Libel

Moving over to WordPress.com

2006-03-23T18:05:00.000+05:00

Roughly a month ago, the Pakistani government, acting to censor online content deemed blasphemous, blocked access to blogger.com blogs. The rationale given: SOME of the blogs there re-posted the cartoons and accompany commentary that are considered extremely blasphemous [by Muslims]. Read, SOME, not all. Instead of stretching their muscles a bit, the Pakistani government, with the help of local ISPs, blocked the entire blogspot.com domain. Duh!

Ever since I started rolling a blog, I have stuck to Blogger.com for its free, easy-to-use blog service. If you are reading this, chances are good you might be reading it via my Blogger account. However, this is going to be the last blog entry I’m going to publish on Blogger.com. Depending on how things unfold, and after some time, I might even wipe out all the blog entries on my Blogger account.

Meanwhile, I’ve moved over to WordPress.com (WP). It took me an entire morning and a better part of the afternoon today to migrate all my posts over to WP.

My blog has moved over to: ayaz.wordpress.com

A Toast to FAST's Administration Department!

2006-03-20T20:41:00.000+05:00

As I approached the notice board in the most populated area of the University, and glanced a look at the exam schedule, I nearly passed out. A paper that was going to be held the following day had been rescheduled today, late in the afternoon. I was shocked. I had no idea when that happened.

Moving towards one of the seminars, which are used as examination halls during exams, I saw many classmates running here and there with pale faces. In the seminar, some classmates were having a field day teasing others regarding the unexpected change in the schedule. As I drew near a desk I had quickly decided I would occupy, a mate asks, "Heard the shocker?" "Yep, I did!", I reply indifferently, in part because I still thought it was all a misunderstanding on the administration's part. There had been no notice that I had seen, no email that I had received. Neither did any of the students. It seemed as if someone had rougishly replaced the copy of the time table glued to one side of the notice board with a corrupted copy. It was completely unbelievable.

After the exam, which went unbelievably great, a bunch of us hurdled over to the administration department, and confronted the guy in-charge. Apparently, he claimed that several notices and emails underlining the change in schedule were posted and sent four days earlier. On the contrary, it was only this morning that we had seen a single notice regarding the change in schedule -- no email whatsoever had been received by any of the students. He was bent on not believing in us, until the phone rang, and the director had a word with him.

To our relief, the paper has now been moved over to next Saturday. Phew!

I have gotta' hand it to FAST's administration department.

Excluding sub-directories when creating tarballs via tar.

2006-03-12T13:20:00.000+05:00

Thanks to gm142 on irc.freenode.net##slackware, I learned how to instruct tar not to include certain sub-directories into the final tarball. Here is how it is done:

tar --exclude /dir/to/exclude -cpf /dir/to/save/tarball.tar /dir/to/backup

Smile!

2006-03-09T22:57:00.000+05:00

When I fell ill earlier this year, I almost gave up. I just couldn't bear it anymore. And if it hadn't been for mom's support [and care], it likely would have taken a lot longer for me to recover. Despite having a fickle memory, I clearly remember mom's words, which she gently expressed when I was shivering in fever, "It is only a bad time. It will pass soon."

When you are down, when you are out, depressed, morose, everything sucks. As if nearly by nature, a person who is morose tends to consider the worthlessness of their life, how pointless their existence is; they tend to feel damaged, destroyed. It is the opposite of the sensations and feelings most drugs infuse: Ecstacy, for example, numbs the mind, thereby making anything the consumer does in its influence enjoyable. Depression acts in the other direction.

Being depressed, you find it hard to resist those rouge thoughts and disturbing feelings. It sucks, alright! What sucks more is your giving in to those thoughts and feelings. If you find yourself thinking how insignificant you are, and if you start believing in that, then it is high time you really should try to purge those thoughts. Period!

Being pessimistic, at times, is practical. I think being pessimistic, at times, is practical ONLY for those who know well how to cope up with circumstances, how to cope up with the sort of things that break you down real bad.

It is good to have hope, to be optimistic, to have goals you believe you can accomplish, because being morose and putting yourself into a sorry state of recline is, well, simply foolish, and, as much as I hate to have saying this, harmful.

Smile freely, because, simply, it is great to smile! :-)

Looking for old version of applications?

2006-03-08T00:26:00.000+05:00

Surfing Slashdot.org tonight, I bumped into OldVersion.com. Surprisingly, it makes available a humongous 638 older versions of some 67 programs. Phew!

Random Musings #15

2006-03-07T23:16:00.000+05:00

This is truly a random thought, one which I typed down within the time frame of a couple of seconds.

"In no time differences arise which force one to examine things from an entirely different perspective."

Configuring Primary Nameserver On Linux via BIND

2006-03-07T00:22:00.000+05:00

ISC's BIND, the Berkely Internet Name Domain system, can be set up to act as: a primary nameserver, secondary nameserver, and a caching-only nameserver (or combinations of these). While configuring a DNS system per se is a beast of a task, setting it up to act as a nameserver for a local LAN network is pretty easy.

Before setting up BIND, knowledge of how the DNS system works is absolutely necessary. There are countless tutorials spread across the Internet which not only describe the ins and outs of the DNS system at length, but also clearly explain how to configure BIND in its various configurations.

BIND reads data and configuration information from several files. Under Slackware, these are: /etc/named.conf, /var/named/localhost.zone, /var/named/named.ca, /var/named/named.local, /var/named/forward.domain.tld.zone, /var/named/reverse.domain.tld.zone. The first four files come, by default, with BIND, while the last two files need to be created by users according to their needs.

For demonstration, I am going to set up a domain "uaaa.rk" for a local network. Files required, in this setting, by BIND are: /etc/named.conf, /var/named/ayaz/localhost.zone, /var/named/ayaz/named.ca, /var/named/named.local, /var/named/ayaz/forward.uaaa.rk.zone, /var/named/ayaz/reverse.uaaa.rk.zone

The contents of these file, as favours the scenario in question, are as follows:

/etc/named.conf

options {
        directory "/var/named/ayaz";
        /*
         * If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
         * to talk to, you might need to uncomment the query-source
         * directive below.  Previous versions of BIND always asked
         * questions using port 53, but BIND 8.1 uses an unprivileged
         * port by default.
         */
        //query-source address * port 53;
};

//
// a caching only nameserver config
//
zone "." {
        type hint;
        file "named.ca";
};

zone "localhost" {
        type master;
        file "localhost.zone";
        allow-update { none; };
};

zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
        type master;
        file "named.local";
        allow-update { none; };
};

zone "uaaa.rk" {
        type master;
        file "forward.uaaa.rk.zone";
};

zone "50.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
        type master;
        file "reverse.uaaa.rk.zone";
};

/var/named/ayaz/localhost.zone

$TTL    86400
$ORIGIN localhost.
@                       1D IN SOA       @ root (
                                        42              ; serial (d. adams)
                                        3H              ; refresh
                                        15M             ; retry
                                        1W              ; expiry
                                        1D )            ; minimum

                        1D IN NS        @
                        1D IN A         127.0.0.1

/var/named/ayaz/named.local

$TTL    86400
@       IN      SOA     localhost. root.localhost.  (
                                      2006022707 ; Serial
                                      28800      ; Refresh
                                      14400      ; Retry
                                      3600000    ; Expire
                                      86400 )    ; Minimum
              IN      NS      localhost.

