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  • SSD: NTFS vs EXT4

    - by Joshua
    Always when I read about SSD usage under Linux, the advice is to disable journalling in Ext4 (or use Ext2), since it's too bad for your SSD. But in all articles about SSD tweaks for Windows, I never see any mentions that you should disable NTFS journalling, or that you should stick to FAT32. I know Ext4's journaling is more advanced, but is it so much more damaging to a SSD than that of NTFS? Or are Linux users just a little bit more cautious?

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  • Encrypt windows 8 file history

    - by SnippetSpace
    File history is great but it saves your files on the external drive without any encryption and stores them using the exact same folder structure as the originals. If a bad guy gets his hands on the hard drive it could basically not be easier to get to your important files. Is there any way to encrypt the file history backup without breaking its functionality and without having to encrypt the original content itself? Thanks for your input!

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  • Postfix sendmail bypass restrictions [on hold]

    - by EnEli
    I have setup a postfix/dovecot mail server and all thing work fine! BUT: I use virtual mailboxes and when you try to send a mail to a non existent mailbox via telnet postfix will punch you... But if you use sendmail, all restricitons are bypassed... This is bad becuase dovecot does not know what to do with this mail! It will stay in the queue for ever... How can I force sendmail to use normal smtp?

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  • Quick method to determine SSD drive health?

    - by ewwhite
    I have an Intel X-25M drive that was marked "failed" twice in a ZFS storage array, as noted here. However, after removing the drive, it seems to to mount, read and write in other computers (Mac, PC, USB enclosure, etc.) Is there a good way to determine the drive's present health? I feel that the previous failure in the ZFS solution was the convergence of bugs, bad error reporting and hardware. It seems like this drive may have some life in it, though.

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  • Level 3 Communications Monitoring

    - by thursdasy
    Does level 3 Communications offer any type of map of current network status? It seems our connection here is getting high latency through their network. Also what is the experience asking them questions about if one of their appliances is malfunctioning or being overloaded because you are receiving bad latency in their network?

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  • USB ports not working after restoring back

    - by jmainock
    After restoring this computer with a backup it appears that 2 of the 5 usb ports no longer work. I'm thinking that there is something corrupted on the backup disk causing the failure. When I plug in a usb keyboard to these ports the system will not recognize the new hardware on the 2 bad ports but does recognize new hardware on the remaining three ports. All the ports were working prior to the restoration.

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  • USB ports not working after restoring back

    - by jmainock
    After restoring this computer with a backup it appears that 2 of the 5 usb ports no longer work. I'm thinking that there is something corrupted on the backup disk causing the failure. When I plug in a usb keyboard to these ports the system will not recognize the new hardware on the 2 bad ports but does recognize new hardware on the remaining three ports. All the ports were working prior to the restoration.

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  • Is it OK to have a diferent hostname to fqdn?

    - by Cameron Ball
    I have a server with fqdn git.mydomain.com (this is in DNS) but I don't really want the machine to have git as its hostname. Right now I have the hostname in /etc/hostname set as (for example): mycustomhostname And in /etc/hosts I have 1.2.3.4 git.mydomain.com mycustomhostname (Where 1.2.3.4 is my server's IP) I've read that the first component of the FQDN should always be the unqualified hostname, so is what I'm doing bad? If so, what is the correct way to do what I want?

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  • Virtual PC in Remote Desktop session runs very slowly??

    - by Michael Bray
    I have a VPN to my work which is quite fast... I Remote Desktop to my work PC, which is running a Microsoft Virtual PC. Working with the PC while I'm actually at work isn't too bad, but when I try to interact with it over the remote desktop, it is VERY slow to respond. Even simple typing can be slow, but screen painting and response time is painfully obvious. Any suggestions to help speed it up?

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  • delphi idhttp post related question

