> Use a secure OS... A liveUSB of Tails is pretty idiot proof.
That implies Tails is very secure. Why is that? Is it because it has never been hacked before or has Tails been shown to be virtually hacker-proof? As someone non-technical I might be misunderstanding something. If so, can you clarify that?
Tails is intended to be run on a USB drive. This means you can take nearly any computer, boot to usb, and have a operating system designed for security running in the computer's RAM. Many claim that this does not leave a trace of your activity in the computer itself.
It also comes with tor browser, electrum bitcoin wallet, and some GPG utilities preinstalled.
I second this. This a phenomenal book. I didnt like it at first sight because I thought it looked kind of ugly, but the authors have a knack for clarifying some of the more arcane concepts in math in a very few words. It's not a cutesy bestseller that will end up teaching you jackshit, nor it's an intimidating monster like Lang's Algebra that's meant to put hair on your chest. This book is just right.
As others have said it's mostly the desire to learn. A lot of the brightest reverse engineering I have met started off hacking video games. They started with a desire to either understand the game or create cheats. From there they dug into the code.
Reverse engineering has a very romantic view from the outside. In actuality a lot of it is learning esoteric topics and boring concepts to be able to apply it to a single task. It takes a certain mindset to stick with it.
The main pre-requisite is being able to read and understand assembly language. From there it's operating system fundamentals, memory layout, compilers, basic understanding C & C++ and Python is popular in the RE community.
The RE sub-reddit has a good introduction for beginners.
Having a goal helps too. I tried and failed to learn x86 assembly a number of times in 2015 and then decided to focus more on modem firmware analysis instead. Sure, it's a bit of a cop-out (I can get a lot further without looking at any assembly code) but I'm slowly coming back around to reverse engineering the long way around.
One way to get familiar with assembly is to get a development board that can run bare metal code. You could even start with something that isn't x86, but is assembly. Once you complete a driver, game, or some other project in assembly, learning another assembly becomes considerably easier.
There is a mindset involved. You can get it on a 6502, if you want to, but you have to have it in order to make any real sense of assembly language, IMHO.
I have my struggles with this too, but I find it always interesting and fascinating. Goes back to the days of cracking games and opening up licenses on simpler, smaller computers.
I also believe a number of us should maintain and share these skills. It's important for a lot of basic reasons, and those don't have to be piracy, or nefarious malware reasons. It may be as simple and benign as using something we own to do something we want it to do as opposed to what it was originally intended to do.
Absolutely. Besides knowing Asm, the other thing I've noticed is that debugging/general analytical problem-solving skills --- being able to grok the code and understand its operation in general, without having written it --- is highly correlated with RE skills. Of those I've worked with, those who are highly skilled at debugging tend to have RE experience; and likewise those who can easily do RE, even if it's something like analysing a protocol/interface and writing a specification, also tend to be very effective debuggers.
I've never quite been able to shake the feeling of being born in the wrong era. I didn't start learning programming til I was 12, and I jumped straight into higher level languages. While I'm thankful for StackOverflow, I've got a bookshelf full of things like Peter Norton's Guide to Assembly just waiting for a spare week or two.
I sometimes feel I missed things too. For me, it's a better era alignment in that I was writing low level code on the simpler machines. But, I did step away for quite a while doing manufacturing, CAD, and a lot of related things.
All of which were very interesting, but my real love is programming and circuits. So, now I'm back, making progress, loving it, but also feeling a bit out of place.
It's what you do with what you have and being open to always learning. Reading Masters of Doom and Making of Prince of Persia, I was around (if a few years younger) during this time but I didn't have the drive these people did until much later. If you have the drive, then you can do great things, regardless of the era.
> How likely is this situation in the rest of the world? Can one end up behind bars for teaching at an "unofficial" school?
Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly, but it sounds like Mr. Badavam's crimes were being Baha'i and teaching at a school for Baha'i students.
From the article:
"Iran’s Baha’i community created BIHE in the 1980s after our youth were banned from Iranian universities. I began volunteering there in 1989 after serving three years in prison for simply being an active Baha’i."
If I'm reading this correctly, the title is a bit misleading.
You are reading this correctly. The "for teaching physics" title is clickbait, which does not appear to be reflected in the body of the article. Baha'i is a religion, and he was imprisoned for apostasy from Islam in a country where that is considered a crime.
To answer the GP's question: if you are in Iran, you are likely to end up in prison for any form of openly displaying an unwillingness to follow Islamic rules. If you should find yourself in Iran, my best advice is to leave at the earliest opportunity.
> To answer the GP's question: if you are in Iran, you are likely to end up in prison for any form of openly displaying an unwillingness to follow Islamic rules. If you should find yourself in Iran, my best advice is to leave at the earliest opportunity.
I don't think that's correct. Apostasy though is banned by law(not just for muslims).