1       IN      PTR     localhost.

/var/named/ayaz/forward.uaaa.rk.zone

$TTL 86400
@       IN      SOA     ns.uaaa.rk. root.localhost. (
                                2
                                1h
                                15m
                                30d
                                1h )

@       IN      NS      ns.uaaa.rk.
@       IN      MX      0       mail.uaaa.rk.

localhost       IN      A       127.0.0.1

ns      IN      A       192.168.50.1
www     IN      A       192.168.50.1
ftp     IN      A       192.168.50.1
ssh     IN      A       192.168.50.1
mail    IN      A       192.168.50.1

/var/named/ayaz/reverse.uaaa.rk.zone

$TTL 86400
@       IN      SOA     ns.uaaa.rk.     root.localhost (
                        2       ; serial
                        28800   ; refresh
                        7200    ; retry
                        604800  ; expire
                        86400   ; ttl
                        )

@       IN      NS      ns.uaaa.rk.

; The first row are digits appended to 192.168.50., it seems.
1       IN      PTR     www.uaaa.rk.
1       IN      PTR     ssh.uaaa.rk.
1       IN      PTR     ftp.uaaa.rk.
1       IN      PTR     mail.uaaa.rk.

That is it! Start BIND, on Slackware, through /etc/rc.d/rc.bind, and voila! BIND is running.

Note: The files localhost.zone, named.ca, and named.local require no changes.

Tip: If BIND is bailing out mysteriously, execute it in debug mode by calling /usr/sbin/named -g. Doing so will, no doubt, save lots of your time.

Random Musings #14

2006-02-20T22:08:00.000+05:00

Learn to keep your mouth shut!

Karachi's weather, oh my!

2006-02-17T20:57:00.000+05:00

Karachi's weather is ever so unpredictable. To take an example, I took mom out for grocery shopping in the vicinity in the afternoon. Although the house had been somewhat cool, I had absolutely no clue how unbearably hot it was outside. The sky was clean, without so much as a speck of cloud, there was not a whiff of wind blowing, and the scorching sun was beating down its hammer upon anyone or anything that dared to step outside. No sooner had I stepped on the axel than I started sweating. You can imagine the rest. What is so unpredictable about the weather is that, for example, when I again took mom out for a ride in the evening, I felt a chill down my spine as I jumped into the driver's seat. It was cold. A breeze was blowing. I had had no idea it would get that cold.

Meteorologists recorded a record-breaking winter temperature for Karachi during these winters. The mercury sure as hell did not fall as low as it does in Moscow in winters -- heck, it did not even fall below the zero mark, but, for Karachities, it was colder than they had ever experienced. One of my best friends was visiting Karachi earlier this year. We both went out to a pizza parlour, and had a heck of a fun time together. On our way back, he said, "In Topi in winters, it often gets minus one degrees Celsius, and even though it is that cold, if you regularly go out to have a cone of ice-cream, you can be sure to enjoy it without getting sick. But, Karachi's winters, despite being any severe, almost tend to leave a person sick. That is why Karachi's winters are dangerous." I couldn't agree more.

These days the afternoons seem to suggest summer is waiting right outside the door. However, the evenings and the nights appear to paint an altogether different picture, whispering to people that they should keep their warm clothes around. It is this fluctuating weather that plays host to diseases of various kinds, but, in a way, it also makes Karachi unique. Or does it?

Was the University really open today?

2006-02-16T18:21:00.000+05:00

Yesterday, the government of Sindh strictly ordered all public- and private-sector schools, colleges, and universities -- all educational institutes, in fact -- in Karachi to remain closed on Thursday in response to plans of carrying out protests, against a recent debacle in which a publishing house within Denmark published offending cartoons depicting religious symbols, all over the city on both Thursday and Friday. All scheduled examinations got postponed, and almost all public and private sectored educational institutes refused to open. Except ours! The reason: NU-FAST does not come under the jurisdiction -- is this even the right word? -- of the Sindh government, but rather the Federal one, and that to that end, the University will remain open on the condition that the University busses decide to ply along their routes. And, the University busses did come, and the University did remain open. However, open it did.

Early morning, as I was packing my knapsack and tying the knots on my boots, mom kept insisting that I not go. Dad had already said that there was no need to go. It was not like I wanted like hell to go. It was just that I was desperate -- in fact, all of my classmates were -- as one of our instructors had handed us an assignment which, he said, had to be submitted in on Thursday at ALL costs. And if you are any familiar with that instructor, then you would know that that does indeed mean at ALL costs. The assignment, per se, was, I believe, the only reason why most of my classmates were up late night, and also why they decided to come to University today.

Back at the University, it was a different scene. Most students made it to the campus, either via University busses or, those who missed their rides, via local busses. The people, however, who bunked university were most instructors, professors, and lecturers. Imagine that: there was once a time when students would not show up but teachers would, and now, it is completely the other way round. This leaves one question to be asked: What in the heck is the world coming to? What is worse is that the very bloody instructor, to whom we had come to submit our assignments, did not come.

Even though the University was open, it was hardly any different from closed ones. No classes were being conducted. Students were loitering around, sitting in the Cafe, chatting, reading books, and doing whatever else they usually do when they are not taking lectures. The gates of the University were closed shut on strict ordersof the University admin, and no student was allowed to leave the premises. It became public knowledge that the University would go off at noon, and the University busses will leave then. However, at about noon, when everyone gathered at the ground where all the busses where parked, everyone was told that only four busses would leave the campus. There were students in the University one could not fit in ten busses, however one tried, and only four busses were leaving! Shocking! Lucikly, after a while, the drivers agreed -- duh! -- to drive all the busses, and within the next fifteen minutes, everyone was safely riding in their respective busses headed home.

First day of the new semester at the University.

2006-02-13T22:41:00.000+05:00

Imagine your first day of the new semester at the University starting off with a bumpy, half-an-hour ride to the University, where you find yourself hanging off the back door of the bus because of it being overly crowded. As exhilarating a prospect as one might imagine, no? Hell no! It is extremely unpleasant and tiring. I can say so because that is exactly what I had to go through this morning.

The first lecture being at quarter to noon, I had no better ideas on how to pass the time than to head to the air-conditioned computer laboratory. I surfed a few websites, laughed my head off reading an article describing hilarious top ten hoaxes of the previous year, engaged in a humorous IM conversation with a friend, and, well, surfed some websites. From half past eleven to quarter to noon, I sat on top of the boundary wall lining one side of the corridor that leads to the men's rest room. A cool breeze was blowing.

