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Visualization techniques for networking data
This is the HTML version of a paper I’ve written for school. Sorry for the poor formatting, but it was generated (semi-)automatically with Google Docs from an ODT document. You can download a nicer, PDF version of it here. Introduction Humans have a natural ability to correlate patterns from multiple sources to become aware of…
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Who are behind the RaceToZero contest?
The RaceToZero has captured the publics imagination (or shall I say the medias) as the latest member of the AntiVirus is dead movement. As I tried to explain in my previous post, the results of the game are rather predictable (no detection after 5 minutes) unless the organizers are really mean (giving the contestants a…
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Avoiding the dogpile effect
When using caching to speed up webpages (or other request-response oriented protocols), it is very common to tie the update of the cache to a new request, meaning that every request checks if the cache is too old first. If not, it returns the value from the cache. If it is, it tries to recompute…
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Why prevention (rather than cure) is a must for the malware problem?
Lately I have seen a movement towards the idea that you can’t prevent security problems, so you should do your best to detect and eliminate them. While I agree with this in the general sense, it is clear that a very strong tendency in malware evolution nowdays is to make it both as stealth as…
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On IP, the Universe and everything
I’m getting old or something, because I seem to rant more an more. Much of this text is contained in an e-mai sent to the .NET Rocks podcast regarding their OOXML show, but I thought it might be interesting to publish it here to clarify my views on IP, OSS, the universe and everything 🙂…
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Having fun
Via the Hacker Webzine blog (yes, I’m challenging all the security gods by linking to the blog which social engineered people in giving their passwords just for fun – so take care): The Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People: The MIT Gallery of Hacks Also on that page I found the engineers drinking song: Lyrics can…
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My Perl blog – how to turn off warnings
There seems to be a meme going around which encourages blogging about Perl. So here is my contribution: When you write scripts, it is really, really recommended to use the strict and warning pragmas (eventually diagnostics): use strict; use warnings; use diagnostics; #mainly for debugging, to better understand the messages I can’t tell you how…
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The cheapest laptop evar 🙂
On a lighter note: You can’t get laptops cheaper than this. If it was any cheaper, they would have to pay you to take it 🙂 I saw this while browsing the online catalog of an IT shop (lei being the national currency of Romania). A true Daily WTF moment.
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Race to Zero
Disclaimer: I work for a security company. This post (and all others, unless marked explicitly otherwise) represent my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of my current or past employers. As expected, the announced Race to Zero competition has raised quite some stir, similar to the test performed by ConsumerReports. Here are…
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Think Vitamin compromised?
I’m pretty sure I was not hallucinating… Earlier, when I was reading the Developing with Google App Engine, Part I in my RSS reader, I noticed some spammy links at the end of the article (the kind offering free stuff). I visited the original page, and surely, there it was. It all seems to be…