This picture was done by Antony Zboralski (for his talk in HackInTheBox 2006.

The people at HITBSec2006 were kind enough to provide Live webcast ;)

I heard the second day's keynote and some talks which interested me in the 2 day conference.

VML Exploit from milw0rm receives a lot of attention as vendor patch hasn't come up yet

The unofficial patch from ZERT is the temporary solution, and I think that team consists of the most elite and respected researchers in security industry.

That's all I got in stock now, actually I have been staying away from my box for a while now ... Since I thought life has more to give / take except this machine ;)

Update: Official patch released out of the microsoft patch cycle, available at update website.

Cheers

Pshisssssss ... the hell out !
Long time , no blog ... bah, I have been lazy, tht's one reason
Second reason is I haven't done much except reporting and getting keen on phishing.
Here is the report from APWG (Anti-Phishing Working group) for June06.

Oh, we can't forget Patch Tuesday's advance bulletin
Here is an interesting thread a new set of API's for Java
That's it for now

/quit :)

Hierarchy of Piracy

The above diagram shows how software is pirated schematically ...


Cheers :)

Things I can think of now ...
Microsoft Bulletin (came out 4 days before ... already ppl will be diff'ing patches)
Post on browser bugs from hdm
Then the Anti-Malware Team at Microsoft releasing a whitepaper
Picture of the Anti-Malware Team

Ahh... I almost forgot Italy's World Cup victory over France and about the
"disgusting" words spoken by Materazzi. Zidane's head butt had a lot of press
attention. According to French Coach Raymond Domenech "To me
Materazzi is the man.... He not only uttered those words and sent
our best player packing, but also scored an extra goal and helped
Italy win the world cup"

Ye, we can understand why he said he scored the "extra-goal".
At the near end of the match in the second period of extra-time the french
players were really pushing it hard and almost scored a goal ...
suddenly zidane's head butt and the rest is history ... it went to
penalties and the italians won on penalties. For me this world cup was
less convincing than the 2002 world cup for the sheer fact of the dives
(all hail van bommel)/unfair play (do u remember a banner called "My play is fair play ??")
/inconsistent referees(Portugal v Holland) and ofcourse the materazzi-zidane issue.

I bought a new laptop with very nice specs. That's some good news :)

/quit for now

Iam NOT the only one who cries over spilt milk.... ;'-(

I have got over what has been troubling me for almost a month or two.... I got over the fact that Iam not the only one who looks back at a good friend who is no more mine and I deserved it for sure.

Okay what's new in the scene ... Let's see ...

First off we've got the FBI raiding underground servers
Next we've got the usual punkz at school doing their grades away !
Microsoft are releasing what seems to be like "12 ?!" patches

I guess the folks at nCircle wouldn't be sad this time ;-))
Just looking ahead to a busy patch tuesday for him and his team ... so...so day for the sys-admins as well

/quit

Antivirus vendor Sophos has cracked the password for the Ransomware Archivieus.

Read the full story at Vnunet

The Da Vinci code "mobile-virus" ? Still unsure of what's going on because I haven't seen anyone in Chennai report anything or maybe they do...If someone is infected, consider sending me a sample because I'd like to have it :-))

Courtesy: MiDDAY magazine.

"Hardcore" Body building is what Iam going to be concentrating for a change side-tracking my security saga which has been going on for 5 yrs.

I want a break and Iam finally working out and eating like a beast ...to be precise
Iam trying to become a HUNK :-))

6 meals a day and 3 protein shakes ... Am I crazy ?? No ... Iam serious abt building myself like a beast.

Iam planning to gain say around 10 kilos in 3 months, ofcourse all this can't be done without a good protein intake. Iam using Creatine Monohydrate, and another supplement with L-Glutamine.

Oh, I almost forgot about WHEY ... hehe, I use that too... Hope I'd not die of renal failiure...lol

Cheers :)

http://blog.ncircle.com/archives/2006/05/certifications.htm

nCircle team's blog had this post and an e-week news-brief based on which this was written and it's makes for a good read if you're having ur tea in hand like me at midnight... lol

Cheers :-)

TV cards people ... It's time for new action as I have gone chasing the card model from Nagra systems for TV.

