script that hooks onto Microsoft Outlook gets the job done in less amount of time and with less hassle!