![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Merry Christmas!
May God bless you in this season. I know that not everyone believes in God. I pray that God reveals Himself to those that don't.
For you all, I pray that Jesus comes into your life in a meaningful way this year. That you may understand for the first time, or understand more deeply, the meaning of Christmas, the birth of God's one and only Son.
It was an incredible year for me. I married a true blessing, the most wonderful woman in my life, Patty. We were married on Valentine's day of this year. We spent our honeymoon in Martha's Vineyard (an island off the coast of Massachusetts). I am blessed each day that I get to spend with my wife. God is working in our lives, drawing us closer to Him and to each other. We have been through so much together. There were other weddings that we went to this year and more to come. We have been attending a weekly Monday night Bible study (with a recently added Facebook group). Through these experiences and through our daily lives we are learning so much. We have been strengthened in our never-ending pursuit of balancing spirit, mind, and body.
We took and were in a lot of pictures this year:
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Wed
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Hon
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Pos
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Fis
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Can
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Bub
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Ogd
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Fis
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Phi
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Dea
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deshantm/se
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deshantm/se
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deshantm/se
More still to come, Picasaweb is running low on space and Flickr has an monthly upload limit that we somehow always seem to hit :)
I even wrote a few blogs:
On the wedding
On looking back at high school after 10 years
On changing hearts vs. changing minds
On being nice
On Google Chrome OS
And also on other things and saved lots of links on my blog.
I am also trying to write more, including on my dissertation, and in a prayer journal. If you have any prayer requests, let me know.
Have a wonderful Christmas season and a Happy New Year!
With lots of love,
Todd
So, why is this all so exciting? Lots of reasons.
Google is pushing open source and open standards, allowing more people to get involved and allowing other projects (such as browsers, messaging programs, and HTML5 applications) to be compatible. Google is also pushing cutting-edge web technologies to the mainstream. They are innovating on what computers can and should do today. Operating systems environments were originally developed when the Internet was not as pervasive as it is today. The usage model of most people has changed dramatically. Current browser and OS models are out-dated and lead to slower, less secure, and less user-friendly environments than are possible given the technology that is available.
Another really big reason this is exciting is that Google has really great brand recognition and has a legitimate chance of taking significant market share from Microsoft in the netbook space. Netbooks are just the start. Actually, smartphones (cell phones that have more advanced/rich functionality such as Internet access - Email, Facebook, Twitter etc.) were the actually start. Google released an open source mobile platform called Android (also based on Linux), which is running on various smartphones (for examples see: http://www.androphones.com/). Google taking market share is really exciting because they push open source and open standards. Having Linux-based devices available is a good thing. Sean Dague explains this general concept well in his Google Chrome OS post.
One reason for me, more personally, to be excited is being able to use Chromium OS as a very good browser virtual machine appliance. My research involves creating a more secure desktop experience for average users. It makes use of virtual machine technology (the ability to run more than one operating system simultaneously on the same computer). Chromium OS is just one great example of something that could run on our system in a locked down environment. The great thing about Chromium OS is that it is designed from the ground up to be fast and secure. They take a lot of security into account by default. We would just need to translate their rules to our system.
I've read up on Chromium OS quite a bit (the design documents etc.) and plan to use any of my (currently very limited) spare time to try to contribute to that project. It has some interesting parallels to my research.
If you have questions or comments about Chromium OS, feel free to bring them up here. I may likely need to refer you too the Chromium OS discussion group, but adding discussion specifically related to virtualization as comments to this post is greatly appreciated. For some of my thoughts see this discussion thread on a topic related to virtualization:
Consider the statement "We live in interesting times". Is that true? But was that also true 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 100 years ago? 1000 years ago? you get the point. Do we really face harder challenges today than they faced 100 years ago? The challenges are different, but there are also so many commonalities. Let's consider first some of those commonalities that I think are too often ignored. We are so quick to notice the differences (in technology, etc.), but I think we don't put enough thought into the things that stay the same. First, and one of the most important things that are very common throughout history is people. People haven't really changed all that much. There has always been people that have tried to be helpful and people that have tried to hurt. Human nature is there, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and so it has been with the people that have gone before us. People need to interact with others; that hasn't changed. The types of interactions may change, but people still need to communicate with others in one way or another (If only simply to get food or other goods at the store).
