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  • Does writing program using global variables is safer?

    - by ZoZo123
    I was reading about buffer, stack and heap overflows. I read this post as well. my question is like that: if I use only global variables in my code, can I say it prevents all the exploits of overflow? let's say I have this buffers in code declared in the global scope: char buf1[10]; char buf2[100]; If I send buf1 as the buffer to recv(int s, char *buf, int len,int flags); I will overwrite the data segment and may ruin the buf2 content, right? Would I be able to run a code from it because as I know it is not a code segment and data segment is not executable. Can we conclude that using Globals is the safest way?

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  • file names based on file content

    - by Mark
    So iow, some algorithm to generate a unique, reasonable length filename based on binary file content. Two files that have the same binary content should have the same name. Obviously there would be limits to this, as presumably you couldn't have unique reasonable length filenames for each of a large set of large files only differing at a handful of bit positions. But presumably there is some heuristic, best approximation to this that for example exploits known attributes of typical image files. If I had the name of some algorithm that does this I can google it and find other approaches as well.

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  • Would it be possible for web browsers to automatically update rendering engines?

    - by unknowing
    As a way to prevent the major annoyances of browser segmentation and older versions. This way the code would only need to be done for the latest version of the browser, but users could still have the functionality of the older version and not be forced to do major updates? I am sure there will be some major flaws in this, and I would like you to tell me what they are! -Obviously, people may not want this as often auto-updating is frowned upon, however Chrome does it (or at least, they used to); Without a manual check, Chrome will update itself automatically, Google said. "Google Chrome will automatically checks for updates approximately every five hours. If an update is available, it will be downloaded and applied at the next browser restart," Google said. -there is still the problem of getting users from the really old ones onto the any new browsers that have this functionality -To prevent exploits in terms of updates, maybe they could have a 7 day opt-in period before being pushed out to everyone?

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  • Oracle Releases New Mainframe Re-Hosting in Oracle Tuxedo 11g

    - by Jason Williamson
    I'm excited to say that we've released our next generation of Re-hosting in 11g. In fact I'm doing some hands-on labs now for our Systems Integrators in Italy in a couple of weeks and targeting Latin America next month. If you are an SI, or Rehosting firm and are looking to become an Oracle Partner or get a better understanding of Tuxedo and how to use the workbench for rehosting...drop me a line. Oracle Tuxedo Application Runtime for CICS and Batch 11g provides a CICS API emulation and Batch environment that exploits the full range of Oracle Tuxedo's capabilities. Re-hosted applications run in a multi-node, grid environment with centralized production control. Also, enterprise integration of CICS application services benefits from an open and SOA-enabled framework. Key features include: CICS Application Runtime: Can run IBM CICS applications unchanged in an application grid, which enables the distribution of large workloads across multiple processors and nodes. This simplifies CICS administration and can scale to over 100,000 users and over 50,000 transactions per second. 3270 Terminal Server: Protects business users from change through support for tn3270 terminal emulation. Distributed CICS Resource Management: Simplifies deployment and administration by allowing customers to run CICS regions in a distributed configuration. Batch Application Runtime: Provides robust IBM JES-like job management that enables local or remote job submissions. In addition, distributed batch initiators can enable parallelization of jobs and support fail-over, shortening the batch window and helping to meet stringent SLAs. Batch Execution Environment: Helps to run IBM batch unchanged and also supports JCL functionality and all common batch utilities. Oracle Tuxedo Application Rehosting Workbench 11g provides a set of automated migration tools integrated around a central repository. The tools provide high precision which results in very low error rates and the ability to handle large applications. This enables less expensive, low-risk migration projects. Key capabilities include: Workbench Repository and Cataloguer: Ensures integrity of the migrated application assets through full dependency checking. The Cataloguer generates and maintains all relevant meta-data on source and target components. File Migrator: Supports reliable migration of datasets and flat files to an ISAM or Oracle Database 11g. This is done through the automated migration utilities for data unloading, reloading and validation. It also generates logical access functions to shield developers from data repository changes. DB2 Migrator: Similarly, this tool automates the migration of DB2 schema and data to Oracle Database 11g. COBOL Migrator: Supports migration of IBM mainframe COBOL assets (OLTP and Batch) to open systems. Adapts programs for compiler dialects and data access variations. JCL Migrator: Supports migration of IBM JCL jobs to a Tuxedo ART environment, maintaining the flow and characteristics of batch jobs.

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  • Characteristics of a Web service that promote reusability and change

    Characteristics of a Web service that promote reusability and change:  Standardized Data Exchange Formats (XML, JSON) Standardized communication protocols (Soap, Rest) Promotes Loosely Coupled Systems  Standardized Data Exchange Formats (XML, JSON) XML W3.org defines Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a simplistic text format derived from SGML. XML was designed to solve challenges found in large-scale electronic publishing. In addition,  XML is playing an important role in the exchange of data primarily focusing on data exchange on the web. JSON JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a human-readable text-based standard designed for data interchange. This format is used for serializing and transmitting data over a network connection in a structured format. The primary use of JSON is to transmit data between a server and web application. JSON is an alternative to XML. Standardized communication protocols (Soap, Rest) Soap W3Scools.com defines SOAP as a simple XML-based protocol. This protocol lets applications exchange data over HTTP.  SOAP provides a way to communicate between applications running on different operating systems, with different technologies and programming languages. Rest In 2007, Stefan Tilkov defines Representational State Transfer (REST) as a set of principles that outlines how Web standards are supposed to be used.  Using REST in an application will ensure that it exploits the Web’s architecture to its benefit. Promotes Loosely Coupled Systems “Loose coupling as an approach to interconnecting the components in a system or network so that those components, also called elements, depend on each other to the least extent practicable. Coupling refers to the degree of direct knowledge that one element has of another.” (TechTarget.com, 2007) “Loosely coupled system can be easily broken down into definable elements. The extent of coupling in a system can be measured by mapping the maximum number of element changes that can occur without adverse effects. Examples of such changes include adding elements, removing elements, renaming elements, reconfiguring elements, modifying internal element characteristics and rearranging the way in which elements are interconnected.” (TechTarget.com, 2007) References: W3C. (2011). Extensible Markup Language (XML). Retrieved from W3.org: http://www.w3.org/XML/ W3Scools.com. (2011). SOAP Introduction. Retrieved from W3Scools.com: http://www.w3schools.com/soap/soap_intro.asp Tilkov, Stefan. (2007). A Brief Introduction to REST. Retrieved from Infoq.com: http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-introduction TechTarget.com. (2011). loose coupling. Retrieved from TechTarget.com: http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/loose-coupling

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  • Keeping your options open in a cloud solution

