Recent Posts

5151

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista’s ReadyBoost benefits on your Windows XP machine with eBoostr

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 06:57 AM »

icekin: actually, that application does not try to "allocate as much memory as it can to running applications and then then releases it." - instead (afaik), it goes through all running processes, and does SetWorkingProcessSetSize(process, -1, -1), which tells windows to "trim that process".

Much less non-lame than "allocate as much memory as possible", but still a pretty silly thing to do - it doesn't really help you... if windows needs more memory, it will do this trimming automatically. Remember: unused memory is wasted memory. And flushing things to the pagefile (and reading back from disk) is slow.

5152

General Software Discussion / Re: Harvest the Web with OutWit (Firefox)

« Last post by f0dder on June 13, 2008, 05:56 PM »

Sometimes I think it's not worthy to 'harvest' webpages, keep a webpage versioned, revised and updated is more and more popular. 

Just save URL to del.icio.us and check it out later.

Is the Web evolving from user-generated to user-refreshed ?

-electronixtar (June 11, 2008, 10:47 PM)

Sometimes, pages go missing from the internet, though - which sucks. For some kinds of information (research, source code snippets, technical info, reverse-engineering related matters, ...) keeping a local copy can be very nice.

5153

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 - A visual guide to the new features

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 07:32 PM »

Nice little guide - confirms that it's mostly the under-the-hood improvements I'm interested in, though (the AwesomeBar could be a blessing or a curse, or just plain "whatever" - time will tell).

5154

Developer's Corner / Re: Do you use a good office chair when programming?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 06:38 PM »

p3lb0x should post some pics of the various chairs he has mutilated. Spends way too much time in front of the computer, that kiddo, and just can't sit still.

5155

General Software Discussion / Re: Do we need a Linux and/or Mac child board?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 05:34 PM »

I'm all for it, as it would help attract a more varied user base.

However, if you start making a Linux board, and a Mac board, you also have to make a *BSD board, a Solaris board, a plan9 board, etc... you get the drift.

Maybe call it a non-windows board or an 'alternative OS' board or something.

-Gothi[c] (June 12, 2008, 05:31 PM)

Do you think a subforum would actually attract more users? At least that's not what we saw on the asmcommunity, it just fragmented the topics on the board...

5156

Living Room / Re: Comic Strip Generator (and March Caption Contest Announcement!)

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 05:04 PM »

* f0dder mutters something about (still) not having any decent sized mug to drink coffee the nectar of life from.

5157

Living Room / Re: cody spotted on You Tube

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 05:03 PM »

Personally i thought it was funny.

-mouser (June 12, 2008, 04:58 PM)

But... but... it was so random and incoherent, and plain old silly - but without any monthy python appeal, or anything like it. Oh well, tastes differ

5158

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: CD-RW/DVD-RW emulated drive?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 04:59 PM »

Sounds weird about that pricing stuff indeed, carol

I can see how this would be a useful feature to have, especially since burning and then ripping is a pretty slow and tedious process, whereas emulating and just writing an ISO image could be pretty darn fast.

But complicated, yeah. First of all, it requires driver code. And then it requires supporting an even larger subset of the ATAPI commands than a "simple" virtual-cd driver. And possibly supporting different quirks that the various burning applications have.

5159

General Software Discussion / Re: Do we need a Linux and/or Mac child board?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 04:54 PM »

I'm pretty much in the same boat as steeladept... and with the relatively low volume of linux/mac topics, don't they fit in well enough in the existing subforums? Having too many subforums can be a cluttering disadvantage, we felt that heavily on the asmcommunity before cleaning up the board structure.

5160

Living Room / Re: cody spotted on You Tube

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 04:52 PM »

Exactly-oh.

5161

Living Room / Re: does win XP 64-bit suck?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 09:04 AM »

Addressing a few of mouser's points:
1) XP64 is based on the win2k3 server codebase, so service packs follow that, not XP32.
3) stop using explorer, grab a superior (and 32bit) explorer replacement . Old hardware can be a problem, though.
4) haven't seen any random crashes on XP64 that I didn't have on XP32...
5) if you have 4gig or more memory, it's worth it. Most people can stick with XP32 without problems though, XP64 doesn't offer that much unless you have specific needs.

Oh, one extra thing: most malware is pretty system-specific, and targets 32bit windows... 64bit is slightly safer

5162

Living Room / Re: does win XP 64-bit suck?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 08:24 AM »

I've been using XP64 for a while (at least since January... perhaps longer?) and I don't think it sucks.

Most stuff works just fine, with the noticeable exception of anything 16-bit - DOS as well as win16 programs. This does mean you'll have problems installing some old apps; even if the apps themselves are 32bit, some of the older installers are 16bit.

There can also be problems with some older games, relying on 32bit drivers for their copy protection mechanism. The solution is to find a crack somewhere, makes the games run better as well. I don't see this as unethical when you own the game.

Most 32bit stuff runs at the same speed as under 32bit XP. A few things might run a bit faster, if they spend a lot of time doing in OS or driver code. A few things run slower - 32bit FoxIt Reader, for instance, is massively slow at rendering pages (only shows with very complex PDFs though), but Sumatra  runs just fine.

Shell extensions can be a problem - not everybody knows how to compile their stuff for 64bit. This can be solved by using a 32bit explorer replacement like xplorer², though.

5163

Living Room / Re: good time to buy graphics card?

« Last post by f0dder on June 12, 2008, 08:09 AM »

oldfar: probably just a test that's biased either ATi cards, or very high-end cards?