Entering home at around about quarter to three, I changed, washed, and had lunch. I remembered my room had been getting awfully dirty of late, what with a thick layer of dirt resting on all surfaces in the room. I got hold of my handy dusting cloth, which, in actuality, is just like any other simple cloth, and wiped cleaned the dirt off of room. It looks clean and shiny now.

In the evening, I was forcefully woken up by my maternal aunt, who had expressed a wish to visit a shopping mall in the vicinty in the evening. Despite having a cracking headache, I took her and mom there, and, bought myself Call's 'Jilawatan' album.

The rest of the evening and night passed unnoticed being online and contending to household chores.

Measles and a bloody eye infection.

2006-02-12T15:15:00.000+05:00

The past fifteen days were both tough and painful. I had been down with a severe case of 'measles' and an utterly painful eye infection, which kept me away from many things throughout the fifteen days. It appears that I might have caught the infection from a friend, who himself subsequently suffered from a mild case of measles, during a short spell of concerted study we had had together for the semester exams. But, whatever the source of the virus may be, it was painful. Real painful.

I spent the whole fifteen days lying restlessly on one side of the bed, either shivering with cold in fever, or flipping my head sideways as I tried to bear the cracking headache grasping my head and eyes. What was worse was that slumber evaded me at all instances, and I had to resort to taking heavy-dosage sleeping pills each night only to fall asleep in order to have some form of relief from the jumble of pains attacking my body from all angles. Eyes were blood red, and hurt like hell if I tried to move them, albeit a bit. Rash had taken charge almost all over the body, with my face glowing red like plants glow after they have been exposed to a long, constant spell of nuclear radiation. As soon as the rash had reached the feet, the fever, at least, dissipated. The eyes remained hurtful and blood red. Within a few days, the rash began to die off, leaving scraps of dead skin hanging from spots where the rash had once taken root. The eye drops I had been prescribed to use four times a day to kill the eye infection bit in the eye like nothing I had ever experienced. The first time my mom administered the drops, I jerked in pain and screamed. From the time the drops were administered till the next ten minutes at most, the eye would hurt as if a nail had been impaled in it. And imagine having to use those drops four times a day for a week straight. Damn, it was painful.

I have recovered nearly one-hundred percent now. However, as is an after-affect of measles, the immune system of the body becomes delicately weak, and stays so for about a month. So, I have to take extra care of myself the following month, as the danger of catching various viruses and falling ill is high. Ah, poor me!

Of Cats and Love!

2006-02-12T15:10:00.000+05:00

The window of my room opens into a small porch, which lies right next to a small, greenish garden, and one side of the boundary wall, with metal fences on top that are themselves adorned with vines and various other plants, courtesy my mom's love for gardening. Today, as I stood behind my window and took a glance, I caught sight of what I consider to be the cutest scene I have seen in a while. On top of the wall, two cats, one all grey with black spots all over, the other stark white, were lying side-by-side to each other, their heads on top of each others', as if they had been rubbing their heads before they dosed off. Unperturbed by the hustle and bustle of the world around them, they were blissfully sleeping, as if, to them, nothing existed save each other. I don't know about you, but I find that both cute and romantic. <blush>

Random Musings #13

2006-01-15T02:03:00.000+05:00

Bite my shiny metal ass! -- Bender, Futurama

Random Musings #12

2006-01-15T01:53:00.000+05:00

Damn, people are cruel. All everyone wants is for someone to listen to their [sordid] affairs without having to listen to what he has to share. It is true what they say, "The opposite of speaking is not listening: it is waiting." Sheesh!

Eid

2006-01-13T12:43:00.000+05:00

A bit belated, but whoever is reading, I wish you a meaty Eid mubarak.

Eid this time round has been relatively enjoyable. From early morning till way late in the afternoon on the first day, I was dirt busy. There were only two butchers hired to perform the sacrifice and subsequently properly chop the meat, so I had to help them at various points in different ways during the sacrifice of the goat. In the interim of all that, I got blood splattered all over my jeans, and shreds of meat and, especially, fat stuck onto my t-shirt. As soon as the butchers had finished their job of chopping the meat into appropriately small pieces and had left, I quietly cleaned and washed the entire porch floor with water and a cleaning viper. I had to open clear the drain just outside our house, which had been clogged with a mix of water, blood clots, pieces of fat, and general garbage. Mom did lend a helping hand, but I took care of most things myself. A major part of chopped meat had got goat's hairs stuck all over, so I helped mom wash up all the meat. It was a yucky afair, with melted fat accumulating all over my hands and some part of the forearm. And I was already too dirty. No sooner than I was done with everything, I took a hot water bath. It was only after the bath that I felt relieved. Heh.

Rest half of the day until late evening was spent online working with a colleague on a network programming puzzle. Somewhere around late afternoon, a friend asked if I would be able to drop by his house. I was excited, and negotiated a time in the late evening for meeting. At quarter to eight, with dad's consent, I jumped into my car and drove to the friend's house, where we both talked and talked and had a great one and a half hour together. I was home by half past nine. I stayed up till an hour after midnight, and then dropped dead on my bed.

Next morning, on second day, I woke to the usual sounds of mom and dad leaving for work. In the afternoon, a friend dropped by to pick up some notes. We both talked for a while, until I had to politely ask him to leave as mom and dad, which arrived an hour earlier, were waiting to leave with me to a relative's house very far away. Again, I was the driver, and I drove some 45+ kilometres to get to the place. And, then, I did another 45+ kilometres on the way back. Pain clasped my back, hips, legs and arms as, having parked the car outside home, I stepped foot outside. Late in the night, two cousins, who have been married to each other for some time now, showed up. I kept awake till an hour and a half past midnight, and, then, eventually, dosed off.

The third day is still progressing as I write this. I have to study for my MPI exam scheduled on Monday, 16 January. I don't expect we will go anywhere today, or anyone will visit us, but who knows.

CyberHiSpeed: What a cock-up!

2006-01-05T11:37:00.000+05:00

Cyber.Net's monthly unlimited dial-up package, CyberHiSpeed, is cocking-up of late. It takes more than two to three failed dial-in attempts to successfully get through. It is interesting to note that the failure to dail-in is not attributed to unavailability of ports at the ISP's end, although seldom it is, but to the peculiar ways in which the server to which connections are dailed-in responds to login credentials and other strings sent by the calling device. Half of the time the server blatantly fails to respond. The rest of the time the server spits back strings which cause the connecting device to get into a hung-up state. Having a server either not respond to login information well after a preliminary connection has been established by way of a phone call or hook-up the modem by sending undesired strings is an order of magnitutde more annoying than simply getting a BUSY dail tone back. I have no doubts the PSTN adds the appropriate amount for a connected call in such situations to the end-user's telephone bill.

This is neither the place nor have I the time to provide detailed evidence of such behaviour. I do, however, plan on writing a descriptory rant in time to come. It need be noted that almost everyone who I have been in touch with who use CyberHiSpeed package have been facing similar problems and, likewise, shared the same sentiments.

