www.jamesogorman.com

Shooting kittens and accepting apologies

A friend in Oxford sent me an updated version of a game I played a long time ago; "Clay Kitten Shooting", never has wounding and torturing pixelised, fluffy kittens been so much fun.  Thank you Fliss! 

I also stumbled across a site called "Sorry Everybody" where the intelligent half of the United States of America is attempting to apologise to the world for their failure to evict Bush from the Whitehouse.  My particular favourite is "The only bush I trust, is my own!".   

Potential IFRAME exploit workaround

Before I begin let me say that I am not to be held in anyway responsible for any actions you may take upon the content herewith.  That said, let me get on with it.  I have been conducting some research into possible workarounds to avoid any script executions that may occur from exploits of the recently discovered IFRAME buffer overflow vulnerability. Waiting for a patch whilst script kiddies craft better exploits just isn't an option. Full stop end of story. Sorry, period and end of story to my American counterparts! I have been working with this exploit. 

I changed the default security settings on an IE6 SP1 client so that the "Internet" zone had Active Scripting disabled, this caused IE6 to crash in a less than graceful way, however, the exploit did not load and a netstat -a proved that the command shell was never opened on port 28876. These findings are in contrast to those found when Active Scripting was set to enabled (the default) where a command shell did open on port 28876. The impact of disabling active scripting takes us back quite a few years in terms of internet browser functionality, but for some of you this may be a much needed last resort whilst the wait for an effective security patch from Microsoft continues.  Yesterday was patch day and there was no mention of a patch for this vulnerability.  We wait. 

My biggest worry is that this exploit and others like it use the NOP slide or No-Operation slide buffer overflow technique, this is easily detected by SNORT's heuristics and other intrusion detection systems but what happens when the buffer overflow implements normal commands (Non-NOP), not only do we have vulnerable systems but we also have very little in the way of detecting a system compromise.  Is anyone else out there scared? 

the 90 days of christmas

is it just me or is christmas starting earlier every year? i wouldn't mind if it was just the festive spirit that was awoken early ... but it isn't, instead we have the commercial onslaught that is the christmas shoppping season. why? marketing departments around the uk say that it is to "supply consumer demand" and is inline with "market factors". personally i think that christmas has lost all it's magic due to this one oblivious act of capitalism, forgive me for being nostalgic, but christmas for me is the dark nights, cold weather, mince pies and gathering of friends and family around a cosy fire at home, pub, etc. the capitalists would have us shopping on christmas day if they could, indeed our local outlet of "next" opens at about 4am on boxing day to throngs of shoppers who are probably still recovering from their huge meal on christmas day. well, i'm boycotting christmas here and going to new zealand instead, there has to be somewhere in the world that doesn't put a price on christmas.

an even more xenophobic bush

bush is now blocking overseas visitors from viewing his website, why? the bbc reports that this is due to security reasons ... personally i think a touch of xenophobia has gone too far! luckily for us we his counterpart has posted a few mirrors; here, here and here! thanks kerry! on a more worrying note, did you know that the florida ballot papers have gone missing ... again!!!? i fear for the future of the world if bush gets into power again.

pitcairn anyone?

after years of accusations and investigations, six of the seven pitcairn men accused of sexual offences have been found guilty at trial in new zealand according to the bbc, unfortunately this leaves the island's future hanging in the balance as the men are crucial to the support of the island through fishing and of course procreation. so what next for pitcairn? how about a reality tv show that finds potential bachelors for a life on the far flung south pacific island? who do you think would be best to fill those six positions and why?

the end of the world

i'm not a commuter, i live three minutes from work, but i think there is a gross misunderstanding when it comes to blaming the commuters for rush hour traffic, there is a far greater evil. it is now officially half term in the schools calendar. now there are quite a few people out there that will notice just how much easier life is when there is a school holiday, they will notice that they can breeze into work half an hour earlier because there is NO traffic on the roads, no mummies in range rovers or 2 tonne mercedes trying to drop their precious singular child off outside the numerous schools whilst parking on double yellow lines and without ever using an indicator. also note the absence of the incessant pushchair rammer - we all know who they are! indeed you will also find yourself home early having not wasted an hour of your day stuck in UNNECESSARY traffic. school kids should be on buses, no ifs no buts, there should be heavy penalties for those who flaunt the rules too. i don't know about the rest of the world, but i would say that here in Cheltenham most children are within walking distance of school, but the act of taking one's child to school is merely a means of conveying social status, showing off the new car and keeping up with the jones'. enough.

