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Hacker keyboard guy
Posted: 07 May 2014, 00:58
by webwit
http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... tells-all/
Helkowski is also a self-described computer keyboard aficionado. At one point, he had a collection of more than 35 keyboards, starting with a Northgate OmniKey that he picked up at a yard sale for $10. When the FBI raided his house, the agents had difficulty dealing with his current preferred keyboard—a Japanese keyboard with an English alphabet that he bought in the Akhibara district of Tokyo. The characters for each key are printed on the front of the key instead of its top, and its symbols don’t properly map to US standards.
Anyone we know?
Posted: 07 May 2014, 01:12
by ne0phyte
Haha who knows.
When the FBI raided his house, the agents had difficulty dealing with his current preferred keyboard
I wouldn't let them (and they probably couldn't) use my keyboard. They should bring their own!
Posted: 07 May 2014, 01:13
by Muirium
Security through keyboard obscurity…
Posted: 07 May 2014, 01:26
by Eszett
A red escape key is a gewgaw. How about a “raid”-Key, which erases the harddisk securely, while police officers are approaching to your house? Then, the red color would fit that button.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 01:33
by webwit
Muirium wrote:Security through keyboard obscurity…
Works for me when I'm on a job with my HHKB. Blank black keys, red clickclack escape. No one dares to touch it. But when someone does, Colemak does the trick anyway.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 01:45
by Findecanor
The keyboard should be irrelevant. If you do computer forensics, you don't boot he suspect's computer and use his keyboard. You remove the harddrives, copy their contents and then run your searches on your local copy.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 02:21
by Muirium
The feds can be incompetent too. The main reason I don't cower too deeply in fear at all this NSA stuff. Sure, they have the power. But they're just dudes, too. With dickhead managers, braindead training, idiot objectives, dodgy backups, random changes of direction and HR…
Poor bastards.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 02:23
by webwit
Also, if you have a weird keyboard, you are clearly a terrorist. The computer might explode.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 02:36
by Muirium
Keycap shrapnel. That's why we like thick caps so much.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 09:01
by scottc
That Northgate Omnikey link goes to our wiki.
Maybe we should add a section:
Known to be used by notorious hacker Helkowski.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 09:27
by Grendel
Eszett wrote:A red escape key is a gewgaw. How about a “raid”-Key, which erases the harddisk securely, while police officers are approaching to your house? Then, the red color would fit that button.
No need really.
TrueCrypt FTW
Posted: 07 May 2014, 19:01
by Eszett
I know and approve TrueCrypt, the raid-key was merely a joke.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 20:07
by fifted
Raid key => TrueCrypt dismount. Done!
Hmm, I guess my Ctrl+Alt+D combo already is a raid key...
Posted: 07 May 2014, 21:09
by Miko
TrueCrypt is not secure enough for the truly paranoid. The key is stored in RAM and can be extracted. There is Tresor (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRESOR) that avoids this by using debug registers and not RAM as storage for the key.
On could use a Raid Key, that does 1) Make the filesystems sync 2) powers down the PC 3) Reboots into memtest to erase the RAM.
Posted: 07 May 2014, 21:37
by webwit
TrueCrypt + Japanese keyboard ftw.
Posted: 10 May 2014, 15:42
by IvanIvanovich
Haha. Use only SSD and have a macro that does ata secure erase... takes only a moment and everything is 100% gone forever. As for keyboards...
- DSC01763.JPG (426.86 KiB) Viewed 3209 times
I would guess mixing some different language sets should make it FBI proof.