    - by paul
    hello All im new to delphi. and also almost new to programming world. i was made some simple post software which using idhttp module. but when execute it , it not correctly working. this simple program is check for my account status. if account login successfully it return some source code which include 'top.location =' in source, and if login failed it return not included 'top.location =' inside account.txt is follow first and third account was alived account but only first account can check, after first account other account can't check i have no idea what wrong with it ph896011 pk1089 fsadfasdf dddddss ph896011 pk1089 following is source of delphi if any one help me much apprecated! unit Unit1; interface uses Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms, Dialogs, StdCtrls, IdBaseComponent, IdComponent, IdTCPConnection, IdTCPClient, IdHTTP, IdCookieManager, ExtCtrls; type TForm1 = class(TForm) Button1: TButton; IdHTTP1: TIdHTTP; Memo1: TMemo; IdCookieManager1: TIdCookieManager; lstAcct: TListBox; result: TLabel; Edit1: TEdit; Timer1: TTimer; procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject); //procedure FormCreate(Sender: TObject); //procedure FormClose(Sender: TObject; var Action: TCloseAction); private { Private declarations } public AccList: TStringList; IdCookie: TIdCookieManager; CookieList: TList; StartCnt: Integer; InputCnt: Integer; WordList: TStringList; WordNoList: TStringList; WordCntList: TStringList; StartTime: TDateTime; end; var Form1: TForm1; implementation {$R *.dfm} procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); var i: Integer; //temp: String; lsttemp: TStringList; sl : tstringlist; //userId,userPass: string; begin InputCnt:= 0; WordList := TStringList.Create; CookieList := TList.create; IdCookie := TIdCookieManager.Create(self); if FileExists(ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName) + 'account.txt') then WordList.LoadFromFile(ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName) + 'account.txt'); WordNoList:= TStringList.Create; WordCntList := TStringList.Create; lsttemp := TStringList.create; sl :=Tstringlist.Create; try try for i := 0 to WordList.Count -1 do begin ExtractStrings([' '], [' '], pchar(WordList[i]), lsttemp); WordNoList.add(lsttemp[0]); //ShowMessage(lsttemp[0]); WordCntList.add(lsttemp[1]); //ShowMessage(lsttemp[1]); sl.Add('ID='+ lsttemp[0]); sl.add('PWD=' + lsttemp[1]); sl.add('SECCHK=0'); IdHTTP1.HandleRedirects := True; IdHTTP1.Request.ContentType := 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'; memo1.Text:=idhttp1.Post('http://user.buddybuddy.co.kr/Login/Login.asp',sl); if pos('top.location =',Memo1.Text)> 0 then begin application.ProcessMessages; ShowMessage('Alive Acc!'); //result.Caption := 'alive acc' ; sleep(1000); Edit1.Text := 'alive acc'; lsttemp.Clear; Memo1.Text := ''; //memo1.Text := IdHTTP1.Get('https://user.buddybuddy.co.kr/Login/Logout.asp'); Sleep(1000); end; if pos('top.location =', memo1.Text) <> 1 then begin application.ProcessMessages; ShowMessage('bad'); Edit1.Text := 'bad'; //edit1.Text := 'bad'; lsttemp.Clear; memo1.Text := ''; sleep(1000) ; end; Edit1.Text := ''; end; finally lsttemp.free; end; StartCnt := lstAcct.items.Count; StartTime := Now; finally sl.Free; end; end; end.

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  • How do encrypt a long or int using the Bouncy Castle crypto routines for BlackBerry?

