Get Started with Software Defined Radio (SDR) using Windows 8


After attendind DEF CON earlier this month I decided to try out the SDR dongle that I had bought a few months back and hadn't tried. As I'll want to go mobile, I decided to set everything up on my cheap Windows 8 laptop.

While it wasn't hard to get everything setup once I had the necessary steps, it did take me awhile to find the necessary steps to get things working.


Get a JavaScript Source Code Syntax Highlighter Working in Concrete5


For the last 2 years I've tried various methods of displaying source code in my articles, none of which have worked very well. As I do this a lot, I recently decided that it was time to implement one of the various syntax highlighters that are 'out there'.

This article describes how I got google-code-prettify to work with Concrete5.


OpenSSL, C++ and AES Encryption (Just scratching the surface)


Cryptography is a fascinating subject that I would like to learn more about. While I may not make any contributions in cryptology in my career, I can certainly appreciate the mathematics, mathematicians and engineers who have helped make encryption more mainstream. As I'm interested in applying cryptography in the software I create I decidd to look at how I can operate OpenSSL.

As with my previous foray into the world of Bouncy Castle (a C# Cryptographic library) I have found the documentation surrounding OpenSSL to be inadequate. While I hope what I write here can be useful to someone investigating one facet OpenSSL I hope to come back here in the future to refresh my memory when working with AES in OpenSSL in the future.


Tips for a successful DEFCON


I've had a couple of days to recover from DEF CON 21 and want to jot down a few general observations, notes and tips as reminders for next years CON.


DEFCON 21- Day 4


I didn't have time yesterday to write up my summary (The 5 hour drive home took up my afternoon). Sunday @ DEF CON was a bit more subdued than Saturday with fewer people moving more sedately. Still had some good sessions, though.


DEFCON 21- Day 3


SDR's jump out at me the most from today. Maybe because the session was awesome and the last one I attended today? :) Overall I had a great time today, even if there were some issues with AV equipment and soft-spoken presenters.


DEFCON 21- Day 2


My notes from DEF CON, Day 2. Fewer lines, more people and more stuff going on in general.

As it was pretty hard to attend every session, I just attended the ones I found interesting. And bought some cool DEF CON Swag. :)


DEFCON 21- Registration Day


I've had a busy day- I just got back from his first day at DEF CON 21! Things were getting warmed up today and I look forward to the rest of the conference.

This is my first DEF CON, so I'm learning the ropes as I go along.


Selenium Wait in C#


At work we have been trying to get Selenium WebDriver working to help automate the testing of our Web Administration console. While on the surface Selenium seems like a great choice (lots of features, broad base of users, excellent support of web browsers), it can be a bit quirky from time to time.

One of the biggest problems we've had is getting the selenium wait states to work correctly. This article presents a method that can be used to get selenium to actually wait until page elements have loaded before performing a test action.


Threadsafe Bouncy Castle for (C# Lightweight API)


I leverage the Bouncy Castle cryptographic library to create tools that help me test the encryption management software we make at my day job. It is a robust library that comes in handy for generating all kinds of interesting data.

It came as a surprise to find that Bouncy Castle did not take to threading as well as I'd hoped. After implementing Threading in a few of my testing tools I found that Bouncy Castle would get stuck in an infinite loop while generating BigIntegers. I had to alter part the BC source code in order to solve my problem.