Also whether it's true or not that there is a strong relationship between Baha'i and Israel the world center is in Haifa. You don't need to be a genius to know that doesn't play ball with the Mullah's.
Any of the downvoters care to explain their downvote? Saying 1800 doesn't properly capture that it was founded in 1844 and that by 1853 he the main guy left, because after the previous guy was executed after he declared himself the messiah and wrote a new sharia law, and in '50 his followers tried to assassinate the shah.
The reason the Baha'i world center is in Haifa Israel is because the Persian authorities in the 1800's banished its founder outside its borders to the Ottomonan Empire next door. there was no Israel at the time. The mullahs just find it convenient to use as an excuse to discriminate and treat any non muslims as 2nd class citizens.
If anything, Iran is very flexible in it's interpretation of islam (events like in Indonesia are pretty much unthinkable in Iran). Even in this case. You see, the prescribed punishment for what this guy did, according to islam, is not imprisonment at all. It is execution:
The constant weaseling out of stating the fact, the sort of treatment muslims give people of non-islamic faiths, and atheists (read the blog "the big pharaoh" a bit) is very a very controversial fact : just read the wikipedia article, the constant sentences about "a minority thinks different". Reality is that polls place the number of muslims that want to execute people like this physics teacher is just over 70%, and more in countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan and a dozen others. You will experience the same constant weaseling out if you talk to muslims in America. When you're in an islamic ghetto, in Europe (some have quite nice food), they (in one case the same muslim) will readily point it out though. Seems to have something to do with how many muslims there are.
Of course this means that the basic article of the current politically correct order, that humans just want to live together in peace, is not true for around 70% of muslims. Whether they'll take immediate action on that opinion is a different matter, true, but that obviously doesn't apply once muslims are ~60% of the local population.
> if you are in Iran, you are likely to end up in prison for any form of openly displaying an unwillingness to follow Islamic rules. If you should find yourself in Iran, my best advice is to leave at the earliest opportunity.
The problem is not only Iran, most countries with Muslim majorities have this problem. Yes, there are some exceptions though.
Also where should this people leave to? Just because they'd like to leave they are not entitled to be let in.
If you ask me: Stay in Iran or where ever you are right now and work on improving your own country and society.
The only way to improve a country like that is through violent revolution, because you're never going to get conservative Muslims to change their views. Anything short of that is a waste of effort. If your group is a tiny minority, you have no chance of your violent revolution succeeding in Iran. Therefore, the only sane thing to do is figure out how to leave. Someone like that should be able to rightfully claim asylum somewhere, because obviously, being a religious minority in Iran can and does lead to serious oppression in the form of prison.
I don't see evidence that violent people's revolution (not the US kind of traditional polite batyle among aristocrats' armies) is more successful than a modernizing/liberalizing leader, like Russia at the end of the cold war (before Putin-types won back the elections).
Removing a government is relatively easy. Installing a new one is hard.
A "modernizing/liberalizing leader" doesn't work, as you just pointed out yourself with Russia. If the majority of the people aren't supportive of that, that leader will be replaced before long with a Putin-like leader. Obviously, someone in Russia in the late 80s would have been better off simply leaving the country for greener pastures, because the time they had with a more liberal leader was short and things quickly regressed.
Fighting for a better government is only worthwhile when the majority of people in your country are going to back you. If most of them like the crappy, oppressive government (or want something even worse), you're just wasting your time and effort trying to improve things, and you'd be better off finding someplace better to live.
The first major bloodletting of the Bahai in Iran was in 1955 - two years after the US and UK conspired to overthrow Iran's secular parliament and install the Shah, with the backing of the ayatollahs. In 1955, the Shah and his strong supporter, Ayatollah Falsafi, conspired in an anti-Bahai campaign which led to riots in Iran, Bahai deaths etc.
It's not surprising to me at all to see Americans overthrow a secular democracy, install an ayatollah-back dictator who less than two years later starts a bloody campaign against the Bahai...
...and then to see those same Americans shaking their heads in moral outrage how the Iranian ayatollahs (who they empowered) are persecuting the Bahai in the modern day.
Same Americans? It was sixty years ago; those responsible are either dead or so old that "shaking their heads in moral outrage" is physically difficult.
> Blindsight is on my Kobo right now, but after reading Permutation City I'm scared to start reading it because I don't want to reach halfway and want to chuck it like I did Permutation City.
I read Blindsight before Permutation City. The way he describes the situations and the way his characters are often extremely confusing. But you get used to it at some point along the way. The story line itself and the Aliens are somewhat off the left field which makes the story very interesting. I personally liked it.
Permutation City is, on the other hand, simply boring as hell. Drier than ye olde Abstract Algebra textbook.
That implies Tails is very secure. Why is that? Is it because it has never been hacked before or has Tails been shown to be virtually hacker-proof? As someone non-technical I might be misunderstanding something. If so, can you clarify that?
Thanks.