The flash interepreter is loaded as a dynamic library by the browser. Ergo , if it has control of the flash interpreter memory space it has control of the whole process memory space which includes the browser. On unix anyway, can't speak for windows.
Well that rather depends on how different CPUs and platforms handle deferencing of invalid values doesn't it not to mention any platform specific code that flash itself may contain underneath the exploitable code.
"Flash builds, the addressing inside them is compatible. The exploit works in both places."
So it can mess around with the browser. Unless it can successfully exploit system specific API calls as opposed to browser APIs (you know , stuff like fork(), rmdir() etc etc) then its only ever going to be platform specific. And I think we can guess which one that'll be. I don't think I'll be updating adobe on my linux box just yet.
Err , I'm sorry but how exactly do they expect x86 code to run on Sparc, or PA-RISC or PPC? etc etc. Even on the same architecture but a different OS all the interrupt vectors and API address calls will be different. Sounds like they're got a bit over excited to me. Or maybe I've missed some complex details of the exploit.
You could say the same about the hungaro-finnish language group. Occams razor says that the basques are just the descendents of an earlier group of peoples out of africa or the near east or survivors or a much larger group that were killed off or interbred with a later group so killing off the prot-basque language in the rest of europe (in the same way the invading anglo saxons caused the demise of the celtic languages in england and pushed them into corners such as wales).
"programmers typically seem to be socially-stunted and have personality and mental issues"
Who modded this crap insighful? Where did you get that , Cliched Quotes R Us? I know plenty of coders who are perfectly normal people , in fact I don't think I've ever met one who was the alleged stereotype aspergers and I only ever met one who I'd have called socially stunted.
"In comparison, most black people and women I've come across, tend to be more outgoing and sociable."
Women tend to be more outgoing than men. Black people ? It varies just as much as whites or asians. Are you just making this up as you go along? sounds to me like you've never mixed with anyone and are just going by the lyrics on your Craig David albums,
"because there are a lot more interesting things to do in this world if you don't mind interacting with regular people."
Yeah , like not posting trite made up crap you pulled out of your arse on slashdot.
According to the article the patent has no hope of standing up in court anyway so why not just use the flyby to rescue the satellite? Wouldn't surprise me if SES just want the insurance money as its a lot easier than messing around trying to re-orbit this thing but Boeings "patent" provides a convenient excuse.
>The "but it wasn't shot in HD" argument is one of my favorites.
Depends on the original source. If it was 70mm film then it'll be better than HD quality. If it was a standard broadcast videotape then it will somewhat worse.
I mean really , who gives a rats arse about document formatting standards. Who the hell cares about XML? Not real geeks thats for sure. Must be yet another slow news day...
Anyway , does it really matter if OOXML is voted for by ISO? Its just XML for heavens sake, what does it matter? Its not like MS will have copyright on it , they WANT other companies and software to use it. Not everything that comes out of Redmond smells bad.
Maintenance programming is a tedious bore where you learn little about the thinking behind code. IMO the best way to learn programming is to write your own stuff from scratch maybe with a few CS/algo books at hand. That way you get a far better feel for coding than you ever will diving into class foobar() at line 20,000 in some finance app or whatever.
"Yeah, let's start ruining young hackers' (and I mean that in the positive sense) lives for youthful indiscretion, that's the way to go."
Aww diddums. Perhaps we shouldn't punish kids when they chuck bricks through someones window either since that'll be just youthful exuberance right?
"it's just that the 'crime' of rooting some insecure corporate box and not doing anything particularly destructive or criminal (credit card fraud etc.) with it is just not what I'd consider a big deal"
Rooting around someones private email is no different to rooting around through letters at home. Its not as bad as writing a virus or trojan but it still deserves more than a slap on the wrist.
As well as the software side there needs to be harsher punishment for the borderline aspergers, socially inept idiots who write viruses, trojans and the like. I'm tired of hearing the excuse the they were just "exploring" and "didn't understand the consequences of their actions". Oh gimme a friggin break. You might as well say a burglar was just exploring my house because he had the skills to open it from the outside! Sure , a lot of cybercrime is criminal gangs , but they don't write their own software do they?. Its about time we stopped pussyfooting around with these criminal geeks and started treating them like the felons they are - 10 years inside minium with maybe an extra year for every $10,000 of damage they cause.
