I had a really interesting post about last weekend about halfway done and ready to post when the worst of all possible things happened: My workstation at work flamed out in a serious way. It's still in pieces all over the office and not operating because the RAID array - the disk mirror set up to prevent data loss in the event of a failure - blew up along with everything else. Systemware all over the place is corrupt, and I can't do much else other than log in as the root user and try to track down everything that's been damaged …
Last week, a group of information security researchers released a whitepaper detailing a practical data extraction attack on DRAM after the power's been cut. Unfortunately, Applebaum et al didn't release the source code for the utilities they used in the lab. One Wesley McGrew read the paper and decided to apply the scientific method by reproducing their experiments. This required developing utilities to extract data from powered-down DRAM from scratch which he's done and released the source code for. The source is mostly in C with some in-line assembly. It's dense and you really have to understand what's going on …
Early today someone threw an improvised bomb at a US military recruiting station, whereupon it went off some time later and caused minimal damage to the structure. Witnesses watched an unknown man on a bicycle ride by and throw the device, housed in a green ammunition box probably purchased on the surplus market, at the building. The New York City bomb squad reports that the device was technically classed as a low explosive, which means that technically it didn't burn fast enough to really be considered an explosion. The device was made using black or blasting powder they say, which …
It seems as if we're losing heroes (or at least, people perceived as heroic) left, right, and center these days. People that are put up on pedestals by people (or more often by marketing execs and television networks) are slowly and steadily being knocked from their lofty perches in the public eye and cratering when they hit, sometimes never to dig themselves out. About six years ago (probably a bit more, because I remember reading his book when I was still at IUP) a guy named Mike Warnke published what was ostensibly his autobiography, in which he described being the …
Mr. Gygax, thank you for everything. You've given thousands, if not millions of people over the years hours without number of fun and taught many how to imagine. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family and friends.
It seems as if malware evolves just as fast as biological diseases anymore. Earlier this year, it was made public that batches of flu vaccine were probably ineffective against this year's upper respiratory plague that I've complained about more than enough lately (my apologies to house Laurelinde, though - Lyssa and I will bring over something tasty soon for you). Around the same time, a new strain of rootkit called Mebroot hit the Net that infects the Master Boot Record of boxen it's installed into. It compromises the machine below the level of the operating system because executable code referenced by …
After a long and unfortunately tiring week, I limped my way home after work to be greeted by Lyssa and Laurelinde, who had been kind enough to put dinner together. Lyssa's been on a jerk chicken kick lately, not that I'm complaining, it's one of her best dishes, and often just what I need after dealing with.. well.. work. Afterward we packed up the leftovers and set about gathering clothing and laundry, for we'd be vacationing (sort of) at Laurelinde's place for the weekend.
You see, there's something that you need to know about the apartment complex that Lyssa and …