We can make a difference in the world. Individually we make choices everyday that affect others, in positive or negative ways. If you keep an eye out, you will notice so many friendly people in the world. People that help others, that are polite to one another, that hold doors or simply caution others of possible dangers. Even if you don't keep an eye out, you will probably see people that don't seem so friendly, those that are angry with things, frustrated, in a rush, busy, and just not happy with the situation that they are in. They may just be having a bad day and are not reacting well to it. They may in general feel bad about there circumstances. You know what I mean. We are all like these people from time to time. Hopefully not all the time though. Both of these types of people affect the world.
Our surroundings change, technology advances, but people are not that much different than people thousands of years ago. We still all have a choice each day to positively or negatively affect those that we come in contact with. Both or contagious. Contagious like the cold or the flu :) We can pass friendliness to others and they may not catch it, but a lot of people will. And that alone can make the world a better place to live in.
These are my thoughts, but I draw inspiration from others that I come in contact with, things I read, and simply by living. I don't remember everything or everyone, but that doesn't mean that those things or person's didn't have an effect on me. Some things that come to mind related to this specific topic. Nathaniel LaGarry, who goes to my church, once gave a nice speech on society and specifically mentioned the concept of how we think we live in the hardest times, etc. and how that probably isn't necessarily true. I have read the blog of Bruce Schneier, a respected security professional, and I really think he makes some good points on people's perception of terrorism. For a good example of his opinions take a look at this article titled Beyond Security Theater. The basic idea is that terrorism has been very much made into movie plots and the actually reality of terrorism is much harder to accomplish than is perceived. And that simply taking away freedoms and acting different is not helpful compared to using old fashion investigation, emergency response, etc. My explanation is a very oversimplified, but hopefully enough to get you to want to read more. Finally, another story from the Bible comes to mind. The story of the first people born. God created Adam and Eve, but they had kids. Their first kid was Cain and there second kid was Able. Cain killed Able. The first man born was a murderer. Adam and Eve probably tried to be the best parents they could be. They (literally) talked to God. Cain and Able talked to God too. Able made an offering that was pleasing to God, but Cain's offering was not pleasing to God. Cain got upset and although he talked with Able, he ended up killing him. I think the reason that I am reminded of this story is that people are just people, doing the best they can with what they have. We all make mistakes and get angry with others. How we react to things really matters. Obviously we can see that Cain reacted very badly, but we can affect others just as much, both negatively and positively, simply with our words and our actions. I had a math teacher in high school that said "10% of life is what happens to you and 90% is how you react". There is a lot of truth in that. There's a song by John Lennon that has the words "Life is what happens to you when are busy making other plans".
Make the most of life. When life gives you lemons make lemonade. Being nice is contagious :)
Quite some time ago I came up with another interesting personal analogy. Free software has some interesting analogies to Christianity. I wondered if other people had had the same thought, so I searched on Google and one of the things I found was a site called Linux for Christians with a motto "Free as in salvation" referencing the bible verse Ephesians 2:8-9, which says "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." I thought it was really neat that someone had seen the same the analogy that I had. Just recently I had a conversation with Pat about technology and Christianity and I promised to write up an blog post on this topic in hopes of being included on his new website. We both agree that there is a lot of possibilities when combining technology and Christianity. For instance, we have been discussing the concept of cloud Christianity, which could be understood simply as using the cloud to spread Christianity.
In conclusion, it is fun to apply different parts of your life together in order to find interesting analogies and you never know what you will come up with. You may also be surprised that others have had the same thought. In Ecclesiastes 1:9, it says "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." I think it is important not to take such statements out of context however. The author of Ecclesiastes is king Solomon (I wrote about this king before), who was given much wisdom from God and in this book he is trying to share some of those ideas. I don't think it should be read that you can't think of new ideas, but more in the sense that God already knows everything and we can't think up something new that he doesn't already know about. New to us, sure. That is my understanding anyway. Feel free to give your thoughts on it.