I felt a strong sense of deja vu writing this. Oh, well!

Happy, Prosperous New Year!

2005-12-31T11:42:00.000+05:00

It is nearly twelve hours short of the start of the new year and, through an adoring e-card, someone special has already wished me a bright and wonderful new year.

I, therefore, wish everyone reading this a lovely new year filled with happiness, success and everything else good. It is no denying that time flies quickly. I also wish that you do anything productive with your time, instead of sitting idly and wasting it. For those who have not yet realised it, time is priceless.

Happy new year!

Inhumane?

2005-12-30T10:33:00.000+05:00

A man lured, with sweets, the 11-year old daughter of his friend's into his house and raped her. Subsequently, he slit her throat with a kitchen knife and, using a chain-saw, cut her body into three parts: torso, legs, and head. He hid the body parts inside cupboards, cleaned his house, and, with a look of concern on his face, went to his friend's house to enquire after his friend's missing daughter and, later, joined the friend in search for her. In the midst of an interrogation later that day, the man gave himself in to authorities, admitting his crime. Apparently, he had been helping his friend with monetary aid from Saudi Arabia, but was treated unfairly by the same friend on his return.

Sigh. The above, which is a brief description of the event in my own words, made it to the front page of the major newspaper this morning. The above also happens to be the first thing I read to start my day. The word inhumane seems to have suddenly lost its charm.

Random Musings #11

2005-12-29T22:23:00.000+05:00

Promise only that which you can deliver. Learn to say no to people, instead of saying yes and ending up disappointing them. And treat people more or less the way they treat you.

A mere misinterpretation!

2005-12-28T20:06:00.000+05:00

It takes only misinterpretation of context for one to break up an old, deep-rooted relationship. Words intended to mean an entirely different thing, but construed as entirely another can act like double-edged swords and peneterate easily through a bond of any relationship, ripping the fibres that keep the bond strengthened and intact into shreds. It is most true what they say that, "Beauty and bullshit, both, are only in the eyes of the beholder."

It may seem at first reading that such misinterpretation might lie within the act of an unreasonable, un-understable interlocutor. The sad reality, however, suggests that it need not be.

Words can have deceiving meanings, and when used in complex, syntacticly-correct constructions can often leave behind structures whose context and meaning are baffling to not only a careless eye, but to most pedantic eyes too.

It may also seem at first reading that the fault lies within the speaker's careless, incorrect, or at times ego-ridden interpretation of the ineptitude of their interlocutor to grasp meaning out of complexly dangling constructions. However valid that may be, it remains a fact that most interlocutors in today's age do not care enough to properly, thoroughly read what has been addressed to them in order to comprehend the intended substance of the message. Oftener, the interlocutor finds themselve picking up not the import of the message, but that which they themselve presume to be the meaning, which, it is only fair to add, overlaps the intended meaning more than just often. It is still a sad reality, though.

This brings the focus back to why exactly I have chosen to rant under this issue. I nearly lost a close friend -- to make an understatement. A harmless, childish misinterpretation of context on their part, which itself came as a thudding surprise to me, ruptured a tightly bonded relationship. What was worse was that, till the run-out to my discovering about it, I had been kept in the dark. Simply. I was not allowed a chance to clarify my context and, in doing so, undo the damage I had never intended to cause. It was all hush-hush. A mere misinterpretation inflicted enough pain to numb out the capacity to assess the situation with reason, thereby obviating a need to even indulge in a conversation with the speaker, even if only to vent feelings, let alone to allow a chance to the speaker to clarify.

A mere misinterpretation ...

PAKCON II

2005-12-17T21:04:00.001+05:00

PAKCON II ended on 13 December in Pearl Continental, Karachi, this week. It was nothing short of a blast.

The underground hacking and information security convention spanned over two days, covering eleven different, exceedingly insightful talks and a low-profile Capture the Flag (CtF) hacking contest. This time around, five of the eleven security speakers were from abroad from various security organisations. The rest six were local speakers. I was due to present a talk myself, but could not because of a tough academic schedule at the University which kept me occupied.

Detailed information about the speakers who presented this year is available here.

With a clean shave and a hot-water bath, I dove into my casual jeans and "hacker" t-shirt, putting on a sleeveless, front-open black sweater. I drove to the hotel in my white Swift and got off right next to the hall booked for the convention. It was the first time I had driven to the hotel, so I was naturally excited. As I was heading down to the entrance to the hotel, I spotted a couple of goons coming straight my way. With them was Ben, a security researcher from eEye Digital Security, who had flown in from Thailand to present a talk. I greeted him and others. As I soon found out, Ben had a heck of a ride, as he told me with a frown how he had had to spend five hours at the airport waiting. The next few hours were spent lingering in the hall, visualising how the hall would look next morning when all preparations would have been completed, and chatting with each other. Some of the goons, who were going to present talks and not least those who were going to go in for the first time, were taking turns to stand on the podium, getting the feel of it, practising their speeches, all the while trembling at the thought of having to speak the very next morning or day after in front of a large crowd. Ben was happily occupied with tweaking the sound system to adapt it to the length of the hall so that, presumably, those sitting at the back could hear the speakers without effort. He looked like a professional. Oh, wait. He is a professional. Heh!

Jahanzaib and I left off the hall, leaving the other goons inside, and headed straight to the hotel's lobby to use the hotel's wireless Internet connection. The connection was galloping with a consistent 50-KB/sec download rate. But, honest-to-goodness, we did not dowload porn. A few hours later, we retired to a local cafe outside, in front of and at a five minutes walks from the hotel, to have dinner. Done with the dinner, we rendezvoused with Faiz and, consequently, checked into our room, where we spent the better part of the night chatting and designing the CtF. At around about four, setting the alarm to ring at 8 sharp, we dosed off, hoping everything would go smoothly the next morning.

During day-1, I was involved most of the time with managing the CtF, so, unfortunately, missed a whole bunch of talks. I did not attend day-2, and consequently, as a friend put it out for me, I missed out on a bunch of cool talks.

Day-1 started off with Faiz, founder of PAKCON, delivering his talk on "Hackers Methodology and Incident Handling". Struggling with getting the CtF ready with Jahanzaib, the other guy with whom I design and implement the CtF, I let the talk pass. The Information Technology minister had been invited to the convention, but, he turned out to be a major pain. The inauguration ceremony was thus postponed until an hour or two later when, not the minister, but his personal secretary showed up. The personal secretary to the IT minister mauled the audience, who clearly did not seem interested, with a nearly half an hour long speech, three quarters of which focused on the recent earthquake incident. With my head drooped into my clasped hands, I gathered up enough patience to listen through the speech.

