systemcall dot org

Another fine example about how the open source community can be impressive, even when comparing with the biggest software companies.

Yesterday we had a gig at our annual Music Evening and I needed to edit the videos to upload them on my wife’s website. I go on cinelerra’s website download page and get the Ubuntu 8.04 repository, update the package listing and try to install cinelerra:


sudo apt-get install cinelerra


It should be that easy but unfortunately the repository had an error:


Err http://repository.akirad.net akirad-hardy/main akiradnews 20080417
500 Internal Server Error
Err http://repository.akirad.net akirad-hardy/main libguicast
1:2.1.0-1svn20080530akirad1
500 Internal Server Error
Err http://repository.akirad.net akirad-hardy/main libmpeg3hv
1:2.1.0-1svn20080530akirad1
500 Internal Server Error
Err http://repository.akirad.net akirad-hardy/main libquicktimehv
1:2.1.0-1svn20080530akirad1
500 Internal Server Error


Well, with nothing else to do about it, I’ve followed the instructions on the website saying to email the guy that put the packages in place, which I did. Seriously, I thought it would take a while (days?) until the guy could have time to go home, do whatever he wanted to do at home, check his emails, talk to the ISP, bla bla bla.

To my surprise, after exactly 1 hour and 20 minutes he replied (in English and Italian) that the packages were reloaded, I should be able to get it, which I did, and indeed, worked absolutely fine. I now have my videos edited.

The “guy” was actually Paolo Rampino, which I thank him very much, but also I’d like to acknowledge once more the power of the open source community. I wonder if I had any much more serious problems (security) with a copy of Windows or Office if Microsoft would take 1:20 hours to not only answer, but to fix it!

Thanks again Paolo, you made another user very happy indeed.

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I still code in my spare time and for a while I’ve been gathering some numerical methods I did at university in an easy-to-understand generic C++ package. Despite being easy to understand, I also tried to implement the best method I knew for each problem.

The root finding algorithm is based on Brent’s method which is, in turn, based on the secant method. If everything fails, it throws an exception and you can use the safe bisection method.

The integration is using the Romberg’s method, which is a further extrapolations of Simpson’s method which is already much better than the trapezoid basic method.

For Interpolation I’m using the Natural Cubic Spline but would like to implement other types of splines (like complete, periodical, clamped etc). The interpolation is working, but I couldn’t managed to get the coefficients right yet.

Other codes I have are Monte Carlo, Runge-Kutta and Markov Chain (this one using boost graph library for C++) and will be integrated soon. I’ll let you know when it’s done.

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Last week I did two silly but still quite funny projects: word search on protein sequences and chat bot using markov chains.

Word search

Searching for similar sequences among the known proteins to understand evolutionary paths and function similarities is a powerful algorithm called BLAST. Following the same lines I spent a few minutes to develop a similar (but not quite the same) algorithm to search for all dictionary words on all UniProt sequences.

The algorithm will look into a dictionary (say /usr/share/dict/words) and for every sequence it’ll find the words in it, allowing a few (no more than 2) amino-acids to be between the letters. Than it gives a weight to the match based on the size of the word and the “added length” due to additional amino-acids in between. You can also restrict the number of letters on the word list to avoid too short or long words.

The results for 7 to 9 characters words in English searched only on Swiss-Prot entries are:


STRANGE 1.4
CHARADE 1.75
SLEDGED 1.75
MEALIER 1.75
DEMEANS 2.33333
DETAINS 2.33333


Markov bot

I knew a markov chain could have true wisdom but I never tried to make it actually talk to anyone until a friend told me about MegaHAL (much better than my markov model, of course). I decided to give it a try and got the XMPP bot from the Python examples and plugged in my markov program on all phrases spoken to it.

In the beginning it was awful, of course, it knew nothing. But with time (and hard work from some friends to actually teach him about leisure, programming, physics etc) it could babble a few coherent words once in a while.

The results are complete rubbish, below is a sample of the complete non-sense conversation I had with it now:


rengolin: how are you doing? have you managed to find the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything?
oraculoids: with an amazing company makes the basic points of some operator
rengolin: operator or not, you must come to reality and sense the danger there is in talking like that after such a complex and meaningful question
oraculoids: dead as an interface to follow an animal
rengolin: whatever animal you prefer, I would say but it seems that you are now driving the conversation
oraculoids:
rengolin: aha! I know you didn't have answers to everything!
oraculoids: how is in between and pray
rengolin: I don't pray too much, really, I'm not that kind of a person anyway...
oraculoids: but at the conversation it't fall into them!
rengolin: I would never say that, especially not with you my friend
oraculoids: A design pattern is a practical laywer
rengolin: lawyers have no purpose other than screwing up the poor
oraculoids: hi bot
rengolin: I am not a bot
oraculoids: field of some of life, love them!


