Tag Archives: Testing

A Sneak Peek at Anechoic Chamber Testing

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[Mathieu Stephan] has something new in the works, and while he isn’t ready to take the wraps off of it yet, he was kind enough to document his experience putting the mysterious new gadget through its paces inside an anechoic chamber. Considering the majority of us will never get inside of one of these rooms, much less have the opportunity to test our own hardware in one, he figured it was the least he could do.

If you’re not familiar with an anechoic chamber, don’t feel bad. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you’ll have at the local makerspace. …read more

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Cybersecurity Best Practices Calls for Penetration Testing

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As attacks become more sophisticated, penetration testing is becoming a must-have security measure The tactics cybercriminals employ are as clever as they are numerous, and show no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately, an attacker can gain access to y… Continue reading Cybersecurity Best Practices Calls for Penetration Testing→

DevSecOps: Robservations from Black Hat 2018

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One of the nice things about my new role is that I recently had the pleasure of attending my first Black Hat conference. Now to be completely transparent, I only had an exhibitor pass and I was there primarily to support networking and interactive act… Continue reading DevSecOps: Robservations from Black Hat 2018→

Perf Board Pyrotechnics Courtesy of a High-Voltage Supply

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You may have asked yourself at one time or another, “Self, what happens when you pass 100 thousand volts through a printed circuit board?” It’s a good question, and [styropyro] put together this fascinating bit of destructive testing to find out.

Luckily, [styropyro] is well-positioned to explore the high-voltage realm. His YouTube stock-in-trade is lasers, ranging from a ridiculously overpowered diode-laser bazooka to a bottle-busting ruby laser. The latter requires high voltage, of course, and his Frankenstein’s lab yielded the necessary components for this destructive diversion. A chopper drives dual automotive ignition coils to step the voltage up to a …read more

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Quadcopter Hardware Gets Classic Lake Bed Test

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You’d be hard pressed to find an aircraft that wasn’t designed and tested without extensive use of simulation. Whether it’s the classic approach of using a scale model in a wind tunnel or more modern techniques such as computational fluid dynamics, a lot of testing happens before any actual hardware gets bolted together. But at some point the real deal needs to get a shakedown flight, and historically a favorite testing ground has been the massive dry lake beds in the Western United States. The weather is always clear, the ground is smooth, and there’s nobody for miles around.

Thanks …read more

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Putting Crimpers to the Test: How Good Are Our Crimp Tools?

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Almost every project of mine from the last quarter century, if it has contained any wiring, has featured somewhere at least one crimp connector. There are a multiplicity of different types of crimp, but in this case I am referring to the ubiquitous variety with a red, blue, or yellow coloured plastic sleeve denoting the wire size they are designed for. They provide a physically robust and electrically sound connection that is resistant to wire fatigue due to vibration, and that can carry hefty currents at high voltages without any problems.

You might expect this to now head off into …read more

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Ever Run a Relay? Why SMB Relays Should Be On Your Mind

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Time is never on your side when you’re onsite with a client and trying to get the first good foothold, with admin privileges, can seem impossible.  However, some things seem to work more often than others. One of my current, favorite methods… Continue reading Ever Run a Relay? Why SMB Relays Should Be On Your Mind→

How to Test a B-52 Against EMP: Project ATLAS-I

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Audacious times generate audacious efforts, especially when national pride and security are perceived to be at stake. Such was the case in the 1950s and 1960s, with the Space Race that started with a Russian sphere whizzing around the planet and ended with Neil Armstrong’s footprint on the Moon. But at the same time, other efforts were underway to answer big questions of national import, such as determining how durable the United States’ strategic assets were, and whether they could withstand the known effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy that could potentially disable a plane …read more

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How Much of Your Security Gear Is Misconfigured or Not Configured?

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Now that we are truly done with SOAR, our Testing Security project continues in full force. This post is a bit contemplative, and related to the question of ‘why test security if we are >>oh-so-sure<< that we did things right here… Continue reading How Much of Your Security Gear Is Misconfigured or Not Configured?→