    - by DanG
    How do encrypt/decrypt a long or int using the Bouncy Castle crypto routines for BlackBerry? I know how to encrypt/decrypt a String. I can encrypt a long but can't get a long to decrypt properly. Some of this is poorly done, but I'm just trying stuff out at the moment. I've included my entire crypto engine here: import org.bouncycastle.crypto.BufferedBlockCipher; import org.bouncycastle.crypto.DataLengthException; import org.bouncycastle.crypto.InvalidCipherTextException; import org.bouncycastle.crypto.engines.AESFastEngine; import org.bouncycastle.crypto.paddings.PaddedBufferedBlockCipher; import org.bouncycastle.crypto.params.KeyParameter; public class CryptoEngine { // Global Variables // Global Objects private static AESFastEngine engine; private static BufferedBlockCipher cipher; private static KeyParameter key; public static boolean setEncryptionKey(String keyText) { // adding in spaces to force a proper key keyText += " "; // cutting off at 128 bits (16 characters) keyText = keyText.substring(0, 16); keyText = HelperMethods.cleanUpNullString(keyText); byte[] keyBytes = keyText.getBytes(); key = new KeyParameter(keyBytes); engine = new AESFastEngine(); cipher = new PaddedBufferedBlockCipher(engine); // just for now return true; } public static String encryptString(String plainText) { try { byte[] plainArray = plainText.getBytes(); cipher.init(true, key); byte[] cipherBytes = new byte[cipher.getOutputSize(plainArray.length)]; int cipherLength = cipher.processBytes(plainArray, 0, plainArray.length, cipherBytes, 0); cipher.doFinal(cipherBytes, cipherLength); String cipherString = new String(cipherBytes); return cipherString; } catch (DataLengthException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (IllegalStateException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (InvalidCipherTextException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (Exception ex) { Logger.logToConsole(ex); } // else return "";// default bad value } public static String decryptString(String encryptedText) { try { byte[] cipherBytes = encryptedText.getBytes(); cipher.init(false, key); byte[] decryptedBytes = new byte[cipher.getOutputSize(cipherBytes.length)]; int decryptedLength = cipher.processBytes(cipherBytes, 0, cipherBytes.length, decryptedBytes, 0); cipher.doFinal(decryptedBytes, decryptedLength); String decryptedString = new String(decryptedBytes); // crop accordingly int index = decryptedString.indexOf("\u0000"); if (index >= 0) { decryptedString = decryptedString.substring(0, index); } return decryptedString; } catch (DataLengthException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (IllegalStateException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (InvalidCipherTextException e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } catch (Exception ex) { Logger.logToConsole(ex); } // else return "";// default bad value } private static byte[] convertLongToByteArray(long longToConvert) { return new byte[] { (byte) (longToConvert >>> 56), (byte) (longToConvert >>> 48), (byte) (longToConvert >>> 40), (byte) (longToConvert >>> 32), (byte) (longToConvert >>> 24), (byte) (longToConvert >>> 16), (byte) (longToConvert >>> 8), (byte) (longToConvert) }; } private static long convertByteArrayToLong(byte[] byteArrayToConvert) { long returnable = 0; for (int counter = 0; counter < byteArrayToConvert.length; counter++) { returnable += ((byteArrayToConvert[byteArrayToConvert.length - counter - 1] & 0xFF) << counter * 8); } if (returnable < 0) { returnable++; } return returnable; } public static long encryptLong(long plainLong) { try { String plainString = String.valueOf(plainLong); String cipherString = encryptString(plainString); byte[] cipherBytes = cipherString.getBytes(); long returnable = convertByteArrayToLong(cipherBytes); return returnable; } catch (Exception e) { Logger.logToConsole(e); } // else return Integer.MIN_VALUE;// default bad value } public static long decryptLong(long encryptedLong) { byte[] cipherBytes = convertLongToByteArray(encryptedLong); cipher.init(false, key); byte[] decryptedBytes = new byte[cipher.getOutputSize(cipherBytes.length)]; int decryptedLength = cipherBytes.length; try { cipher.doFinal(decryptedBytes, decryptedLength); } catch (DataLengthException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IllegalStateException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (InvalidCipherTextException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (Exception e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } long plainLong = convertByteArrayToLong(decryptedBytes); return plainLong; } public static boolean encryptBoolean(int plainBoolean) { return false; } public static boolean decryptBoolean(int encryptedBoolean) { return false; } public static boolean testLongToByteArrayConversion() { boolean returnable = true; // fails out of the bounds of an integer, the conversion to long from byte // array does not hold, need to figure out a better solution for (long counter = -1000000; counter < 1000000; counter++) { long test = counter; byte[] bytes = convertLongToByteArray(test); long result = convertByteArrayToLong(bytes); if (result != test) { returnable = false; Logger.logToConsole("long conversion failed"); Logger.logToConsole("test = " + test + "\n result = " + result); } // regardless } // the end Logger.logToConsole("final returnable result = " + returnable); return returnable; } }

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  • Python - Converting CSV to Objects - Code Design