The card model is ST19XL18... I have figured out a new way of dumping the eprom. The card's memory is having several roms. (3 ROMs and 1 EEPROM) The whole thing is about DSS hacking. Sadly there's no DSS in Chennai, only cable TV

I got lucky when I met a 24 yr old from Portugal who asked me for help and it's really cool to know that weak crypto algos like DES are still used in TV cards. The whole aim to do all this to see more/all channels for FREE

We have finally made it ... he was happy and so am I... I learned something new and new hardware to play with.
The best part was all this was done remotely with me just supervising about the hardware/cables/connectors and the binaries were sent to me by email. He co-operated with me a lot and Iam proud that we did all this within 1 week. Hehe ;-))

Given below is a small working of our old 64-bit algo.
>> A short write up on DES by the Matthew Fischer <<
Courtesy: Zone-H.org

Cheers

Update: If anybody wants the ST-7 opcodes email me

Rediff website has introduced a service/page for searching the approximate air fare for cities inside India only. The service is still beta and it's named Faresearch.

You can check out >> the service here <<

I found this while checking my mails in my almost extinct rediff a/c :))

Cheers

Car engines are amazing and they can be more fun sometimes, but paining as well.

To know their details can be fun, but to draw maps of their connections can really be a pain in the ... well , it's happening now and I accidentally sleep these days just too much unusually. So time is still one step ahead of me.

Car and computers are inter-related and I knew how only from ... some kind ppl who told me the things written below :-)

As technology advanced, so did the electronics that go into cars. The ECU in a modern automobile, together with advanced engine technology, makes it possible to control many aspects of the engine's operation, such as spark timing and fuel injection. The ECU may also control valve timing, boost control (in turbocharged engines), ABS, the automatic transmission, and the electronic stability control system. All western cars like Nissan/Volvo/BMW/Skoda/Renault that have been manufactured after 1996 have ECU in them. The first ECU was seen in early 1970 as per Wikipedia. ECU means Electronic control unit or sometimes, called Engine control unit.

My Embedded RE project has something do with the ECU only :-))

Twenty dont's for ASP developers
The article is precise and exactly to the point , making it more easier to read and understand.
It's a must read for all developers who use ASP.

Courtesy of Security Focus

Regards

Okay, it's been almost a week or more since I blogged.

Iam now in kolkata and Iam here for a kewl project.I like the city, I have been here for 3 days and to be very frank I like this place ;)

I have mapped several ideas for working on the project and I have temporarily stopped analyzing malware because this project is really sophisticated than the former. It's an embedded RE project.

I'll update what Iam doing periodically ... if I have time.

Regards

MS Malicious code removal tool update for march includes W32/Atak, W32/Zlob and W32/Torvil

Get it here
(note: this tool is not a continual defense product like anti-virus or firewall product,it can be run on-demand)

Regards

The VM Rootkits : Next big threat to security ??

MS Research team has come up with a rootkit which can defeat virtual machine technologies like vmware/ms-virtual pc. They seem to have tested the PoC code on a linux/vmware and a windows/ms-virtual pc. Get the full story here

Regards

Is Google the next Big Brother ??

The above mentioned article makes for an interesting read and it spits out the facts of why/how Google could be potentially dangerous in the future not only for Microsoft but also to the common internet user like me or you.

The invasion of email privacy is one key point to be noted by all Gmail fans out there.

I have no comments regarding this Gmail issue because I use Yahoo mail.

Regards

Regarding the OS X 86 Maxxuss has successfully ported the system long time back and is now producing patches in a race with Apple, I spotted that the issue of dual booting OS X / Win XP will soon be accomplished.
More info about this can be had from this website

Meanwhile we must not forget that still some computers in the world are infected with Nyxem.e which will activate its payload on the 3rd of every month. I heard from some sources near me indicating a meagre rate of infection still existing here.

/quit

An Auditor from Deloitte & Touche,USA has lost an unencrypted CD beleived to be containing important information of current and former McAfee Employees. Around 9000 employees' social security numbers, information of stock holdings and other important info has been lost.

A Deloitte representative confirmed this incident had taken place on Dec.15 and McAfee were informed on Jan.11 almost a month after the incident had occured.

Read the full story here

Feels good to have gone bug-hunting after a long time. I found a couple of buffer overflows in a prominent software in just a matter of 2 hrs !!. The POC Code will not be released. I have contacted the vendor and prefer not to elaborate on the details of the same as malware authors are waiting to prey in such situations ;-))

Life seems to be fast these days and time alwayz is one-step ahead of me ... I hope to change this situation soon.

Regards