Security Tidbits #2

Hacking + business savvy
Hackers and technical wizards that like to break things usually have their own l33t speek. But unfortunately, this does not translate very well in business. It's like speaking in two different languages, hacker talk and business spiel. You could argue it's more than two as you could be dealing with management, general IT and helpdesk. All of whom speak a different language. Anyways, in security consultancy, you do have to talk to the client and explain things in an easy understandable way, essentially in their language. This is well discussed in this securityfocus column. So it's like someone told me, "l33t speak evolved" and "pwntry with a touch of class".

Disclosure
Hackers and pen-testers naturally like to show off what exactly they can do by releasing vulnerabilities and attacks. This securityfocus column discusses how some MIT students were gagged by the MBTA from demonstrating their research at defcon despite discussions with them. Unfortunately, it is usual to shoot the messenger! There has been many a time, when a vulnerability has been found and the vendor contacted but very little happens for months. Hence some vulnerabilities can be released months even years after it was originally found. Should the vulnerability be released despite the contact with the vendor? Arguably they should be. If a customer has this issue, they should be aware of this and would like a solution. Ultimately it's the responsibility of the vendor. But unfortunately, it's usually the man-in-the-middle, the messenger, the security tester that gets the heat!

Programmers Tidbits #2

Code Generation
There are repositories code available from Google, Yahoo and Best Practical.

User Guides
There are number of places where you can get free guides and tutorials, they include devdaily.com, howtoforge.com, linuxjournal.com, tutorialized.com, tutorialspoint.com, wdvl.com, w3schools, unix.org.ua. Flazx used to offer free guides but they appear to be tied in to amazon nowadays.

Random Musings - Day #90

Got back from Glasgow. I was watching late night, videos from The Vault. And as it's day 90, I better mention my website Shy 90, which I've not updated in a little while and not to be confused with Joe 90.

Random Musings - Day #89

Glasgow
I could swear I have stayed in Glasgow before but I didn't recognise the part of Glasgow I was in. All I remember was Shanghai Shuffle on Bath Street, which is on the west part of the city centre. This time I was staying near the central station at the Buchanan Hotel, which was cheap and rustic but very nice for me. One place, we didn't visit to go karaoke was Madness Theatre of Fun.

Glasgow would be a good to visit with a bunch of friends for the nightlife!

Random Musings - Day #88

UK Singles Chart
"Poker Face" stays at #1 for a second week as the Noisettes debut at #2 with "Don't upset the rhythm". Flo-ri-da continues to drop back at #3. Look for KIG to move up from #18 with a song that been in clubs for the last month or two, "Head shoulders, knees and toes"

Glasgow
I went up to Glasgow for work on a late night flight. My colleague and I went to the same Frankie and Benny's and the waitress remembered us from last time. It wasn't my colleague's good looks (or mine for that matter). It was the fact, he almost lost his boarding pass there.

Anyways the flight was delayed by an hour and got there late. Not pleased with Easyjet on that front. I should get work to travel by BA. Particularly, I've still got a BA card.

Random Musings - Day #87

Hot tea... not good?
Apparently having steaming hot tea increases the chance of cancer. However it does say adding milk as in the western tradition cools the tea, reducing the risk.

Busy Business
For some reason, today was extermely busy in the streets and shops of the Medway. Traffic was really bad in Rochester. Even where I live, pubs were pretty busy. Considering it was fairly cold and windy today, very surprising.

24
I am enjoying 24/7! Jon Voight as a main villian and enjoying himself whilst being evil. There is something menancing that makes him a classy villian. Anyhow I was catching on the latest episodes that I've missed and realise you can easily lose track of time, watching television and vegging out!

Tripwire
I thought tripwire was supposed to be a triggering mechanism to pick off if anyone is trying to do something/get in somewhere. But according to the company tripwire, it's a configuration controller.

