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  • Stange stream of HTTP GET requests in apache logs, from amazon ec2 instances

    - by Alexandre Boeglin
    I just had a look at my apache logs, and I see a lot of very similar requests: GET / HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: curl/7.24.0 (i386-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.24.0 \ NSS/3.13.5.0 zlib/1.2.5 libidn/1.18 libssh2/1.2.2 Host: [my_domain].org Accept: */* there's a steady stream of those, about 2 or 3 per minute; they all request the same domain and resource (there are slight variations in user agent version numbers); they come form a lot of different IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, in blocs that belong to amazon ec2 (in Singapore, Japan, Ireland and the USA). I tried to look for an explanation online, or even just similar stories, but couldn't find any. Has anyone got a clue as to what this is? It doesn't look malicious per say, but it's just annoying me, and I couldn't find any more information about it. I first suspected it could be a bot checking if my server is still up, but: I don't remember subscribing to such a service; why would it need to check my site twice every minute; why doesn't it use a clearly identifying fqdn. Or, should I send this question to amazon, via their abuse contact? Thanks!

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  • I need advices: small memory footprint linux mail server with spam filtering

    - by petermolnar
    I have a VPS which is originally destined to be a webserver but some minimal mail capabilities are needed to be deployed as well, including sending and receiving as standalone server. The current setup is the following: Postfix reveices the mail, the users are in virtual tables, stored in MySQL on connection all servers are tested with policyd-weight service against some DNSBLs all mail is runs through SpamAssassin spamd with the help of spamc client the mail is then delivered with Dovecot 2' LDA (local delivery agent), virtual users as well As you saw... there's no virus scanner running, and that's for a reason: clamav eats all the memory possible and also, virus mails are all filtered out with this setup (I've tested the same with ClamAV enabled for 1,5 years, no virus mail ever got even to ClamAV) I don't use amavisd and I really don't want to. You only need that monster if you have plenty of memory and lots of simultaneous scanners. It's also a nightmare to fine tune by hand. I run policyd-weight instead of policyd and native DNSBLs in postfix. I don't like to send someone away because a single service listed them. Important statement: everything works fine. I receive very small amount of spam, nearly never get a false positive and most of the bad mail is stopped by policyd-weight. The only "problem" that I feel the services at total uses a bit much memory alltogether. I've already cut the modules of spamassassin (see below), but I'd really like to hear some advices how to cut the memory footprint as low as possible, mostly: what plugins SpamAssassin really needs and what are more or less useless, regarding to my current postfix & policyd-weight setup? SpamAssassin rules are also compiled with sa-compile (sa-update runs once a week from cron, compile runs right after that) These are some of the current configurations that may matter, please tell me if you need anything more. postfix/master.cf (parts only) dovecot unix - n n - - pipe flags=DRhu user=vmail:vmail argv=/usr/bin/spamc -e /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver -d ${recipient} -f {sender} postfix/main.cf (parts only) smtpd_helo_required = yes smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_invalid_hostname, permit smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, reject_invalid_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_recipient, reject_unknown_recipient_domain, reject_unauth_pipelining, reject_unauth_destination, check_policy_service inet:127.0.0.1:12525, permit policyd-weight.conf (parts only) $REJECTMSG = "550 Mail appeared to be SPAM or forged. Ask your Mail/DNS-Administrator to correct HELO and DNS MX settings or to get removed from DNSBLs"; $REJECTLEVEL = 4; $DEFER_STRING = 'IN_SPAMCOP= BOGUS_MX='; $DEFER_ACTION = '450'; $DEFER_LEVEL = 5; $DNSERRMSG = '450 No DNS entries for your MTA, HELO and Domain. Contact YOUR administrator'; # 1: ON, 0: OFF (default) # If ON request that ALL clients are only checked against RBLs $dnsbl_checks_only = 0; # 1: ON (default), 0: OFF # When set to ON it logs only RBLs which affect scoring (positive or negative) $LOG_BAD_RBL_ONLY = 1; ## DNSBL settings @dnsbl_score = ( # host, hit, miss, log name 'dnsbl.ahbl.org', 3, -1, 'dnsbl.ahbl.org', 'dnsbl.njabl.org', 3, -1, 'dnsbl.njabl.org', 'dnsbl.sorbs.net', 3, -1, 'dnsbl.sorbs.net', 'bl.spamcop.net', 3, -1, 'bl.spamcop.net', 'zen.spamhaus.org', 3, -1, 'zen.spamhaus.org', 'pbl.spamhaus.org', 3, -1, 'pbl.spamhaus.org', 'cbl.abuseat.org', 3, -1, 'cbl.abuseat.org', 'list.dsbl.org', 3, -1, 'list.dsbl.org', ); # If Client IP is listed in MORE DNSBLS than this var, it gets REJECTed immediately $MAXDNSBLHITS = 3; # alternatively, if the score of DNSBLs is ABOVE this level, reject immediately $MAXDNSBLSCORE = 9; $MAXDNSBLMSG = '550 Az levelezoszerveruk IP cime tul sok spamlistan talahato, kerjuk ellenorizze! / Your MTA is listed in too many DNSBLs; please check.'; ## RHSBL settings @rhsbl_score = ( 'multi.surbl.org', 4, 0, 'multi.surbl.org', 'rhsbl.ahbl.org', 4, 0, 'rhsbl.ahbl.org', 'dsn.rfc-ignorant.org', 4, 0, 'dsn.rfc-ignorant.org', # 'postmaster.rfc-ignorant.org', 0.1, 0, 'postmaster.rfc-ignorant.org', # 'abuse.rfc-ignorant.org', 0.1, 0, 'abuse.rfc-ignorant.org' ); # skip a RBL if this RBL had this many continuous errors $BL_ERROR_SKIP = 2; # skip a RBL for that many times $BL_SKIP_RELEASE = 10; ## cache stuff # must be a directory (add trailing slash) $LOCKPATH = '/var/run/policyd-weight/'; # socket path for the cache daemon. $SPATH = $LOCKPATH.'/polw.sock'; # how many seconds the cache may be idle before starting maintenance routines #NOTE: standard maintenance jobs happen regardless of this setting. $MAXIDLECACHE = 60; # after this number of requests do following maintenance jobs: checking for config changes $MAINTENANCE_LEVEL = 5; # negative (i.e. SPAM) result cache settings ################################## # set to 0 to disable caching for spam results. To this level the cache will be cleaned. $CACHESIZE = 2000; # at this number of entries cleanup takes place $CACHEMAXSIZE = 4000; $CACHEREJECTMSG = '550 temporarily blocked because of previous errors'; # after NTTL retries the cache entry is deleted $NTTL = 1; # client MUST NOT retry within this seconds in order to decrease TTL counter $NTIME = 30; # positve (i.,e. HAM) result cache settings ################################### # set to 0 to disable caching of HAM. To this number of entries the cache will be cleaned $POSCACHESIZE = 1000; # at this number of entries cleanup takes place $POSCACHEMAXSIZE = 2000; $POSCACHEMSG = 'using cached result'; #after PTTL requests the HAM entry must succeed one time the RBL checks again $PTTL = 60; # after $PTIME in HAM Cache the client must pass one time the RBL checks again. #Values must be nonfractal. Accepted time-units: s, m, h, d $PTIME = '3h'; # The client must pass this time the RBL checks in order to be listed as hard-HAM # After this time the client will pass immediately for PTTL within PTIME $TEMP_PTIME = '1d'; ## DNS settings # Retries for ONE DNS-Lookup $DNS_RETRIES = 1; # Retry-interval for ONE DNS-Lookup $DNS_RETRY_IVAL = 5; # max error count for unresponded queries in a complete policy query $MAXDNSERR = 3; $MAXDNSERRMSG = 'passed - too many local DNS-errors'; # persistent udp connection for DNS queries. #broken in Net::DNS version 0.51. Works with Net::DNS 0.53; DEFAULT: off $PUDP= 0; # Force the usage of Net::DNS for RBL lookups. # Normally policyd-weight tries to use a faster RBL lookup routine instead of Net::DNS $USE_NET_DNS = 0; # A list of space separated NS IPs # This overrides resolv.conf settings # Example: $NS = '1.2.3.4 1.2.3.5'; # DEFAULT: empty $NS = ''; # timeout for receiving from cache instance $IPC_TIMEOUT = 2; # If set to 1 policyd-weight closes connections to smtpd clients in order to avoid too many #established connections to one policyd-weight child $TRY_BALANCE = 0; # scores for checks, WARNING: they may manipulate eachother # or be factors for other scores. # HIT score, MISS Score @client_ip_eq_helo_score = (1.5, -1.25 ); @helo_score = (1.5, -2 ); @helo_score = (0, -2 ); @helo_from_mx_eq_ip_score= (1.5, -3.1 ); @helo_numeric_score= (2.5, 0 ); @from_match_regex_verified_helo= (1,-2 ); @from_match_regex_unverified_helo = (1.6, -1.5 ); @from_match_regex_failed_helo = (2.5, 0 ); @helo_seems_dialup = (1.5, 0 ); @failed_helo_seems_dialup= (2, 0 ); @helo_ip_in_client_subnet= (0,-1.2 ); @helo_ip_in_cl16_subnet = (0,-0.41 ); #@client_seems_dialup_score = (3.75, 0 ); @client_seems_dialup_score = (0, 0 ); @from_multiparted = (1.09, 0 ); @from_anon= (1.17, 0 ); @bogus_mx_score = (2.1, 0 ); @random_sender_score = (0.25, 0 ); @rhsbl_penalty_score = (3.1, 0 ); @enforce_dyndns_score = (3, 0 ); spamassassin/init.pre (I've put the .pre files together) loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Hashcash loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Pyzor loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Razor2 loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AutoLearnThreshold loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::MIMEHeader loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ReplaceTags loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Check loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HTTPSMismatch loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDetail loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Bayes loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::BodyEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DNSEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HTMLEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HeaderEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::MIMEEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::RelayEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::WLBLEval loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::VBounce loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Rule2XSBody spamassassin/local.cf (parts) use_bayes 1 bayes_auto_learn 1 bayes_store_module Mail::SpamAssassin::BayesStore::MySQL bayes_sql_dsn DBI:mysql:db:127.0.0.1:3306 bayes_sql_username user bayes_sql_password pass bayes_ignore_header X-Bogosity bayes_ignore_header X-Spam-Flag bayes_ignore_header X-Spam-Status ### User settings user_scores_dsn DBI:mysql:db:127.0.0.1:3306 user_scores_sql_password user user_scores_sql_username pass user_scores_sql_custom_query SELECT preference, value FROM _TABLE_ WHERE username = _USERNAME_ OR username = '$GLOBAL' OR username = CONCAT('%',_DOMAIN_) ORDER BY username ASC # for better speed score DNS_FROM_AHBL_RHSBL 0 score __RFC_IGNORANT_ENVFROM 0 score DNS_FROM_RFC_DSN 0 score DNS_FROM_RFC_BOGUSMX 0 score __DNS_FROM_RFC_POST 0 score __DNS_FROM_RFC_ABUSE 0 score __DNS_FROM_RFC_WHOIS 0 UPDATE 01 As adaptr advised I remove policyd-weight and configured postfix postscreen, this resulted approximately -15-20 MB from RAM usage and a lot faster work. I'm not sure it's working at full capacity but it seems promising.