"One of the reasons more seasoned programmers are not particularly interested is that in most cases someone else has already doen the hard work."
Who is this mythical "someone else"? I'd like to meet them. Incidentaly since when have database triggers been parallel systems? The LAST thing you want in a database is these sort of things running parallel, thats why you have locking!
"It is very rare that you actually need to do parallel programing yourself."
Err , if you count threads as parallel programming then I do it in virtually every project I work on. You talk about POSIX threads as if there some scary API that only people who require real power use. On the contrary , they're an API that probably almost every C/C++ unix coder uses all the time these days.
Econet was never intended as some sort of secure system that would connect to the world at large. It was designed to connect a few isolated computers in a room. So what if it had security flaws? Wow , you could hack into a machine 6 foot away, BFD. Its not like the BBC had a 3DES login system to get past, it was an 8 bit micro with for the most part cassette based and ROM storage. Not exactly ideal an l337 hacker enviroment to embed viruses and mess up data.
... does quantum communications (not quantum computers) actually serve any potentially useful purpose? Or is it just another way for researchers to get a nice fat grant and a for a load of network equipment companies a decade down the line flog yet more replacement network equipment at a juicy markup? This isn't a troll , I'm just a bit suspicious about all the hype surrouding QC when so far we've yet to see a single usable example of anything from this research anywhere in the world.
Also if anyone spins me the line about it being unbreakable I'll take it with a large pinch of salt. I have nothing to base my cynicism on other than time and time again supposedly secure and unbreakable systems have been broken and I don't see why QC should be any different. Harder yes , but different? Hmm...
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't look that brilliant to me. A clever hack but not genius. As for security people being overwhelmed? Oh please.
(And yes I did RTFA and the relevant bits of the paper.)
"Because it can probably be made to work cross-version, cross-platform and cross-architecture?"
The bug might be cross platform but the exploit will require platform specific code.
"Because everyone has Flash installed?"
Speak for yourself pal.
"Because the way he does it is nothing short of godlike?"
You're kidding me? Its clever but its no cleverer than a dozen other exploits. Read around a bit more.
"This is HUGE."
Bollocks.
The flash interepreter is loaded as a dynamic library by the browser. Ergo , if it has control of the flash interpreter memory space it has control of the whole process memory space which includes the browser. On unix anyway, can't speak for windows.
Many explits in cross platform systems can run anything if you shove the correct binary down the pipe to the exploit. Why is this news?
Well that rather depends on how different CPUs and platforms handle deferencing of invalid values doesn't it not to mention any platform specific code that flash itself may contain underneath the exploitable code.
"Flash builds, the addressing inside them is compatible. The exploit works in both places."
So it can mess around with the browser. Unless it can successfully exploit system specific API calls as opposed to browser APIs (you know , stuff like fork(), rmdir() etc etc) then its only ever going to be platform specific. And I think we can guess which one that'll be. I don't think I'll be updating adobe on my linux box just yet.
FTA: "is not far off being cross platform "
Err , I'm sorry but how exactly do they expect x86 code to run on Sparc, or PA-RISC or PPC? etc etc. Even on the same architecture but a different OS all the interrupt vectors and API address calls will be different. Sounds like they're got a bit over excited to me. Or maybe I've missed some complex details of the exploit.
Tell that to Apple!
You could say the same about the hungaro-finnish language group. Occams razor says that the basques are just the descendents of an earlier group of peoples out of africa or the near east or survivors or a much larger group that were killed off or interbred with a later group so killing off the prot-basque language in the rest of europe (in the same way the invading anglo saxons caused the demise of the celtic languages in england and pushed them into corners such as wales).
Can someone translate that into english for those of us who don't speak fluent hillbilly?
"and a burden I shall have to accept."
Before you accept it you might want to actually give it a try.
"programmers typically seem to be socially-stunted and have personality and mental issues"
Who modded this crap insighful? Where did you get that , Cliched Quotes R Us? I know plenty of coders who are perfectly normal people , in fact I don't think I've ever met one who was the alleged stereotype aspergers and I only ever met one who I'd have called socially stunted.
"In comparison, most black people and women I've come across, tend to be more outgoing and sociable."
Women tend to be more outgoing than men. Black people ? It varies just as much as whites or asians. Are you just making this up as you go along? sounds to me like you've never mixed with anyone and are just going by the lyrics on your Craig David albums,
"because there are a lot more interesting things to do in this world if you don't mind interacting with regular people."
