Category — Security

Have you seen the commercials for the noise-canceling around-the-ear headphones from Bose? They pretty much shut out all the environmental noise, so it is great for listening to music while on the train, plane, or in the car. The QuietComfort 2 headphones cost around $299 from the Bose website. Well, how would you like to make your own around-the-ear noise-canceling headphones for about $30 and 4 minutes of work?

Kip Kay from the Science Channel’s TV show, Brink, shows viewers how to make fun things out of cheap items. He uses a typical headphone and removes the headset portion, so all that is left is the speakers with ear pads. He then uses the Leightning LOF Earmuff. It is rated to block up to 23dB, so hunters and target shooters use them. They can be found online for about $20. Really, it’s just snap off a couple of things and insert the earphone pieces and snap back on. Voila. He has video and instructions. Let me know how they work out for you.

Also, in the latest episode, there’s a story of the MIT students that hacked the Boston transit system’s RFID fare card as a class project. With a card reader/writer purchased of eBay, they were able to refill their RFID fare card for free. When they submitted the findings to the manufacturer of the fare system for them to address the security hole, the FBI was called in to investigate the students.

Cheating the fare has been around for a long time. I remember guys selling “slugs” , which are fake NYC subway tokens that weighed and measured the same as real tokens, back in the day. Now, I’m not suggesting you go out an try to cheat the system. I’m just telling you about security breaches that exist, especially since this was an electronic form of breach. My identity was stolen a few years ago, so I will be sharing my experience with that whole ordeal, and how to prevent it, in future posts.