    - by victorhooi
    Hi, I have a small script we're using to read in a CSV file containing employees, and perform some basic manipulations on that data. We read in the data (import_gd_dump), and create an Employees object, containing a list of Employee objects (maybe I should think of a better naming convention...lol). We then call clean_all_phone_numbers() on Employees, which calls clean_phone_number() on each Employee, as well as lookup_all_supervisors(), on Employees. import csv import re import sys #class CSVLoader: # """Virtual class to assist with loading in CSV files.""" # def import_gd_dump(self, input_file='Gp Directory 20100331 original.csv'): # gd_extract = csv.DictReader(open(input_file), dialect='excel') # employees = [] # for row in gd_extract: # curr_employee = Employee(row) # employees.append(curr_employee) # return employees # #self.employees = {row['dbdirid']:row for row in gd_extract} # Previously, this was inside a (virtual) class called "CSVLoader". # However, according to here (http://tomayko.com/writings/the-static-method-thing) - the idiomatic way of doing this in Python is not with a class-fucntion but with a module-level function def import_gd_dump(input_file='Gp Directory 20100331 original.csv'): """Return a list ('employee') of dict objects, taken from a Group Directory CSV file.""" gd_extract = csv.DictReader(open(input_file), dialect='excel') employees = [] for row in gd_extract: employees.append(row) return employees def write_gd_formatted(employees_dict, output_file="gd_formatted.csv"): """Read in an Employees() object, and write out each Employee() inside this to a CSV file""" gd_output_fieldnames = ('hrid', 'mail', 'givenName', 'sn', 'dbcostcenter', 'dbdirid', 'hrreportsto', 'PHFull', 'PHFull_message', 'SupervisorEmail', 'SupervisorFirstName', 'SupervisorSurname') try: gd_formatted = csv.DictWriter(open(output_file, 'w', newline=''), fieldnames=gd_output_fieldnames, extrasaction='ignore', dialect='excel') except IOError: print('Unable to open file, IO error (Is it locked?)') sys.exit(1) headers = {n:n for n in gd_output_fieldnames} gd_formatted.writerow(headers) for employee in employees_dict.employee_list: # We're using the employee object's inbuilt __dict__ attribute - hmm, is this good practice? gd_formatted.writerow(employee.__dict__) class Employee: """An Employee in the system, with employee attributes (name, email, cost-centre etc.)""" def __init__(self, employee_attributes): """We use the Employee constructor to convert a dictionary into instance attributes.""" for k, v in employee_attributes.items(): setattr(self, k, v) def clean_phone_number(self): """Perform some rudimentary checks and corrections, to make sure numbers are in the right format. Numbers should be in the form 0XYYYYYYYY, where X is the area code, and Y is the local number.""" if self.telephoneNumber is None or self.telephoneNumber == '': return '', 'Missing phone number.' else: standard_format = re.compile(r'^\+(?P<intl_prefix>\d{2})\((?P<area_code>\d)\)(?P<local_first_half>\d{4})-(?P<local_second_half>\d{4})') extra_zero = re.compile(r'^\+(?P<intl_prefix>\d{2})\(0(?P<area_code>\d)\)(?P<local_first_half>\d{4})-(?P<local_second_half>\d{4})') missing_hyphen = re.compile(r'^\+(?P<intl_prefix>\d{2})\(0(?P<area_code>\d)\)(?P<local_first_half>\d{4})(?P<local_second_half>\d{4})') if standard_format.search(self.telephoneNumber): result = standard_format.search(self.telephoneNumber) return '0' + result.group('area_code') + result.group('local_first_half') + result.group('local_second_half'), '' elif extra_zero.search(self.telephoneNumber): result = extra_zero.search(self.telephoneNumber) return '0' + result.group('area_code') + result.group('local_first_half') + result.group('local_second_half'), 'Extra zero in area code - ask user to remediate. ' elif missing_hyphen.search(self.telephoneNumber): result = missing_hyphen.search(self.telephoneNumber) return '0' + result.group('area_code') + result.group('local_first_half') + result.group('local_second_half'), 'Missing hyphen in local component - ask user to remediate. ' else: return '', "Number didn't match recognised format. Original text is: " + self.telephoneNumber class Employees: def __init__(self, import_list): self.employee_list = [] for employee in import_list: self.employee_list.append(Employee(employee)) def clean_all_phone_numbers(self): for employee in self.employee_list: #Should we just set this directly in Employee.clean_phone_number() instead? employee.PHFull, employee.PHFull_message = employee.clean_phone_number() # Hmm, the search is O(n^2) - there's probably a better way of doing this search? def lookup_all_supervisors(self): for employee in self.employee_list: if employee.hrreportsto is not None and employee.hrreportsto != '': for supervisor in self.employee_list: if supervisor.hrid == employee.hrreportsto: (employee.SupervisorEmail, employee.SupervisorFirstName, employee.SupervisorSurname) = supervisor.mail, supervisor.givenName, supervisor.sn break else: (employee.SupervisorEmail, employee.SupervisorFirstName, employee.SupervisorSurname) = ('Supervisor not found.', 'Supervisor not found.', 'Supervisor not found.') else: (employee.SupervisorEmail, employee.SupervisorFirstName, employee.SupervisorSurname) = ('Supervisor not set.', 'Supervisor not set.', 'Supervisor not set.') #Is thre a more pythonic way of doing this? def print_employees(self): for employee in self.employee_list: print(employee.__dict__) if __name__ == '__main__': db_employees = Employees(import_gd_dump()) db_employees.clean_all_phone_numbers() db_employees.lookup_all_supervisors() #db_employees.print_employees() write_gd_formatted(db_employees) Firstly, my preamble question is, can you see anything inherently wrong with the above, from either a class design or Python point-of-view? Is the logic/design sound? Anyhow, to the specifics: The Employees object has a method, clean_all_phone_numbers(), which calls clean_phone_number() on each Employee object inside it. Is this bad design? If so, why? Also, is the way I'm calling lookup_all_supervisors() bad? Originally, I wrapped the clean_phone_number() and lookup_supervisor() method in a single function, with a single for-loop inside it. clean_phone_number is O(n), I believe, lookup_supervisor is O(n^2) - is it ok splitting it into two loops like this? In clean_all_phone_numbers(), I'm looping on the Employee objects, and settings their values using return/assignment - should I be setting this inside clean_phone_number() itself? There's also a few things that I'm sorted of hacked out, not sure if they're bad practice - e.g. print_employee() and gd_formatted() both use __dict__, and the constructor for Employee uses setattr() to convert a dictionary into instance attributes. I'd value any thoughts at all. If you think the questions are too broad, let me know and I can repost as several split up (I just didn't want to pollute the boards with multiple similar questions, and the three questions are more or less fairly tightly related). Cheers, Victor