Netbooks
Well looking for one now. I have decided to the follow the fad of netbooks. One of my biggest questions would be how easy it is to restore/rebuild the operating system. Well it looks like it as easy as changing the bios to boot from usb device and go from there. Here's an article where someone has installed Mac OS X on Lenovo Idea Pad. There is a comprehensive list of netbooks available too. WhatLaptop put the Acer Aspire One as he number 1 in netbooks.But for me, looking for something cheap and something easy to rebuild (and have a correct drivers available). Anyways do your own research!

Random Musings - Day #86

Tired. I think random musings will be just as they are. Totally random.

Random Musings - Day #85

Tomcat Hardening
Well there are some guides on how to harden your configuration for tomcat. Usually it's common sense, remove unnecessary files, ensure you set standard error messages and set your OS privileges for your service to be as low as possible. A general security guide focusing on authentication can be found at cafesoft. Whilst, there is an OWASP guide provides some pointers but I stress this is not the definitive guide. The apache wiki has a few discussion points. There is also a security how-to.

Government sniffing facebook
It's interesting to hear that the UK government want to monitor communications on facebook. That's no mean task at all. That's excluding the privacy issues associated with it. Here's some thoughts from blogsecurity and the privacy guy

Pensions
MyFinances discuss why people are saving for a pension. I remember a finance colleague I used to work with, say I am not saving for pension, there's no point. With the credit crunch, no-one is really immune from going belly-up. I am not clear how well protected you are if an event like that. Here's a financial crisis article which actually leaving more questions rather than giving any answers.

Random Musings - Day #84

Live Messenger vs ZoneAlarm Free
I've recently encountered problems with running Live Messenger behind a ZoneAlarm Firewall. Everything used to be fine and dandy until one day I couldn't connect to Live Messenger. After troubleshooting, messenger was claiming 'key' ports could not be accessed, which fingerpointed the problem at ZoneAlarm. I updated Live Messenger to find it work. But it soon stopped working again with the same problem. I've updated ZoneAlarm now and things are ok for the moment.

Rochester/Strood
Sir Thomas Longley was born in Rochester and was the Archbishop of Canterbury. A couple of things to do around Strood include Diggerland and Monkey Bizz.

Gambling on irony
It's ironic that former Arsenal legend Paul Merson has had his fair share of gambling addiction is the new face of Betterbet.
Apparently Merson is good friend with the main man there.

Shrewd Jade
It looks like Jade Goody saved a million in taxes as she got married before her death. The inheritance tax of 40% has been by-passed as her spouse Jack Tweed can pass on the money to her kids.

Hacking News
Romanian outfit Hackersblog have called time on the blog.
Oh dear, it looks like all the major browsers have one or more vulnerabilities found at pwn2own (cansecwest)

Glasgow Gyms
Heading of to Glasgow, next week and cheap hotel with a gym appears to be the Swallow Hotel. However that is two miles away from the city centre.
A couple of gyms seen include The griphouse and Morrison's Gym

Random Musings - Day #83

1p club
Well a few people have benefited big time over the recent crash in interest rate. A Middlesex couple are enjoying a 1p interest on their monthly repayment, effectively a free home loan. The reason is simple enough. Only a couple of years ago, mortgages were on offer that were discounted/tracked beneath the Bank of England rate. Well since it has crashed to 0.5%, some deals that were as high as 1% beneath the interest rate are 0. (They don't seem to want to give you -0.5% interest; i.e. pay off some of the repayment for you;)

Extreme Gene
Here's proof that extreme gene does exist, which gives you urge to do extreme sports

Random Musings - Day #82

Busy with work.
I saw and bought some potato rostis in Asda. I've not seen them in a while and for some reason there are only 4 in pack rather than the 6, there used to be.

Random Musings - Day #81

Mother's day
Today is mother's day! Hope you took your mother out, otherwise I might have to take her out for you.

