Optimisation of John the Ripper in a clustered Linux environment

To aid system administrators in enforcing strict password policies, the use of password cracking tools such as Cisilia (C.I.S.I.ar, 2003) and John the Ripper (Solar Designer, 2002), have been employed as software utilities to look for weak passwords. John the Ripper (JtR) attempts to crack the passwords by using a dictionary, brute-force or other mode of attack. The computational intensity of cracking passwords has led to the utilisation of parallel-processing environments to increase the speed of the password-cracking task. Parallel-processing environments can consist of either single systems with multiple processors, or a collection of separate computers working together as a single, logical computer system; both of these configurations allow operations to run concurrently. This study aims to optimise and compare the execution of JtR on a pair of Beowulf clusters, which arc a collection of computers configured to run in a parallel manner. Each of the clusters will run the Rocks cluster distribution, which is a Linux RedHat based cluster-toolkit. An implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI), MPICH, will be used for inter-node communication, allowing the password cracker to run in a parallel manner. Experiments were performed to test the reliability of cracking a single set of password samples on both a 32-bit and 64-bit Beowulf cluster comprised of Intel Pentium and AMD64 Opteron processors respectively. These experiments were also used to test the effectiveness of the brute-force attack against the dictionary attack of JtR. The results from this thesis may provide assistance to organisations in enforcing strong password policies on user accounts through the use of computer clusters and also to examine the possibility of using JtR as a tool to reliably measure password strength

DISJUNCTIVE SYNTHESES OF (POST) DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE AND LIFE

In her recent book, Architecture, Animal, Human: The Asymmetrical Condition, Catherine Ingraham maintains a stalwart asymmetry between, on the one hand, human, animal and other life, and on the other hand, the material constraints or framed enclosures of architecture. When we turn to the recent, speculative work of the Emergence and Design Group (Michael Hensel, Michael Weinstock, and Achim Menges) we find a practice that deploys the software of computer technologies as a medium that has become increasingly life-like in its operational capacities and engagements. Rather than an asymmetrical condition, digital architects, such as the Emergence and Design Group, appear to be dismantling the distinction between architectural form and human, animal and other life forms. What we are asked to imagine is a continuum that unfolds in both directions, one infecting the other, organic interpenetrating inorganic, technology intertwined with biological life. What’s more, the resulting hybrid of architecture-cum-life in (de)formation, should be apprehended as animated and ever-responsive to the field from which it emerges. The formal complexity that supposedly results erupts unexpectedly from a plane of continuous variation where the emphasis lies in the surface effect. This paper will trace the legacy of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with respect to key conceptual moves, implicit and explicit, being made by so-called digital architects. Following what can be identified as Deleuze and Guattari’s ethics of immanence, this paper will also consider whether an appropriate ethico-aesthetic practice can be engaged to address what appears to be a new architectural paradigm with its attendant desire for an intimate proximity with life

Bullfighting, Sex and Sensation

The investigation that follows will flex in four directions, backwards and forwards, along the elastic threadthat ties the event of the bullfight to sex and thence a warm spill of sensation. In order to enter the fraythat is the bullfight, I will appropriate a term from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari by way of which eachof the four thrusts I advance, or fights I present, can be read as asignifying ruptures [1] . With thisconcept we are encouraged to question the integrity of signification. By breaching the threshold ofsignification there results a momentary loss of the senses, at which point we might take the opportunityto search out or invent other modes of making sense. The activity of writing, for instance, as one meansof experimenting with sense, "has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping,even realms that are yet to come" [2]. Though the bullfight is organised by way of its own particularcodes ofoperation and signification, much is also left to chance and the unexpected [3] . With thisemphasis on unexpected novelty in mind, I ask you to consider this paper as an arena in which fourbullfights will be conducted. The twists and turns of the trope of the bullfight will be surveyed across fourdifferent textual terrains in order to explore the effects that result in bringing these terrains into thevicinity of each other. As such, I will touch upon the work of Georges Bataille, Friedrich Nietzsche,Francis Bacon and Michel Leiris. As Nietzsche has suggested, using the tauromachic trope, to enter intoa "frightful and dangerous" enterprise does not necessarily enable the capture of an enraged bull [4]; atthe outset we cannot necessarily be assured of what will eventuate with the outcome. Furthermore, thatthe bull is always vanquished merely holds to the dictates of good and common sense, conventions that,in this arena, are only tenuously maintained. It is instead the event that surfaces as an incorporeal blocof sensation, exploding in the midst of the spectacle, that this paper determines to pursue