    - by BuckWoody
    In on-premises solutions we have the full range of options open for a given computing solution – but we don’t always take advantage of them, for multiple reasons. Data goes in a Relational Database Management System, files go on a share, and e-mail goes to the Exchange server. Over time, vendors (including ourselves) add in functionality to one product that allow non-standard use of the platform. For example, SQL Server (and Oracle, and others) allow large binary storage in or through the system – something not originally intended for an RDBMS to handle. There are certainly times when this makes sense, of course, but often these platform hammers turn every problem into a nail. It can make us “lazy” in our design – we sometimes don’t take the time to learn another architecture because the one we’ve spent so much time with can handle what we want to do. But there’s a distinct danger here. In nature, when a population shares too many of the same traits, it can cause a complete collapse if a situation exploits a weakness shared by that population. The same is true with not using the righttool for the job in a computing environment. Your company or organization depends on your knowledge as a professional to select the best mix of supportable, flexible, cost-effective technologies to solve their problems, whether you’re in an architect role or not.  So take some time today to learn something new. The way I do this is to select a given problem, and try to solve it with a technology I’m not familiar with. For instance – create a Purchase Order system in Excel, then in Hadoop or MongoDB, or even in flat-files using PowerShell as an interface. No, I’m not suggesting any of these architectures are the proper way to solve the PO problem, but taking something concrete that you know well and applying that meta-knowledge to another platform will assist you in exercising the “little grey cells” and help you and your organization understand what is open to you. And of course you can do all of this on-premises – but my recommendation is to check out a cloud platform (my suggestion would of course be Windows Azure :) ) and try it there. Most providers (including Microsoft) provide free time to do that.

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  • Understanding the levels of computing

    - by RParadox
    Sorry, for my confused question. I'm looking for some pointers. Up to now I have been working mostly with Java and Python on the application layer and I have only a vague understanding of operating systems and hardware. I want to understand much more about the lower levels of computing, but it gets really overwhelming somehow. At university I took a class about microprogramming, i.e. how processors get hard-wired to implement the ASM codes. Up to now I always thought I wouldn't get more done if learned more about the "low level". One question I have is: how is it even possible that hardware gets hidden almost completely from the developer? Is it accurate to say that the operating system is a software layer for the hardware? One small example: in programming I have never come across the need to understand what L2 or L3 Cache is. For the typical business application environment one almost never needs to understand assembler and the lower levels of computing, because nowadays there is a technology stack for almost anything. I guess the whole point of these lower levels is to provide an interface to higher levels. On the other hand I wonder how much influence the lower levels can have, for example this whole graphics computing thing. So, on the other hand, there is this theoretical computer science branch, which works on abstract computing models. However, I also rarely encountered situations, where I found it helpful thinking in the categories of complexity models, proof verification, etc. I sort of know, that there is a complexity class called NP, and that they are kind of impossible to solve for a big number of N. What I'm missing is a reference for a framework to think about these things. It seems to me, that there all kinds of different camps, who rarely interact. The last few weeks I have been reading about security issues. Here somehow, much of the different layers come together. Attacks and exploits almost always occur on the lower level, so in this case it is necessary to learn about the details of the OSI layers, the inner workings of an OS, etc.

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  • How do I server multiple domains from the same directory and codebase without my configuraton breaking when apache.conf is overwritten?

    - by neokio
    I have 20 domains on a VPS running cPanel. One public_html is filled with code, the remaining 19 are symbolic links to that one. (For example, assets is a directory within public_html ... for the 19 others, there's a symbolic link to that directory in each each accounts public_html dir.) It's all PHP / MySQL database driven, with content changing depending on the domain. It works like a charm, assuming cPanel has suExec enabled correctly, and assuming apache.conf does NOT have SymLinksIfOwnerMatch enabled. However, every few weeks, my apache.conf is mysteriously overwritten, re-enabling SymLinksIfOwnerMatch, and disabling all 19 linked sites for as long as it takes for me to notice. Here's the offending line in apache.conf: <Directory "/"> AllowOverride All Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks IncludesNOEXEC Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch </Directory> The addition of SymLinksIfOwnerMatch disables the sites in a strange way ... the html is generated correctly, but all css/js/image in the html fails to load. Clicking any link redirects to /. And I have no idea why. I do have a few things in my .htaccess, which work fine when SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is not present: <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> # www.example.com -> example.com RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] # Remove query strings from static resources RewriteRule ^assets/js/(.*)_v(.*)\.js /assets/js/$1.js [L] RewriteRule ^assets/css/(.*)_v(.*)\.css /assets/css/$1.css [L] RewriteRule ^assets/sites/(.*)/(.*)_v(.*)\.css /assets/sites/$1/$2.css [L] # Block access to hidden files and directories RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -d [OR] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -f RewriteRule "(^|/)\." - [F] # SLIR ... reroute images to image processor RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/images/.*$ RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L] # ignore rules if URL is a file RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f # ignore rules if URL is not php #RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.php$ # catch-all for routing RewriteRule . index.php [L] </ifModule> I also use most of the 5G Blacklist 2013 for protection against exploits and other depravities. Again, all of this works great, except when SymLinksIfOwnerMatch gets added back into apache.conf. Since I've failed to find the cause of whatever cPanel/security update is overwriting apache.conf, I thought there might be a more correct way to accomplish my goal using group permissions. I've created a 'www' group, added all accounts to the group, and chmod -R'd the code source to use that group. Everything is 644 or 755. But doesn't seem to be enough. My unix isn't that strong. Do you need to restart something for group changes to take effect? Probably not. Anyways, I'm entering unknown territory. Can anyone recommend the right way to configure a website for multiple sites using one codebase that doesn't rely on apache.conf?

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  • Mod Rewrite Help - Pseudo-Subdirectories

    - by Gimpyfuzznut
    I am dealing with a frustrating problem with Joomla that is going to require some url trickery. The idea is straight-forward but after reading a bunch of guides for mod-rewrite, I still can't seem to get it work. Let's say my site is www.mysite.com. Joomla is already performing some rewriting for SEF urls so I have links like www.mysite.com/home and www.mysite.com/news and so on. I want to be able to have (4) pseudo-subdirectories like www.mysite.com/mode1/ and www.mysite.com/mode2/ and so on. These subdirectories should work as if the subdirectory isn't there, ie both www.mysite.com/mode1/home and www.mysite.com/mode2/home should pull up the same www.mysite.com/home. It should point any www.mysite.com/mode1/anypagehere to www.mysite.com/anypagehere. The reason I am asking for this is because I will be reading the url for mode1, mode2, etc, to modify the template page. There will be a landing page that will direct people to /mode1/ and /mode2/ etc and the template will change based on that. Note, that I don't want to actually pass a parameter to the url accessible by a GET or whatever because Joomla removes it (perhaps because of my current mod_rewrite settings). I've pasted the current .htaccess file. RewriteBase /joomla ##########Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR] # Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR] # Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR] # Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] # Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) # Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error! RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L] ########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.php|\.html|\.htm|\.feed|\.pdf|\.raw|/[^.]*)$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) index.php #RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L] ########## End - Joomla! core SEF Section