Warren Joyce
Warren Joyce's name might not ring a bell unless you are a die-hard Hull City fan and maybe if you are Manchester United fan. Anyways he's a legend at Hull City when they were 92nd and bottom of the whole football league, he managed to dig Hull out of a big hole that is the Conference. What is more amazing, he didn't have the fan's support initially.
Currently, Joyce is working as reverse team coach at Manchester United.

UK Singles Chart
I was right that Flo-rida would nudge past the comic relief song. However, I didn't think Lady Gaga would gain her 2nd chart-topper as "Poker Face" leap frogs both songs.

Random Musings - Day #80

Lingfield
I took my dad out to the horses after my housemate gave me some complimentary tickets. Interesting because it was probably Lingfield's biggest day as it hosted the Winter Derby. There's appears to be not a lot in Lingfield itself. Trying to find shops was a bit of a mission. The town, sorry village centre was about half a mile away from the station. The racecourse (and golf club) is about quarter of mile away from the station.

Sweets
Trying to clean my room up and going through old stuff. I found this nice business card for sweetsforu. Which reminds me of the sherbet straws. There looks to be the two types, these smaller straws are apparently called sherbet straws. But the one I am thinking of is in fact called rainbow dust sherbet straws

Random Musings - Day #79

Google Street View
Apparently, Google Street view has been around for a few months but it's been introduced to London to a mixed reaction.
People have coming out with privacy concerns.
People caught in compromising positions (e.g. leaving sex shops, being sick, etc) have been pulled. Another concern was that not all number plates weren't fuzzed out upon release. Also entrances to high profile organisations were not consulted (e.g. MI5)
I live on the outskirts of London and it appears that there is no street view for my street.
This could be because of the constant roadworks in the way or the fact google's equipment would probably be ransacked and vandalised by the friendly locals.

Twin Cats
My mate put his milk bottles out and saw a cat leap out and then jump over the neighbour's fence. He thought it was my cat!
He got his shoes on and tried to entice my cat back home. I decided to help out, so I got to my room and picked up a pair of shoes. When I got there, there was a cat lying in bed waiting for me. My housemate saw the wrong cat. Funny!

Champions League Draw
I really think Arsenal got the best deal out of the draw for the Champions League. They avoided all the other English sides plus Barcelona and Bayern Munich. Furthermore, only Man Utd stand in their way of the final. They could go all the way! This is reflected in the odds for Arsenal to win the Champions League reduced to 7-1. Talking of odds, Charlton are 1-66 to get relegated again. Here's a fact, Charlton have lost 6 times after scoring first (out of 13). They were Preston (away), Wolves (home), Sheff Wed (home), Sheff Utd (away), Burnley (away), Bristol City (away). If they won those games, particularly the former games, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now.

Cleared for driving too fast
This cracked me up. A man who drove 173mph was cleared when the prosecution could not prove that the car was capable of reaching that speed!

What's on in London
New Boy is a play that stars "About a boy" and "Skins" star Nicholas Hoult and is a comedy/play set/about school-life. It's got ok reviews. The cast is good but it's too short and the material quite risque. Its run ends on April 11. Meanwhile Avenue Q is moving to the Gielgud Theatre and will recommence performances on June 1.
Also I see Wallace & Gromit are fronting "A world of cracking ideas" at the Science Museum (from March 28 to November 1). There's also the Ideal Home Show, which started today and runs until April 13.

Random Musings - Day #78

78 rpm
As it's day #78, let's look at the old gramophone record, which originally span at 78 revolutions per minute (rpm). (Late on in history, it was primarily used at 33 1/3 and 45 rpm.

Marmite/Twiglets
Last night, someone introducing me to dipping stuff in Marmite. Twiglets are very nice and taste like Marmite but dip them in Marmite sounds crazy but actually isn't too bad. There's even a recipe for Marmite Chicken.