Later on in the day, Jamil Villiani, a Security Program Manager in Microsoft's Secure Windows Initiative (SWI) team, spoke on "Secure Development Lifecycle". I doubt the amp or the microphone was suffering from any technical problem, but Mr Villiani spoke in a very low, somewhat inaudible tone. I thought I had heard him chatting at a high tone with Ben earlier. Nah! Next up was Ben from eEye Digital Security, whose talk was titled "Beyond NX: An Attackers guide to anti-exploitation technology for Windows". With a native Australian accent, Ben managed to present a deeply technical talk in an interesting fashion, keeping the audience awake and focused on what was going on. During the Q/A session with Ben, I put up a question which convinced him to throw a t-shirt at me, and he would have, if only I had not been wearing a "Hacker" t-shirt myself. The t-shirt went off to someone else in the audience. Tough luck, eh!

Jawad Sarwana, an Advocate of the High Court of Sindh and Senior Associate with Abraham & Sarwana, mused on "Identifying Cyber Crime". Amidst his talk, the IT minister appeared from no-where and demanded that an announcement of his arrival be made. Despite attempts to explain to him that a talk was already in motion, someone went up the stage, regretfully interrupted the ongoing talk and made an announcement. Sigh! It was relieving to see that the minister at least had the sense and decency to wait till the end of the talk to deliver his speech, which I did not bother to lend an ear to, anyway.

c0ntex, a hobbyist security researcher, pen-tester and exploit developer, had been due to present his talk on "0day: Heap-based Format String Bug in Real-/Helix-players on *nix" on day-2, but, for some reason, his slot was stashed up to the end of day-1. I had not known about that change myself, and was enlightened during a small conversation I had with him. It was his first talk, he wasn't prepared properly, and was a little nervous. I wished him good luck. In a Scottish accent, he spoke about his discovery of an 0-day bug in Real-/Helix-players on *nix systems. He presented a live demo detailing how to get a root shell by exploting a format string bug in the real-/helix-player on a Debian-based system. I enjoyed the demo more as he played tinkered with gdb to grab offsets and EIP and EBP addresses and demonstrated how he overwrote the EIP to get root on the box. His was the last presentation of the day.

The CtF, meanwhile, had been going on the whole day side-by-side as the talks progressed. It too ended coincidentally with the end of c0ntex's talk. Only three teams showed up, and the game designed was simple itself, though hard to crack in the sense that one of the system was extremely difficult to break in to both remotely and locally. It was an interesting CtF nonetheless, althought I must say not anywhere so interesting as the one Jahanzaib and I had designed for the GameHack earlier this year in August/September. The team that had had won the CtF at GameHack were proclaimed the winners of the CtF again. Kudos to them!

With that came an end to day-1. I headed home with a friend, took a bath, sat online for a while, and went to bed. Next morning, I did get up early to get ready to leave to attend day-2, but a severe gastric ailment kept me isolated. Unfortunately, I missed out on a couple of great talks on day-2. Now that I think of it, it seems both clear and logical to me that, given the fairly sensitive gastric system I possess, the food I had had multiple times from a small, local cafe outside of Pearl Continental Hotel during the time I stayed at PC was what caused the chain reaction, so to speak. Ah, well! I will prefer to stay hungry next time.

That's about it. All in all, it was a great security event. It would have been even greater if I had presented a talk myself. Oh, well: there's always next time. ;-)

National Kindergarten of Computer And Emerging Sciences!

2005-12-03T21:46:00.000+05:00

"This is the photo-copy of the first page of your answer sheet on which the marks you have scored are listed. Take it home, get it signed by your parents, and scribble on the top right corner a legitimate contact number through which to contact your parents. Bring it next Monday!", the old professor, who could barely stand soundly, dictated on top of his otherwise inaudible voice. Before anyone could manage a groan, the professor bursts, "And I will call your parents and discuss your progress." Half of the students drop the lower part of their jaws open in utter shock, some retain their composure, trying hide to stifle their reacation, while the rest diss away the professor's meanderings with a cold smirk.

On a cold Thursday morning, which as the day progresses will transform into an otherwise unimaginably tiring Thursday afternoon and evening, a lecturer guards his ground and callously threatens, with a grin twisting at one end of his mouth as the words make way out the mouth, "I will show you your answer sheets next week. You will take it and get it signed by your parents and return it back. I will be cross-checking the authenticity of the signatures, and he who is found guilty of forgery, well, let's just say, it won't be good for him." Half of the students are shocked, not so much by the news as the fear it has infused in their minds. Others still, don't bother so much as a second thought, jerking off the threat as utter trash.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, allow me the once-in-a-lifetime pleasure to introduce you to everything. First, allow me to introduce who I am. My name is Ayaz Ahmed Khan, I am a four-year old baby, and I study in kindergarten. The professor and the lecturer mentioned are my kindergarten teachers. The rest are my kindergarten friends -- I have many.

All my friends are very naughty. They barely study. They enjoy teasing teachers, and playing with lego, colouring pretty pictures in the pretty picture book with colourful crayons, and many more things.

My teachers are very caring. They believe that all play and no work will make Jack a dull boy. They want us all to study and do well. But, because they themselves cannot find a way to control us and make us study, they now want to complain to our parents. They believe that since we are kindergarten babies, whatever our parents will tell us to do, we will do. I think my teachers are very clever.

But, this news has scared some of my kindergarten friends. Some of my friends aren't bothered at all -- they still like playing with lego and colouring pictures, etc. Rest of my kindergarten friends did not comment. Some of my kindergarten friends who know what will happen if their parents found out are very very scared. They realise that their parents will take away their toys, keep them away from watching Barney on Nikelodion, etc, until they start studying. My friends are very worried.

Everyone in my kindergarten class is discussing what to do. Everyone is thinking what will happen next, what will become of them.

I am scared. I don't know what will happen next.

Night Vision Device!

2005-11-27T23:17:00.000+05:00

The working principle behind a night vision device centres around the use of InfraRed (IR) LEDs. The light emitted by an IR LED, when boucned off of an object, can easily be seen by a camera. Human eye can only perceive visible light, not IR, or UV, or for that matter, any other form of light whose wavelength and frequency characteristics don't overlap those of visible light. Following that, a grid comprising several IR LEDs mounted around a camera can effectively enable the camera to see in dark.

For our project for the "Microprocessor Programming and Interfacing" course this semester, we were advised by the instructor to work on designing and constructing a night vision device based on the same prinicple described earlier. It seemed all simple enough, until we actually sat down to work on it.

We spent two nights and three days, nearly, sleepless and restless, designing and constructing what we might proudly claim to be a night vision device in the end. On the d-day, we had something that could clearly see in the dark, but the additional features to be included with the main device were still dysfunctional, to some extent.

The IR LEDs are delicate. Their current ratings are high, while they start to burn off at any voltage greater than 3.0 volts at max. The IR LED grid we had constructed was built to work on 3 volts. Anything more than that for a length of time at a stretch, and the complete grid would go south.

