July 15, 2010

As many of you know, my house was broken into a few months back. Along with my MacBook, several other things were stolen. My LCD television, my PlayStation 3, my Glock 17, and quite a few other things. Some of the least expensive items were recovered, however the items mentioned above were not. Those ended up being replaced by insurance, but even though I had full backups the MacBook was the most devastating loss.

In the theft scramble, the douchebags that stole my shit also made off with all of my savegame data stored on the PS3. I had completed Fallout 3, but I was still working toward exploring the rest of the wasteland (as well as the areas offered by all of the DLC packs) when the unit was involuntarily removed from my house. To add insult to injury, the disc was still in the PS3 at the time. That being the case, once I got my replacement PS3 my first goal was to get my hands on another Fallout 3 disc and start over. I haven't re-completed the story as of yet, though, since I've been distracted by another game by the name of Red Dead Redemption.

I bought the game back in May, and my initial impressions were as follows:

1. Game mechanics are very GTA-like, so it's familiar territory from a controls and experience standpoint. No way to configure the controls though, which kind of blows.
2. Immersive from the get-go. You get dropped right into the old west and it actually feels like it, from story to characters to voice performance. Also doesn't seem to start off nearly as slow as GTA4 did, which is also a plus.
3. Attention to detail is excellent. It probably doesn't spoil too much to say your character gets shot close to the opening of the game, and after you get bandaged up you occasionally grunt and hold your wound. Beyond that, the environment itself looks gorgeous, from the dusty and rocky terrain to the individual leaves on the trees. I feel like a guest star on Little House on the Prairie.

Since then, I've been playing it fairly regularly and enjoying it immensely. My impressions have not changed, and in addition I have the added benefit of continuing to be engrossed by the story. That being said, I still take time to deviate from the story and go out to explore the land, or to go hunting. I'll either kill shit for the sake of killing it, collecting furs and the like to sell to merchants, or I'll try and complete the side challenges offered by the game's Journal. Currently I'm a highest-rank survivalist, and I'm working on becoming a Rank 9 Master Hunter (I need to hunt a famous jaguar named Khan and kill him), as well as a Rank 8 Sharpshooter which involves me shooting the hats off of two people as well as disarming them.

A few complaints have arisen from becoming involved with the game, however. Aside from my previous gripe about not being able to customize the controls, I'm a little annoyed at the game-save functionality. While not as bullshitty as say, the Resident Evil series (where you need to find the nearest goddamn typewriter before you can save your game), it's certainly not as freeing as many other games. Fallout 3 offered you the ability to pretty much save your game anywhere at any time. In Red Dead Redemption, however, you need to work under a certain set of specific circumstances. First, to save a game you have to set up a campsite. It doesn't sound inconvenient until you realize that you can't do this anytime and anywhere. You can't do it when you're in the middle of a mission. You can't do it when you're near a town, or a settlement, or a gang hangout. You can't do it near water, or near anywhere there isn't a clear flat surface. I understand the realism factor in those last parts, but seriously, there's nothing real about stopping time and resuming at a later date (and coming back if you die) anyway.

And then there's the whole water thing. Back in the days of GTA: Vice City, you had the Liotta-voiced Tommy Vercetti cruising around the city, knocking off rival mobsters, fucking prostitutes, and stealing tons of cash, but when it came to dealing with the concept of water, he died instantly. That was one of my biggest complaints with the game, and apparently it echoed well throughout the gaming community. It seemed to have been heard by Rockstar Games since, in the two subsequent GTA games (San Andreas and GTA IV) swimming was no problem at all. Unfortunately, Rockstar has reverted back to their old ways. In Red Dead Redemption, John Marsten, legend of the west, famous gunslinger and badass, will straight up die without his fucking water wings and ducky floaty. Get him in waist-deep water and he'll keel over like a whore getting stabbed in the stomach by Tommy Vercetti.

In the overall scheme of things though, Red Dead Redemption is a solid offering that I wholly recommend to fans of the GTA series. I was never big on the "Old West" genre, but I took the plunge on this because I like Rockstar's previous offerings and I was curious to see what they could do with this since it's a pretty unique setting in the sense of video games. And it's not a surprise to say they did not disappoint.

(18:19)

[ 0 Comments... ]

June 29, 2010

In the same spirit as Attrition's reporting of various strange idiosyncrasies surrounding Ligatt Security, I've taken some time to do a little digging myself. I can't put my finger on why this particular Gregory Evans charlatan has caught my interest, but the stuff we keep digging up certainly makes for interesting reading.