Let's consider a specific example. Should "In God We Trust" be printed on all of our money? Does that really matter that much? If individually we trust in God shouldn't that simply show itself in our actions? Conversely, if we don't trust in God that could also show. Does it send a false message to both the world and also to (potential/hypothetical) future generations that might dig up the remains of our civilization and find it on our money? I think it is much more important to live a God-trusting life than to try to force others to even when they choose not to. Arguing close-mindedly against ever removing the phrase from our money probably hurts theism and Christianity more that it helps. Stopping to understand, stopping to think critically, and stopping to be open-minded is bad practice.
The concept of changing hearts doesn't simply have to apply to politics or religion or the like. Changing hearts can also apply to our lives in a general sense, regardless of our goals, mission, vision, or causes. If we simply argue based on ideals and don't actually live up to them or have a character that supports the types of things we support, then we won't be likely to change hearts or minds. People need to see something different before they can ever think about changing their mind on something. Even if they never change their mind on something, they may be able to have a change of heart toward specific situations. Persistence is one key to success. Let's take an example from the Bible. In Luke 18, verses 1 through 8, we find the parable of persistent widow. It reads:
"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' " And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
So, even though the judge didn't fear God or care about men, he appeased the women so that she would stop bothering him. Being persistence in our love or actions can make a much bigger impact than simply stating a case for something (and then not even bothering to live it out).
"Cybersecurity is one of our most urgent priorities," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
1. Polluted ads
2. SQL injection attacks
3. User-provided content
4. Stolen site credentials
5. Compromised hosting service
6. Local malware
7. Hacker-engineered fakes
Free online, creative commons book on git
Good introduction to git
While searching the Web for the latest celebrity news and photos may be your favorite Internet pastime, it can also potentially lead to some unintended pain.
Use Cases
* Guest - Host clipboard copy/paste operations
o By a VMM or via an internal API within qemu
* libguestfs (offline usage)
o For poking inside a guest to fetch the list of installed apps, etc.
* Online usage
o Locking desktop session when vnc session is closed
* Cluster I/O Fencing aka STONITH
o Current models require networking between guest/host
+ fence_virsh, xen0 -> ssh to defined host and to perform fencing; no migration tracking; requires ssh key distribution to work.
+ fence_xvm -> tracks migrations, but requires multicast between guest/host; distributed key recommended but not required
o Using VMChannel-Serial, the requirement of guest-host can be avoided
o Key distribution of any sort can be avoided, making this easier to configure than existing solutions
Application virtualization is at the heart of Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). It decouples applications from the operating system and enables them to run as network services. Application virtualization can be layered on top of other virtualization technologies—network, storage, machine—to create a fully virtual IT environment where computing resources can be dynamically allocated in real-time based on real-time needs. App-V's patented application virtualization, dynamic streaming delivery, and centralized management technologies make everything from deployments and upgrades to migrations and business continuity initiatives easier and faster with better agility
From Metasploit blog (3 years ago): Considering how many browser bugs are turning up, maybe its time we develop a consistent, reusable API for exploiting browsers. So many exploits are using Skylined's heap spraying technique, we may as well add animated progress bars, DHTML layers, and trance background music to the Metasploit Framework modules :-)
heap spraying is a technique used in exploits to facilitate arbitrary code execution. The term is also used to describe the part of the source code of an exploit that implements this technique. In general, code that sprays the heap attempts to put a certain sequence of bytes at a predetermined location in the memory of a target process by having it allocate (large) blocks on the process' heap and fill the bytes in these blocks with the right values. They commonly take advantage from the fact that these heap blocks will roughly be in the same location every time the heap spray is run.
A driver domain is unprivileged Xen domain that has been given responsibility for a particular piece of hardware. It runs a minimal kernel with only that hardware driver and the backend driver for that device class. Thus, if the hardware driver fails, the other domains (including Dom0) will survive and, when the driver domain is restarted, will be able to use the hardware again.
Real-time keyloggers were first discovered in the wild last year, but the court filing and the Times article should bring new attention to the threat. The technique menaces the 2-factor authentication that some banks have instituted
Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are harnessing more than a million Linux kernels as virtual machines as part of an effort to aid researchers to better analyze botnet behavior.