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  • creating a color coded time chart using colorbar and colormaps in python

    - by Rusty
    I'm trying to make a time tracking chart based on a daily time tracking file that I used. I wrote code that crawls through my files and generates a few lists. endTimes is a list of times that a particular activity ends in minutes going from 0 at midnight the first day of the month to however many minutes are in a month. labels is a list of labels for the times listed in endTimes. It is one shorter than endtimes since the trackers don't have any data about before 0 minute. Most labels are repeats. categories contains every unique value of labels in order of how well I regard that time. I want to create a colorbar or a stack of colorbars (1 for eachday) that will depict how I spend my time for a month and put a color associated with each label. Each value in categories will have a color associated. More blue for more good. More red for more bad. It is already in order for the jet colormap to be right, but I need to get desecrate color values evenly spaced out for each value in categories. Then I figure the next step would be to convert that to a listed colormap to use for the colorbar based on how the labels associated with the categories. I think this is the right way to do it, but I am not sure. I am not sure how to associate the labels with color values. Here is the last part of my code so far. I found one function to make a discrete colormaps. It does, but it isn't what I am looking for and I am not sure what is happening. Thanks for the help! # now I need to develop the graph import numpy as np from matplotlib import pyplot,mpl import matplotlib from scipy import interpolate from scipy import * def contains(thelist,name): # checks if the current list of categories contains the one just read for val in thelist: if val == name: return True return False def getCategories(lastFile): ''' must determine the colors to use I would like to make a gradient so that the better the task, the closer to blue bad labels will recieve colors closer to blue read the last file given for the information on how I feel the order should be then just keep them in the order of how good they are in the tracker use a color range and develop discrete values for each category by evenly spacing them out any time not found should assume to be sleep sleep should be white ''' tracker = open(lastFile+'.txt') # open the last file # find all the categories categories = [] for line in tracker: pos = line.find(':') # does it have a : or a ? if pos==-1: pos=line.find('?') if pos != -1: # ignore if no : or ? name = line[0:pos].strip() # split at the : or ? if contains(categories,name)==False: # if the category is new categories.append(name) # make a new one return categories # find good values in order of last day newlabels=[] for val in getCategories(lastDay): if contains(labels,val): newlabels.append(val) categories=newlabels # convert discrete colormap to listed colormap python for ii,val in enumerate(labels): if contains(categories,val)==False: labels[ii]='sleep' # create a figure fig = pyplot.figure() axes = [] for x in range(endTimes[-1]%(24*60)): ax = fig.add_axes([0.05, 0.65, 0.9, 0.15]) axes.append(ax) # figure out the colors to use # stole this function to make a discrete colormap # http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/ColormapTransformations def cmap_discretize(cmap, N): """Return a discrete colormap from the continuous colormap cmap. cmap: colormap instance, eg. cm.jet. N: Number of colors. Example x = resize(arange(100), (5,100)) djet = cmap_discretize(cm.jet, 5) imshow(x, cmap=djet) """ cdict = cmap._segmentdata.copy() # N colors colors_i = np.linspace(0,1.,N) # N+1 indices indices = np.linspace(0,1.,N+1) for key in ('red','green','blue'): # Find the N colors D = np.array(cdict[key]) I = interpolate.interp1d(D[:,0], D[:,1]) colors = I(colors_i) # Place these colors at the correct indices. A = zeros((N+1,3), float) A[:,0] = indices A[1:,1] = colors A[:-1,2] = colors # Create a tuple for the dictionary. L = [] for l in A: L.append(tuple(l)) cdict[key] = tuple(L) # Return colormap object. return matplotlib.colors.LinearSegmentedColormap('colormap',cdict,1024) # jet colormap goes from blue to red (good to bad) cmap = cmap_discretize(mpl.cm.jet, len(categories)) cmap.set_over('0.25') cmap.set_under('0.75') #norm = mpl.colors.Normalize(endTimes,cmap.N) print endTimes print labels # make a color list by matching labels to a picture #norm = mpl.colors.ListedColormap(colorList) cb1 = mpl.colorbar.ColorbarBase(axes[0],cmap=cmap ,orientation='horizontal' ,boundaries=endTimes ,ticks=endTimes ,spacing='proportional') pyplot.show()

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  • What is the MVC version of this code?