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  • samba4 dc "network location cannot be reached"

    - by mitchell babies peters
    to clear the air centos 6.4? (maybe 6.3) as the server, running samba 4.0.10, trying to add a windows 7 client that has connectivity to the server. this is what windows shouts as me as it mocks my dependence on network infrastructure. "the network location cannot be reached." i have access to the domain contoller (dc) im using the dc as the domain name server (dns) already, and the name is correctly resolving, and it is correctly forwarding outbound traffic. i have nothing but self taught experience with active directory(ad) so if i am missing something obvious, please shout it out, but keep the verbal abuse to a minimum. i checked samba4DC + my error and found nothing relevant to my issue, if i missed something please point me in that direction. the weekend is just starting as i write this so i probably wont be back on to check this post for a day or three, but i might because this mystery is killing me. i followed the samba4 as a dc guide here and i supplimented gaps with this i have tested kerberos, ntp, and set my DC as the clock to sync to in my windows client and it appears to be a very small fraction of a second off so that shouldn't be it. also, firewall and selinux are both off for testing. i have also tried disabling ipv6, and cleared the registry of ipv6 records (allegedly the default samba4 as a DC runs as windows server 2003 which allegedly does not support or tolerate the existence of ipv6, fair warning, i heard this on the internet so it is probably a lie) i have tried a few other things that i have forgotten because i have been doing this for a day and a half now. ideas welcome. suggestions for alternatives are also welcome, as long as they are free. i was given a budget of $0 dollars and told to implement active directory (no prior knowledge of active directory at that point).

