slashdot | Code in my Bug!

May 21, 2008

Slashdot, uh! :|

Slashdot is supposed to be a respectable (news) portal for geeks and nerds. It’s punch line says News for nerds, Stuff that matters. I must admit that there was a time when I used to start my day with Slashdot, trying not to miss even a single news. That phase, however, is over. The two biggest problems with Slashdot today are:

1. The Slashdot community, which is getting reduced to people who lurk around to post comic and sarcastic comments. It’s very seldom that you come across an intelligent and insightful comment.
2. The news, if I may say so, itself.

By flickr.com/photos/nesster/

This rant is a direct result of a news titled Google Assists In Arrest Of Indian Man, posted on 19th. First of all this is an Old News. In fact I’d used the context to post a legal analysis of the impact of another Orkut worm, as per my knowledge and belief. I have nothing against reading old news, but for God’s sake, don’t claim it to be new.

Secondly, the post cites Shivaji as a saint. He was not a saint. He was a king and a warrior. Do your homework before posting, or rather approving such news.

Thirdly, the tone in which the post is written is as vague, if not more, as the point the post tries to make. If you wish to blame Google, get proper info before doing that. Google has a pact with Indian law enforcement. They are bound to provide such info. If you wish to convey the news that a false person was convicted, say it. If you wish to bring about the role of Yahoo! and Google in such cases, do it properly.

Being said all that, I don’t think I’ll completely stop reading /. . However, the prestige of being Slashdotted now seems to be just about traffic now.

August 6, 2007

Fake Steve Jobs Revealed

Arpit had a joint post on the probable revealation of FSJ (Fake Steve Jobs), along with the info on Exif Data revealations of the Harry Potter book images.

Anyways, the new news is that FSJ has been busted for real. It’s work of a New York Times reporter Brad Stone. The FSJ is Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes Magazine.

Although Daniel says that he’s surprised that it took so long for people to reveal his real identity, yet it doesn’t really seem that he’s happy about it… or even okay. He looks pretty upset with Brad though 🙂

Link: http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/damn-i-am-so-busted-yo.html

July 5, 2007May 7, 2008

TPM Boys withdraw paper from BlackHat USA

I hope you remember the young Indian security researchers Vipin Kumar (22) and Nitin Kumar (23), the TPM Boys [I guess, that’s the way they call themselves. At least their blog confirms that. 🙂 ]They presented a Paper “Vboot Kit: Compromising Windows Vista Security” at Blackhat Europe – 2007.

The talk explained the (different) booting process of Windows Vista. It also introduced the concept of manipulating an OS during its boot process using VBootkit. Finally, they gave a live demo of VBootkit in action (on Vista).

This event was Slashdotted. VBootkit was also blogged by Bruce Schneier. Here is an interview of the “boys” at SecurityFocus by Federico Biancuzzi. In their own words, “Vbootkit is much like a door or a shortcut to access vista’s kernel……. since vbootkit becomes part of the kernel, it can do anything that Vista’s kernel can do.”

This all, however, is a news of past. The current news stirred more vigour and controversy. They had yet another paper “TPMkit: Breaking the Legend of Trusted Computing (TC [TPM]) and Vista (BitLocker)” scheduled to be presented at Blackhat USA – 2007. They withdrew there paper last week without any comments. This news was Slashdotted and resulted in a (typical) slashdotian variety of comments. Some even doubted if they really had any success in their research. Well, you cannot really blame them. That’s the fussy nature of our FOSS communities… errr… wait. Before you bash me, I’d like to remind you that it’s not (only) me who says that. It was originally cited by Mark Shuttleworth. An amazing number of people opposed Mark by creating a lot of Fuss. 😉

Coming back to the story. A user, by the handle PoliTech, commented on Slashdot and reminded the Michael Lynn’s paper at Blackhat about his research on Cisco Routers. Cisco and ISS sued Lynn and the management of Black Hat conference. It’s worth noting that Lynn was an ISS employee. 🙂

It should be also be noted that Vipin and Nitin’s previous presentation was in Amsterdam, Europe. This presentation, however, was scheduled in US… and the (stupid) US laws can screw things up. Based on Lynn’s case, it is quite apparent that Vipin and Nitin didn’t wish to get caught in any such undesirable situation.

I hope to see them present the paper at some other conference (or location) pretty soon. Best of luck guys.

OffTopic: Coincidentally, my younger brother’s name is Nitin. 🙂

May 9, 2007

Open JavaFX, an alternative to AJAX?

Strange things happen to me all the time.
When I came to the office a few hours ago, I came across JavaFX scripting language while reading random blogs.

I found it pretty interesting and decided to check it out.
So I added the module in my NetBeans IDE and started playing with it. Though I could not fiddle for quite long, I found it pretty good. In fact, it looks to be amazing through the initial glances (though I haven’t done any serious coding in it yet). I have bookmarked some of the pages with a motive to get back to the kid.
However, I must mention that it was pretty slow. I am not sure if office’s system has something to do with it.]

I then resumed my other tasks; little did I know that the language has already created waves.
Slashdot is running an article: Sun Debuts JavaFX As Alternative To AJAX

That was a real surprise to me. JavaFX was unveiled at JavaOne today. I initially thought that the language has been there for quite sometime and I was stupid enough to have missed it somehow.

Finally, I too hope that it turns out to be an AJAX killer; not just because I have never been a javascript fan, but also because it’ll hopefully reduce the dangers of XSS, which according to Jeremiah Grossman is the next Buffer Overflow (and Javascript, the new ShellCode 🙂 ).

Footnotes: Hopefully, I’ll get some time from my official work to play with JavaFX and update on the same.
…and by the way, if it turns out to be an AJAX killer; will we rename it to AJilla??? [For the uninformed, Mozilla = Mosaic + killer 🙂 ]

January 24, 2006

God’s give Interviews !!!

So, here I am with my first tech. blog that I wrote in the midst of my (frustu) sems, but couldn’t post due to some “technical reasons” 😛 .

I had come across the interviews of two gods in the field of computer security:

Paul (Tony) Watson (I prefer to call him jus Tony Watson 😀 ). Currently working with Google. I really wonder when the hell does this guy work. I mean each and every time I visit his site or blog, I see some new pics being posted. 😉 He shot to fame when he discovered a TCP/IP flaw, but made a place in my heart by his sweet comment on fyodor, where he refers him as Fyodor, the great. 🙂 He was interviewed by whitedust.net. If you know some other interview of God Tony ^:)^ , please lemme know.

God in full form

In a Mysterious Mood

Fyodor or Fyodor, the great, the guy behind world’s most powerful vulnerability scanner, nmap. Anything said about him would be less, but the best thing I like about him is his down to earth nature. Read his interviews. For newbies, nmap feauterd in Matrix Reloaded and it’s source code in Battle Royale, a Japanese movie (if anyone wants to watch, may contact me 🙂 )….. and he himself feautured in the third edition (Clustermind) of comics published by hero-z.org, a legitimate child of zone-h. He gave his interviews at slashdot, zone-h, and whitedust.

God Looks at You

The Smiling Devil.. (Oops) Genius 😀

So this is it people. The show time has come to an end. If you are still wondering about the content of this article…. You need to understand that there are a lot of hyperlinks in it, that need to be visited to unleash the treasure :).

Have a nice time,
3~