    - by Ian Boyd
    i'm trying to wrap my head around how to enterprise up my code: taking a simple routine and splitting it up into 5 or 6 methods in 3 or 4 classes. i quickly came up three simple examples of code how i currently write it. Could someone please convert these into an MVC/MVP obfuscated version? Example 1: The last name is mandatory. Color the text box red if nothing is entered. Color it green if stuff is entered: private void txtLastname_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Lastname mandatory. //Color pinkish if nothing entered. Greenish if entered. if (txtLastname.Text.Trim() == "") { //Lastname is required, color pinkish txtLastname.BackColor = ControlBad; } else { //Lastname entered, remove the coloring txtLastname.BackColor = ControlGood; } } Example 2: The first name is optional, but try to get it. We'll add a bluish tint to this "try to get" field: private void txtFirstname_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Firstname can be blank. //Hint them that they should *try* to get it with a bluish color. //If they do enter stuff: it better be not all spaces. if (txtFirstname.Text == "") { //Nothing there, hint it blue txtFirstname.BackColor = ControlRequired; } else if (txtFirstname.Text.Trim() == "") { //They entered spaces - bad user! txtFirstname.BackColor = ControlBad; } else { //Entered stuff, remove coloring txtFirstname.BackColor = SystemColors.Window; } } Example 3 The age is totally optional. If an age is entered, it better be valid: private void txtAge_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Age is optional, but if entered it better be valid int nAge = 0; if (Int32.TryParse(txtAge.Text, out nAge)) { //Valid integer entered if (nAge < 0) { //Negative age? i don't think so txtAge.BackColor = ControlBad; } else { //Valid age entered, remove coloring txtAge.BackColor = SystemColors.Window; } } else { //Whatever is in there: it's *not* a valid integer, if (txtAge.Text == "") { //Blank is okay txtAge.BackColor = SystemColors.Window; } else { //Not a valid age, bad user txtAge.BackColor = ControlBad; } } } Every time i see MVC code, it looks almost like random splitting of code into different methods, classes, and files. i've not been able to determine a reason or pattern to their madness. Without any understanding of they why it's being one some way, it makes no sense. And using the words model, view, controller and presenter, like i'm supposed to know what that means, doesn't help. The model is your data. The view shows data on screen. The controller is used to carry out the users actions And oranges taste orangy. Here's my attempt at splitting things up in order to make the code more difficult to follow. Is this anywhere close to MVC? private void txtFirstname_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { FirstnameTextChangedHandler(sender, e); } private void FirstnameTextChangedHandler(sender, e) { string firstname = GetFirstname(); Color firstnameTextBoxColor = GetFirstnameTextBoxColor(firstname); SetFirstNameTextBoxColor(firstnameTextBoxColor); } private string GetFirstname() { return txtFirstname.Text; } private Color GetFirstnameTextBoxColor(string firstname) { //Firstname can be blank. //Hint them that they should *try* to get it with a bluish color. //If they do enter stuff: it better be not all spaces. if (firstname == "") { //Nothing there, hint it blue return GetControlRequiredColor(); } else if (firstname.Trim() == "") { //They entered spaces - bad user! return GetControlBadColor(); } else { //Entered stuff, remove coloring return GetControlDefaultColor(); } } private Color GetControlRequiredColor() { return ControlRequired; } private Color GetControlBadColor() { return ControlBad; } private Color GetControlGoodColor() { return ControlGood; } //am i doin it rite i've obfuscated the code, but it's still altogether. The next step in the MVC obfuscation, i gather, is to hide the code in 3 or 4 different files. It's that next step that i don't understand. What is the logical separation of which functions are moved into what other classes? Can someone translate my 3 simple examples above into full fledged MVC obfuscation? Edit: Not ASP/ASP.NET/Online. Pretend it's on a desktop, handheld, surface, kiosk. And pretend it's language agnostic.

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  • understanding evaluation function

    - by mish
    I am developing a chess program. And have made use of an alpha beta algorithm and a static evaluation function. I have successfully implemented both but I want to improve the evaluation function by automatically tuning the weights assigned to its features. At this point am totally confused about the policy suitable for updating the weights of the function. One policy I have in mind is to check whether a move is good or bad before updating weights but I really know how to implement it. Thus I need ideas and pseudo code please.

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  • OpenGL or OpenGL ES

    - by zxspectrum
    What should I learn? OpenGL 4.1 or OpenGL ES 2.0? I will be developing desktop applications using Qt but I may start developing mobile applications in a few months, too. I don't know anything about 3D, 3D math, etc and I'd rather spend 100 bucks in a good book than 1 week digging websites and going through trial and error. One problem I see with OpenGL 4.1 is as far as I know there is no book yet (the most recent ones are for OpenGL 3.3 or 4.0), while there are books on OpenGL ES 2.0. On the other hand, from my naive point of view, OpenGL 4.1 seems like OpenGL ES 2.0 + additions, so it looks like it would be easier/better to first learn OpenGL ES 2.0, then go for the shader language, etc Please, don't tell me to use NeHe (it's generally agreed it's full of bad/old practices), the Durian tutorial, etc. Thanks

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  • Would a programmer knowing C# and VB.Net ever choose VB.Net?

