It’s that time again

Time for another post and also for another Full Disclosure debate. I’ve always been a big fan of full disclosure – getting ALL the information out there so that users/admins can decide for themselves instead of relying on a company that has no interest whatsoever in exposing the true level of their incompetence to their customers.

Also
Google Code – Summer Code, maybe I’ll actually do something this summer.

ModSecurity Again

I previously mentioned ModSecurity but I was still suprised to learn how powerful it is.

Referer Spam

Going through the usage statistics for neacm I found what looked like referer spam. I told Relax about it and we tried using this .htaccess but since we had problems with it (it was blocking everyone) Relax ended up using this one. Let’s see how it works.

Additional Resources:
.htaccess files
Blocking Referer Spam

Know your Enemy: Phishing

The KYE papers always make for an interesting read and this one is no exception even though phishing isn’t a topic I’m particularly interested in.

Security News Links of the Week

I have to agree with this, specially the with the following paragraph:

Bad engineering in critical applications should result in corporate pain. If companies want their products to be used in the construction of the online world, they must accept the responsibility of making them fit for the job — and the consequences of cutting corners.

The following 3 links Via Bruce Schneier:
The Paris Hilton Hack.
Social Engineering Via Voicemail – sigh.
Encryption as Evidence of Criminal Intent

And there was more:
Russians Use Affiliate Model To Spread Spyware, Adware
Witty worm flaws reveal source, initial targets
HERT interviews Kismet’s author, Mike Kershaw
Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips – I won’t buy chips with DRM for as long as I have a choice. Well, not until it becomes trivial to bypass – weeks after their introduction? Maybe months, who knows?

The Cell Processor

I finally got around to reading something about the Cell Processor:
Introducing the IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell Processor — Part I and Part II. There are two more detailed articles entitled The CELL Microprocessor and CELL Microprocessor Revisited but I haven’t gotten around to reading them and I doubt I will anytime soon.

More Links:
IBM will unlock door to Cell
IBM Discloses Cell Based Blade Server Board Prototype
The Cell chip – what it is, and why you should care

Planeta Asterisco

I’ve joined Asterisco a portuguese technology blog planet aggregator. Some (if not most) of the portuguese blogs I read had already joined (Rui Carmo, Pedro Melo, …).

ModSecurity

I came across ModSecurity:

ModSecurity is an open source intrusion detection and prevention engine for web applications (or a web application firewall). Operating as an Apache Web server module or standalone, the purpose of ModSecurity is to increase web application security, protecting web applications from known and unknown attacks.

I read Introducing mod_security and I think I’ll try ModSecurity one of these days. The author also wrote a book – Apache Security. If I was currently runing apache somewhere I’d consider reading it. He also has a blog.

Firefox Extensions

Yesterday I had a problem with my Firefox and I ended up deleting my profile. That meant I had to install all my exxtensions again as well as configure everything again. Here’s the list of extensions I installed:

adblock
bookmarks synchronizer
greasemonkey
ieview
Magpie
PDF Download
ScrapBook
Slogger
Foxylicious
Resize Search Box
Tabbrowser Preferences
BetterSearch
SessionSaver
Single Window

DVD Wars, The Nokia 770 and The Xbox 360

Is Iomega going to finish the Blue-Ray vs HDDVD war by killing both formats with its 800GB DVD?
Now I want the Debian Linux/Gnome based Nokia 770. More info at mobileburn,InfoSyncworld and for developers there is Maemo: “Maemo is a development platform to create applications for Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and other maemo compliant handheld devices in the future“. Shortly after Nokia announces patent support to the Linux Kernel.
Xbox 360 OS is apparently a deravative of the original Xbox OS (makes sense) which in turn is a derivative of Windows 2000. Also on /. there was a link to Inside the Xbox 360, part I: procedural synthesis and dynamic worlds – “The present article covers these features in detail, from the processor’s triple-core design, to its caches, deep pipeline, lack of an instruction window, and expected performance“.