The better half of the morning and afternoon on the d-day was spent working on functionalising the additional modules. They showed no hope of working. Frustrated, tired, sleepless, someone inadvertently supplied 5 volts across the IR LED grid. Boom! Kaput! The complete grid fried off -- not literally, but that was what had happened. Some of us did not want to believe the grid had burned off, and kept on tweaking one thing after another in the hopes of somehow making the device work miraculously. It did not work. It was dead. The project was dead. And we were all ready to accept the consequences.

Only, the instructor, instead of penalising us with an upfront zero, offered us another chance to re-do the device and re-submit in a week's time. Hard as it may be to believe, some of us cursed under our breaths at that. The drudgery had already been unbearable. And another week was going to add further fuel to the already ablaze fire.

Anywho, we packed up, gathered our equipment, and left off for our houses to get back on the lost sleep. Few of us got mildly sick from spending up nights and days without rest and much food. But, anyway, it all passed.

The better half of the next week was unproductive. We would gather up every evening after University at a friend's place and ponder over our plans to re-do the project. Sadly, nothing productive came to pass, until, again, only the weekend was left.

We again spent two sleepless nights soldering circuit components and wrapping wires of different colours on circuit boards. From the way things were going, it seemed we were worse off that time than we had been the last time. However, on the d-day, what we had in our hands was a much better end product than it had been the last time.

With little additional tweakings, we were able to make the night vision device work nearly flawlessly. In whatever time we had before the demonstration, we were able to do the software part in assembly. Finally, we demonstrated the project and got off easily.

I struggle each day ... in vain.

2005-11-02T19:53:00.000+05:00

It is said that if a hard-disk is made to work consistently for a long stretch of time, spun down, and spun back up, it will most likely fail. If not, it will at the very least show signs of wearing away.It is a mechanical thing.

I had stopped to give myself a long-needed break and left for a month to relax at a place I had last had visited roughly ten-to-fifteen years ago. The drudgery in life that becomes routine had worn me out to the point of straining both my mental and physical condition. Ihad then decided to cut some slack.

A month, roughly, without work, without reading the sort of books I had done almost every day, without looking down at anything that had resembled a computer, had been most pleasant, what with more social interaction than I had ever had before. I had barely laid sight on a flickering CRT monitor, felt the small etched markers on the 'F' and 'J' keys. I had had a difficult time taking in that I could even livewithout all that. I had loved every single day.

By the end of the month, I had already hopped into my ride home, and in record time was back enjoying a cold shower in my bathroom. "The transition had seemed smooth", I thought. Only, in some respects, itwas not.

More than three months have passed after my arrival, and although I have managed to return back to life as I had known it before I left for vacations, I find I have turned embarrasingly lazy. Each passing day I find myself short of energy to compete with the day's toil. I have books lying there wanting and in need of my attention, work that need be done, and so many more things. Yet, there is no familiar impetus to drive me to commit myself. I recount such imeptus had always hadbeen there, before. Now, no more.

I struggle each day, trying harder than ever to resist the temptation of idling away my time, to break out of the cage I have now come to recognise as home, only in part in vain. To err on the brighter side,at least I am struggling!

I feel I had made a mistake.

2005-10-31T06:46:00.000+05:00

For the first time in almost two years now, I feel I had made a mistake choosing Hardware Engineering as my field of study. I feel I would have been better off purusing a degree in Software Engineering.

The prospect of getting a decently paying job is not the reason behind why I feel that way. It is, simply, lack of interest in the field. Just that!

One could say this sudden realisation has, in part, something to do with poor initial performance in a wholly-engineering course of late, but, then, there is often always at least one course every semester in which developing interest is a daunting task. However, there is more to this than meets the eye.

A good piece of advice goes a long way!

2005-10-26T00:33:00.000+05:00

I had the occasion once to watch intently a local soap opera being aired on a local station. The theme of the show had everything to do with an array of problems the society at large faces.

That day, particularly, the host was drawning upon a girl in her late teenage years who had been madly in love with a guy few years older than her. Among a myraid of issues that were discussed, one that overwhelmed me was the advice the host gave to the girl. It was something to the effect of, "Remember, never, ever, betray and forget, or be willing to, your blood relations for a person who is, no matter how much you know, still a stranger."

That single piece of advice has made its way into that part of my mind from where it spouts up every once in a while and reinforces the point it carries. In light of what has been happening with my personal life, if twisted and turned a bit, that piece of advice fits perfectly. I keep reminding myself, "Never, ever, betray and forget your family for a person who is, no matter how much you know, still a stranger."

Prioritise your things wisely!

Earthquake Survival Guides!

2005-10-13T22:36:00.000+05:00

In wake of the recent, harrowing earthquake(s) that shook parts of Pakistan, there is an increasing need for people to understand what earthquakes are, how to distinugish between differently sized earthquakes, and, most importantly, how to prepare for and react to an earthquake.

While browsing for earthquake related information, I came across some pieces I would like to share with anyone who is interested in learning about earthquakes.

I hope these help!

Packeted!

2005-10-12T15:33:00.000+05:00

Few hours short of noon today, I dialed in and got an IP from my ISP's DHCP server. Before I could open up a terminal and execute fetchmail to fetch my e-mails, I noticed the two red lights on my modem blinking red and green. They were blinking fast. Seeing as nothing on the system had initiated any sort of connections, I suspected something was amiss. Frantically, I ran snort in IDS mode in one terminal, constantly monitoring the alerts file for any notifications, started tethereal in another terminal, and called up EtheRape to generate a dynamic, grahical model of network traffic my box was seeing.

I was shocked. More than hundred IPs were hitting me on port 6881. A quick grok of the /etc/nmap-services file against the port number 6881 turned nil. However, searching across Google, I found out port 6881 used by Bittorrent.

I captured a snapshot of one of my screens which was running the packet logging and network monitoring tools I just mentioned: wtf.png

Why?

2005-10-08T17:18:00.000+05:00

Yesterday afternoon, a few friends at the campus were bent on taking me to offer prayers. I told them persistently that I don't pray. They did not listen and wanted to force me to go with them, but I was equally stubborn and didn't go.

It was not the first time something like that happened with me. What incidents like these leave behind in the mind to wonder about are questions like, "Is not religion a person's personal affair?", "Why do people swipe at every chance they get of enforcing their beliefs, their practices over others?", and, "Why can't people leave others alone in matters pertaining to religion?".

I don't pray, and I don't believe in God. What buisness is it of yours to know and, not least, persuade me otherwise? None! Why do you feel the need to discuss religion with me when clearly I show no interest?

I could not care less what religion you follow, which God you have faith in. I don't disapprove of your religious practices. I don't derive any pleasure from mocking your religious inclinations. Why do you? (Although in my case religion is replaced by lack thereof.)

Sigh! Eventually, it all boils down to a single interrogative construction: Why?

Some day, I trust, I shall find out!

Oh, that must have been EFnet's resilient, not DALnet's!

2005-10-08T16:56:00.000+05:00

Heh! I logged into #darkend on DALnet in the wee hours of the morning of 7 October. The regulars, mistaking me for someone of the same nick from another IRC network, indulged in a hilarious chat. I am making the log file avaiable: dalnet-darkend.log

Worth a laugh or two, no?

