taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Security: Hey user auth systems! If you’re going to require me to sign in, and publish my login as a signature to prove that I’m ‘me’, please do me a favour — don’t delete the account if it’s been ‘inactive’, and allow anyone to re-register that name without my knowledge!

I just tried to leave a comment on a Blogger.com weblog, to find that my user account at Blogger had been deleted. Re-creating a new account with the same name wasn’t a problem – the previous account data had been simply deleted outright. (Presumably they don’t do this to people with a Blogger.com weblog — I hope.)

The risks of this are pretty clear; given that I’d already established an identity (at least in comments on certain Blogger weblogs) as ‘justinmason23′, if an attacker were to have re-registered that identity before I did, they could impersonate me.

Tags: account, auth, blogger, com, hey, identity, login, name, security, user, weblog

Politics: So I was listening to that this morning. Did I hear correctly? Did Bush really say that one of the good side-effects of Iraq’s invasion, was that there were now hopefully less attacks inside other countries? sure looks like it:

‘Coalition forces now serving in Iraq are confronting the terrorists and foreign fighters so peaceful nations around the world will never have to face them within our own borders.’

I’m sure the Iraqi civilians will love that. ‘Hey guys, sorry about all the missing limbs, but you’re doing a really good job of being flypaper so we don’t get hurt. Cheers! Have a 15% corporate tax rate!‘

Tags: bush, cheers, coalition, flypaper, hey, invasion, job, morning, politics, tax, world

Conferences: Hey — I’m talking at ToorCon 2004 down in San Diego this weekend! Come along and check it out, if you can.

I’d better hurry up and file my presentation slides pronto ;) The topic is:

Spam Forensics: Reverse-Engineering Spammer Tactics

In this talk, I’ll discuss how the SpamAssassin project has identified reliable signatures indicating that a message is spam, by reverse-engineering spammer tactics from the spam mails themselves. I’ll also discuss several specific features that we have identified, how we found them, and why the spammers add them.

Tags: conferences, forensics, hey, presentation, pronto, reverse, spam, spammer, toorcon, topic, weekend

GNU: Hey, Dublin-based people! Richard Stallman will be giving a talk titled ‘The Dangers of Software Patents’ in Dublin on May 24, at 19:30. It’ll be in the TCD Hamilton building, right beside Pearse St. DART station. I’ve never seen him speak, but I hear it’s definitely worth attending, and his message needs to get out there, further into the Irish software industry and political circles.

Also on patents: good news via groklaw.net — Germany has stated they plan to vote against the Irish software patent legalisation plan, and some French ISVs are asking Chirac to do likewise.

Tags: building, dublin-based, gnu, hey, may, patents, pearse, right, software, talk, tcd

Politics: Hey, Sarge, Why Are They Shooting At Us with American Guns? (Three-Toed Sloth).

An interesting article, with one central thesis that had never occurred to me before; why should exports of guns, automatic weapons, and landmines be as free and easy as they are now?

In recent weeks, small arms have brought down several U.S. helicopters in Iraq, killing dozens of soldiers. Given the historically unprecedented military strength of the American armed forces, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be flooding the world with weapons that could someday be used in guerilla warfare — arguably the only kind of war that an enemy can successfully wage against the U.S. military.

Sanchez cited Afghanistan as a perfect example of this phenomenon. ‘No sale of weapons is ever completely safe,’ he said, ‘as yesterday’s allies become today’s terrorists.’

Environment: excerpts from Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (via NTK). Eek! Check this out…

Tags: american, article, hey, lot, politics, shooting, sloth, strength, thesis, three, toed

Music: Delta Force (The Observer) — you couldn’t make this up:

‘I ask T-Model if I can hear him play. ‘Let’s go,’ he says and we get into his big blue 1979 Lincoln Continental and drive across the railroad tracks to a corner house in a part of Water Valley I have never seen before. An old man with one eye and no teeth is in a wheelchair on a rotting front porch, trying to attach a prosthetic leg to his stump.

‘Hey Pete!’ yells T-Model. ‘Y’all got any elec-quickery up in there? We fixin’ to play a little music.’ ‘Hey bluesman, you come on. We got electric,’ says Pete and then his leg falls off with a clatter. ‘I ain’t never gonna get used to this damn fool leg.’

Tags: continental, corner, delta, drive, force, hey, leg, music, observer, odel, railroad