Tours
Just a thought and perhaps a concern about Michael Jackson. Remember originally he was supposed to do 10 dates only and now it's 50, which really begs the question is health up for it, considering his original planned tenure at the o2.
Talking of being up for it, Tina Turner is still around and touring and gigging.

Freshie
I didn't know what someone was going on about when they were talking about someone being a freshie.

Higham
I didn't know there was a bus (735/736) that goes from Higham to London. I got completely lost in Higham. It's a real sleepy village!

Random Musings - Day #77

Javascript
A couple of short tutorials that I have used for my own benefit...
SetInterval and reload.

Random Musings - Day #76

It's day 76, so it's time to mention the NBA team called the 76ers from Philadelphia.

Lent
Read a little more into Lent. In some quarters, lent is not on consecutive days. The Sundays during Lent are considered as mini-Easter. Well that means I could eat my chips (I've given that up for lent, don't ask why;) on Sundays. I think that defeats the purpose of Lent.

Holidays
There are 4 bank holidays coming real soon. Two for Easter and Two in May.

Extracurricular Activities
You've heard the term, "Never mix business with pleasure". Well a couple of interesting stories have cropped up. A Ryanair pilot found out that one of the air stewardess, Edita Schindlerova was actually a porn star off hours.
Interesting that a Ryanair spokesman said "What people do before or after they work for us is their business." Contrast, this to a female director who is suing a city fund manager for a half million for sacking her after she declined to date him.

Sonicwall can meet the Government criteria in the products.

Random Musings - Day #75

I'm slightly surprised that more publications are Internet-only. I mean I rarely read the rag unless it's something like London Lite or the Metro. Anyhow Seattle paper, Seattle Post-Intelligencer is not going to print newspapers anymore.

It looks another old 80s TV series is about to hit the big screen. MacGyver is that character that gets out of trouble by making weapons out of households such as used kitchen rolls and sticky-back plastic. Apparently, there is currently no script at this stage. So don't expect anything for a year or two.

27 appears to be the age when everything goes downhill, at least in the brain, it is!

Interesting that clocks have gone forward in the states already. More than 3 weeks ahead of the clocks going forward here in the UK. The reason the clocks were forward earlier is that they can enjoy an extra hour of daylight earlier in the year and hence save an hour's of electricity in lighting. Well that's the theory.

Random Musings - Day #74

Moving to Scottish Borders
If I could move to another place around the Scottish/English Border is probably the place to be. Scotland has its own government and have drawn up a proposal to have a minimum price for alcohol. I figure living close to the border you can get the best of both worlds in terms of living and bargains.

Stress and Opposites
I was thinking why do people under stress do the opposite to what they are acheiving. For example, obese people when stressed, turn to food. Whilst thin people trying to put on weight, reject food.

UK Chart
As stated last week, The "Islands in the sun" Comic Relief song would be the danger to Flo Rida and sure enough Ruth Jones/Rob Brydon/Tom Jones replace "Right Round" at #1. Saturdays are back at #3. I wouldn't rule out Flo Rida bouncing back from #2 to #1. Mind you I haven't really been following what the new songs will be.

Random Musings - Day #73

Confidence Trickster
There has been a spate of mobile insurance frauds. About 10 companies have been involved cold-calling punters selling mobile insurance. The trick is that the fraudsters have bought new mobile phones and dial up numbers similar to their own. Chances the number are new. So they claim they are the mobile operator or from the shop they bought the phone, offering cheap insurance.
Always be careful when you get cold calls and cold emails. Don't give out details. In fact, ask to phone back!

Dating Review
Stumbled upon this dating agency review.

Shell Tidbit
Here's a nice little tutorial that I found for generating numbers from a for-loop in a unix shell.

Windows Tidbits
1. The old IIS unicode exploit!
2. How to restrict access to the registry from a remote computer.
3. How to prevent Windows from storing a LAN manager hash of your password in Active Directory and local SAM databases.

Random Musings - Day #72

Don't tell the boss
... That 10% of companies are freezing pay!

