Eschew Obfuscation

Below is the text of an email that I sent to someone to post on a forum that I didn’t feel like signing up for that already had a thread going on cloned Treo phones.

Enjoy!

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I will apologize up front here as I’m tired and this is mostly just a
way to get past being pissed off at VZW for not watching out for the
customer.

I have a Treo 700p and it was cloned Friday night, just in time for the
weekend. If you’re wondering how to tell if your phone has been cloned,
it’s really easy. Call yourself from another phone. If you get no
indication whatsoever of that call happening, including voicemail
notification, you’re in trouble. If you periodically get through, it’s
likely due to the other phone having been turned off and your phone is
termporarily winning.

I just went through the process of getting my phone back from being
cloned. The most awesome part of this is the complete lack of support
that VZW gives to prevent the inconvenience of having your phone cloned.

The sequence of events:

1. Drive to Vegas for a weekend conference on a Thursday
2. Friday evening, no calls or text messages are getting through to my phone
3. Sunday, while driving back, I have eleven (11) voice mails with no evidence of a missed call or that I might have a voicemail.
4. Sunday night, contact VZW help (611) and find out that:

A) support will try to help you and tell you they believe that
your phone has been cloned. Once they believe that your phone
has been cloned, they will tell you that something is wrong
with the device and you should hard reset it.

This will do you no good, whatsoever. However, I’m pretty sure
that they have a pool running on the other end of the phone to
see how many customers they can stroke out by zapping all of
the data on their phones “on accident.”

B) The cloning and fraud department at VZW only works M-F,
0500-1800 PST. Obviously, this is because your phone can only
get cloned during banker hours. *SIGH*

C) Nobody at VZW can actually look at your account and tell you if
there are weird charges on the bill. In my case, there was no
indication of misuse during the episode and the one phone call
that I did get from the DR was from a local area code.

5. Monday morning, call VZW cloning/fraud department. I had to speak to two separate people to complete my phone transaction.

The first person was very kind and genuinely wanted to help me but
was an idiot. “Yes, Mr. HalfDime, I’m going to send you a text
message with the URL you can use to update your phone firmware
with.”

“But my phone has been cloned.”

“Right. Did you get the text message?”

The second person was pissed off to be alive. They cut me off
every time I started to say something and then seemed to think
that it was obvious that doing a complete restore from backup to
the device would not overwrite the settings just downloaded from
Palm.

Anyway, the information that you will need to get your phone uncloned,
or that you should use to keep from having it get cloned in the first
place:

1. Go here
2. Follow the directions on updating your phone firmware.
3. After the 35 minutes it takes the software to install, call cloning/fraud at the number below:

Cloning/Fraud Dept.
888 483-7200
Hours: M-F, 0500 - 1800 PST only

4. They will “verify” your phone via the following process:

• Dial #2539 - Authorization from verizon host, they send programming to phone.
• Turn phone radio off
• Tell support person when it’s off
• Turn phone radio on
• Tell support person when it’s on

NOTE: It’s very likely that over the air programming ( *228, option 1 )
will not work at this time since your phone has been flagged in
the system as being cloned. It may take a day or more for this to
clear. However, updating roaming ( *228, option 2 ) works.

After updating your phone, the firmware version displayed for the phone
firmware is Treo700p_-1.10-VZW.

According to a treocentral article on the interweb [0] and the Verizon
tech, this flaw is due to there being no AKEY shipped with the phone
firmware and has been known for quite some time. It’s just now coming
up in numbers as it’s been discovered at large. Most of the phone
numbers are being cloned to the Dominican Republic.

The importance of the A-Key is described well by this quote:

“Security of the A-Key is critical in a CDMA system. Over-the-Air
provisioning uses Diffie-Hellman algorithm, making it the best choice
for A-Key programming from the alternatives mentioned above.
Diffie-Hellman algorithm is used for secure key exchange between two
entities so that a third party cannot deduce the value in the process
of exchange.” [1]

What this basically boils down to is that all the information required
to clone a phone is being broadcast unencrypted over the air for anyone
to partake of with very little effort.