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  • Load Testing a Security/Gateway Appliance

    - by Joel Coel
    In a couple weeks I will load testing a security/gateway appliance. We're a small residential college, and that "residential" means the traffic moving through the appliance is a bit like the Wild West. We have everything from Facebook to World of Warcraft, BitTorrent to Netflix, or Halo to YouTube... basically anything you might find in the home of a high-school or college aged person. Somewhere in there some real academic work gets done as well. We rely on our current appliance for traffic shaping, antivirus, malware filtering, intrusion detection on our servers, logging and abuse reporting, and even some content filtering. All this puts a decent load when we have students around, and I'm concerned about the ability of the new candidate to keep up. On paper it should handle things, but I'm worried. Prior experience is that vendors greatly over-report what an appliance can handle. The product also includes a licensed session limit, and I'm also worried that just a few misbehaving students could unwittingly bring us to that limit and cause service disruptions. I need to know this will work for our campus in order to commit to it. Going a performance level higher in that product takes the pricing way out of line with what we expect and have done in the past. What I need is a good way to load test this guy. My problem is that our current level of summer traffic is less than one percent of what it will be when students come back just six weeks from now. Any ideas on how to really stress this thing and see what it can do, in a way that will give me some clear ideas o. How that will scale for our campus? For the curious, I'm looking at a Watchguard 515, but it could be anything. If I were evaluating a competitor, I'd ask the same question.

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  • Fixing Poor Email

    - by Tiffany Walker
    I'm having an issue with SenderBase. My IPs are not blocked in any BLs but people who use SenderBase/Ciscos stuff do not get my emails. Is this because my email system is setup poorly? They list the following: Your email server or a computer in your network may be infected with malware and may be used to send spam. You may have an insecure network which is allowing other parties to use your network to send spam. Your email server may be misconfigured and might relay spam. You may be utilizing a dynamic IP that is not allowed to relay email directly to the Internet. I have just my site running CPanel. As far as I know there is no spam or abuse. What should I check to ensure that the mail systems (Exim) are up to standards? I have the server pretty well configured so I just can't see the system being abused without me knowing it. What standards should I be ensuring my e-mail server aligns up to?

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  • Hotmail marking messages as junk

    - by Canadaka
    I was having problems with emails sent from my server being blocked completely by Hotmail, but I found out Hotmail had blocked my IP and by contacting Hotmail I had the block removed. See this question for more info: Email sent from server with rDNS & SPF being blocked by Hotmail But now all emails from my server are going directly to recipients "Junk" folder on hotmail and I can't figure out why. Hotmail says "Microsoft SmartScreen marked this message as junk and we'll delete it after ten days." I tried contacting the same people at Hotmail who had my IP block removed, but I haven't received any reply and its been almost a week. Here are some details: I have a valid SPF record for my domain "v=spf1 a include:_spf.google.com ~all" I have reverse DNS setup I have a Sender Score of 100 https://www.senderscore.org/lookup.php?lookup=66.199.162.177&ipLookup.x=55&ipLookup.y=14 I have signed up for Microsoft's SNDS and was approved. My ip says "All of the specified IPs have normal status." Microsoft added my IP to the JMRP Database My IP is not on any credible spam lists http://www.anti-abuse.org/multi-rbl-check-results/?host=66.199.162.177 my FROM header is being sent in proper format "From: CKA <[email protected]>" Here is a test email source:

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  • Is my webserver being abused for banking fraud?

    - by koffie
    Since a few weeks i'm getting a lot of 403 errors from apache in my log files that seem to be related to a bank frauding scheme. The relevant log entries look like this (The ip 1.2.3.4 is one I made up, I did not modify the rest of each line) www.bradesco.com.br:80 / 1.2.3.4 - - [01/Dec/2012:07:20:32 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 427 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.56 Safari/535.11" www.bb.com.br:80 / 1.2.3.4 - - [01/Dec/2012:07:20:32 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 370 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.56 Safari/535.11" www.santander.com.br:80 / 1.2.3.4 - - [01/Dec/2012:07:20:33 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 370 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.56 Safari/535.11" www.banese.com.br:80 / 1.2.3.4 - - [01/Dec/2012:07:20:33 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 370 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.56 Safari/535.11" the logformat I use is: LogFormat "%V:%p %U %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" The strange thing is that all these domains are domains of banks and 3 out of the 4 domains are also in the list of the bank frauding scheme described on: http://www.abuse.ch/?p=2925 I would really like to know if my server is being abused for bank frauding or not. I suspect not, because it's giving 403 to all requests. But any extra checks that I can do to ensure that my server is not being abused are welcome. I'm also curious on how the "bad guys" expected my server to behave. I.e. are they just expecting my server to act as a proxy to hide the ip of the fake site, or are they expecting that my server will actually serve the fake banking website? Is the ip 1.2.3.4 more likely to be the ip of a victim or the ip of a bad guy. I suspect a bad guy, because it's quite unlikely that a real person would visit 4 bank sites in a second. If it's from a bad guy I'm very curious at what he is trying to do.

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  • Need Help Scoping a Server to use for study (MCITP Ent Admin + SharePoint 2010)

    - by AVFamily76
    i need to study for mcitp, but i also need to study for sharepoint 2010 i have a poweredge 1850 with two single-core CPUs + two 73G drives - it kills me on electricity, so don't want to use it, and it won't do VT, but it could be one of three boxes for a lab that's cheap, but will cost a lot on electricity i was thinking . . . OPTION #1 Opteron 4170 HE (50 watt chip), 6-core, only two-bills ($200), but the board's are $250, so that's an $800 box, then get another box to dual-boot Win7/Hyper-V on the cheap...? OPTION #2 Used Quad - but how many VM's that are really banging away could it run at same time? (Server 2008r2, SQL 2008r2, Search Server) OPTION #3 Study from books and just get one box that can run two VM's at same time, even if slowly. the last time i had and used a home lab was five years ago when i had a DC, SQL, Exchange and business app box, that's where i got my server skills was just banging on it for four years, but didn't read any books, so now i have to get certified and know the material, and just am not sure how much attention i should pay to the box i use versus the studying time and reading. sorry it's a subjective question, and am obviously open to all sorts of abuse here, but hope you can tell me also how many VM's i can run at the same time given what they'll be doing (SQL and SharePoint FAST search server are resource hungry) thanks!

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  • RedStation.com is heaven for ddos attackers, How to file complaint?