Don't tell the doctor
... That you are having sandwiches for lunch. Sandwiches
apparently have 18 times the daily allowed salt content. But then again salt may not be as bad for you according to these scientists.

Don't tell the Nicole (Don'tcha)
... That you have the slowest car in F1. Poor Lewis Hamilton will going from first to last judging by the car's test runs.

Don't tell anyone
... That you played golf with nothing on but your boxers.

Don't stop til you get enough
Michael Jackson is a million-seller has 50-date residency at o2 sold out in a morning.
But there are rumours that batches of tickets have been bought by companies to sell tickets at 10 times the original asking price. This article demonstrates the point. Not to mention the usual dodgy deals on ebay.

Random Musings - Day #71

Green Tea
When I was in Taunton, I was having a fair bit of green tea and felt relaxed. Must get some more.

Windows Tax
No, Microsoft haven't inflated the price of their flagship product. But it's about the tax that was introduced based on the number of windows and coined the phrase "Daylight robbery. I was told on a bus tour in Dublin that some of the old buildings in the city centre had small windows at the top because the tax didn't apply to windows above a certain height (or in the roof). However, I've seen no reference to it in Google. So not so sure now...

Random Musings - Day #70

Billionaires
It's interesting that 322 names have been wiped off the Forbes' list of billionaires. Furthermore, the ones at the top of the list have seen their fortunes shrink. It begs question where has all the money gone? Someone somewhere must be making a profit. There's a probably a conspiracy theory about that like the Russians have it.

Football
The quarter finals of the Champions League will consist 4 English, 2 Spanish, 1 German and 1 Portuguese. Also I explained to a good friend of mine that 7th place in Premiership will be a UEFA cup place unless Hull somehow make the FA Cup final. Good news as West Ham are currently 7th...

Pet Products
There are a number of online pet stores. Unlike online pharmacies, they don't spam you! I've used vetuk before. But I've been told that petmeds is better.

Random Musings - Day #69

Taunton is really hard place to get food. Everything including pubs stop selling food after 9pm. That said their 24 hour Tesco has some top food. That half chicken for 1.89 was yummy!

In the UK, youtube have taken down premium music videos claiming it's a loss maker.

I will be looking forward to visiting such places as Carlisle, Hartlepool, Huddlesfield, Rochdale, Scunthorpe, Wycombe. Maybe Brentford and Leyton Orient as well.
Imagine Charlton winning the Johnstone's Paint Trophy next season.

Random Musings - Day #68

Not much here! I went to Taunton for business and stayed in Corner House Hotel. The room I stayed in was quaint and small. But getting to my room was a bit of maze. It kind of reminds me of a hotel I once stayed in Birmingham called Jonathans.

Random Musings - Day #67

As predicted from last week, Flo-rida takes the top spot away from Kelly Clarkson with "Right round". Saturdays debut at #2 with a cover of Depeche Mode's "Just can't get enough", whilst Lady Gaga holds on to #3 with "Poker Face".
This week sees comic relief and its coinciding single. For 2009, a version of the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (written by the Bee-Gees) song, "Islands in the Stream gets the Comic Relief treatment. This looks the danger to Flo-rida for next week's #1. That said, the proceeds for the Saturdays song also go to comic relief as well.

Random Musings - Day #66

Felt lazy and tired today. But I did have a look at we.dig.tv again. I had a look at this a very long time ago. It seems better this time around. I think they are a few bugs like in Countdown, you can't seem to change the multiply button in the numbers game and Blockbusters just randomly halts towards the end of a game. And after watching a bit of The colour of money, there's another game to play!

Random Musings - Day #65

Michael Jackson is back and a badder than ever as he announced he will performing (for the last time) in London for a number of dates during the summer.
Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters has been remixed on the back of the 118 campaign. Three beatboxers have combined their efforts with the main man.
The current Barclays ad about the guy going down the water tube is spot on
as the current bank credit crunch sees all our money go down the tube. ;)

We all know his on and off the pitch activities have been criminal (ask
Cheryl Cole and Arsenal) but it looks like Ashley Cole has got in trouble
with the law once more.

