Bash TCP programming hack!?

I had never heard of this until I ran into working on a recent project. In “bash” you can open sockets:

exec file-descriptor<>/dev/tcp/IP-or-hostname-here/port

so for example:

exec 3<>/dev/tcp/192.168.1.100/23

would open port 23 (telnet) to IP “192.168.1.100″ for read and write (the “<>”) on file descriptor “3″ (remember descriptors 0, 1, and . . . → Read More: Bash TCP programming hack!?

Rubber Or Glue, It Still Sticks…

This brings up a sort of interesting if not chilling thought in the world of security, particularly for large organizations:

Mozilla shuts online store after security breach

The title of this entry, which I’ve included verbatim, is important.

To me when I read it, I’m reading “Mozilla has a problem”, or “Mozilla . . . → Read More: Rubber Or Glue, It Still Sticks…

Outlook email verbosity…

I write HTML in Thunderbird because I like some rich formatting (an area I am sad to admit Thunderbird is weak on). In particular I do a lot of indented stuff, which Thunderbird translates to simple “<blockquote>” tags. However, when I moved to Outlook 2007 (which I don’t use for mail, but was just checking) . . . → Read More: Outlook email verbosity…

Eating ourselves alive…

Here is yet another example of how the “good guys” are figuring out ways to subvert security to “help” us:

http://www.h-online.com/security/Bootkit-bypasses-hard-disk-encryption–/news/113884

Basically Peter Kleissner, a young and clearly very smart university student, has figured out how to inject a bootkit in front of TrueCrypt (an excellent and free encryption product) to subvert its . . . → Read More: Eating ourselves alive…