    - by Earlz
    Now before someone tells me VB.Net isn't bad like VB was, I know it isn't. But, I've yet to speak to a programmer who is completely content that some project they work on is written in VB.Net. Basically, my question is would a programmer knowing both C# and VB.Net (and all of their team knowing both), would they ever choose VB.Net? And why? All of the VB.Net projects I've seen were written that way only because the programmer that started it(that usually isn't working there anymore) knew VB6(or earlier) and wrote it in VB.Net because of the similar syntax. Is there any advantage to writing a program in VB.Net compared to C#? (hopefully this is appropriate here, SO rejected it within a few minutes)

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  • How to run Repository Creation Utility (RCU) on 64-bit Linux

    - by Kevin Smith
    I was setting up WebCenter Content (WCC) on a new virtual box running 64-bit Linux and ran into a problem when I tried to run the Repository Creation Utility (RCU). I saw this error when trying to start RCU .../rcuHome/jdk/jre/bin/java: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory I think I remember running into this before and reading something about RCU only being supported on 32-bit Linux. I decided to try and see if I could get it to run on 64-bit Linux. I saw it was using it's own copy of java (.../rcuHome/jdk/jre/bin/java), so I decided to try and get it to use the 64-bit JRockit I had already installed. I edited the rcu script in rcuHome/bin and replaced JRE_DIR=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk/jre with JRE_DIR=/apps/java/jrockit-jdk1.6.0_29-R28.2.2-4.1.0 Sure enough that fixed it. I was able to run RCU and create the WCC schema.

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  • Create a trailing, ghosting effect of a sprite

    - by Neeko
    I want to create a trailing, ghosting like effect of a sprite that's moving fast. Something very similar to this image of Sonic (apologies of bad quality, it's the only example I could find of the effect I'm looking to achieve) However, I don't want to do this at the sprite sheet level, to avoid having to essentially double (or possibly quadruple) the amount of sprites in my atlas. It's also very labor intensive. So is there any other way to achieve this effect? Possibly by some shader voodoo magic? I am using Unity and 2D Toolkit, if that helps.

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  • “Being Agile” Means No Documentation, Right?

    - by jesschadwick
    Ask most software professionals what Agile is and they’ll probably start talking about flexibility and delivering what the customer wants.  Some may even mention the word “iterations”.  But inevitably, they’ll say at some point that it means less or even no documentation.  After all, doesn’t creating, updating, and circulating painstakingly comprehensive documentation that everyone and their mother have officially signed off on go against the very core of Agile?  Of course it does!  But really, they’re missing the point! Read The Agile Manifesto. (No, seriously - read it now. It’s short. I’ll wait.)  It’s essentially a list of values.  More specifically, it’s a right-side/left-side weighted list of values:  “Value this over that”. Many people seem to get the impression that this is really a “good vs. bad” list and that those values on the right side are evil and should essentially be tossed on the floor.  This leads to the conclusion that in order to be Agile we must throw away our fancy expensive tools, document as little as possible, and scoff at the idea of a project plan.  This conclusion is quite convenient because it essentially means “less work, more productivity!” (particularly in regards to the documentation and project planning).  I couldn’t disagree with this conclusion more. My interpretation of the Manifesto targets “over” as the operative word.  It’s not just a list of right vs. wrong or good vs. bad.  It’s a list of priorities.  In other words, none of the concepts on the list should be removed from your development lifecycle – they are all important… just not equally important.  This is not a unique interpretation, in fact it says so right at the end of the manifesto! So, the next time your team sits down to tackle that big new project, don’t make the first order of business to outlaw all meetings, documentation, and project plans.  Instead, collaborate with both your team and the business members involved (you do have business members sitting in the room, directly involved in the project planning, right?) and determine the bare minimum that will allow all of you to work and communicate in the best way possible.  This often means that you can pick and choose which parts of the Agile methodologies and process work for your particular project and end up with an amalgamation of Waterfall, Agile, XP, SCRUM and whatever other methodologies the members of your team have been exposed to (my favorite is “SCRUMerfall”). The biggest implication of this is that there is no one way to implement Agile.  There is no checklist with which you can tick off boxes and confidently conclude that, “Yep, we’re Agile™!”  In fact, depending on your business and the members of your team, moving to Agile full-bore may actually be ill-advised.  Such a drastic change just ends up taking everyone out of their comfort zone which they inevitably fall back into by the end of the project.  This often results in frustration to the point that Agile is abandoned altogether because “we just need to ship something!”  Needless to say, this is far more devastating to a project. Instead, I offer this approach: keep it simple and take it slow.  If your business members or customers are only involved at the beginning phases and nowhere to be seen until the project is delivered, invite them to your daily meetings; encourage them to keep up to speed on what’s going on on a daily basis and provide feedback.  If your current process is heavy on the documentation, try to reduce it as opposed to eliminating it outright.  If you need a “TPS Change Request” signed in triplicate with a 5-day “cooling off period” before a change is implemented, try a simple bug tracking system!  Tighten the feedback loop! Finally, at the end of every “iteration” (whatever that means to you, as long as it’s relatively frequent), take as much time as you can spare (even if it’s an hour or so) and perform some kind of retrospective.  Learn from your mistakes.  Figure out what’s working for you and what’s not, then fix it.  Before you know it you’ve got a handful of iterations and/or projects under your belt and you sit down with your team to realize that, “Hey, this is working - we’re pretty Agile!”  After all, Agile is a Zen journey.  It’s a destination that you aim for, not force, and even if you never reach true “enlightenment” that doesn’t mean your team can’t be exponentially better off from merely taking the journey.