    - by Ehsan
    Sorry, I don't know where to open this subject. This is not the first time we have faced with a massive DDOS attack from one of servers in RedStation.com and even after we had contacted with their abuse department with it's log there is no cooperation and they don't even like to bother themselves about it. and we don't know how to stop such activity. Do you know how to file complaint against this datacenter? we could not be patient anymore and see they are not care about such things on their network ? it seems like they are heaven for attackers now since they close their eyes to gain more money. I guess some global organization is missing in this matter to investigate such activity and make sure providers are responsible for their services. Here is some of it's log: 2686M 75G DROP all -- * * 31.3-RedStation 0.0.0.0/0 rt: 16167 0.002007 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 36391 Destination port: 16167 0.002011 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 38367 Destination port: 16312 0.002014 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 39585 Destination port: 12081 0.002018 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 39585 Destination port: 12081 0.002021 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 38367 Destination port: 16312 0.002025 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 39585 Destination port: 12081 0.002033 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 36391 Destination port: 16167 0.002037 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 38367 Destination port: 16312 0.002040 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 38367 Destination port: 16312 0.002044 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 38367 Destination port: 16312 0.002047 31.3-RedStation -> my-server-ip UDP Source port: 39585 Destination Any response would be appreciated

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  • Q&A: Oracle's Paul Needham on How to Defend Against Insider Attacks

    - by Troy Kitch
    Source: Database Insider Newsletter: The threat from insider attacks continues to grow. In fact, just since January 1, 2014, insider breaches have been reported by a major consumer bank, a major healthcare organization, and a range of state and local agencies, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.  We asked Paul Needham, Oracle senior director, product management, to shed light on the nature of these pernicious risks—and how organizations can best defend themselves against the threat from insider risks. Q. First, can you please define the term "insider" in this context? A. According to the CERT Insider Threat Center, a malicious insider is a current or former employee, contractor, or business partner who "has or had authorized access to an organization's network, system, or data and intentionally exceeded or misused that access in a manner that negatively affected the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the organization's information or information systems."  Q. What has changed with regard to insider risks? A. We are actually seeing the risk of privileged insiders growing. In the latest Independent Oracle Users Group Data Security Survey, the number of organizations that had not taken steps to prevent privileged user access to sensitive information had grown from 37 percent to 42 percent. Additionally, 63 percent of respondents say that insider attacks represent a medium-to-high risk—higher than any other category except human error (by an insider, I might add). Q. What are the dangers of this type of risk? A. Insiders tend to have special insight and access into the kinds of data that are especially sensitive. Breaches can result in long-term legal issues and financial penalties. They can also damage an organization's brand in a way that directly impacts its bottom line. Finally, there is the potential loss of intellectual property, which can have serious long-term consequences because of the loss of market advantage.  Q. How can organizations protect themselves against abuse of privileged access? A. Every organization has privileged users and that will always be the case. The questions are how much access should those users have to application data stored in the database, and how can that default access be controlled? Oracle Database Vault (See image) was designed specifically for this purpose and helps protect application data against unauthorized access.  Oracle Database Vault can be used to block default privileged user access from inside the database, as well as increase security controls on the application itself. Attacks can and do come from inside the organization, and they are just as likely to come from outside as attempts to exploit a privileged account.  Using Oracle Database Vault protection, boundaries can be placed around database schemas, objects, and roles, preventing privileged account access from being exploited by hackers and insiders.  A new Oracle Database Vault capability called privilege analysis identifies privileges and roles used at runtime, which can then be audited or revoked by the security administrators to reduce the attack surface and increase the security of applications overall.  For a more comprehensive look at controlling data access and restricting privileged data in Oracle Database, download Needham's new e-book, Securing Oracle Database 12c: A Technical Primer. 

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  • Inappropriate Updates?

    - by Tony Davis
    A recent Simple-talk article by Kathi Kellenberger dissected the fastest SQL solution, submitted by Peter Larsson as part of Phil Factor's SQL Speed Phreak challenge, to the classic "running total" problem. In its analysis of the code, the article re-ignited a heated debate regarding the techniques that should, and should not, be deemed acceptable in your search for fast SQL code. Peter's code for running total calculation uses a variation of a somewhat contentious technique, sometimes referred to as a "quirky update": SET @Subscribers = Subscribers = @Subscribers + PeopleJoined - PeopleLeft This form of the UPDATE statement, @variable = column = expression, is documented and it allows you to set a variable to the value returned by the expression. Microsoft does not guarantee the order in which rows are updated in this technique because, in relational theory, a table doesn’t have a natural order to its rows and the UPDATE statement has no means of specifying the order. Traditionally, in cases where a specific order is requires, such as for running aggregate calculations, programmers who used the technique have relied on the fact that the UPDATE statement, without the WHERE clause, is executed in the order imposed by the clustered index, or in heap order, if there isn’t one. Peter wasn’t satisfied with this, and so used the ingenious device of assuring the order of the UPDATE by the use of an "ordered CTE", based on an underlying temporary staging table (a heap). However, in either case, the ordering is still not guaranteed and, in addition, would be broken under conditions of parallelism, or partitioning. Many argue, with validity, that this reliance on a given order where none can ever be guaranteed is an abuse of basic relational principles, and so is a bad practice; perhaps even irresponsible. More importantly, Microsoft doesn't wish to support the technique and offers no guarantee that it will always work. If you put it into production and it breaks in a later version, you can't file a bug. As such, many believe that the technique should never be tolerated in a production system, under any circumstances. Is this attitude justified? After all, both forms of the technique, using a clustered index to guarantee the order or using an ordered CTE, have been tested rigorously and are proven to be robust; although not guaranteed by Microsoft, the ordering is reliable, provided none of the conditions that are known to break it are violated. In Peter's particular case, the technique is being applied to a temporary table, where the developer has full control of the data ordering, and indexing, and knows that the table will never be subject to parallelism or partitioning. It might be argued that, in such circumstances, the technique is not really "quirky" at all and to ban it from your systems would server no real purpose other than to deprive yourself of a reliable technique that has uses that extend well beyond the running total calculations. Of course, it is doubly important that such a technique, including its unsupported status and the assumptions that underpin its success, is fully and clearly documented, preferably even when posting it online in a competition or forum post. Ultimately, however, this technique has been available to programmers throughout the time Sybase and SQL Server has existed, and so cannot be lightly cast aside, even if one sympathises with Microsoft for the awkwardness of maintaining an archaic way of doing updates. After all, a Table hint could easily be devised that, if specified in the WITH (<Table_Hint_Limited>) clause, could be used to request the database engine to do the update in the conventional order. Then perhaps everyone would be satisfied. Cheers, Tony.