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  • Concerns about Apache per-Vhost logging setup

    - by etienne
    I'm both senior developer and sysadmin in my company, so i'm trying to deal with the needs of both activities. I've set up our apache box, wich deals with 30-50 domains atm (and hopefully will grow larger) and hosts both production and development sites, with this directory structure: domains/ domains/domain.ext/ #FTPS chroot for user domain.ext domains/domain.ext/public #the DocumentRoot of http://domain.ext domains/domain.ext/logs domains/domain.ext/subdomains/sub.domain.ext domains/domain.ext/subdomains/sub.domain.ext/public #DocumentRoot of http://sub.domain.ext Each domain.ext Vhost runs with his dedicated user and group via mpm-itk, umask being 027, and the logs are stored via a piped sudo command, like this: ErrorLog "| /usr/bin/sudo -u nobody -g domain.ext tee -a domains/domain.ext/logs/sub.domain.ext_error.log" CustomLog "| /usr/bin/sudo -u nobody -g domain.ext tee -a domains/domain.ext/logs/sub.domain.ext_access.log" combined Now, i've read a lot about not letting the logs out of a very restricted directory, but the developers often need to give a quick look to a particular subdomain error log, and i don't really want to give them admin rights to look into /var/logs. Having them available into the ftp account is REALLY handy during development stages. Do you think this setup is viable and safe enough? To me it is apparently looking good, but i'm concerned about 3 security issues: -is the sudo pipe enough to deal with symlink exploits? Any catches i'm missing? -log dos: logs are in the same partition of all domains. got hundreds of gigs, but still, if one get disk-space dos'd, everything will break. Any workaround? Will a short timed logrotate suffice? -file descriptors limits: AFAIK the default limit for Apache on Ubuntu Server is currently 8192, which should be plenty enough to handle 2 log files per subdomain. Is it? Am i missing something? I hope to read some thoughts on the matter!

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  • Which is more secure: Tomcat standalone or Tomcat behind Apache?

    - by NoozNooz42
    This question is not about performance, nor about load-balancing, etc. Which would be more secure: running Tomcat in standalone mode or running Tomcat behind apache? The thing is, Tomcat is written in Java and hence it is pretty much immune to buffer overrun/overflow (unless a buffer overrun in a C-written lib used by Tomcat can be triggered, but they're rare [the last I remember was in zlib, many many moons ago] and one heck of a hack to actually exploit), which gets rid of a lot of potential exploits. This page: http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/FAQ/Security has this to say: There have been no public cases of damage done to a company, organization, or individual due to a Tomcat security issue... there have been only theoretical vulnerabilities found. All of those were addressed even though there were no documented cases of actual exploitation of these vulnerabilities. This, combined with the fact that buffer overrun/overflow are pretty much non-existent in Java, makes me believe that Tomcat in standalone mode is pretty secure. In addition to that, I can install both Java and Tomcat on Linux without needing to be root. The only moment I need to be root is to set up a transparent port 8080 to port 80 forwarding (and 8443 to 443). Two iptables line as root, that's all root is needed for. (I don't know for Apache). Apache is much more used than Tomcat and definitely does not have a security track record as good as Tomcat. What would make Tomcat + Apache more secure? What would make Tomcat + Apache less secure? In short: which is more secure, Tomcat standalone or Tomcat with Apache? (remembering that performance aren't an issue here)

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  • Can I get all active directory passwords in clear text using reversible encryption?

    - by christian123
    EDIT: Can anybody actually answer the question? Thanks, I don't need no audit trail, I WILL know all the passwords and users can't change them and I will continue to do so. This is not for hacking! We recently migrated away from a old and rusty Linux/Samba domain to an active directory. We had a custom little interface to manage accounts there. It always stored the passwords of all users and all service accounts in cleartext in a secure location (Of course, many of you will certainly not think of this a being secure, but without real exploits nobody could read that) and disabled password changing on the samba domain controller. In addition, no user can ever select his own passwords, we create them using pwgen. We don't change them every 40 days or so, but only every 2 years to reward employees for really learning them and NOT writing them down. We need the passwords to e.g. go into user accounts and modify settings that are too complicated for group policies or to help users. These might certainly be controversial policies, but I want to continue them on AD. Now I save new accounts and their PWGEN-generated (pwgen creates nice sounding random words with nice amounts of vowels, consonants and numbers) manually into the old text-file that the old scripts used to maintain automatically. How can I get this functionality back in AD? I see that there is "reversible encryption" in AD accounts, probably for challenge response authentication systems that need the cleartext password stored on the server. Is there a script that displays all these passwords? That would be great. (Again: I trust my DC not to be compromised.) Or can I have a plugin into AD users&computers that gets a notification of every new password and stores it into a file? On clients that is possible with GINA-dlls, they can get notified about passwords and get the cleartext.

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  • IPC between multiple processes on multiple servers

    - by z8000
    Let's say you have 2 servers each with 8 CPU cores each. The servers each run 8 network services that each host an arbitrary number of long-lived TCP/IP client connections. Clients send messages to the services. The services do something based on the messages, and potentially notify N1 of the clients of state changes. Sure, it sounds like a botnet but it isn't. Consider how IRC works with c2s and s2s connections and s2s message relaying. The servers are in the same data center. The servers can communicate over a private VLAN @1GigE. Messages are < 1KB in size. How would you coordinate which services on which host should receive and relay messages to connected clients for state change messages? There's an infinite number of ways to solve this problem efficiently. AMQP (RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ, etc.) Spread Toolkit N^2 connections between allservices (bad) Heck, even run IRC! ... I'm looking for a solution that: perhaps exploits the fact that there's only a small closed cluster is easy to admin scales well is "dumb" (no weird edge cases) What are your experiences? What do you recommend? Thanks!