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  • Toorcon14

    - by danx
    Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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  • 8 Things You Can Do In Android’s Developer Options

    - by Chris Hoffman
    The Developer Options menu in Android is a hidden menu with a variety of advanced options. These options are intended for developers, but many of them will be interesting to geeks. You’ll have to perform a secret handshake to enable the Developer Options menu in the Settings screen, as it’s hidden from Android users by default. Follow the simple steps to quickly enable Developer Options. Enable USB Debugging “USB debugging” sounds like an option only an Android developer would need, but it’s probably the most widely used hidden option in Android. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection. This is required for a variety of advanced tricks, including rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, installing a custom ROM, or even using a desktop program that captures screenshots of your Android device’s screen. You can also use ADB commands to push and pull files between your device and your computer or create and restore complete local backups of your Android device without rooting. USB debugging can be a security concern, as it gives computers you plug your device into access to your phone. You could plug your device into a malicious USB charging port, which would try to compromise you. That’s why Android forces you to agree to a prompt every time you plug your device into a new computer with USB debugging enabled. Set a Desktop Backup Password If you use the above ADB trick to create local backups of your Android device over USB, you can protect them with a password with the Set a desktop backup password option here. This password encrypts your backups to secure them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. Disable or Speed Up Animations When you move between apps and screens in Android, you’re spending some of that time looking at animations and waiting for them to go away. You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here. If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can speed them up. On a fast phone or tablet, this can make switching between apps nearly instant. If you thought your Android phone was speedy before, just try disabling animations and you’ll be surprised how much faster it can seem. Force-Enable FXAA For OpenGL Games If you have a high-end phone or tablet with great graphics performance and you play 3D games on it, there’s a way to make those games look even better. Just go to the Developer Options screen and enable the Force 4x MSAA option. This will force Android to use 4x multisample anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 games and other apps. This requires more graphics power and will probably drain your battery a bit faster, but it will improve image quality in some games. This is a bit like force-enabling antialiasing using the NVIDIA Control Panel on a Windows gaming PC. See How Bad Task Killers Are We’ve written before about how task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again. Don’t believe us? Enable the Don’t keep activities option on the Developer options screen and Android will force-close every app you use as soon as you exit it. Enable this app and use your phone normally for a few minutes — you’ll see just how harmful throwing out all that cached data is and how much it will slow down your phone. Don’t actually use this option unless you want to see how bad it is! It will make your phone perform much more slowly — there’s a reason Google has hidden these options away from average users who might accidentally change them. Fake Your GPS Location The Allow mock locations option allows you to set fake GPS locations, tricking Android into thinking you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. Use this option along with an app like Fake GPS location and you can trick your Android device and the apps running on it into thinking you’re at locations where you actually aren’t. How would this be useful? Well, you could fake a GPS check-in at a location without actually going there or confuse your friends in a location-tracking app by seemingly teleporting around the world. Stay Awake While Charging You can use Android’s Daydream Mode to display certain apps while charging your device. If you want to force Android to display a standard Android app that hasn’t been designed for Daydream Mode, you can enable the Stay awake option here. Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging and won’t turn it off. It’s like Daydream Mode, but can support any app and allows users to interact with them. Show Always-On-Top CPU Usage You can view CPU usage data by toggling the Show CPU usage option to On. This information will appear on top of whatever app you’re using. If you’re a Linux user, the three numbers on top probably look familiar — they represent the system load average. From left to right, the numbers represent your system load over the last one, five, and fifteen minutes. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d want enabled most of the time, but it can save you from having to install third-party floating CPU apps if you want to see CPU usage information for some reason. Most of the other options here will only be useful to developers debugging their Android apps. You shouldn’t start changing options you don’t understand. If you want to undo any of these changes, you can quickly erase all your custom options by sliding the switch at the top of the screen to Off.     

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