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  • Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

    - by Aaronaught
    In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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  • T-SQL Tuesday #025 &ndash; CHECK Constraint Tricks

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Allen White (blog | twitter), marathoner, SQL Server MVP and presenter, and all-around awesome author is hosting this month's T-SQL Tuesday on sharing SQL Server Tips and Tricks.  And for those of you who have attended my Revenge: The SQL presentation, you know that I have 1 or 2 of them.  You'll also know that I don't recommend using anything I talk about in a production system, and will continue that advice here…although you might be sorely tempted.  Suffice it to say I'm not using these examples myself, but I think they're worth sharing anyway. Some of you have seen or read about SQL Server constraints and have applied them to your table designs…unless you're a vendor ;)…and may even use CHECK constraints to limit numeric values, or length of strings, allowable characters and such.  CHECK constraints can, however, do more than that, and can even provide enhanced security and other restrictions. One tip or trick that I didn't cover very well in the presentation is using constraints to do unusual things; specifically, limiting or preventing inserts into tables.  The idea was to use a CHECK constraint in a way that didn't depend on the actual data: -- create a table that cannot accept data CREATE TABLE dbo.JustTryIt(a BIT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, CONSTRAINT chk_no_insert CHECK (GETDATE()=GETDATE()+1)) INSERT dbo.JustTryIt VALUES(1)   I'll let you run that yourself, but I'm sure you'll see that this is a pretty stupid table to have, since the CHECK condition will always be false, and therefore will prevent any data from ever being inserted.  I can't remember why I used this example but it was for some vague and esoteric purpose that applies to about, maybe, zero people.  I come up with a lot of examples like that. However, if you realize that these CHECKs are not limited to column references, and if you explore the SQL Server function list, you could come up with a few that might be useful.  I'll let the names describe what they do instead of explaining them all: CREATE TABLE NoSA(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sa CHECK (SUSER_SNAME()<>'sa')) CREATE TABLE NoSysAdmin(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sysadmin CHECK (IS_SRVROLEMEMBER('sysadmin')=0)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc CHECK (OBJECT_NAME(@@PROCID) IS NOT NULL)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc2(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc2 CHECK (@@NESTLEVEL>0)) CREATE TABLE NoCursors(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_Cursors CHECK (@@CURSOR_ROWS=0)) CREATE TABLE ANSI_PADDING_ON(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_ANSI_PADDING_ON CHECK (@@OPTIONS & 16=16)) CREATE TABLE TimeOfDay(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_TimeOfDay CHECK (DATEPART(hour,GETDATE()) BETWEEN 0 AND 1)) GO -- log in as sa or a sysadmin server role member, and try this: INSERT NoSA VALUES(1) INSERT NoSysAdmin VALUES(1) -- note the difference when using sa vs. non-sa -- then try it again with a non-sysadmin login -- see if this works: INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(1) GO -- then try this: CREATE PROCEDURE NotAdHoc @val1 int, @val2 int AS SET NOCOUNT ON; INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(@val1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(@val2) GO EXEC NotAdHoc 2,2 -- which values got inserted? SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc2   -- and this one just makes me happy :) INSERT NoCursors VALUES(1) DECLARE curs CURSOR FOR SELECT 1 OPEN curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(2) CLOSE curs DEALLOCATE curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(3) SELECT * FROM NoCursors   I'll leave the ANSI_PADDING_ON and TimeOfDay tables for you to test on your own, I think you get the idea.  (Also take a look at the NoCursors example, notice anything interesting?)  The real eye-opener, for me anyway, is the ability to limit bad coding practices like cursors, ad-hoc SQL, and sa use/abuse by using declarative SQL objects.  I'm sure you can see how and why this would come up when discussing Revenge: The SQL.;) And the best part IMHO is that these work on pretty much any version of SQL Server, without needing Policy Based Management, DDL/login triggers, or similar tools to enforce best practices. All seriousness aside, I highly recommend that you spend some time letting your mind go wild with the possibilities and see how far you can take things.  There are no rules! (Hmmmm, what can I do with rules?) #TSQL2sDay

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  • Protecting Consolidated Data on Engineered Systems

    - by Steve Enevold
    In this time of reduced budgets and cost cutting measures in Federal, State and Local governments, the requirement to provide services continues to grow. Many agencies are looking at consolidating their infrastructure to reduce cost and meet budget goals. Oracle's engineered systems are ideal platforms for accomplishing these goals. These systems provide unparalleled performance that is ideal for running applications and databases that traditionally run on separate dedicated environments. However, putting multiple critical applications and databases in a single architecture makes security more critical. You are putting a concentrated set of sensitive data on a single system, making it a more tempting target.  The environments were previously separated by iron so now you need to provide assurance that one group, department, or application's information is not visible to other personnel or applications resident in the Exadata system. Administration of the environments requires formal separation of duties so an administrator of one application environment cannot view or negatively impact others. Also, these systems need to be in protected environments just like other critical production servers. They should be in a data center protected by physical controls, network firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, etc Exadata also provides unique security benefits, including a reducing attack surface by minimizing packages and services to only those required. In addition to reducing the possible system areas someone may attempt to infiltrate, Exadata has the following features: 1.    Infiniband, which functions as a secure private backplane 2.    IPTables  to perform stateful packet inspection for all nodes               Cellwall implements firewall services on each cell using IPTables 3.    Hardware accelerated encryption for data at rest on storage cells Oracle is uniquely positioned to provide the security necessary for implementing Exadata because security has been a core focus since the company's beginning. In addition to the security capabilities inherent in Exadata, Oracle security products are all certified to run in an Exadata environment. Database Vault Oracle Database Vault helps organizations increase the security of existing applications and address regulatory mandates that call for separation-of-duties, least privilege and other preventive controls to ensure data integrity and data privacy. Oracle Database Vault proactively protects application data stored in the Oracle database from being accessed by privileged database users. A unique feature of Database Vault is the ability to segregate administrative tasks including when a command can be executed, or that the DBA can manage the health of the database and objects, but may not see the data Advanced Security  helps organizations comply with privacy and regulatory mandates by transparently encrypting all application data or specific sensitive columns, such as credit cards, social security numbers, or personally identifiable information (PII). By encrypting data at rest and whenever it leaves the database over the network or via backups, Oracle Advanced Security provides the most cost-effective solution for comprehensive data protection. Label Security  is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for classifying data and mediating access to data based on its classification. Designed to meet public-sector requirements for multi-level security and mandatory access control, Oracle Label Security provides a flexible framework that both government and commercial entities worldwide can use to manage access to data on a "need to know" basis in order to protect data privacy and achieve regulatory compliance  Data Masking reduces the threat of someone in the development org taking data that has been copied from production to the development environment for testing, upgrades, etc by irreversibly replacing the original sensitive data with fictitious data so that production data can be shared safely with IT developers or offshore business partners  Audit Vault and Database Firewall Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall serves as a critical detective and preventive control across multiple operating systems and database platforms to protect against the abuse of legitimate access to databases responsible for almost all data breaches and cyber attacks.  Consolidation, cost-savings, and performance can now be achieved without sacrificing security. The combination of built in protection and Oracle’s industry-leading data protection solutions make Exadata an ideal platform for Federal, State, and local governments and agencies.