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  • The Next Wave of PeopleSoft Capabilities for the Staffing Industry Is Here

    - by Mark Rosenberg
    With the release of PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 in January this year, we introduced substantial new capabilities for our Staffing Industry customers. Through a co-development project with Infosys Limited, we have enriched Oracle's PeopleSoft Staffing Solution with new tools aimed at accelerating and improving the quality of job order fulfillment, increasing branch recruiter productivity, and driving profitable growth. Staffing industry firms succeed based on their ability to rapidly, cost-effectively, and continually fill their pipelines with new clients and job orders, recruit the best talent, and match orders with talent. Pressure to execute in each of these functional areas is even more acute on staffing firms as contingent labor becomes a more substantial and permanent part of the workforce mix. In an industry that creates value through speedy execution, there is little room for manual, inefficient processes and brittle, custom integrations, which throttle profitability and growth. The latest wave of investment in the PeopleSoft Staffing Solution focuses on generating efficiency and flexibility for our customers. Simplicity To operate profitably and continue growing, a Staffing enterprise needs its client management, recruiting, order fulfillment, and other processes to function in harmony. Most importantly, they need to be simple for recruiters, branch managers, and applicants to access and understand. The latest PeopleSoft Staffing Solution set of enhancements includes numerous automated defaulting mechanisms and information-rich dashboard pagelets that even a new employee can learn quickly. Pending Applicant, Agenda management, Search, and other pagelets are just a few of the newest, easy-to-use tools that not only aggregate and summarize information, but also provide instant access to applicants, tasks, and key reports for branch staff. Productivity The leading firms in the Staffing industry are those that can more efficiently orchestrate large numbers of candidates, clients, and orders than their competitors can. PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers productivity boosters that Staffing firms can leverage to streamline tasks and processes for competitive advantage. For example, we enhanced the Recruiting Funnel, which manages the candidate on-boarding process, with a highly interactive user interface. It integrates disparate Staffing business processes and exploits new PeopleTools technologies to offer a superior on-boarding user experience. Automated creation of agenda items and assignment tasks for each candidate minimizes setup and organizes assignment steps for the on-boarding process. Mass updates of tasks and instant access to the candidate overview page (which we also expanded), candidate event status, event counts, and other key data enable recruiters to better serve clients and candidates. Lower TCO Constructing and maintaining an efficient yet flexible labor supply chain can be complicated, let alone expensive. Traditionally, Staffing firms have been challenged in controlling their technology cost of ownership because connecting candidate and client-facing tools involved building and integrating custom applications and technologies and managing staff turnover, placing heavy demands on IT and support staff. With PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2, there are two major enhancements that aggressively tackle these challenges. First, we added another integration framework to enable cost-effective linking of the Staffing firm’s PeopleSoft applications and its job board distributors. (The first PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Pack released in March 2011 delivered an integration framework to connect to resume parsing providers.) Second, we introduced the teaming concept to enable work to be partitioned to groups, as well as individuals. These two capabilities, combined with a host of others, position Staffing firms to configure and grow their businesses without growing their IT and overhead expenditures. For our Staffing Industry customers, PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 is loaded with high-value tools aimed at enabling and sustaining a flexible labor supply chain. For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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  • Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

    - by Bil Simser
    George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology -  a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

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  • Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Fishbowl Solutions

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Today, I give you the final entry in the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, held last week during OpenWorld. This one comes from Friend of the ‘Lab and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) hacker, John Sim (@jrsim_uix), whom you might remember from his XBox Kinect demo at COLLABORATE 12 (presentation slides and abstract) hacks and other exploits with WebCenter. We put this challenge together specifically for developers like John, who like to experiment with new tools and push the envelope of what’s possible and build cool things, and as you can see from his entry John did just that, mashing together Google Maps and Oracle Social Network into a mobile app built with PhoneGap that uses the device’s camera and GPS to keep teams on the move in touch. He calls it a Mobile GeoTagging Solution, but I think Avengers Assemble! would have equally descriptive, given that was obviously his inspiration. Here’s his description of the mobile app: My proposed solution was to design and simplify GeoLocation mapping, and automate updates for users and teams on the move; who don’t have access to a laptop or want to take their ipads out – but allow them to make quick updates to OSN and upload photos taken from their mobile device – there and then. As part of this; the plan was to include a rules engine that could be configured by the user to allow the device to automatically update and post messages when they arrived at a set location(s). Inspiration for this came from on{x} – automate your life. Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the conference to show off his hard work in person, but luckily, he had a colleague from Fishbowl and a video to showcase his work.    Here are some shots of John’s mobile app for your viewing pleasure: John’s thinking is sound. Geolocation is usually relegated to consumer use cases, thanks to services like foursquare, but distributed teams working on projects out in the world definitely need a way to stay in contact. Consider a construction job. Different contractors all converge on a single location, and time is money. Rather than calling or texting each other and risking a distracted driving accident, an app like John’s allows everyone on the job to see exactly where the other contractors are. Using his GPS rules, they could easily be notified about how close each is to the site, definitely useful when you have a flooring contractor sitting idle, waiting for an electrician to finish the wiring. The best part is that the project manager or general contractor could stay updated on all the action (or inaction) using Oracle Social Network, either sitting at a desk using the browser app or desktop client or on the go, using one of the native mobile apps built for Oracle Social Network. I can see this being used by insurance adjusters too, and really any team that, erm, assembles at a given spot. Of course, it’s also useful for meeting at the pub after the day’s work is done. Beyond people, this solution could also be implemented for physical objects that are in route to a destination. Say you’re a customer waiting on rail shipment or a package delivery. You could track your valuable’s whereabouts easily as they report their progress via checkins. If they deviated from the GPS rules, you’d be notified. You might even be able to get a picture into Oracle Social Network with some light hacking. Thanks to John and his colleagues at Fishbowl for participating in our challenge. We hope everyone had a good experience. Make sure to check out John’s blog post on his work and the experience using Oracle Social Network. Although this is the final, official entry we had, tomorrow, I’ll show you the work of someone who finished code, but wasn’t able to make the judging event. Stay tuned.

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  • Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 6

