mikas blog

Again a quite “funny spammer” who trapped into spamcatcher (check out the spelling error “whilte addtess list”):

From: Ranjith Eyacheruvatt <ranjithepost @yahoo.co.in>
Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 08:12:45 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Spamcatcher-Blacklist
To: spamcatcher-24.05.2004-08.52.11-61.11.41.110@michael-prokop.at
Message-ID: <20040524071245.73763.qmail@web8303.mail.in.yahoo.com>

Hello,
Sub:Antispam Software
We are US based company and searching for a leading and better anti-spam software to suggest for our clients(2000 more).
I visit your your website and saw product features. But I could not
find that how I can add the nonspam address (whilte addtess list) in your companies address list.
for eg visit here:- http://rating.cloudmark.com/
If you can help me, please let me know about its link or procedure for this.
Anticipatting an early reply.
Thanks in advance
Regards
[...]

Some Notes on the “Who wrote Linux” Kerfuffle by Andy Tanenbaum and a followup.

Due to I don’t like the program overview on the official WLT04-website I created my own one.

What I would like to see is an at.linux-meeting at WLT04. Even if it’s “just unofficial”. Interested?

As you should know Symantec has a really good reputation 8-) – the following mail made my day:

From: support@symantec.com
Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 16:33:00 +0200
Subject: Re: Virus Sample
To: faqbot@michael-prokop.at

The sample file you sent contains a new virus version of mydoom.j.
Please clean your system with the attached signature.

Sincerly,
 Robert Ferrew

(Yes, I do know the current mailvirus-crap ;-))

In the next few weeks I’ll have to check old hardware at work and I assume there will be about 2-3 computers available for experiments 8-). Currently I’m running a QNX-box for fun, now I have to choose which operating system/distribution should get a chance for running on one of the new^Wold boxes. FreeBSD? NetBSD? OpenBSD? LFS? Or even Plan9?

Yesterday I went to Kunsthaus Graz and got my shirt. A shirt by Sven Guckes he put up on one of the server-racks – have a look at the GLT04-Pics, especially this one – see the yellow shirt? Yes, now that’s my one :-)

And because I’m against software patents I reactivated my petition-webpage and took a picture of myself 8-).

Currently I’m trying to check out vservers at linux.

[mika@tweety(500): ~]% uname -a
Linux tweety 2.6.6-vs1.9.0 #1 Wed May 12 00:00:04 CEST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
[mika@tweety(501): ~]%

I’m reading the following guide: Virtual private servers and security contexts – thanks for the pointer – Michael Gebetsroither.

Anyone here also using vservers? If so: any other ressources I should know of? ;) And for which purpose are you using vservers?

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v5i11_weber.html (pointer by Sigi Herzog on luga-ML)

I bought a Samsung ML-1510 Laserjet for 157 Euros a few days ago. Installing it via CUPS was no problem but I had problems with the margins. Changing the options in the ppd-file did the job:

$ grep 'ImageableArea A4' /usr/share/cups/model/samsung.ppd
*ImageableArea A4/A4: "14 20 581 822"
$

Yeah, absolutely great – now printing is fun 8-)

First day of GLT04 was nice. Interesting talks, no serious incidents and social event at Brot&Spiele was fun. Pictures are online. Now I am going to sleep due to I have a workshop together with Sven Guckes early in the morning – at 10:00 ;-)

From: Garry Mahoney <vmtnw@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 01:33:55 -0200
Subject: Vim this size gets anyone
To: vim[at]michael-prokop.at
Message-Id: <jwkgfovivofnufxstxgpkctmt@hotmail.com>
X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=17.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_99,CLICK_BELOW_CAPS,[...]

Yes! I am one of the 5 students at TU Graz who can take part in IPICS04 – Intensive Program on Information and Communication Security: Secure Embedded Systems – in July 2004. Absolutely great!

No – it’s not a rant cause it’s quite funny 8-). Today an icq-spammer named ‘Andrea’ with UIN 234701251 wrote me. Have a look to the log:

02.05 03:11 Hi, what You do?
02.05 03:11 * Authorization request : Empty authorization request message
02.05 03:11 * Authorization request : Empty authorization request message
02.05 03:11 Has found you in the ICQ... I think you can help me...
02.05 03:11 I can not send you the information, it is not sent... Add in contact list please

Ok, I just wrote some lines and regardless of what I now write and send I get the following reply-message(s):

02.05 23:50 You can advise as to fix this site? http://info.url.biz.ua/

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6864

# ps 1>/dev/null
# uname -srv
Linux 2.4.25-grsec #1 Sam Apr 24 11:49:51 CEST 2004
#

It’s running… I’m just thinking of a (smart and hidden) lart for the guys who pulled the power plug… Any ideas?

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=245718
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=245849

No, that’s not funny:

# ps 1>/dev/null
{ide_get_best_pio_mode} {GPLONLY_ide_get_best_pio_mode}
Warning: /boot/System.map-2.4.22-ow1 does not match kernel data.
# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.23 seconds =556.52 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.78 seconds = 35.96 MB/sec
#

And it’s a productive machine running with RAID. No option for remote-reboot. Compiling kernel 2.4.25 with grsecurity and ea+acl+nfsacl+sec-0.8.71 was definitely no fun. Ok, but after changing some lines of code it compiled without any errors and I installed the debian-package:

# dpkg --get-selections | grep 2.4.25
kernel-image-2.4.25-grsec                       install
#

Googleing for ‘{ide_get_best_pio_mode} {GPLONLY_ide_get_best_pio_mode}’ does not bring me anything useful ;-(. I hope the problem solves itself with 2.4.25 on monday….

No – it’s not really a rant. I just installed Opera 7.50 B1 on my laptop. The DNS-confirmation and the close-transfer-window have been fixed in the Preview-4-version. Due to the changelog Opera now supports ‘Auto-detection of RSS file (link rel=”alternate”) displayed in navigation bar’. Ok, so I added such a header to my webpage. What the changelog does not mention is that Opera crashes when clicking on ‘Newsfeed’ 8-).

Remember my rant about the mailinglist of securityfocus? More than 80 mails in my spam_securityfocus-folder ;-(

I unsubscribed multiple times but still receive newsletters – grml. So I tried to unsubscribe via webpage for another time. Have a look:

An unsubscribe request has been sent for «censored»michael-prokop.at to the following mailing lists:

sf-news 
ms-secnews 
linux-secnews

Hint: notice the position of the ‘for’ and ‘to’ – how true 8-)

Maybe my KMail-rant was a little bit polemic (hey – it costs time! 8-)) [I’ll have a look at the source], but what really sucks is Outlook. Am I telling news? :o)

At work we still have two persons using Outlook. One at it’s own risk and the other one because importing in thunderbird didn’t work as expected ;-(

What’s the problem? One pst-file (a binary file from and for Outlook) crashed. I could recover the file using C:\Programme\Gemeinsame Dateien\System\MSMAPI\1031\pstscan.exe. Costs time, is quite thrilling (binary format for important files – argl!) but worked at least.

But what’s really stupid: one person changed her password on the server but did not recognize that also Outlook prompted for the new password. Due to the existence of multiple mail-accounts it was not clear enough which password should be entered ;-(. Ok – shouldn’t be a real problem, nor? But: Outlook prompted for password just once, when entering a wrong one it just switched to offline-mode. Which means you will never see the new mails – great! More than 20 days without checking mails on a account ;-( Hey, KMail is great!