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  • C++ property system interface for game editors (reflection system)

    - by Cristopher Ismael Sosa Abarca
    I have designed an reusable game engine for an project, and their functionality is like this: Is a completely scripted game engine instead of the usual scripting languages as Lua or Python, this uses Runtime-Compiled C++, and an modified version of Cistron (an component-based programming framework).to be compatible with Runtime-Compiled C++ and so on. Using the typical GameObject and Component classes of the Component-based design pattern, is serializable via JSON, BSON or Binary useful for selecting which objects will be loaded the next time. The main problem: We want to use our custom GameObjects and their components properties in our level editor, before used hardcoded functions to access GameObject base class virtual functions from the derived ones, if do you want to modify an property specifically from that class you need inside into the code, this situation happens too with the derived classes of Component class, in little projects there's no problem but for larger projects becomes tedious, lengthy and error-prone. I've researched a lot to find a solution without luck, i tried with the Ogitor's property system (since our engine is Ogre-based) but we find it inappropiate for the component-based design and it's limited only for the Ogre classes and can lead to performance overhead, and we tried some code we find in the Internet we tested it and worked a little but we considered the macro and lambda abuse too horrible take a look (some code omitted): IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_BEGIN(CBaseEntity) IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Editor"); IWE_PROP_INT_S("Id", "Internal id", m_nEntID, [](int n) {}, true); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END(); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Entity"); IWE_PROP_STRING_S("Mesh", "Mesh used for this entity", m_pModelName, [pInst](const std::string& sModelName) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_MESH); pInst->m_stackMemUndoStr.push(pInst->getModelName()); pInst->setModel(sModelName, false); pInst->saveState(); }, false); IWE_PROP_VECTOR3_S("Position", m_vecPosition, [pInst](float fX, float fY, float fZ) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_POSITION); pInst->m_stackMemUndoVec3.push(pInst->getPosition()); pInst->saveState(); pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[0] = fX; pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[1] = fY; pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[2] = fZ; pInst->setPosition(pInst->m_vecPosition); }, false); IWE_PROP_QUATERNION_S("Orientation (Quat)", m_quatOrientation, [pInst](float fW, float fX, float fY, float fZ) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_ROTATE); pInst->m_stackMemUndoQuat.push(pInst->getOrientation()); pInst->saveState(); pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[0] = fW; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[1] = fX; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[2] = fY; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[3] = fZ; pInst->setOrientation(pInst->m_quatOrientation); }, false); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END(); IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_END() We are finding an simplified way to this, without leading confusing the programmers, (will be released to the public) i find ways to achieve this but they are only available for the common scripting as Lua or editors using C#. also too portable, we can write "wrappers" for different GUI toolkits as Qt or GTK, also i'm thinking to using Boost.Wave to get additional macro functionality without creating my own compiler. The properties designed to use in the editor they are removed in the game since the save file contains their data and loads it using an simple 'load' function to reduce unnecessary code bloat may will be useful if some GameObject property wants to be hidden instead. In summary, there's a way to implement an reflection(property) system for a level editor based in properties from derived classes? Also we can use C++11 and Boost (restricted only to Wave and PropertyTree)

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  • Good DBAs Do Baselines

    - by Louis Davidson
    One morning, you wake up and feel funny. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something isn’t quite right. What now? Unless you happen to be a hypochondriac, you likely drag yourself out of bed, get on with the day and gather more “evidence”. You check your symptoms over the next few days; do you feel the same, better, worse? If better, then great, it was some temporal issue, perhaps caused by an allergic reaction to some suspiciously spicy chicken. If the same or worse then you go to the doctor for some health advice, but armed with some data to share, and having ruled out certain possible causes that are fixed with a bit of rest and perhaps an antacid. Whether you realize it or not, in comparing how you feel one day to the next, you have taken baseline measurements. In much the same way, a DBA uses baselines to gauge the gauge health of their database servers. Of course, while SQL Server is very willing to share data regarding its health and activities, it has almost no idea of the difference between good and bad. Over time, experienced DBAs develop “mental” baselines with which they can gauge the health of their servers almost as easily as their own body. They accumulate knowledge of the daily, natural state of each part of their database system, and so know instinctively when one of their databases “feels funny”. Equally, they know when an “issue” is just a passing tremor. They see their SQL Server with all of its four CPU cores running close 100% and don’t panic anymore. Why? It’s 5PM and every day the same thing occurs when the end-of-day reports, which are very CPU intensive, are running. Equally, they know when they need to respond in earnest when it is the first time they have heard about an issue, even if it has been happening every day. Nevertheless, no DBA can retain mental baselines for every characteristic of their systems, so we need to collect physical baselines too. In my experience, surprisingly few DBAs do this very well. Part of the problem is that SQL Server provides a lot of instrumentation. If you look, you will find an almost overwhelming amount of data regarding user activity on your SQL Server instances, and use and abuse of the available CPU, I/O and memory. It seems like a huge task even to work out which data you need to collect, let alone start collecting it on a regular basis, managing its storage over time, and performing detailed comparative analysis. However, without baselines, though, it is very difficult to pinpoint what ails a server, just by looking at a single snapshot of the data, or to spot retrospectively what caused the problem by examining aggregated data for the server, collected over many months. It isn’t as hard as you think to get started. You’ve probably already established some troubleshooting queries of the type SELECT Value FROM SomeSystemTableOrView. Capturing a set of baseline values for such a query can be as easy as changing it as follows: INSERT into BaseLine.SomeSystemTable (value, captureTime) SELECT Value, SYSDATETIME() FROM SomeSystemTableOrView; Of course, there are monitoring tools that will collect and manage this baseline data for you, automatically, and allow you to perform comparison of metrics over different periods. However, to get yourself started and to prove to yourself (or perhaps the person who writes the checks for tools) the value of baselines, stick something similar to the above query into an agent job, running every hour or so, and you are on your way with no excuses! Then, the next time you investigate a slow server, and see x open transactions, y users logged in, and z rows added per hour in the Orders table, compare to your baselines and see immediately what, if anything, has changed!