    - by MarkPearl
    Learning Outcomes Discuss the physical characteristics of magnetic disks Describe how data is organized and accessed on a magnetic disk Discuss the parameters that play a role in the performance of magnetic disks Describe different optical memory devices Magnetic Disk The way data is stored on and retried from magnetic disks Data is recorded on and later retrieved form the disk via a conducting coil named the head (in many systems there are two heads) The writ mechanism exploits the fact that electricity flowing through a coil produces a magnetic field. Electric pulses are sent to the write head, and the resulting magnetic patterns are recorded on the surface below with different patterns for positive and negative currents The physical characteristics of a magnetic disk   Summarize from book   The factors that play a role in the performance of a disk Seek time – the time it takes to position the head at the track Rotational delay / latency – the time it takes for the beginning of the sector to reach the head Access time – the sum of the seek time and rotational delay Transfer time – the time it takes to transfer data RAID The rate of improvement in secondary storage performance has been considerably less than the rate for processors and main memory. Thus secondary storage has become a bit of a bottleneck. RAID works on the concept that if one disk can be pushed so far, additional gains in performance are to be had by using multiple parallel components. Points to note about RAID… RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by the operating system as a single logical drive Data is distributed across the physical drives of an array in a scheme known as striping Redundant disk capacity is used to store parity information, which guarantees data recoverability in case of a disk failure (not supported by RAID 0 or RAID 1) Interesting to note that the increase in the number of drives, increases the probability of failure. To compensate for this decreased reliability RAID makes use of stored parity information that enables the recovery of data lost due to a disk failure.   The RAID scheme consists of 7 levels…   Category Level Description Disks Required Data Availability Large I/O Data Transfer Capacity Small I/O Request Rate Striping 0 Non Redundant N Lower than single disk Very high Very high for both read and write Mirroring 1 Mirrored 2N Higher than RAID 2 – 5 but lower than RAID 6 Higher than single disk Up to twice that of a signle disk for read Parallel Access 2 Redundant via Hamming Code N + m Much higher than single disk Highest of all listed alternatives Approximately twice that of a single disk Parallel Access 3 Bit interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Highest of all listed alternatives Approximately twice that of a single disk Independent Access 4 Block interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than single disk for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than single disk for write Independent Access 5 Block interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Similar to RAID 0 for read, lower than single disk for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, generally  lower than single disk for write Independent Access 6 Block interleaved parity N + 2 Highest of all listed alternatives Similar to RAID 0 for read; lower than RAID 5 for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than RAID 5  for write   Read page 215 – 221 for detailed explanation on RAID levels Optical Memory There are a variety of optical-disk systems available. Read through the table on page 222 – 223 Some of the devices include… CD CD-ROM CD-R CD-RW DVD DVD-R DVD-RW Blue-Ray DVD Magnetic Tape Most modern systems use serial recording – data is lade out as a sequence of bits along each track. The typical recording used in serial is referred to as serpentine recording. In this technique when data is being recorded, the first set of bits is recorded along the whole length of the tape. When the end of the tape is reached the heads are repostioned to record a new track, and the tape is again recorded on its whole length, this time in the opposite direction. That process continued back and forth until the tape is full. To increase speed, the read-write head is capable of reading and writing a number of adjacent tracks simultaneously. Data is still recorded serially along individual tracks, but blocks in sequence are stored on adjacent tracks as suggested. A tape drive is a sequential access device. Magnetic tape was the first kind of secondary memory. It is still widely used as the lowest-cost, slowest speed member of the memory hierarchy.

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  • New Sample Demonstrating the Traversing of Tree Bindings

    - by Duncan Mills
    A technique that I seem to use a fair amount, particularly in the construction of dynamic UIs is the use of a ADF Tree Binding to encode a multi-level master-detail relationship which is then expressed in the UI in some kind of looping form – usually a series of nested af:iterators, rather than the conventional tree or treetable. This technique exploits two features of the treebinding. First the fact that an treebinding can return both a collectionModel as well as a treeModel, this collectionModel can be used directly by an iterator. Secondly that the “rows” returned by the collectionModel themselves contain an attribute called .children. This attribute in turn gives access to a collection of all the children of that node which can also be iterated over. Putting this together you can represent the data encoded into a tree binding in all sorts of ways. As an example I’ve put together a very simple sample based on the HT schema and uploaded it to the ADF Sample project. It produces this UI: The important code is shown here for a Region -> Country -> Location Hierachy: <af:iterator id="i1" value="#{bindings.AllRegions.collectionModel}" var="rgn"> <af:showDetailHeader text="#{rgn.RegionName}" disclosed="true" id="sdh1"> <af:iterator id="i2" value="#{rgn.children}" var="cnty">     <af:showDetailHeader text="#{cnty.CountryName}" disclosed="true" id="sdh2">       <af:iterator id="i3" value="#{cnty.children}" var="loc">         <af:panelList id="pl1">         <af:outputText value="#{loc.City}" id="ot3"/>           </af:panelList>         </af:iterator>       </af:showDetailHeader>     </af:iterator>   </af:showDetailHeader> </af:iterator>  You can download the entire sample from here:

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  • Batch file to uninstall all Sun Java versions?

    - by Ricket
    I'm setting up a system to keep Java in our office up to date. Everyone has all different versions of Java, many of them old and insecure, and some dating back as far as 1.4. I have a System Center Essentials server which can push out and silently run a .msi file, and I've already tested that it can install the latest Java. But old versions (such as 1.4) aren't removed by the installer, so I need to uninstall them. Everyone is running Windows XP. The neat coincidence is that Sun just got bought by Oracle and Oracle has now changed all the instances of "Sun" to "Oracle" in Java. So, I can conveniently not have to worry about uninstalling the latest Java, because I can just do a search and uninstall all Sun Java programs. I found the following batch script on a forum post which looked promising: @echo off & cls Rem List all Installation subkeys from uninstall key. echo Searching Registry for Java Installs for /f %%I in ('reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\microsoft\windows\currentversion\uninstall') do echo %%I | find "{" > nul && call :All-Installations %%I echo Search Complete.. goto :EOF :All-Installations Rem Filter out all but the Sun Installations for /f "tokens=2*" %%T in ('reg query %1 /v Publisher 2^> nul') do echo %%U | find "Sun" > nul && call :Sun-Installations %1 goto :EOF :Sun-Installations Rem Filter out all but the Sun-Java Installations. Note the tilda + n, which drops all the subkeys from the path for /f "tokens=2*" %%T in ('reg query %1 /v DisplayName 2^> nul') do echo . Uninstalling - %%U: | find "Java" && call :Sun-Java-Installs %~n1 goto :EOF :Sun-Java-Installs Rem Run Uninstaller for the installation MsiExec.exe /x%1 /qb echo . Uninstall Complete, Resuming Search.. goto :EOF However, when I run the script, I get the following output: Searching Registry for Java Installs 'DEV_24x6' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. 'SUBSYS_542214F1' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. And then it appears to hang and I ctrl-c to stop it. Reading through the script, I don't understand everything, but I don't know why it is trying to run pieces of registry keys as programs. What is wrong with the batch script? How can I fix it, so that I can move on to somehow turning it into a MSI and deploying it to everyone to clean up this office? Or alternatively, can you suggest a better solution or existing MSI file to do what I need? I just want to make sure to get all the old versions of Java off of everyone's computers, since I've heard of exploits that cause web pages to load using old versions of Java and I want to avoid those.