The only problem I've seen with nvidia cards that can give very low performance, is if you use screen rotation... then it feels like acceleration on windows shown on the the rotated monitor is basically turned off.

Also, does the 6200 card really have 512meg ram, or is it a TurboCache model that actually uses system ram?

5164

Living Room / Re: PC Mag's Top 100 Web Sites - Vote for your Favorite (DonationCoder.com Love?)

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 09:25 PM »

Didn't see this thread until now. Sent them a mail listing DC, xkcd and explodingdog

5165

Developer's Corner / Re: Is it possible to change to working directory within the running programm?

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 08:09 PM »

Well, your code to get parent id does look extraordinarily slow - the performance counter API is pretty slow to deal with, especially the first call you make in a program. It'd probably be faster to use toolhelp32 and enumerate the processes until you find your own pid, and then check the th32ParentProcessID member... or use the undocumented NtQueryInformationProcess() function, which is pretty much instantaneous.

But even with the parent process PID, there isn't much you can do, without resorting to the hackhackhack I outlined in the previous post

Doing the multiple-batchfile approach is probably the cleanest.

5166

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 07:03 PM »

Ehtyar: not only the cryptography community... I don't even dare think about the consequences of anybody being able to factor 1024-bit RSA in realistic time.

5167

General Software Discussion / Re: GloryLogic, you guys suck!

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 06:05 PM »

The only burning app I use these days is imgburn. I don't really need much fancyness when I burn individual files, and it does the job pretty well.

5168

Developer's Corner / Re: Is it possible to change to working directory within the running programm?

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 06:03 PM »

What you want to do is change the working directory of the calling program, yes?

I dunno if this is possible to do in any clean way. Thing is, Current Working Directory is managed per-thread, not per-process. So the solution hack I'm thinking of would require finding your parent process (requires undocumented calls, iirc), locating the "correct thread", injecting code in the parent process to SetCurrentDirectory where you want, temporarily redirect the "correct thread" to this injected code, and then back to where it originally was.

Perhaps there's a cleaner way. A less hackish method would probably be running your tool from a batch file, and having the batch file CHDIR to the new folder.

5169

Living Room / Re: Drinking Vinegar?

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 05:55 PM »

r odd, 40 sounds like a nice round

-PPLandry (June 11, 2008, 04:21 PM)

42, you heretic!

5170

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 05:52 PM »

Problem is, Ehtyar, how would you go about attacking the RC4 key? Unless there's a serious flaw in the PRNG used for generating the random RC4 key (like, using srand(time(0))), what would you do? I know there's some cryptographic problems with RC4 itself, but haven't read up on just how it affects it. Even with reduced complexity attacks, you still need some way of detecting if you've found the right key - unless you have a md5sum of at least one original file, how are you going to do this detection without manually looking at each "attempted decrypt"?

I'd guess that the "unique ID" is the RC4 encryption key that has itself been encrypted with the RSA public key.  I'd also guess that the RC4 key is a randomly generated value that gets created right before the encryption of your data files.  If you're able to "catch" the malware at this point, it's probably best to simply stop it rather than extract the keys.

-mwb1100 (June 11, 2008, 02:17 PM)

That's my guess as well. But just stopping the malware might not be enough - what if you realize it's active only after it's encrypted, say, 100 of your files?

Now, factoring RSA-1024... I wonder just how feasible that is, even with a SETI or Folding@Home size grid. Probably more realistic to track down the bastard.

5171

General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting Approach by the Profiteering Malware Author

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 09:34 AM »

It's definitely not new, Renegade, and Ethyar does mention that there's 7 previous variants - I think it's some years since I heard about this particular malware last. But using 1024-bit RSA, hmm... that's "pretty hard" to factor. The best bet would probably be catching the malware while it's doing it's nasty crap, and doing a process memory dump to extract the keys.

That, or find out how to link the "unique ID" with the key. But that probably involves tracking down the author, checking his source code, and putting a bullet or two in his stomach.

5172

Living Room / Re: cody spotted on You Tube

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 08:54 AM »

spotted in this vid http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=h8yHguvYYyQ

(I think he was there giving tech support)

-Target (June 11, 2008, 01:42 AM)

Heh, funny to see Cody there

But damn the video was lame and unfunny. Too bad, because somebody obviously spent a good deal of time making it...

5173

Living Room / Re: good time to buy graphics card?

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 08:15 AM »

Hm, hadn't thought of the fuel price issue...

but I'd definitely wait a bit if I were to upgrade my graphics card. The GeForce 9xxx cards are basically the same as the 8xxx card, except somewhat different performance and power consumption - but the basic architecture is the same (in other words, shame on nvidia for calling it a 9xxx series). The new GPUs "coming soon" are supposed to be new architecture (and probably higher performance).

That should push down prices within too long, and a mid-range next-gen card tends to have about the same performance as a current-gen highish-range card.

5174

Developer's Corner / Re: Wanted: Version Control Propaganda Video

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 08:02 AM »

Heck, I'd say that if I had a way to divine whether a candidate had ever held such a view in the past, it would automatically disqualify them.

-CWuestefeld (June 11, 2008, 05:30 AM)

Why? Learning the error of your ways & accepting you were wrong is a pretty important & valuable attribute to have, imho.

It took me a while to move to version control software... after all, doing automatic incremental RAR archiving of my source partition was easy to set up, and it "worked just fine". Was definitely less work than adopting the new workflows that version control requires.

Obviously, I'd never ever go back to that after I got comfortable with subversion, though.

5175

Living Room / Re: Linux hardware support is about to get much better

« Last post by f0dder on June 11, 2008, 07:58 AM »

Open source drivers != open source hardware.