f*ck off ebayers

i like to sell things on ebay, call it a hobby, part of this "hobby" involves me going down to the post office and mailing off all the goods, now you would think that the post office would be grateful of such business been as they aren't particularly rolling in the money at the moment, as you can see from their financial figures the post office made an operating loss of £142 million pounds last year, but apparently they are going in the "right direction"! well, just to let all you budding ebayers know from an anonymous sub-postmaster in oxfordshire that you're all "f**king annoying w*nkers" who should apparently get a life and a real job, obviously the prospects of working for royal mail plc are better .... personally i think my chances of making a living from ebay are a lot better than working for a privatised, badly managed, british institution on the verge of financial ruin.

sophos welcomes the porn dialler

sophos have recently removed detection for the coulomb dialler from their virus detection list on the advice given by sophos' legal team. The basis for this decision lies in the fact that the dialler asks the user permission to install itself and is therefore legitimate software, whilst I can understand the argument, i can think of many applications that "ask" for permission before installing themselves, i know what they are and what they do ... and i don't even want them in my internet cache, the real question concerns less tech savvy users; they shouldn't have local admin rights to install such items, but, not all items would require the local admin rights! i wouldn't be surprised if such a dangerous action now opens a precedent for producer's of other products such as gator, xxx toolbars, "handy" internet explorer integrated tools, etc. quis custodiet ipsos custodes; if we can't rely on self regulation in the AV industry we may have to start rolling out products like spybot on a domain level? ironically, norton/symantec and mcafee offer expanded protection against "unwanted applications" whereas sophos, whose market is solely corporate, does not ... can someone explain to me why the home user is better catered for?

smoke free but not smell free

i was in dublin again this weekend, just got back a few hours ago in fact, aoife decided to take me to the infamous club 92 in leopardstown. club 92 is the domain of playboys and equestrian followers alike due to it's location at the leopardstown racecourse, i'm told that this is where the beautiful people amass to ignore each other and act precocious. rumour has it that "92" relates to the percentage of failed attempts at communication with the opposite sex ... I wouldn't know, i went to drink, dance and have a good laugh with my girlfriend and her friends, whom, although beautiful are not at all precocious or ill mannered (thought i should add that!)

the interesting point about dublin's social scene is the smoking ban, this will be the first winter that dublin's smokers are left out in the cold so to speak, from a non-smoker's point of view this should be fantastic, except that until now the smoke has covered a multitude of rather unsavoury smells! whilst i love the fact i can go out and not worry about my health i have to worry about the stench of stale beer, body odour, vomit and food ... i have to say that given the option between the two i would choose smoke! maybe the example set by tram co will be the answer ... a multimillion euro refurbishment with improved ventilation, modern decor, etc. i think club owners are now realising that the public will no longer be palmed off with the usual grotty cattle markets!

stupid o'clock

woke up this morning at 06:30 a.k.a. stupid o'clock, the reason: to turn up at work and check that the multitude of patches released by micro$oft on wednesday were successfully rolled out without the blue screen of death. for a few years now i have been the security junkie; a calm, reserved individual that craves on "safe computing", i'm the one that takes exploits seriously, eats virii for breakfast and scoffs in the face of trojan horses ... in some sick perverted way I actually derive pleasure from what I do.

found out yesterday that one of my entries for the corporate christmas card was chosen for ... well ... the christmas card! after some slight tweaking it was ready. comments?

off to dublin tonight, again, to see my lovely girlfriend, by the time i arrive i will have been awake 14 hours and then i have to go out for a further 6 to 8 hours, i think i'm getting too old for all this all-night socialising!