Thank you so much, Verizon.

Adding insult to injury, not only did I lose use of my phone for an
entire weekend because my phone got nabbed on a Friday night and VZW
fraud/cloning works banker hours, but I had to perform a 90 minute hokey
pokey to get the new software installed, call back to VZW and then do
the hokey pokey, turn the phone off and on with VZW on the phone.

–HalfDime

[0] http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?p=1477412

[1] Over-The-Air Provisioning in CDMA, Rohini P.P., Gemplus Technologies, October 2004
http://www.cdg.org/resources/white_papers/files/Gemplus%20Over-The-Air%20Provisoning%20in%20CDMA%20Oct%2004.pdf

written by halfdime

At least some of you know that I’m LDS and am active in my church.

I am not perfect and am not what you would call a typical member.

That said, I had an experience two weeks ago that made me laugh so hard that I was light-headed by the time I could slow down my laughing enough to breathe right.

Church is broken down into three parts and in the last part, I meet with the young men that I work with every Wednesday evening (and camp with once a month, but that’s another story).

During the last meeting, we were talking about General Conference, the semi-annual world wide meeting of the church. The meetings are held the first weekend of April and October each year.

The question asked of the boys was, “When is the next General Conference?”

To this, the boys looked at each other for a couple of seconds. When nobody was able to answer, I provided a subtle hint, “It’s in a month that begins with an ‘O’.”

Let’s pause here to identify the calendar that I’m speaking about. I can imagine that you’re familiar with it but here we go:

1. January
2. February
3. March
4. April
5. May
6. June
7. July
8. August
9. September
10. Obedience
11. November
12. December

If you looked carefully, you’ll have picked out the boy’s answer.

Yes, Obedience it was.

Of course, this wasn’t funny enough, the other leader in the room had to pipe up with, “No. That would be Ramadan.”

If you’re wondering, this didn’t help me get any air.

All of the boys took turns noting how red I was turning.

It was awesome.

written by halfdime \\ tags: religion

I feel like a bad parent.

My blog is withering under my hand.

I’m wondering at the things that I have to say and find myself doubting the validity and relevance.

So very often I find myself thinking, “That would be a cool thing to put on my blog,” only to be lax and not write down the idea stub or later discard the idea as being non-relevant to those who would read it.

So I’m going to ask you, my dedicated reader, what would you like to see here?

What topics do YOU believe I should commit to the intartubes?

— OK. Enough of that. On with the show. —

As I’m wont from time to time, I wonder about the things that have transpired in the past. My past really. I can’t dwell too much on the choices and actions of those before me other than to try to avoid their gross errors.

Far too often, I find that I speak without thinking about the true consequences of my words. I admit that I’m rarely out to cause harm. Most often I find that these things come about from my love of seeing people smile. This doesn’t necessarily ease the impact had on someone that believes my intent to be otherwise.

The other outcome frequented by this problem is that folks may consider me to flippant or an idiot. If flippant, then trust cannot be engendered in our relationship because it’s possible that they believe that I’m incapable of a serious answer. If idiotic, well, that’s just bad.

Overcoming this dilemma is indeed difficult for me. I have a really hard time making life more serious than it already is. Life has a way of being serious when it needs to be all on its own. If I add drama to the mix just because I choose to, I’m not really helping anything, I’m just being dramatic. I’m really not a very good actor, so drama just makes me look foolish. Reference my earlier comment about being considered an idiot.

So what does this all have to do with time? As time has passed, I’ve become more an more comfortable with who and what I am. Not necessarily confident in myself so much as accepting of the things that can be considered merits and flaws of my character.

I realize that there are things about me that are considered socially good and those that are socially notsogood.

As time goes on, I’m hopeful that I will be able to change the things that I find to be broken and garner acceptance in others for those things that I may not do “according to the book.”