Twitter was inaccessible for several hours on Thursday morning, followed by a period of slowness and sporadic time-outs (and more outright downtime). The company is blaming an "ongoing" denial-of-service attack but has not said anything further. Facebook has also confirmed that it was targeted by a DoS attack that rendered some of its features slow or non-functional.
More than 9 out of every 10 Windows users are vulnerable to the Flash zero-day vulnerability that Adobe won't patch until Thursday, a Danish security company said today.
When Adobe released Acrobat 9 last year, the company introduced support for embedding Flash media in PDF files. This feature is now being used by attackers who are exploiting a new vulnerability in Adobe's Flash media plugin. The vulnerability allows remote code execution, making it a potential vector for malware deployment.
...
As a temporary measure to eliminate the security risk, Adobe recommends disabling Flash support in Acrobat Reader by renaming or deleting the "authplay.dll" file. Doing so will cause Acrobat Reader to abort when it attempts to reads a Flash-enabled PDF.
...
Wouldn't it be nicer if it was running in a sandbox instead (Virtual Machine Appliance, for example)
"...multi-process browsing will be coming to Firefox. The project is called Electrolysis, and the developers "have already assembled a prototype that renders a page in a separate process from the interface shell in which it is displayed." Mozilla's Benjamin Smedberg says they're currently "[sprinting] as fast as possible to get basic code working, running simple testcase plugins and content tabs in a separate process," after which they'll fix everything that breaks in the process. Further details of their plan are available on the Mozilla wiki, and a summary is up at TechFragments."
"Spam volumes were at a peak in November before the McColo ISP was shut down, prompting an estimated 70 percent drop in spam volumes practically overnight. Within about four months, the spam spigot was flowing as heavy as before as spammers found new hosters for their operations..."
"...Postini found that one attack alone, on June 18, unleashed 50 percent of a typical day's spam volume in just two hours. The attack featured an e-mail that looked like a legitimate newsletter from CNN but which had malicious links and images in it"
"Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures."
A lot of truth in this article, especially for new users. What do you think?
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/We
 |
| Wedding Album |
I commented on most of the photos.
For my earlier reaction to the wedding see:
http://deshantm.livejournal.com/36750.h
and in case you missed them, the honeymoon pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/deshantm/Ho
 |
| Honeymoon |
“Why do strong passwords matter?” “Who cares about my data? I don’t have anything worth stealing.” These are common arguments raised by users when presented with the requirement of using strong passwords. The strongest counter-example to these arguments came this week in the form of a compromised user account. Let’s travel back in time…
A nice article from Google Chrome developers on browser security.
"There is no silver bullet for providing a perfectly secure browser, but there are several techniques that browser developers can use to help protect users. Each of these techniques has its own set of challenges.
In particular, browsers should minimize the danger that users face using three techniques:
Reduce attack severity by applying the principle of least privilege in the browser architecture. This technique limits the damage caused when an attacker exploits a vulnerability.
Reduce the window of vulnerability by ensuring updates are developed and deployed as quickly as possible. This technique minimizes the number of vulnerable browsers an attacker can target.
Reduce how often users are exposed to attacks by filtering out known malicious content. This technique protects users during vulnerable time windows.."
"is based on a core chassis which can accommodate many modular types of exterior designs. Going further with the modularity concept, it has daisy-chained organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) under its surface that allow the user to configure the look of everything from headlamps to brake lights to the car's interior. Although EDAG is approaching other companies to help with the design, it's a stretch to call this car open source, but it does leverage open source concepts."
"The team decided to release the car's designs under an open source license in order to speed up the time it takes to develop the vehicle while also driving down the cost of its components. There's an altruistic value to the idea as well:
Human society is facing the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change, and transport represents a significant proportion of global emissions.We urgently need more fuel efficient vehicles, and by sharing our ideas and our designs we hope to encourage others to adopt this novel technology. "
A really good explanation of the Conficker worm's evolution
They call it the worst they have seen, but we have been hearing about these types of things for a long time.
A good defense: don't use the most popular systems