Yeah , like not posting trite made up crap you pulled out of your arse on slashdot.
"this request was good for both parties, good for science, and good for the industry."
Yeah , because there are no highly talented unemployed america IT engineers right now, oh wait...
Idiot.
According to the article the patent has no hope of standing up in court anyway so why not just use the flyby to rescue the satellite? Wouldn't surprise me if SES just want the insurance money as its a lot easier than messing around trying to re-orbit this thing but Boeings "patent" provides a convenient excuse.
>The "but it wasn't shot in HD" argument is one of my favorites.
Depends on the original source. If it was 70mm film then it'll be better than HD quality. If it was a standard broadcast videotape then it will somewhat worse.
I mean really , who gives a rats arse about document formatting standards. Who the hell cares about XML? Not real geeks thats for sure. Must be yet another slow news day...
Anyway , does it really matter if OOXML is voted for by ISO? Its just XML for heavens sake, what does it matter? Its not like MS will have copyright on it , they WANT other companies and software to use it. Not everything that comes out of Redmond smells bad.
Maintenance programming is a tedious bore where you learn little about the thinking behind code. IMO the best way to learn programming is to write your own stuff from scratch maybe with a few CS/algo books at hand. That way you get a far better feel for coding than you ever will diving into class foobar() at line 20,000 in some finance app or whatever.
"For example, most people don't use the SSE stuff or even know about it. "
Why should they? Its inherantly non portable. Not everyone develops for late Pentium x86.
B2003
"Yeah, let's start ruining young hackers' (and I mean that in the positive sense) lives for youthful indiscretion, that's the way to go."
Aww diddums. Perhaps we shouldn't punish kids when they chuck bricks through someones window either since that'll be just youthful exuberance right?
"it's just that the 'crime' of rooting some insecure corporate box and not doing anything particularly destructive or criminal (credit card fraud etc.) with it is just not what I'd consider a big deal"
Rooting around someones private email is no different to rooting around through letters at home. Its not as bad as writing a virus or trojan but it still deserves more than a slap on the wrist.
As well as the software side there needs to be harsher punishment for the borderline aspergers, socially inept idiots who write viruses, trojans and the like. I'm tired of hearing the excuse the they were just "exploring" and "didn't understand the consequences of their actions". Oh gimme a friggin break. You might as well say a burglar was just exploring my house because he had the skills to open it from the outside! Sure , a lot of cybercrime is criminal gangs , but they don't write their own software do they?. Its about time we stopped pussyfooting around with these criminal geeks and started treating them like the felons they are - 10 years inside minium with maybe an extra year for every $10,000 of damage they cause.
"One of the reasons more seasoned programmers are not particularly interested is that in most cases someone else has already doen the hard work."
Who is this mythical "someone else"? I'd like to meet them. Incidentaly since when have database triggers been parallel systems? The LAST thing you want in a database is these sort of things running parallel, thats why you have locking!
"It is very rare that you actually need to do parallel programing yourself."
Err , if you count threads as parallel programming then I do it in virtually every project I work on. You talk about POSIX threads as if there some scary API that only people who require real power use. On the contrary , they're an API that probably almost every C/C++ unix coder uses all the time these days.
Econet was never intended as some sort of secure system that would connect to the world at large. It was designed to connect a few isolated computers in a room. So what if it had security flaws? Wow , you could hack into a machine 6 foot away, BFD. Its not like the BBC had a 3DES login system to get past, it was an 8 bit micro with for the most part cassette based and ROM storage. Not exactly ideal an l337 hacker enviroment to embed viruses and mess up data.
And yet again the moderators on here prove that anyone who dares to question the prevailing "wisdom" on /. gets marked as a troll.
... does quantum communications (not quantum computers) actually serve any potentially useful purpose? Or is it just another way for researchers to get a nice fat grant and a for a load of network equipment companies a decade down the line flog yet more replacement network equipment at a juicy markup? This isn't a troll , I'm just a bit suspicious about all the hype surrouding QC when so far we've yet to see a single usable example of anything from this research anywhere in the world.
Also if anyone spins me the line about it being unbreakable I'll take it with a large pinch of salt. I have nothing to base my cynicism on other than time and time again supposedly secure and unbreakable systems have been broken and I don't see why QC should be any different. Harder yes , but different? Hmm...