X-Forwarding via SSH!

2005-10-02T12:07:00.000+05:00

I did not know X-Fowarding via SSH could be so easy. All it requires is that the directive X11Forwarding yes be placed somewhere on a line by itself in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the remote system from which X applications may be forwarded, and sshd be restarted. The -X switch to ssh then hooks up an SSH connection to the remote host with X11Forwarding enabled.

Indeed, a bunch of security risks exists with such form of X-Fowarding, but I have decided to ignore them for the time being, seeing as my headless P-I, which runs the SSH server, is pretty neatly hardened behind a masquerading gateway.

Random Musings #10

2005-10-01T01:36:00.000+05:00

It is often easier to overlook your mistakes and make a fuss over those of others. It is said that it takes a man to admit his mistakes. I say that it takes a man to first realise and then admit his errors, his wrongs.

Update: Night out with a couple of friends.

2005-10-01T01:18:00.000+05:00

I went to Nandos, an eatery in one of the posh locations of Karachi that specialises in serving spicy, grilled chicken, with a couple of friends for dinner tonight. We ordered a spicy leg of chicken each, with a bowl full of fries and another with coleslaw and soft drinks. For dessert, we feasted on a small yet heavy chocolate fudge cake, and, having finished that, went out to an ice-cream parlour a few blocks away for some Vanilla shakes and sundae.

It was a nice night out. I enjoyed the ride and seeing what they call the City of Lights at night time. It was fun.

A night out with a couple of friends.

2005-09-30T16:42:00.000+05:00

Mid-terms are finally over. I would rather you not ask how the last paper went, 'cause what you'll hear coming out of my mouth won't be anything short of a nice expletive. Heh.

A whole week for an insignificant mid-term is stretching it too bloody far. A couple of friends have decided to have dinner at some eatery of their choosing tonight. They offered me to come and join them, and, feeling frustrated myself, I accepted their offer. Besides, I will get a chance that way to see the city during night time, a scene I so enjoy observing and yet rarely if ever get the chance to savour.

See you tonight!

Pakistan Studies Exam tomorrow.

2005-09-29T22:27:00.000+05:00

Pakistan Studies exam is tomorrow and I dare you to make me go and study for it. Oh, wait. Junaid and Farheen, you guys don't count, so, zip it. ;-p

Perl quickie!

2005-09-29T22:22:00.000+05:00

Junjun, this Perl quickie is for you!  Enjoy!


#!/usr/bin/perl
# tr.pl:  Implements encryption and decryption using the lame 1-letter forward
#         substitution technique.
#
# Copyrights (C) 2005 Ayaz Ahmed Khan 
#
# usage:  perl tr.pl -e "plain-text"
#         perl tr.pl "cipher"
#

## __CODE STARTS __
sub decrypt {
       $_ = shift;
       $_ =~ tr/a-zA-Z/b-zaB-ZA/;

       print "$_ \n";
}

sub encrypt {
       $_ = shift;
       $_ =~ tr/a-zA-Z/za-yZA-Y/;

       print "$_ \n";
}

sub usage {
       print qq{Copyrights (C) 2005 Ayaz Ahmed Khan.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

usage:  $0 [OPTIONS] "PLAIN-TEXT/CIPHER"
          -e           Enable encryption mode.
          -h           Display help menu.

};
       exit 0;
}

sub main {
       if ($ARGV[0] eq "-h") {
               usage;
       }
       elsif ($ARGV[0] eq "-e" || $ARGV[0] eq "-E") {
               $_ = shift @ARGV;
               decrypt @ARGV;
       }
       else {
               encrypt @ARGV;
       }
}

usage unless defined @ARGV;
main;

Dumped Xfce in favour of KDE.

2005-09-26T00:50:00.000+05:00

Um, one last post before I disappear. ;-)

Xfce crapped out on me, again. As much as I like using it, I had to dump it. And, dump I did. After what has been a decade, I am back to using KDE. It is still v3.1 on my laptop, but it will do.

Disappearing for a brief period of time!

2005-09-25T10:35:00.000+05:00

Mid-terms start from Monday and will last till Friday of the same week. Unlike other mid-terms, where I would prepare for the papers while sitting next to the laptop connected to the Internet, I have decided this time I will stay away from the Internet throughout the whole mid-terms.

My next blog, then, will most probably come next Friday. Until then, bah-bye!

No studies?

2005-09-23T11:13:00.000+05:00

I have decided to drop my job. I hadn't realised, but in hindsight, it seems a part-time job will severely affect my studies, leaving me with no time to do my personal research and book reading and stuff. Farheen and a couple of other folks did advise me the same thing. I guess I should've listened. Oh, well!

Money is good, no doubt, but, then again, money has never been on top of my priority list.

Mid-terms are starting from Monday, next week, so I'd better start studying for them.

Mom and Dad's wedding anniversary.

2005-09-19T22:20:00.000+05:00

18 September was mom and dad's wedding anniversary. I got to know in the morning when dad mentioned it over the breakfast table.

Farheen insisted I give them a wedding anniversary present. I didn't really know what. The day passed on and it was decided that everyone will go out for dinner that night to some nice restaurant. Mom wanted to try Chinese, as it had been ages since we last had it. Dad picked a decent Chinese eatery situated in Tariq Road. As I was getting ready to leave, I remembered what Farheen had been nudging me to do in the morning. Quickly, I made up a quick plan, got ready and jumped into the car.

The food was good and quite heavy. When the bill came in, and before dad could take out his wallet, I instantly took out mine and put the money on the bill. "Mom, dad, that's my wedding anniversary gift for you guys. Happy wedding anniversary." Dad wouldn't let me pay, but, well, I made him accept it. Heh.

It was a nice night out. It had really been ages since we last went out together.

Work, at last!

2005-09-19T22:14:00.000+05:00

Contracted a part-time job today. I trust a job will keep me busy with and my mind focused at things I love doing the most.

Sadly, University life is getting lonelier day after another. Everything, except for the things I love doing, just seems pointless these days.

The bad-ass, general-purpose programming language!

2005-09-18T15:15:00.000+05:00

To hell with Python. I am back to Perl, the bad-ass, general-purpose programming language.

Knowing more than half of Perl, I figured it would be better to continue with it than to learn a new, different language.

Python!

2005-09-17T09:38:00.000+05:00

I started reading the book Dive Into Python yesterday. I figured I already know Perl and a little bit of PHP, why not give Python a try.

So far, my impressions of it are along the lines of a very carefully designed and clean language.

'nother boring day at the campus.

2005-09-14T22:57:00.000+05:00

University sucked twice as ever today. I nearly dosed off in two lectures. ;P

Coincidentally, the system in the computer laboratory in the engineering block in front of which I sat had only RedHat Linux installed. On top of that, it had a CD-ROM too, seeing as no other system in the whole laboratory has any. On top top of that, I had my handy Whoppix CD with me, and, on top top top of that, the system booted Whoppix fine (except for the humongous resolution), seeing as most other systems in other computer laboratories flat-out refuse to boot any Live-CD. :) Consequently, the next half an hour I spent in the laboratory using Whoppix on that system went exceptionally great. As for what I did, that is a secret.