To me, time seems to be a warm friend guiding me towards all that is beautiful.

I pray that I can help others along their path and learn from them at the same time.

written by halfdime

Today for me is a wonderful day. My children have decided that they do in fact love me and that they would like to show that appreciation by wishing me a happy father’s day with extra hugs and kisses.

I’m good with that.

For my part, I want to take the opportunity to publicly thank my father for being there for me and making the tough decisions when they needed to be made. I wasn’t the easiest child to raise and I’m not always the easiest adult to live with.

Thanks Dad. You’re the best. I love you and wish that you could be here. I only hope that when my children grow up

written by halfdime

If this takes on the appearance of a rant, I apologize. I have some strong feelings about this topic.

I was talking to someone the other day who commented that I seem to be in a good mood much more often than bad. I told them that I don’t have a reason to be unhappy when I have so much good in my life.

This seems to be a difficult thing for many geeks to do. I’m not really sure if it’s the belief that it’s cool to be grumpy or if it’s just a lack of perspective brought on by being blessed with so much for so long. Regardless, we tend to dwell on the negative and often thrive on contention.

What’s perhaps even more disturbing is that instead of making an attempt to fix the problems we see, more often than not, we grouse about them and then do nothing beyond adding fuel to the discontent of those around us. The true irony of this situation is that we as geeks have an innate ability and drive to fix things. We thrive on fixing things that are truly challenging. Why then do we so often retreat from societal problems?

To be fair, I don’t see this as just geeks. As a society we are moving aggressively away from being a part of the community that we live in. Each person goes from their home to their car to work and back making as few social interactions as possible. We spend too much time tending our devices and not enough time taking care of what matters most. How do we expect any of the societal ills that we perceive to be remedied if we’re only willing to make sure that we’re not contributing to them? When will we decide that it *is* worth our time to help others?

So here’s my hope. If you’ve read this far, maybe you’re willing to do something besides flame me in the comments.

Sign up for something to improve the life of someone around you. The only stipulation that I would make is that you do something you’ve never done before and that you get no recognition of any kind.

If you feel brave, leave me a comment about what you’re doing/have done/will be doing.

p.s. No. I’m not going to blow my own horn. Just suffice to say that I feel pretty comfortable about what I’m doing and have done in the past to call on folks to be more active in the community.

written by halfdime

As I’m wont to blog about a number of technical things, I find that I’m thinking about personalities in the IT landscape.

To that end, I wanted to jot down the broad categories of people as I see them in the IT world. As far as I’m concerned, there are only really four classes of people in IT.

The Closet Geek
We all know the stereotypical geek who has bad hair, acne a chronic clothing problem and lacks the social finesse necessary to successfully buy candy at a drug store for fear of interacting with a clerk of the opposite sex. The seemingly dominant personality traits in this type of person is hard to find due to the overwhelming lack of self confidence in a social setting. This is the person that they make movies about and that some people believe can shoot energy rays out of their noses [1].

The Casual Geek
These folks can be hard to spot by other casuals and are often targeted by Alpha’s without a moral backing. The most notable trait these folks have is an absolute passion for computer hardware (everything from PC hardware to gadgets). A common mistake that’s made on their resume is considering using the record function in Excel to be programming. There are scores of these folks working at retail computer establishments doing a great job helping folks determine the best of consumer grade electronics. My most recent encounters with this class of geek has been through IBM support but that’s another story entirely.

The Alpha Geek
These are the closet geek escapees. They’ve managed to become functional in a social setting and some may actually excel in social situations.[2] Frequently alpha’s come off as arrogant due to the, “I NEED TO BE RIGHT” setting in their brains. Patience with anything that isn’t interesting (like people) is often in short supply. The irony of this is that the social ability of alpha’s puts them in constant contact with people who are going to ask that the obvious be explained ONE MORE TIME! If you’re not the one asking for the explanation, it can be quite entertaining to prolong this process and watch the alpha’s head near bursting.