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  • I am not satisfied with my career and accomplished nothing in my life. what should I do now [on hold]

    - by user2906155
    After my complete my College education I got chance to work on software programming. I work on few software and now nothing make me feel good. I don't like web-programming. Can't have too much mind to play with other people in team a designer or a senior. it's totally time wasting for me. We do integration without any source code control. copy through pen drive. I write in too many language for web-programming but know nothing about any language specially. I don't like to have a BOSS. I would like to do something on my own. From last 3 year I thing I will got a better job but I am unable to get it. I am not good at Programming nor my English is native. I have a big list for pay then my salary. I have problem with nothing. my atmosphere is about illiterate people. they abuse 24 hours a day. this thing make me sick. people watch CRIME patrol my home (watching rape in TV because it's happen to someone). I do my work from home. I don't like to live in my state. All state is one of the biggest illiterate state of my country. Once I apply for a Job in China and it's look like I can get thing Job but I don't get it. My family doesn't want me to settle anywhere else. I told my family 4 time a day that I can't live in this worst situation. Everyone (including the person who I work for) tell me that you can do it only you have money. Now I really don't know how to make money. My job not allow me to work for anyone. My productivity going down since I don't learn anything new. I thing if this happen to me for next 2 year I don't have any knowledge more then a peon. I hate it. When I was in other city then I see that if I spent 7 days their all my 7 days going better. even I go for travelling in green places then I like it. but all I hate it where I work for. When I work on other city then I see my productivity are improved and I don't hate my work. I listen a song "If you don't your love what are you doing it for". I seriously don' t know what I still live here because this place gave me nothing but depression and trouble. for people I clear that I don't belong to RICH or middle class family. All I got is doing something on my own or help of someone. affording a rental place make my run on footpath. All I save in one month is just 10$ (approximately) (actually I afford some guys's education now). Can a programmer live worst life like this. I really not happy. Today is a festival in India and I don't celebrate it because I really hate myself. I want to do suicide. someone guide me how to start solving this headache

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  • What is the worst programming language you ever worked with? [closed]

    - by Ludwig Weinzierl
    If you have an interesting story to share, please post an answer, but do not abuse this question for bashing a language. We are programmers, and our primary tool is the programming language we use. While there is a lot of discussion about the best one, I'd like to hear your stories about the worst programming languages you ever worked with and I'd like to know exactly what annoyed you. I'd like to collect this stories partly to avoid common pitfalls while designing a language (especially a DSL) and partly to avoid quirky languages in the future in general. This question is not subjective. If a language supports only single character identifiers (see my own answer) this is bad in a non-debatable way. EDIT Some people have raised concerns that this question attracts trolls. Wading through all your answers made one thing clear. The large majority of answers is appropriate, useful and well written. UPDATE 2009-07-01 19:15 GMT The language overview is now complete, covering 103 different languages from 102 answers. I decided to be lax about what counts as a programming language and included anything reasonable. Thank you David for your comments on this. Here are all programming languages covered so far (alphabetical order, linked with answer, new entries in bold): ABAP, all 20th century languages, all drag and drop languages, all proprietary languages, APF, APL (1), AS400, Authorware, Autohotkey, BancaStar, BASIC, Bourne Shell, Brainfuck, C++, Centura Team Developer, Cobol (1), Cold Fusion, Coldfusion, CRM114, Crystal Syntax, CSS, Dataflex 2.3, DB/c DX, dbase II, DCL, Delphi IDE, Doors DXL, DOS batch (1), Excel Macro language, FileMaker, FOCUS, Forth, FORTRAN, FORTRAN 77, HTML, Illustra web blade, Informix 4th Generation Language, Informix Universal Server web blade, INTERCAL, Java, JavaScript (1), JCL (1), karol, LabTalk, Labview, Lingo, LISP, Logo, LOLCODE, LotusScript, m4, Magic II, Makefiles, MapBasic, MaxScript, Meditech Magic, MEL, mIRC Script, MS Access, MUMPS, Oberon, object extensions to C, Objective-C, OPS5, Oz, Perl (1), PHP, PL/SQL, PowerDynamo, PROGRESS 4GL, prova, PS-FOCUS, Python, Regular Expressions, RPG, RPG II, Scheme, ScriptMaker, sendmail.conf, Smalltalk, Smalltalk , SNOBOL, SpeedScript, Sybase PowerBuilder, Symbian C++, System RPL, TCL, TECO, The Visual Software Environment, Tiny praat, TransCAD, troff, uBasic, VB6 (1), VBScript (1), VDF4, Vimscript, Visual Basic (1), Visual C++, Visual Foxpro, VSE, Webspeed, XSLT The answers covering 80386 assembler, VB6 and VBScript have been removed.

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  • OAuth secrets in mobile apps

    - by Felixyz
    When using the OAuth protocol, you need a secret string obtained from the service you want to delegate to. If you are doing this in a web app, you can simply store the secret in your data base or on the file system, but what is the best way to handle it in a mobile app (or a desktop app for that matter)? Storing the string in the app is obviously not good, as someone could easily find it and abuse it. Another approach would be to store it on you server, and have the app fetch it on every run, never storing it on the phone. This is almost as bad, because you have to include the URL in the app. I don't believe using https is any help. The only workable solution I can come up with is to first obtain the Access Token as normal (preferably using a web view inside the app), and then route all further communication through our server, where a script would append the secret to the request data and communicates with the provider. Then again, I'm a security noob, so I'd really like to hear some knowledgeable peoples' opinions on this. It doesn't seem to me that most apps are going to these lengths to guarantee security (for example, Facebook Connect seems to assume that you put the secret into a string right in your app). Another thing: I don't believe the secret is involved in initially requesting the Access Token, so that could be done without involving our own server. Am I correct?

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  • What should every developer know about databases?

    - by Aaronaught
    Whether we like it or not, many if not most of us developers either regularly work with databases or may have to work with one someday. And considering the amount of misuse and abuse in the wild, and the volume of database-related questions that come up every day, it's fair to say that there are certain concepts that developers should know - even if they don't design or work with databases today. So: What are the important concepts that developers and other software professionals ought to know about databases? Guidelines for Responses: Keep your list short. One concept per answer is best. Be specific. "Data modelling" may be an important skill, but what does that mean precisely? Explain your rationale. Why is your concept important? Don't just say "use indexes." Don't fall into "best practices." Convince your audience to go learn more. Upvote answers you agree with. Read other people's answers first. One high-ranked answer is a more effective statement than two low-ranked ones. If you have more to add, either add a comment or reference the original. Don't downvote something just because it doesn't apply to you personally. We all work in different domains. The objective here is to provide direction for database novices to gain a well-founded, well-rounded understanding of database design and database-driven development, not to compete for the title of most-important.