Quite stupid, I might say, but still I had a lot of fun doing it and that’s what matters… In spite of that, though, megaHAL is quite an impressive program and BLAST is a very powerful search mechanism.

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Mike Stonebreaker (Ingres/Postgres) seems to be confused as well…

First he said Google’s Map/Reduce was “Missing most of the features that are routinely included in current DBMS”, but earlier he said to ditch RDBMS anyway because “modern use of computers renders many features of mainstream DBMS obsolete”.

So, what’s the catch? Should we still use RDBMS or not? Or should we still develop technologies based on relational databases while Mike develops himself the technology of the new era? Maybe that was the message anyway…

My opinion:

MapReduce is not a step backwards, there are sometimes when indexing is actually slower than brute-force. And I’m not saying that on insert time the indexes have to be updated and so on, I’m saying in the actual search for information, if the index is too complex (or too big) it might take more time to search through the index, compute the location of the data (which might be anywhere in a range of thousands of machines), retrieve the data and later on, sort, or search on the remaining fields.

MapReduce can effectively do everything in one step, while still in the machine and return less values per search (as opposed to primary key searches first) and therefore less data will be sent over the network and less time will be taken.

Of course, MapReduce (as any other brute-force methods) is hungry for resources. You need a very large cluster to make it really effective (1800 machines is enough :)) but that’s a step forward something different from RDBMS. In the distributed world, RDBMS won’t work at all, something have to be done and Google just gave the first step.

Did we wait for warp-speed to land on the moon?! No, we got a flying foil crap and landed on it anyway.

Next steps? Many… we can continue with brute-force and do a MapReduce on the index and use the index to retrieve in an even larger cluster, or use automata to iteratively search and store smaller “views” somewhere else, or do statistical indexes (quantum indexes) and get the best result we can get instead of all results… The possibilities are endless…

Lets wait and see how it goes, but yelling DO IT than later DON’T is just useless…

UPDATE:

This is not a rant against Stonebreaker, I share his ideas about the relational model being far too outdated and the need for something new. What I don’t agree, though, is that MapReduce is a step backwards, maybe not even a step forward, probably sideways.

The whole point is that the relational model is the thesis and there are lots of antithesis, we just didn’t come up with the synthesis yet.

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Long way ago, when I started using Linux, lots of people laughed at me: “What an absurd! You have to compile your own kernel, what do they want with that? They’ll get nowhere!”. Well, things have changed a bit in the last decade and Linux grew up as a very mature, modern and user-friendly operating system as we (not them) all expected.

OS companies didn’t believe at start but with time Linux became a nuisance, than a problem and now it’s real competition. Not only Linux (or rather GNU/Linux) but all free software and all the free licenses like GPL, FreeBSD, CC, etc. Linux is real business, it’s more stable, faster, better designed and change so much faster than any other OS in existence both for security patches and new features. Lots of companies today contribute to free software without charge or restrictions, just because we gave them so much without charge or restrictions (and it turns out as profit too!).

But last year something I wasn’t expecting happened… The biggest OS company for the last 15 years did a move so stupid that I couldn’t believe. Windows Vista was not an operating system, it was a joke, a *very bad joke* indeed. It reminded me the first upgrades of the first Linux distros back in 94, it was a nightmare.

Well, seems like the free software community learnt a lot about deployment, user interfaces, quality assurance, software development strategies. On the other hand, Microsoft seems a bit amateurish when trying to fix the previous mistakes. Every round it gets worse, I wonder where the good programmers they use to have are now…

Well, better for us, Ubuntu seems to be the new OS of choice for many previous Windows users and with recent Microsoft moves it may become more and more often… Luckily they’ll force everyone out of XP (the last minimally decent thing they did) as they did to Win2000 (the only reasonably decent thing they did) and people will migrate to Ubuntu instead of Vista… Let’s see the outcome by next year…

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Welcome to the October 28, 2007 edition of information security carnival. We have frauds, ID thiefs, virus, spywares, privacy invasion and more.

articles

Marc and Angel presents 6 Digitally Traceable Tracks We Unconsciously Leave Behind | Marc and Angel posted at Marc and Angel, saying, “I have compiled a list of 6 digitally traceable tracks we unconsciously leave behind as we trek through our daily routines. I have also included a hypothetical example of how easy it can be to track someone down online by tracing their online affiliations and dabbling with the information that is found.”

