Newton’s Lore

After typing various secure passwords into an iPod Touch (each change between numbers and letters requiring a switch of the virtual keyboard), I’d become convinced that people are likely to dumb down passwords they have to type into their iPhone. Want to buy an App? Password.
The phenomenon was noted over at 43 folders as well they also point out that the AppleTV conveniently highlights the characters on screen as you type them into iPhone Remote. Whilst this probably isn’t a problem in your living room it’s likely to pose a problem at trade show setups I’d guess.
Or perhaps use the accelerometers to unlock the iPhone keychain when you do the right interpretive dance?
Now if only they’d automatically reconnect to the VPN…

Apple has released Common Criteria security tools for Mac OS X 10.5. There’s also an Apple Common Criteria support page with links to whitepapers and the not-yet-updated-for-Leopard Admin guide.

A recent article on Slashdot about using FireWire’s direct memory access (DMA) capabilities to rewrite memory on a Windows box reminded me a lot of the 1st place winning 2002 MacHack hack “FireStarter” perpetrated by Quinn, which wrote a QuickTime movie of burning flames on the screen of any Mac you plug in via FireWire. As mentioned on TidBITS at the time.

Some of Quinn’s hacks are here.