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  • Excessive Outbound DNS Traffic

    - by user1318414
    I have a VPS system which I have had for 3 years on one host without issue. Recently, the host started sending an extreme amount of outbound DNS traffic to 31.193.132.138. Due to the way that Linode responded to this, I have recently left Linode and moved to 6sync. The server was completely rebuilt on 6sync with the exception of postfix mail configurations. Currently, the daemons run are as follows: sshd nginx postfix dovecot php5-fpm (localhost only) spampd (localhost only) clamsmtpd (localhost only) Given that the server was 100% rebuilt, I can't find any serious exploits against the above stated daemons, passwords have changed, ssh keys don't even exist on the rebuild yet, etc... it seems extremely unlikely that this is a compromise which is being used to DoS the address. The provided IP is noted online as a known SPAM source. My initial assumption was that it was attempting to use my postfix server as a relay, and the bogus addresses it was providing were domains with that IP registered as their nameservers. I would imagine given my postfix configuration that DNS queries for things such as SPF information would come in with equal or greater amount than the number of attempted spam e-mails sent. Both Linode and 6Sync have said that the outbound traffic is extremely disproportionate. The following is all the information I received from Linode regarding the outbound traffic: 21:28:28.647263 IP 97.107.134.33.32775 > 31.193.132.138.53: 28720 op8+% [b2&3=0x4134] [17267a] [30550q] [28773n] [14673au][|domain] 21:28:28.647264 IP 97.107.134.33 > 31.193.132.138: udp 21:28:28.647264 IP 97.107.134.33.32775 > 31.193.132.138.53: 28720 op8+% [b2&3=0x4134] [17267a] [30550q] [28773n] [14673au][|domain] 21:28:28.647265 IP 97.107.134.33 > 31.193.132.138: udp 21:28:28.647265 IP 97.107.134.33.32775 > 31.193.132.138.53: 28720 op8+% [b2&3=0x4134] [17267a] [30550q] [28773n] [14673au][|domain] 21:28:28.647266 IP 97.107.134.33 > 31.193.132.138: udp 6sync cannot confirm whether or not the recent spike in outbound traffic was to the same IP or over DNS, but I have presumed as such. For now my server is blocking the entire 31.0.0.0/8 subnet to help deter this while I figure it out. Anyone have any idea what is going on?

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  • Suspicious process running under user named

    - by Amit
    I get a lot of emails reporting this and I want this issue to auto correct itself. These process are run by my server and are a result of updates, session deletion and other legitimate session handling reported as false positives. Here's a sample report: Time: Sat Oct 20 00:00:03 2012 -0400 PID: 20077 Account: named Uptime: 326117 seconds Executable: /usr/sbin/nsd\00507d27e9\0053\00\00\00\00\00 (deleted) The file system shows this process is running an executable file that has been deleted. This typically happens when the original file has been replaced by a new file when the application is updated. To prevent this being reported again, restart the process that runs this excecutable file. See csf.conf and the PT_DELETED text for more information about the security implications of processes running deleted executable files. Command Line (often faked in exploits): /usr/sbin/nsd -c /etc/nsd/nsd.conf Network connections by the process (if any): udp: xx.xx.xxx.xx:53 -> 0.0.0.0:0 udp: 127.0.0.1:53 -> 0.0.0.0:0 udp: xx.xx.xxx.xx:53 -> 0.0.0.0:0 tcp: xx.xx.xxx.xx:53 -> 0.0.0.0:0 tcp: 127.0.0.1:53 -> 0.0.0.0:0 tcp: xx.xx.xxx.xx:53 -> 0.0.0.0:0 Files open by the process (if any): /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null Memory maps by the process (if any): 0045e000-00479000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 2582025 /lib/ld-2.5.so 00479000-0047a000 r--p 0001a000 fd:00 2582025 /lib/ld-2.5.so 0047a000-0047b000 rw-p 0001b000 fd:00 2582025 /lib/ld-2.5.so 0047d000-005d5000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 2582073 /lib/i686/nosegneg/libc-2.5.so 005d5000-005d7000 r--p 00157000 fd:00 2582073 /lib/i686/nosegneg/libc-2.5.so 005d7000-005d8000 rw-p 00159000 fd:00 2582073 /lib/i686/nosegneg/libc-2.5.so 005d8000-005db000 rw-p 005d8000 00:00 0 005dd000-005e0000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 2582087 /lib/libdl-2.5.so 005e0000-005e1000 r--p 00002000 fd:00 2582087 /lib/libdl-2.5.so 005e1000-005e2000 rw-p 00003000 fd:00 2582087 /lib/libdl-2.5.so 0062b000-0063d000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 2582079 /lib/libz.so.1.2.3 0063d000-0063e000 rw-p 00011000 fd:00 2582079 /lib/libz.so.1.2.3 00855000-0085f000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 2582022 /lib/libnss_files-2.5.so 0085f000-00860000 r--p 00009000 fd:00 2582022 /lib/libnss_files-2.5.so 00860000-00861000 rw-p 0000a000 fd:00 2582022 /lib/libnss_files-2.5.so 00ac0000-00bea000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 2582166 /lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8e 00bea000-00bfe000 rw-p 00129000 fd:00 2582166 /lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8e 00bfe000-00c01000 rw-p 00bfe000 00:00 0 00e68000-00e69000 r-xp 00e68000 00:00 0 [vdso] 08048000-08074000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 927261 /usr/sbin/nsd 08074000-08079000 rw-p 0002b000 fd:00 927261 /usr/sbin/nsd 08079000-0808c000 rw-p 08079000 00:00 0 08a20000-08a67000 rw-p 08a20000 00:00 0 b7f8d000-b7ff2000 rw-p b7f8d000 00:00 0 b7ffd000-b7ffe000 rw-p b7ffd000 00:00 0 bfa6d000-bfa91000 rw-p bffda000 00:00 0 [stack] Would /etc/nsd/restart or kill -1 20077 solve the problem?

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  • Echo 404 directly from nginx to improve performance

    - by user64204
    I am in charge of production servers serving static content for a website. Those servers are constantly being crawled by bots looking for potential exploits (which isn't that much of a problem security-wise because no application can be reached behind the web server) but generates thousands of 404 per day, sometimes per hour. I am looking into ways of blocking those requests but it's tricky (you want to make sure you don't block legitimate traffic and these bots are becoming more and more clever at looking like they're legit) and is going to take me a while to find an acceptable solution. In the meantime I would like to reduce the performance impact of serving those 404 pages. Indeed we're using nginx which by default is configured to serve it's 404 page from the disk (This can be changed using the error_page directive but in the end the 404 will either have to be served from disk or from another external source (e.g. upstream application which would be worst)) which isn't ideal. I ran a test with ab on my local machine with a basic configuration: in one case I echo a message directly from nginx so the disk isn't touched at all, in the other case I hit a missing page and nginx serves its 404 from disk. server { # [...] the default nginx stuff location / { } location /this_page_exists { echo "this page was found"; } } Here are the test results (my laptop has Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM + SSD in case you're wondering why they are so high): $ ab -n 500000 -c 1000 http://localhost/this_page_exists Requests per second: 25609.16 [#/sec] (mean) $ ab -n 500000 -c 1000 http://localhost/this_page_doesnt_exists Requests per second: 22905.72 [#/sec] (mean) As you can see, returning a value with echo is 11% ((25609-22905)÷22905×100) faster than serving the 404 page from disk. Accordingly I would like to echo a simple 404 Page not Found string from nginx. I tried many things so far but they all failed, essentially the idea was this: location / { try_files $uri @not_found; } location @not_found { echo "404 - Page not found"; } The problem is that as soon as the echo directive is used, the http response code is set to 200. I tried changing that by doing error_page 200 = 400 but that breaks the configuration. How can I serve a 404 page directly from nginx? (without hacking the source which may be might next step)

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  • How to find domain registrar and DNS hosting with good DNSSEC support?