Wenchypoo presents The Shocking Ease of Breaching Corporate Security posted at Mental Wastebasket, saying, “Written last year, but the info is (sadly) still relevant.”

Falando pelos Cotovelos presents Airport (In)Security posted at Falando pelos Cotovelos, saying, “Airports are a major concern nowadays.”

Doug Woodall presents Its Halloween! Spooks, Specters and Spyware! posted at The Spyware Biz Blog.

Wenchypoo presents Barking at a Hole in the Fence posted at Mental Wastebasket, saying, “Written last summer, but still relevant today.”

reviews

Renata Vincoletto presents Dangerous Files you Have to Avoid posted at systemcall dot org.

tips

Scott M presents How to Change the Root Password to Get Into a Linux Box posted at System Notes Org, saying, “Get Into a linux box when you don’t have the password. Requires physical access.”

Wenchypoo presents Credit and Identity in Shreds posted at Mental Wastebasket, saying, “A shredder isn’t enough!”

MT presents Safeguard yourself from internet frauds | MT Herald Dot Com posted at MT Herald Dot Com.

Wenchypoo presents No Rest from Identity Thieves–Even After Death posted at Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket, saying, “I experienced this myself when helping my husband clean up his parent’s estate.”

Karl Sultana presents Keeping Children Safe From Online Sexual Victimization posted at NoAdware Blog.

Wenchypoo presents Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket: Choice versus Privacy Invasion posted at Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket, saying, “More to do with consumer information security than anything else.”

tools

Infosec presents Managing your Information Security Projects on line posted at Infosec.

information security carnival, blog carnival.

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Welcome to the August 12, 2007 edition of Information Security Carnival.

It’s amazing how wonderful submissions we have. We have tips, tools, articles, and even cartoons!

Jeremy Hitchcock sent us a great cartoon about Brain Spam… Can you imagine that?

Well, let’s go to our submissions:

articles

Noric Dilanchian presents Dilanchian Lawyers - Checklist of 51 hints for data and IT security posted at Lightbulb, saying, “Based on “the experience and wide reading of the lawyers at this law IT law firm, here is a list of 51 computer security problems and in each case a brief statement on solutions.”

“Amazing article, well-written, with tips for beginners and advanced Infosec Professionals.“

Jeremy Hitchcock presents WTTF: Welcome to the Future - Telepathy by AT&T posted at WTTF: Welcome to the Future, saying, “How hard it’ll be to secure our thoughts in the age of telepathy.”

“Hum… that’ll be my project… secure our brain waves…”

Infosec Group presents InfoSec - How to create a security policy posted at InfoSec.

“General tips to create a Security Policy.”

Falando pelos cotovelos presents Security Breaches posted at Falando pelos Cotovelos.

“Re-think your USB drives, flash drives, MP3 players and even your Digital Cameras’ memory cards.”

reviews

A Geek Family presents How to recover files deleted with Shift Del posted at A Geek Family.

“Yeah… Shift+Del is not the end of the world…”

tips

Slaptijack presents Username / Password Authentication in Cisco IOS posted at Slaptijack.

“Think security isn’t that hard. With a few steps you can improve your router security”.

techsack presents Fight spam while learning Linux posted at TechSack.com.

“Use Linux and improve your spam-filter capabilities”

SmallTownBS presents Yet Another Identity Theft Article posted at Small-town Big-shot, saying, “A highlight of social engineering and other hacking methods that hackers use to steal money and identity; in addition, ways to protect you from these things.”

“Hack your brain is still something for the future… but, right now, some people can stole you identity”.

Ted Reimers presents College Students and Identity Theft posted at CampusGrotto.

“Universities became a target for hackers. How can we protect our students?”

Geek Sisters presents Bluetooth and bluejacking posted at Geek Sisters.

“Nice explanation and video about bluejacking”

Your Hostess presents How to keep your Internet Life Browsing in a secure way posted at > systemcall dot org.

” Just a few tips about browsing.”

That concludes this edition. I want to say thank you for all those great articles, and please, keep your great work!

Submit your blog article to the next edition of information security carnival using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

information security carnival, blog carnival.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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Problems with your Hard Drive? Lost all your pictures in your memory card? There’s still a chance.

Zero Assumption Recovery (or ZAR Recovery) is a tool to recover lost data in a drive unit. The best thing with this tool is you don’t need to be a computer expert to use it. It’s easy to use and all process can be done automatically.