Random Musings - Day #64

When I got to Ayr, the taxi driver said not to visit the pubs around the travelodge hotel. The locals don't take to well to strangers apparently. Better off to be in the city centre.
I went past both the football ground and racecourse on the way to the city centre. I went through the city centre and down to the seafront. It's a little surreal as I got then at dusk. There's a beach, islands and snow on the hills in the distance. Very nice.
By the seafront, there is a children's adventure playground called "Pirate Pete's". I went back to the centre and ate at the west kirk, which was an old church.
One last thing I noticed, on the bus, they only stopped taking cheques on
the bus as of last month.

Random Musings - Day #63

Just going through drawers at work and at home. At home, I've got a lot of papers to go through at some point, probably this weekend. I need to find something the counterpart for my driving licence. Apparently it's quite useless you have both components (that and the photocard itself). At work, going through papers and shredding. I found an interesting post-it note, it said "if you don't know... don't talk about what you don't know!" Which is why I am quiet most of the time!

Ayr
Well I am off to Ayr, which is on the west side of Scotland. The only things I know about Ayr, they have a football team and a racecourse. Ironicly enough, there are races on Friday when I will be returning home. Getting there is going to be a mission as I have to take two trains to Gatwick, fly to Glasgow, take a bus to Glasgow Central and then a train to Ayr. Likely have to take taxi after that as well...

Glasgow Airports
In case you wondering, there are two airports that serve Glasgow. Glasgow Prestwick Airport, which is located near... you've guessed it, Ayr! and 30 miles from the city. The other one is Glasgow International Airport, which is just north of Paisley.

Show us the money
This makes sense. Hand the money to the people not the banks!

Random Musings - Day #62

Shopping
After being on vacation, I've been doing some grocery shopping and noticed a significant rise in prices, particularly at Morrisons. Romanie Lettuce has gone from 99p to 149p. A whole cucumber has doubled in price in 128p. A lemon has doubled in price to 30p. There doesn't appear to be a reason for it (aside from the current credit crunch). Previously there's been a mark-up due to the oil prices (but that's very low right now).

Bad day
So let's see... Very busy at work. I had a parcel sent to my house and the guys wait for it. Parcelforce came and simply left a card to go pick it up. They didn't ring the bell. That's very annoying. I missed my train back home.

Random Musings - Day #61

Excel
Microsoft finally fix Excel after some Trojan Horse have been attacking a particular vulnerability.

Facebook Issues
All kind of reports about Facebook have been coming out. You can gain a lot of details from facebook groups and friends. Because of trust that inherit. A psychologist says, "get off facebook and get a life" and also a girl got fired for calling her job boring.

EULA
What happens if a cat clicks on an agreement.

Vimto
Looks like the Police are getting desperate in that they are now stealing vimto.

Private calls
You can spoof and make your calls truly private according to spoofcard. Conversely, you could unmask blocked calls

Listening
Hmm Listening is everything, particularly when it is active.

Random Musings - Day #60

Lent
I gave up chips for lent.

VOIP
Talkonaut.com and Gtalk2VOIP are a couple of VOIP services for the mobile.

UK Chart
All change on top. Lily Allen fell from the topspot down to #5. Lady Gaga falls down to #6. But her second single, "Poker Face" debuts at #3. Two new songs take the top 2 spots. Taylor Swift debuts big with "Love story" at #2 but former US #1 and original American Idol Kelly Clarkson gets "My life sucks without you" to the top spot over here.
But I fancy Clarkson could be a one week wonder as the current US #1 Flo Rida's "Right Round" gets released this week over here. The song featuring Kesha is a near-enough cover of Dead or alive's "You spin me round"