Security Enthousiasts a weird breed

Hi,

Let's face it. Do you know of

... anyone in your network of relatives and friends who seriously test at which speed the airbags of his car pop-up?

... anyone who seriously tested at which smoke/cigarette distance his CO/CO2 warning or Sprinkler went off

... anyone who seriously kicked his motorbike/car to test at which shock/power the burglar alarm went off

... anyone who just placed a new safety window, tested which size of rocks this window could hold

... anyone who really tested that the door connecting the garage and you house, is able to resist fire for one hour?


Bur we are doing it every day, sometimes testing in a Virtual environment,
sometimes on a virtualised partition, sometimes with a decent data recovery/image rollback plan, sometimes just with windows restore and their trusted multi layered defense.

Let's be honest: we are a wierd bunch

 

Re: Security Enthousiasts a weird bread

Yep, so weird that apart from the people on this forum i don't know anyone else who's into this kind of thing. I always get strange looks from people when i tell them about my hobby and if i try to talk to them about it i must speak a different language or something as they have no clue what i'm on about!

 

Perhaps... But think if no one did any testing at all?

Mmmh... none of us would actually know how to fix things when they did pop up... as we would have no understanding at all of what is going on.

A Weird bunch but I would like to think a rather useful one.

 

Hello,
I think I'm the sanest and most conventional person alive.
Mrk

 

If human lives and physical property could be backed up or virtualized to be restored at a moment's whim, I have no problems imagining a lot of people would be doing the things you mentioned.

 

You're right Kees

My laptop has had all manner of security apps on it since I joined here almost 3 years ago.

What it's never had on it in those 3 years is anything that I needed protecting

No data, no doc's, no pictures, nada, nothing

So why do I do it ?

Other than protection for internet banking, I do it for fun and to learn stuff.

I'm not techie but now I'm no longer afraid of things like BSOD's, dual-booting into Linux etc, and just by default,by trying all these apps, I bet I've learned more about how computers work than your average Joe Public.

I find it all very fascinating. May I revel in my weirdness for another 3 years

 

I tested that at home! You need at least 3 cigarettes in a distance of 20 or less centimeters bellow AEX 690. HOWEVER, what i didn't know was that the smoke detectors are linked together in the whole house. So we had a evacuation at around 1:30 am 2 months ago...

 

LOL

Apparently Scientific Curiosity can have it's side effects!

 

LOL... nice.

Was there any variation on the brand of cigaratte?

 

i'm perfectly sane. i got my tin-foil hat and they AREN'T out to get me. hopefully

 

ha ha, I discovered one cigar will do also, only I did not try the sprinkler, but the carbon monixide/smoke alarm (in a hotel, got removed by the way)

 

You know what I think is funny, the fact that you sometimes see only about 10 people online on some HIPS support forum (or a couple of 100´s over here at Wilders), this is already a clue of how many people are interested/fascinated by this stuff, not that much.

 

I have just successfully reproduced the Inspectors experiment in the spirit of true science and I have to go now and get a taller ladder to stop that noise..

 

No man,

You only triggered the smoke alarm, Inspector Cluseau did the sprinkler. Can you imagine all that water coming down from those interconnected hoses.

 

I don't do that much "out there" testing on this PC, because it's my only one, so my main interest is security. And if I can learn enough to offer some help to others on the way, great.
A few years ago as a total ignorant newbie I got some very good online help from a character called Mesich. That help, as much as later getting some malware and having to rebuild the OS, was what got me interested in this "hobby".
(Now I'm a semi-ignorant "intermediate".)

I do tend to "pressure test" applications at my work, in a totally non destructive way, simply because the correct operation of them is important, and if something goes haywire I want to be able to at least intelligently troubleshoot it before calling the techs. I'm a believer in the adage "If you want to be able to un-cooz something, you have to know what can cooz it, first."

In previous employment I was in the fire brigade. Yer standard sprinkler head has to get to 68C before breaking. Only that head will emit water, but the alarm for the entire building will go off.
You'd have to be puffing up a storm right below the sprinkler to get it to extinguish a durry, much easier to use an ashtray.