How to use it:

1. Selecting a drive to recover:



2. Selecting a volume to process:



3. Analysing a volume:



4. Choosing files to recover:

Things you can do with Zero Assumption Recovery:

1. Recover FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.
2. Copy a hard drive sector by sector.
3. Or, insert 0’s (zero) in all sectors. (This one is for those that don’t want to recovery anything, if you know what I mean)
4. There are some new features as RAD0 and RAID5 support and experimental support for Linux ext2.

Demo version limitations:

- You can recover just 4 folders
- You can record the information scanned in drive unit, but you can load it again.

Zero Assumption Recovery is a tool really great for professional and amateurs photographers (like me), because it can recover digital pictures from you memory stick.

Zero Assumption Recovery works with several memory card formats (CompactFlah, MemoryStick, SmartMedia, etc), since they can be opened by operating system. Supports several file formats: GIF, JPEG, TIFF, CRW, MOV, WAV.

It has a friendly interface, self-explanatory, step-by-step, to help you with the best solution for your problem.

Sponsored by
Zero Assumption Recovery

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Last week I introduced you Active@ File Recovery as a useful computer forensics tool and file recovery software

Today, we go a bit further in Active@ File Recovery usage.

A few tips when using Active @ File Recovery to recover your lost files:

1. Before install Active@ File Recovery for Windows it’s a good idea create a Recovery point, so, that way, if you don’t like the software or if it doesn’t work properly, you can easily restore your system for the situation before to install Acite@ File Recovery.
- Actually, it’s a good idea set up a Recovery Point for Windows every time you will install any software in your Windows System. It will provide the basis for recovery if and when needed.
- A recovery Point is the basis that allows you undo all changes made in your system and recover all your configurations.
2. Try to use Active@ File Recovery without install, so, there’s no risk to overwrite your files.
3. Install Active@ File Recovery in a different Hard Drive or partition of the affected drive partition to avoid of writing over data that you wish to recover.
4. After install Active@File Recovery, you can open it and navigate just like you do in Windows Explorer.
5. Go to the file or folder you want to recover and choose recover option.



6. When you choose this option it will open a new windows asking where do you want to place the recovery file or folder.



7. If you chose to save at the original place, the system will warn you to save it in another place to avoid overwrite your file or folder. In this case, it will be impossible a future recovering operation.

But remember, not every lost file can be recovered. You have to think about the following possibilities:

We have to assume that the file entry still exists, I mean, it was not overwritten. The more the files have been created on your HD, the less chances that the space for that deleted file has been used for other entries.
We assume that the file entry is more or less safe to point to the proper place where file clusters are located. If the operating system had been damaged file entries right after deletion, the first data cluster becomes invalid and further entry restoration will not be possible.

So, as a general advice, do not write anything in the drive containing your deleted data and do not try to recover your files to the original drive data.

Sponsored by Active@ File Recovery

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When you work with Computer Forensic, the first thing you notice is if the data is compromised. You will face all kind of situation: since a disaster recovery, or a simple damage data recovering in several types of devices: hard drives, floppy disks, USB drives, memory cards.

In this article I’ll talk about a recovery tool for Windows, since Unix users don’t have problems like this frequently, given the Unix systems’ nature.
Active@ File Recovery

You can download it here. Since it’s a demo tool, there are a few limitations such as you just can recover 65kb file size.

Lab

1.Download and install Active@ File Recovery in your computer.

2.Search for deleted files

3.Recover a file (until 65kb)

4.Verify the file integrity.

As you can see, this file recovery software is really easy to use, intuitive and fast. It works with the following file systems: FAT, FAT32 and NTFS.

You can use it to recover IDE, SATA, SATA II and SCSI Hard Drives, floppy disks and also CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Sony MemoryStick, USB Hard Drive and USB Flash Memory.

You will find the following features:
File Recovery - Recovers deleted files and folders from an emptied recycle bin, as a result of bypassing the Recycle Bin (for example when using [Shift]+[Delete]), files that have been lost by formatting, damaged by virus attack, a malicious program, or a power failure.
Partition Recovery - Data recovery after disk partitions loss / format / damage (just with Active@ File Recovery Professional).
Photos Recovery - Recovers photos, pictures deleted from flash media, or lost due to formatting a memory card.
Unbootable System Recovery – Active@ File Recovery Enterprise version installation package contains a CD/DVD ISO image that you can burn to get a bootable CD or DVD with a lightweight version of Windows Vista (c) running in RAM (WinPE 2.0).

It’s a valuable tool for home users, enterprises and professionals: the full licensed software starts at U$29,95 for the Standard version.

Sponsored by Active@ File Recovery

Popularity: 18% [?]

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