The Non Geek
You know who you are. If you’re reading my blog, we won’t be talking about you any more because we’re really only interested in flavors of geeks here, right? Ok, maybe not. The non-geek in an IT setting is really fun. This is the person that everyone looks at and asks, “You’re not offended by profanity, are you?” Regardless of the answer, this is quickly followed by a quick string of obscenities.

If you’ve kept with me to this point, you’re probably wanting to know what this has to do with the topic line at all.

It’s the interaction of the various groups in an IT environment. Mix in one of each class from above and sit each down with or without alcohol (preferably with for at least one) and wait for the topics to move. It’s a great to watch the verbal gymnastics to get to the topic that each excels at so that they can stick it to each other.

Some of the best humor I have ever been witness to has come from seeing someone go from the euphoria of a great quip to the low of being zapped themselves. The creative juices required to be flexible enough to laugh and still come off as a know-it-all prick is what I like to call, Creative Curmudgeonry.

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[1] Let’s be honest. That’s the biggest thing on their body and likely dispenses a multi-jigawatt bolt if they’ve put any effort into “enhancements.”
[2] I believe that some of the closet dwellers were actually dragged out by their parents and dropped in a vat of toxic sludge and that changed their personality.

written by halfdime

So I’ve started this insidious little creature known as a blog. I think about it all the time.

I start a thought and then immediately diverge to, “Hey! That would be a good thing to blog about.”

Then I start to compose the blog post in my head and realize it’s, at best, a sound bite worth of information and really isn’t getting anything accomplished in line with my goal for this blog.

So I discard the idea and move on to something else.

After a few seconds, the person sitting across from me who said something that set off the whole chain of events in my little mental detour starts to get a concerned look on their face. You know the look. That, “Hey STUPID! I’m over here.” Pretty soon, it changes to the, “Is he having a seizure” look and if left too long, it becomes the wake up slap.

I’m fully aware of my problem with shiny objects and my coworkers (and my wife to a certain extent) are familiar with the problem and exploit it often.

This new blog thought-hijacking that is going on is just disturbing.

I think I need to find a qualified blunt-trauma specialist to knock some sense back into my dome.

Nah. I think I’ll just take a cue from my daughter and talk until someone hurts me. If I use a tape recorder, I should get at least a month’s worth of blog entries out of it before I lose consciousness.

written by halfdime

As part of my new job, there have been several things that are different due to the nature and size of the company.

First, I have the wonderful opportunity to work with a bunch of brilliant people every day.

Second, I get to travel from time to time to our off-site facilities.

This week, I’ve been able to combine the two and have been on the road with three other guys from work.

With few exceptions (to be exact; severn, including the Dunkin Donuts safari), it’s been great. We’ve gotten a bunch of work done and had a good time.

When talking to one of my coworkers, we agreed that the road trip is a pivotal event. You either leave and come back better friends or leave and decide that you never want to go on a company road trip again.

In my case, I would go anytime with these guys.

Thank you gentlemen. It has been my pleasure.

written by halfdime

As a present to my wife and me, my mother came down to visit us and watch the kids for a couple of days whilst we went to Disneyland to celebrate our anniversary.

First of all, I’d like to say, “Mom. You ROCK!”

Secondly, I want to talk about the odd behavior that was had by me at Disneyland.

Having done automation and control a bit in a previous job, going to Disneyland is part entertainment, part fantasy and part occupational curiosity. On California Screaming [0], we spent the 10 minutes before and after riding looking at the control systems for launching the cars (a magnetic drive system). We rode Pirates of the Carribean looking back often to find the location of as many cameras, doors and control system components as possible.

I even went so far as to wonder what their maintenance records looked like to find out how they “prove” that the rides they’re making are safe.

The trip was great. I can’t wait to go again. I wish that I could go on a tour of the operation of the park.

I love to find out how things work.

[0] This is a GREAT ride. It’s not overly scary and is a long, enjoyable coaster.

written by halfdime

Not too much to say about this one.

Just go read it.

written by halfdime