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  • A better python property decorator

    - by leChuck
    I've inherited some python code that contains a rather cryptic decorator. This decorator sets properties in classes all over the project. The problem is that this I have traced my debugging problems to this decorator. Seems it "fubars" all debuggers I've tried and trying to speed up the code with psyco breaks everthing. (Seems psyco and this decorator dont play nice). I think it would be best to change it. def Property(function): """Allow readable properties""" keys = 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel' func_locals = {'doc':function.__doc__} def probeFunc(frame, event, arg): if event == 'return': locals = frame.f_locals func_locals.update(dict((k,locals.get(k)) for k in keys)) sys.settrace(None) return probeFunc sys.settrace(probeFunc) function() return property(**func_locals) Used like so: class A(object): @Property def prop(): def fget(self): return self.__prop def fset(self, value): self.__prop = value ... ect The errors I get say the problems are because of sys.settrace. (Perhaps this is abuse of settrace ?) My question: Is the same decorator achievable without sys.settrace. If not I'm in for some heavy rewrites.

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  • Collecting high-volume video viewing data

    - by DanK
    I want to add tracking to our Flash-based media player so that we can provide analytics that show what sections of videos are being watched (at the moment, we just register a view when a video starts playing) For example, if a viewer watches the first 30 seconds of a video and then clicks away to something else, we want the data to reflect that. Likewise, if someone watches the first 10 seconds, then scrubs the timeline to the last minute of the video and watches that, we want to register viewing on the parts watched and not the middle section. My first thought was to collect up the viewing data in the player and send it all to the server at the end of a viewing session. Unfortunately, Flash does not seem to have an event that you can hook into when a viewer clicks away from the page the movie is on (probably a good thing - it would be open to abuse) So, it looks like we're going to have to make regular requests to the server as the video is playing. This is obviously going to lead to a high volume of requests when there are large numbers of simultaneous viewers. The simple approach of dumping all these 'heartbeat' events from clients to a database feels like it will quickly become unmanageable so I'm wondering whether I should be taking an approach where viewing sessions are cached in memory and flushed to database when they become inactive (based on a timeout). That way, the data could be stored as time spans rather than individual heartbeats. So, to the question - what is the best way to approach dealing with this kind of high-volume viewing data? Are there any good existing architectures/patterns? Thanks, Dan.

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  • Self-describing file format for gigapixel images?

    - by Adam Goode
    In medical imaging, there appears to be two ways of storing huge gigapixel images: Use lots of JPEG images (either packed into files or individually) and cook up some bizarre index format to describe what goes where. Tack on some metadata in some other format. Use TIFF's tile and multi-image support to cleanly store the images as a single file, and provide downsampled versions for zooming speed. Then abuse various TIFF tags to store metadata in non-standard ways. Also, store tiles with overlapping boundaries that must be individually translated later. In both cases, the reader must understand the format well enough to understand how to draw things and read the metadata. Is there a better way to store these images? Is TIFF (or BigTIFF) still the right format for this? Does XMP solve the problem of metadata? The main issues are: Storing images in a way that allows for rapid random access (tiling) Storing downsampled images for rapid zooming (pyramid) Handling cases where tiles are overlapping or sparse (scanners often work by moving a camera over a slide in 2D and capturing only where there is something to image) Storing important metadata, including associated images like a slide's label and thumbnail Support for lossy storage What kind of (hopefully non-proprietary) formats do people use to store large aerial photographs or maps? These images have similar properties.

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  • Add two 32-bit integers in Assembler for use in VB6

    - by Emtucifor
    I would like to come up with the byte code in assembler (assembly?) for Windows machines to add two 32-bit longs and throw away the carry bit. I realize the "Windows machines" part is a little vague, but I'm assuming that the bytes for ADD are pretty much the same in all modern Intel instruction sets. I'm just trying to abuse VB a little and make some things faster. So... if the string "8A4C240833C0F6C1E075068B442404D3E0C20800" is the assembly code for SHL that can be "injected" into a VB6 program for a fast SHL operation expecting two Long parameters (we're ignoring here that 32-bit longs in VB6 are signed, just pretend they are unsigned), what is the hex string of bytes representing assembler instructions that will do the same thing to return the sum? The hex code above for SHL is, according to the author: mov eax, [esp+4] mov cl, [esp+8] shl eax, cl ret 8 I spit those bytes into a file and tried unassembling them in a windows command prompt using the old debug utility, but I figured out it's not working with the newer instruction set because it didn't like EAX when I tried assembling something but it was happy with AX. I know from comments in the source code that SHL EAX, CL is D3E0, but I don't have any reference to know what the bytes are for instruction ADD EAX, CL or I'd try it. I tried flat assembler and am not getting anything I can figure out how to use. I used it to assemble the original SHL code and got a very different result, not the same bytes. Help?

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  • Cross compiling from MinGW on Fedora 12 to Windows - console window?

    - by elcuco
    After reading this article http://lukast.mediablog.sk/log/?p=155 I decided to use mingw on linux to compile windows applications. This means I can compile, test, debug and release directly from Linux. I hacked this build script which will cross compile the application and even package it in a ZIP file. Note that I am using out of source builds for QMake (did you even know this is supported? wow...). Also note that the script will pull the needed DLLs automagically. Here is the script for you all internets to use and abuse: #! /bin/sh set -x set -e VERSION=0.1 PRO_FILE=blabla.pro BUILD_DIR=mingw_build DIST_DIR=blabla-$VERSION-win32 # clean up old shite rm -fr $BUILD_DIR mkdir $BUILD_DIR cd $BUILD_DIR # start building QMAKESPEC=fedora-win32-cross qmake-qt4 QT_LIBINFIX=4 config=\"release\ quiet\" ../$PRO_FILE #qmake-qt4 -spec fedora-win32-cross make DLLS=`i686-pc-mingw32-objdump -p release/*.exe | grep dll | awk '{print $3}'` for i in $DLLS mingwm10.dll ; do f=/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/bin/$i if [ ! -f $f ]; then continue; fi cp -av $f release done mkdir -p $DIST_DIR mv release/*.exe $DIST_DIR mv release/*.dll $DIST_DIR zip -r ../$DIST_DIR.zip $DIST_DIR The compiled binary works on the Windows7 machine I tested. Now to the questions: When I execute the application on Windows, the theme is not the Windows7 theme. I assume I am missing a style module, I am not really sure yet. The application gets a console window for some reason. The second point (the console window) is critical. How can I remove this background window? Please note that the extra config lines are not working for me, what am I missing there?

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