Decolonizing Your Island Imaginary

Hélène Frichot’s contribution offers an approach to decolonising through fiction, where cross-generational memories of family life in the Seychelles are used to critically illuminate colonial histories. The function of this experimental essay is to offer a preparatory test-site for a future project that may, or may not, come to fruition. What is at stake are processes of decolonisation, specifically of spatial memories, including the residual hold of colonial imaginaries and how these might be creatively critiqued. The story begins on an apparent island paradise, in the grounds of a colonial plantation house coloured sepia, shades of mahogany and amber hue, as all the world seemingly sleeps its way through siesta. An encounter is witnessed between a returned colonial brother and a younger sister the aftermath of which will concatenate through the following three parts of the projected novella. The second part takes place in Perth, the most geographically isolated city in the world, in hyper-saturated Super-8 colours, brilliant fuchsias, lilacs, yellows and blues. Following an evening of sun darkened children’s’ limbs lingering on a makeshift tarpaulin picnic blanket laid out on a backyard of buffalo grass, two girls sneak into the depths of a migrant family home, into an aunt’s closed bedroom to paint their faces in eyeshadows and lipsticks, only to be suddenly discovered. Part three is sketched in cold translucent greys, and deep brown shadows, witness to a young woman venturing far from home. She is hosted by a reclusive family member in an old apartment on Rue Buffon overlooking the Jardin des Plantes, as she prepares herself for a year of study in a far-off land that is both familiar and strange. Sitting in a stone courtyard on campus, holding a book between her hands – attended on the right by the statue of a poet, and on the left by the statue of a biologist – she hears a noise as though the long-lost sea were approaching her. A massive swell of student bodies floods the courtyard, taking her up in its wake. She recognizes the voice of someone who cries out: It is Forbidden to Forbid! Finally, at the centre of Empire in royal blue, indigo, and chalk with burnt orange highlights, a moment of culmination will be discovered. Temporal registers begin to slip and slide: a young man suffers a humiliating sexual encounter as an older man is confronted ascending from the basement flat of a government in exile. A suite of colonial imaginaries is, from one scene to the next, composed and decomposed through processes of decolonisation. The text is introduced by a reading compiled by Kim Gurne

A Creative Ecology of Practice for Thinking Architecture

This contribution offers an examination of the positions that have promoted a return to the ontology of objects and “realism” in philosophical thought (Meillasoux, Shaviro, Morton, Harman, Gannon), and their consequences for theories of architecture. Frichot criticizes some collateral effects of such a theoretical shift in the field of architectural theory: in the first place, the risk of wanting to go back to objects, buildings, material effects with excessive ease. As an alternative, and even an antidote, she proposes to reconsider the notion of “ecology of practice” offered by Isabelle Stengers, meant as a continuous “process of learning” and an “act of creative resistance”. This alternative would be fundamentally critical (of the context of action, particularly for architects) and opposed to the “flat ontology” of “speculative realists”. Ecology, for Stengers, is quite simply a question of habitat, the context in which you undertake your labour, and the habits that circumscribe your methodologies. In operating within your “habitat” your practice must feel out its borders, recognises its limits, and also push against them, in order to re-establish them again and again

The Property Issue. Ground Control and the Commons | Power and Justice

Recent editions of the German journal ARCH+ Journal for Architecture and Urbanism (2018) and the UK based The Architectural Review (June 2018) set their sights on the complex imbroglio of architecture and property, taking up themes of power, justice and the law, and asking: Who owns the land upon which our built edifices resolutely stand? Who can lay claim to such territorial power? The cover of The Architectural Review shows us the personification of justice, her eyes blinded. Colour, race, ..

An Antipodean Imaginary for Architecture+Philosophy: Ficto-Critical Approaches to Design Practice Research

This is a collaborative essay that presents the design practice research of six postgraduate researchers (past and present), who have been working within the Architecture+Philosophy research stream at the School of Architecture, RMIT University, Melbourne. What unites the projects is an aspiration to maintain a creative relationship between architectural design project research and critical theory, with an emphasis on transdisciplinary potentialities. While the design research introduced here is diverse, the researchers all share an engagement in how to construct imaginary worlds using what can be identified as a ficto-critical approach that draws on the productive intersection of architecture and philosophy. Hélène Frichot, who will situate this research from her position as their primary doctoral advisor, argues that by pursuing a productive relay between theory and practice a novel Antipodean design imaginary can be seen to emerge across the collected projects

Flow-directed PCA for monitoring networks

Measurements recorded over monitoring networks often possess spatial and temporal correlation inducing redundancies in the information provided. For river water quality monitoring in particular, flow-connected sites may likely provide similar information. This paper proposes a novel approach to principal components analysis to investigate reducing dimensionality for spatiotemporal flow-connected network data in order to identify common spatiotemporal patterns. The method is illustrated using monthly observations of total oxidized nitrogen for the Trent catchment area in England. Common patterns are revealed that are hidden when the river network structure and temporal correlation are not accounted for. Such patterns provide valuable information for the design of future sampling strategies