Geek – Page 4 – kill-9.it

Paper interessante: analisi su Microsoft Messenger

Da un post su NANOG, la segnalazione di un interessante paper a nome di Eric Horvitz (Microsoft Research) e Jure Leskovec (Carnegie Mellon University), che analizza statisticamente un mese di conversazioni avvenute in tutto il mondo utilizzando Microsoft Messenger.
Impressionanti i numeri:

30 billion conversations
240 million people
1.3 billion undirected edges among active users
150 gigabytes of compressed text logs (per day)

Vengono analizzati i comportamenti (aggregati) degli utenti, dal punto di vista di sesso, eta`, posizione geografica – tra le altre cose, la sua resistenza alla rimozione di nodi.
Sfatato il mito dei “6 degrees of separation“: pare che in realta` siano sette. :-)

* Rido. *

Hat tip to adellam:

Understanding Art for Geeks

Click on the link above to see more. Believe me. You want to see more. :-)

UPDATE 20080212: me ne sono accorto solo ora, che la galleria da flickr e` sparita. Paul deve aver avuto qualche problema. Peccato. :(

Microsoft rulez, after all (MS08-001)

More than two years ago, I was writing the first No Fills TCP RFC draft.
At that time, I wondered if one of the possible features of this new protocol could be a creative use of the RST flag (see section 4.1.1), which I mostly inteded for those Windows system administrators who had to work with a large number of machines on the same subnet.

In the version that hit the web on April, 2006 I wrote (emphasis added):

More aggressive implementation options are being considered, but some are not backward compatible despite being very useful:

last hop router receiving a NFRST packet SHOULD rewrite the destination address with the broadcast address of the nework of the destination host. This should achieve the effect of terminating ALL current connections over the network with the sender host.

the most extreme semantic of the NFRST flag would be “Reboot”: any networked host (computer, router, …) which receives such a packet MUST schedule an orderly reboot. Without any doubt this would solve many remote administration nightmares.

It is not by chance that we choose local broadcast over a multicast group as the destination of the last hop packet: most of the machines which will benefit the most of this innovative method of remote administration will be running an OS that pioneered the use of broadcast for the most inventive purposes.

But — I have to admit it — MS08-001 came in as a big surprise: Microsoft had thought better, implementing a whole sled of reboot functionalities and leaving us in the dark for two whole years!
Granted, the most exciting features (remote management and reboot) are present — as expected — only in the most recent version of its operating systems (XP, 2003, Vista), but we are used to it, aren’t we?

Please note that those with mixed XP/2003/Vista networks have to choose IGMPv3 management, while Vista-only network administrators can opt for either IGMPv3 or MLDv2 (aka CVE-2007-0069).
Fun does not stop here! Windows 2000 administrators are not left outside alone, there’s the handy RDP management (aka CVE-2007-0066) suitable for the not-so-recent enterprise.

PATCH NOW! :-)

I’m not commenting on the time frame, even if I’d like to, because it’s hard for me to determine how long these have been known but not fixed. I note that that CVE-2007-0059 was the Apple Quicktime bug discovered during the MOAB and reported on January 3, 2007 and that CVE-2007-0075 is an AspBB Remote Password Disclosure which came out on Bugtraq more or less January 4, 2007.
I have no idea if this proves anything at all. I know that CVE numbers get handed out on a first-come first-served basis, and nothing more.

NetBSD 4.0!

Non me ne ero accorto:
http://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-4/NetBSD-4.0.html

Tra le cose piu` interessanti nell’annuncio, secondo me:

un’implementazione di CARP
miglioramento alle W^X policies
Kernel Authorization framework (porting da Apple)
miglioramenti al sottosistema di integrita` del filesystem Veriexec

Se riesco a montarlo e a farci un giro nei prossimi giorni (anche se dubito) provero` ad aggiornarvi.

Sun IPX rising!

Warning: this is actually an old post I had forgotten.
I decided to publish it as a thank you note to radrob, for the precious gift of an NVRAM chip for my smallest baby… :-)
If you’re interested in what an NVRAM/IDPROM chip is, this is the best resource on the ‘net, imho.
The chips came from here.

ok banner SPARCstation IPX, No Keyboard ROM Rev. 2.9, 64 MB memory installed, Serial #16777215. Ethernet address ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff, Host ID: ffffffff.


WARNING: Unable to determine keyboard type

WARNING: TOD Oscillator NOT Running, Kickstart in Progress ... Incorrect configuration checksum
Setting diag-switch? NVRAM parameter to true
ok banner

SPARCstation IPX, No Keyboard

ROM Rev. 2.9, 64 MB memory installed, Serial #0.

Ethernet address 0:0:0:0:0:0, Host ID: 00000000.

ok .idprom

Format/Type: 0 0 Ethernet: 0 0 0 0 0 0 Date: 0 0 0 0

Serial: 0 0 0 Checksum: 1 Reserved: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
ok 8 0 20 ba dd ec c0ffee mkpl [CTRL+D][CTRL+R]

ok .idprom

Format/Type: 1 57 Ethernet: 8 0 20 ba dd ec Date: 0 0 0 0

Serial: c0 ff ee Checksum: 24 Reserved: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

ok banner

SPARCstation IPX, No Keyboard

ROM Rev. 2.9, 64 MB memory installed, Serial #12648430.

Ethernet address 8:0:20:ba:dd:ec, Host ID: 57c0ffee.

ok boot disk1

Boot device: /sbus/esp@0,800000/sd@1,0   File and args:

>> NetBSD/sparc Secondary Boot, Revision 1.14

>> (root@amd, Sun Nov 21 12:38:27 CET 2004)

# uname -a NetBSD ipx 2.0_RC5 NetBSD 2.0_RC5 (GENERIC) #1: Wed Nov 17 01:01:24 CET 2004 root@amd:/root/netbsd2/src/sys/arch/sparc/compile/obj/GENERIC sparc
I know, it’s not a current version (cross compiled on linux or netbsd, I don’t remember), but good enough for this little beast. Whoknows if I can cross compile on OSX, too. Uhmm…

In other news, I upgraded WP to 2.3.1. 70-something days are enough after a major release, I hope.

*UPDATE* 20071206: Changed radrob site (newer, faster, better, updated!), added link to maxim-ic