After my last post, I emailed Attrition a about the things I managed to find (and jericho was kind enough to respond), and since then Attrition has added more information to their page on Evans. I've since found some more interesting tidbits, so I figured I'd post about it. I've also shared this info with the guys at Attrition.

Supposedly acquired in March of 2009, Ligatt's "National Cyber Security" website appears to be completely gone, instead redirecting to some kind of foreign investing robot scam site. This isn't really a surprise, considering it was recently discovered that the content was plagarized. They even went as far as faking photos of the authors.

Next we have their online store, which Ligatt (and Ligatt alone) recognizes as an "Overnight International Sensation". The quality of the store is reflected in the awful grammar in the press release: "I told them it was not for sell, they suggested to me we should start a line for the computer community, and after showing a significant amount of sales, come talk to them." With a visual design quality reminiscent of someone who just discovered Frontpage 97, the store not only sports a series of "look at me I'm an asshole" t-shirts, but their business model seems to be based on "buy stuff online and resell it at a markup." Now I understand that all retail pretty much boils down to this concept, but when a software developer makes a product and sells it online, making an online store selling the exact same thing for $40 more is not a successful business model.

Aside from the pitiful product catalog, the site itself is a technical and security joke. First, let's take a look at their SSL certificate:

Issued To: localhost.localdomain, SomeOrganizationalUnit (root@localhost.localdomain), SomeOrganization, SomeCity, SomeState
Issued By: localhost.localdomain, SomeOrganizationalUnit (root@localhost.localdomain), SomeOrganization, SomeCity, SomeState
Expires: Oct 20 17:25:26 2009 GMT

Not the most comforting set of variables for an online store. It gets better when you find out that they're vulnerable to the TLS renegotiation attack, too.

Basically, there's a reason that Ligatt Security, Gregory Evans, and everything associated with them have no legitimate security industry credentials. They're either constructed by misleading statements, based on fabricated organizations, or just outright lies. Evans has so far lied about being a CISSP, CISA/CISM, CFE, and a PI.

It's not a stretch that he would also lie about knowing anything related to security. Hence, Ligatt Security was born.

(14:40)

[ 0 Comments... ]

June 14, 2010

I was cruising around the city in my motorized air conditioned box this weekend, and a billboard happened to catch my eye. I suppose that's what they're meant to do, but this one stood out as quite the odd duck.

Now like most people, I have the understanding that the first tenet of advertising is usually that it will promise something the product likely cannot deliver. That's just how it works. Now that being said, companies will usually limit their lies to believable possibilities that fall squarely in the "little white" category. Not in this case, though. This one pretty much beats you over the head with its ridiculousness. I wasn't about to let it go, however. Having spent over a decade in the field of computer and network security I really had to know more about this very obvious scam.

We start off with a company called Ligatt Security International. Apparently it's their goal to "Protect the World's Computers, one CPU at a time"; an admirable, albeit pointless effort since attackers are typically far more interested in the contents of the hard drive.

Since they have billboards locally, I was curious about where they were located so I looked at their domain registration. It lists their address as 269 South Beverly Dr. #585, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. What do we have here? A small, multi-level multiple retail storefront. Strangely enough, however, that address and suite actually belongs to a Boys and Girls Club and Ligatt's website makes no mention of this address. As of March 17th, their website lists a mailing address of 11209 National Blvd. #173, Los Angeles, CA 90064, which turns out to be yet another small retail strip-mall housing a Radio Shack, a Baja Bud's Restaurant, and a few other things.

Their site also listed an address of 6991 Peachtree Industrial Blvd. Bldg. 400, Norcross, GA 30092. But that address belongs to a company called IntelliSoft. So where is Ligatt? It seems that their address is currently 6050 Peachtree Pkwy. Norcross, GA 30092.

That's a lot of bouncing around for a company to do.

During my searches around the Ligatt company name and its CEO Gregory Evans, I found some impressive coverage by Attrition. They've pretty much spelled out everything on why Ligatt is a scam and their CEO is a fraud, much better than I ever could. I think it's quite obvious that this Evans guy is trying to spin himself as a security expert without actually knowing anything.

It isn't working. Turn in your shirt, Greg.

(12:45)

[ 0 Comments... ]