    - by rsp
    Simplified problem I want to buy a domain and make a website that is fully secured with DNSSEC. Background I've been hearing about the insecurity of DNS for years. I've watched all of the talks by Dan Kaminsky and others from DNS exploits to The future of DNS Security Panel. I knew that using DNS without security is a disaster waiting to happen. I followed the development of the DNSSEC standard. I celebrated the key signing ceremony. Everything was on the right track to finally have a secure DNS system in place. And now more than 2 years later I wanted to just do what everyone said I should do: use DNSSEC for a new domain. So I need a domain registrar and a DNS hosting service that supports DNSSEC. Surprisingly it is not that easy to even find out who does support DNSSEC. It was actually much easier to find info on DNSSEC two years ago when everyone was going to support DNSSEC Real Soon Now but now years passed and I hardly see any progress done. I just hope that I was just looking in the wrong places and someone here will explain all of the doubts. I hope that other people who want to have a secure website will also find this question useful. What is needed registrar and DNS servers with full DNSSEC support for .com domains What is not needed IPv6 support Web hosting anything more What I found out so far Go Daddy offers Premium DNS service for additional $36 per year that lets you "Secure up to 5 domains with DNSSEC". easyDNS has DNSSEC available in Beta across all service levels (you need to enable the "beta" flag in configuration) but it doesn't seem to be production ready and judging from the lack of updates it isn't a feature of highest priority (the last update from March 2011 on the easyDNS blog). Name.com - according to The Register (US domain registrar does IPv6, DNSSEC) it has DNSSEC support since 2010 but right now (October 2012) I couldn't find anything related to DNSSEC on their website. Dynadot that is very often recommended doesn't support DNSSEC Namecheap that is also often recommended doesn't support DNSSEC. The support answer from 2011 suggested that it was being added but in 2012 still no ETA is given to customers. DynDNS was supposed to support DNSSEC, I found a link explaining DNSSEC support but it gives 404 Not Found page and offers a search box - when searching for DNSSEC I get "No results were found for your query." GKG was recommended online for DNSSEC support but it's hard to find any information on the level of DNSSEC support - there is a brief explanation on what is DNSSEC and how to sign Delegation Signer records in their FAQ but no information about the level of actual support can be found. Ask Slashdot: Which Registrars Support DNSSEC? from July 2011 - Answers list Go Daddy, DynDNS, GKG, Name.com as registrars that support DNSSEC but: see above. Related questions How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? What is needed to add DNSSEC to my site? DNS hosting better managed by Domain provider or Hosting provider? Registrar with good security, DNS hosting, and DNSSEC and IPv6 resolvers? In no. 1 no one is ever mentioning DNS at all. In no. 2 answers only mention the .se TLD, there are very few answers and they seem very outdated. In no. 3 one answer says "On projects that demand higher security, I might look for a web host that supports DNSSEC" but no more information is provided. The only relevant answers are in no. 4 where easyDNS is recommended by someone who has never used them personally. Meanwhile, as of October 2012, the support of DNSSEC is described as "in beta" on the easyDNS feature list. Another one recommends SiteGround but searching their site for DNSSEC returns no results. Other answers recommend web hosting providers that don't meet the requirement of DNSSEC support. Also the question mentioned above lists 9 very specific requirements other than only DNSSEC (like eg. HTTP-only login cookies, two-factor authentications, no DNS record limits, DNS statistics of queries/day, audit trails etc.) which might have excluded many possible recommendations if one is only interested in DNSSEC support. Conclusions I thought that by the end of 2012 the support of DNSSEC among domain registrars and DNS providers would be nearly universal. I am shocked that the support seems virtually nonexistent. Is this a result of some serious problems with the DNSSEC adoption? Or is it just not a hot topic and no one bothers anymore? According to the DNSSEC Scoreboard roughly about 0.1% of .com domains support DNSSEC. Could that be caused by the lack of DNSSEC support among registrars and DNS providers, is the information too hard to find or maybe no one cares? There is even no "dnssec" tag here. Questions The information is surprisingly hard to find. That is why I am asking for first-hand experience and personal recommendations. Has anyone here actually set up a website with DNSSEC, from the domain registration to the configuration of DNS servers? Can anyone recommend any of the registrars mentioned above? Can anyone recommend any registrar not mentioned above?

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  • Take Advantage of Oracle's Ongoing Assurance Effort!

    - by eric.maurice
    Hi, this is Eric Maurice again! A few years ago, I posted a blog entry, which discussed the psychology of patching. The point of this blog entry was that a natural tendency existed for systems and database administrators to be reluctant to apply patches, even security patches, because of the fear of "breaking" the system. Unfortunately, this belief in the principle "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" creates significant risks for organizations. Running systems without applying the proper security patches can greatly compromise the security posture of the organization because the security controls available in the affected system may be compromised as a result of the existence of the unfixed vulnerabilities. As a result, Oracle continues to strongly recommend that customers apply all security fixes as soon as possible. Most recently, I have had a number of conversations with customers who questioned the need to upgrade their highly stable but otherwise unsupported Oracle systems. These customers wanted to know more about the kind of security risks they were exposed to, by running obsolete versions of Oracle software. As per Oracle Support Policies, Critical Patch Updates are produced for currently supported products. In other words, Critical Patch Updates are not created by Oracle for product versions that are no longer covered under the Premier Support or Extended Support phases of the Lifetime Support Policy. One statement used in each Critical Patch Update Advisory is particularly important: "We recommend that customers upgrade to a supported version of Oracle products in order to obtain patches. Unsupported products, releases and versions are not tested for the presence of vulnerabilities addressed by this Critical Patch Update. However, it is likely that earlier versions of affected releases are also affected by these vulnerabilities." The purpose of this warning is to inform Oracle customers that a number of the vulnerabilities fixed in each Critical Patch Update may affect older versions of a specific product line. In other words, each Critical Patch Update provides a number of fixes for currently supported versions of a given product line (this information is listed for each bug in the Risk Matrices of the Critical Patch Update Advisory), but the unsupported versions in the same product line, while they may be affected by the vulnerabilities, will not receive the fixes, and are therefore vulnerable to attacks. The risk assumed by organizations wishing to remain on unsupported versions is amplified by the behavior of malicious hackers, who typically will attempt to, and sometimes succeed in, reverse-engineering the content of vendors' security fixes. As a result, it is not uncommon for exploits to be published soon after Oracle discloses vulnerabilities with the release of a Critical Patch Update or Security Alert. Let's consider now the nature of the vulnerabilities that may exist in obsolete versions of Oracle software. A number of severe vulnerabilities have been fixed by Oracle over the years. While Oracle does not test unsupported products, releases and versions for the presence of vulnerabilities addressed by each Critical Patch Update, it should be assumed that a number of the vulnerabilities fixed with the Critical Patch Update program do exist in unsupported versions (regardless of the product considered). The most severe vulnerabilities fixed in past Critical Patch Updates may result in full compromise of the targeted systems, down to the OS level, by remote and unauthenticated users (these vulnerabilities receive a CVSS Base Score of 10.0) or almost as critically, may result in the compromise of the affected systems (without compromising the underlying OS) by a remote and unauthenticated users (these vulnerabilities receive a CVSS Base Score of 7.5). Such vulnerabilities may result in complete takeover of the targeted machine (for the CVSS 10.0), or may result in allowing the attacker the ability to create a denial of service against the affected system or even hijacking or stealing all the data hosted by the compromised system (for the CVSS 7.5). The bottom line is that organizations should assume the worst case: that the most critical vulnerabilities are present in their unsupported version; therefore, it is Oracle's recommendation that all organizations move to supported systems and apply security patches in a timely fashion. Organizations that currently run supported versions but may be late in their security patch release level can quickly catch up because most Critical Patch Updates are cumulative. With a few exceptions noted in Oracle's Critical Patch Update Advisory, the application of the most recent Critical Patch Update will bring these products to current security patch level and provide the organization with the best possible security posture for their patch level. Furthermore, organizations are encouraged to upgrade to most recent versions as this will greatly improve their security posture. At Oracle, our security fixing policies state that security fixes are produced for the main code line first, and as a result, our products benefit from the mistakes made in previous version(s). Our ongoing assurance effort ensures that we work diligently to fix the vulnerabilities we find, and aim at constantly improving the security posture our products provide by default. Patch sets include numerous in-depth fixes in addition to those delivered through the Critical Patch Update and, in certain instances, important security fixes require major architectural changes that can only be included in new product releases (and cannot be backported through the Critical Patch Update program). For More Information: • Mary Ann Davidson is giving a webcast interview on Oracle Software Security Assurance on February 24th. The registration link for attending this webcast is located at http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=280304&s=1&k=6A7152F62313CA09F77EBCEEA9B6294F&partnerref=EricMblog • A blog entry discussing Oracle's practices for ensuring the quality of Critical patch Updates can be found at http://blogs.oracle.com/security/2009/07/ensuring_critical_patch_update_quality.html • The blog entry "To patch or not to patch" is located at http://blogs.oracle.com/security/2008/01/to_patch_or_not_to_patch.html • Oracle's Support Policies are located at http://www.oracle.com/us/support/policies/index.html • The Critical Patch Update & Security Alert page is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

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  • Five development tools I can't live without

    - by bconlon
    When applying to join Geeks with Blogs I had to specify the development tools I use every day. That got me thinking, it's taken a long time to whittle my tools of choice down to the selection I use, so it might be worth sharing. Before I begin, I appreciate we all have our preferred development tools, but these are the ones that work for me. Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio has been my development tool of choice for more years than I care to remember. I first used this when it was Visual C++ 1.5 (hats off to those who started on 1.0) and by 2.2 it had everything I needed from a C++ IDE. Versions 4 and 5 followed and if I had to guess I would expect more Windows applications are written in VC++ 6 and VB6 than any other language. Then came the not so great versions Visual Studio .Net 2002 (7.0) and 2003 (7.1). If I'm honest I was still using v6. 2005 was better and 2008 was simply brilliant. Everything worked, the compiler was super fast and I was happy again...then came 2010...oh dear. 2010 is a big step backwards for me. It's not encouraging for my upcoming WPF exploits that 2010 is fronted in WPF technology, with the forever growing Find/Replace dialog, the issues with C++ intellisense, and the buggy debugger. That said it is still my tool of choice but I hope they sort the issue in SP1. I've tried other IDEs like Visual Age and Eclipse, but for me Visual Studio is the best. A really great tool. Liquid XML Studio XML development is a tricky business. The W3C standards are often difficult to get to the bottom of so it's great to have a graphical tool to help. I first used Liquid Technologies 5 or 6 years back when I needed to process XML data in C++. Their excellent XML Data Binding tool has an easy to use Wizard UI (as compared to Castor or JAXB command line tools) and allows you to generate code from an XML Schema. So instead of having to deal with untyped nodes like with a DOM parser, instead you get an Object Model providing a custom API in C++, C#, VB etc. More recently they developed a graphical XML IDE with XML Editor, XSLT, XQuery debugger and other XML tools. So now I can develop an XML Schema graphically, click a button to generate a Sample XML document, and click another button to run the Wizard to generate code including a Sample Application that will then load my Sample XML document into the generated object model. This is a very cool toolset. Note: XML Data Binding is nothing to do with WPF Data Binding, but I hope to cover both in more detail another time. .Net Reflector Note: I've just noticed that starting form the end of February 2011 this will no longer be a free tool !! .Net Reflector turns .Net byte code back into C# source code. But how can it work this magic? Well the clue is in the name, it uses reflection to inspect a compiled .Net assembly. The assembly is compiled to byte code, it doesn't get compiled to native machine code until its needed using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. The byte code still has all of the information needed to see classes, variables. methods and properties, so reflector gathers this information and puts it in a handy tree. I have used .Net Reflector for years in order to understand what the .Net Framework is doing as it sometimes has undocumented, quirky features. This really has been invaluable in certain instances and I cannot praise enough kudos on the original developer Lutz Roeder. Smart Assembly In order to stop nosy geeks looking at our code using a tool like .Net Reflector, we need to obfuscate (mess up) the byte code. Smart Assembly is a tool that does this. Again I have used this for a long time. It is very quick and easy to use. Another excellent tool. Coincidentally, .Net Reflector and Smart Assembly are now both owned by Red Gate. Again kudos goes to the original developer Jean-Sebastien Lange. TortoiseSVN SVN (Apache Subversion) is a Source Control System developed as an open source project. TortoiseSVN is a graphical UI wrapper over SVN that hooks into Windows Explorer to enable files to be Updated, Committed, Merged etc. from the right click menu. This is an essential tool for keeping my hard work safe! Many years ago I used Microsoft Source Safe and I disliked CVS type systems. But TortoiseSVN is simply the best source control tool I have ever used. --- So there you have it, my top 5 development tools that I use (nearly) every day and have helped to make my working life a little easier. I'm sure there are other great tools that I wish I used but have never heard of, but if you have not used any of the above, I would suggest you check them out as they are all very, very cool products. #

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