Did I mention University sucked today?

Bunk, again?

2005-09-13T17:08:00.000+05:00

And, oh, yea! I bunked University today. And, trust me, I don't feel even a bit of remorse for it. I only wish University wasn't this boring. Oh, well!

Running an NIDS on the box: Snort

2005-09-13T16:54:00.000+05:00

Snort is an open source Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS).

Knowing well how to use snort as both a straight packet sniffer and packet logger, I had always desired to learn to use it as a network intrusion detection system. Today, I learned how to do that too.

I modified the /etc/rc.d/rc.snortd file to include a simple BASH construct


           if [ "`/sbin/ifconfig ppp0 2> /dev/null`" ]; then
                   IFACE=ppp0
           else
                   IFACE=eth0
           fi

to automate choosing of which interface to listen to, depending on the availability of a Point-to-Point link, as I use a dial-up link only to get online.

Now, all I have to do is to execute /etc/rc.d/rc.snortd with the "start" or "restart" argument, and snort goes up automatically, listening as an NIDS.

It is actually kinda' cool, seeing as snort has already flagged some 20+ various intrustion attempts. ;-p

Bunk, bunk! Hot, hot!

2005-09-12T22:39:00.000+05:00

Heh. I bunked nearly two lectures today to complete an assignment which I ought to have done the day before.

It was miserably hot today. I was literally soaking in sweat in the point-bus on way to the University in the morning. It got worse on reaching the campus -- no electricity. Although we have got back-up generators, someone forgot to put fans in the entire engineering block when it was being built. Silly, I know, but it is true. Rooms in the engineering block have air conditioners only -- no fans. When the electricity goes out and the generators come up, only the tube-lights work. :(

A so-so day for me!

Who 0wn3d my b0x? Capture the Flag Contest at GameHack 2005.

2005-09-11T13:08:00.000+05:00

Jahanzaib and I had designed a game-plan for the Capture the Flag (CtF) contest to be held at GameHack 2005. It had taken us 6+ hours to hack out a somewhat ingenious plan on paper. We both spent an evening, a complete night, morning and some part of an afternoon without an iota of rest and sleep to implement it.

CtF started around about half past two yesterday in Pearl Continental's Neelum Hall. Seven teams participated in the contest, most of which brought along their own equipment.

The game kicked off at around 2:45 and lasted some 6+ hours. We had a winner by the end of the night, but the contest, per se, was a rattler.

While some of the teams, admittedly, had what we would call the brains and employed really ingenious tricks to work around different levels, without the various hints given and ad hoc changes made in between the game, I doubt they would have got to the end.

Our servers were running on two HP laptops over VMware. Except for a mere 15 minutes a couple of times, neither Jahanziab nor I had to oversee and attend to any of the two servers.

All in all, we had a great game. It had password cracking in it, packet sniffing, remote root buffer overflow exploting, local user privilege escalation exploiting, very basic cipher cracking, etc.

Both the teams and the admins had a wonderful time.

Rain galore!

2005-09-11T12:21:00.000+05:00

It is as if the clouds above us are crying. It rained big time yesterday, where at one point everything went nearly dark. It rained day before yesterday too, now that I remember, and I, even, got drenched in it, sitting on the rooftop and savouring every drop of rain that managed to fall on to me.

I can perceive the smells and sounds of a heavy downpour as I write this. I can feel the cold wind seeping inside my room and lashing on my body. Oooh. One cannot imagine what I can kill to enjoy such weather. Sadly, the car's tyre is flat and I cannot go outside for a free, slow ride through wet roads, switching the windscreen flapper on and off periodically.

The only annoyance is that the landline will go dead any minute cutting off my means of communications except that via mobile technology.

Nmap-3.90 is out!

2005-09-08T21:19:00.000+05:00

Nmap version 3.90 is available.

v3.90 is the first stable release of Nmap after 3.81 after nearly seven months. Its changelog is long and interesting, and worth a read.

I have downloaded the source distribution, and will compile a Slackware package of it tonight.

One-liner, tonight.

2005-09-07T19:40:00.000+05:00

Have you no conscience? I wish more people did.

Of crushes, love and all.

2005-09-06T21:38:00.000+05:00

Having a crush is not a bad thing. Getting obsessed over it, however, is.

If you believe in luck, I'd say you would be damn too lucky if you were to fall in love with a person who turns out to just be, um, the right one for you -- if there is any such thing. Otherwise, that rarely happens.

I know statistics suck, but nine out of ten times, the first person you get a crush on and fall in love with, you almost always get obsessed with. And it gets worse if things don't work out, which they usually don't.

While that may seem like a bad thing, it isn't. Well, at least, when you look at it from the angle that you might learn an important lesson out of that experience, it doesn't seem so bad. Ideally -- lol -- then, the next time you fall for another person, having learned the lesson, you don't get obsessed over it and don't take it hard if things fall apart.

I speak out of experience.

From Fluxbox to Xfce!

2005-09-05T10:47:00.000+05:00

Funny thing is, after I upgraded Fluxbox from 0.1.4 on my Slackware-9.1.0 system to 0.9.9 -- big, big upgrade, yea, I know, I just wasn't keeping myeslf up-to-date ;) --, I realised the upgrade had broken some features I had come to heavily depend on in the previous version of Fluxbox.

Therefore, in a fist of fury and frustration, I migrated to Xfce. It wasn't until I started exploring it that I realised how fast and powerful a Desktop it is.

I have some screenshots here for you to see: pic_1.jpg, pic_2.jpg

I am an Xfce fan now.

It is not like I cannot appreciate good music!

2005-09-05T10:35:00.000+05:00

Heh.

IMIK's album Zamana Badlay Ga features some exquisitely soothing songs. Songs are slow, romantic and something I would call music to [my] ears.

Call the band recently released their song Shayad. Although I don't know in which genre of music it comes -- pardon my ignorance here --, but it is one hell of a rattler. A moving song, both literally and figuratively. I'd say it is worth listening to. I'll most probably be purchasing their album, Jilwatane, which will be out shortly.

Checkinstall: Building Slackware packages from source.

2005-09-05T10:27:00.000+05:00

Checkinstall simply rocks.

I had had to upgrade Gaim to the latest snapshot, gaim-1.5.1, but could not find pre-built, binary Slackware packages for Slackware-9.1.0 running on my lappy. I downloaded the source tarball, configured the various Makefiles and built the modules. However, instead of issuing make install, I used checkinstall to generate a standard Slackware package tailored for my system. Five minutes later, wham, I have a Slackware package for gaim-1.5.1.

Cool! I did not know building Slackware binary packages from source could be as easy as "untar'ing the source, ./configure'ing, make'ing, and checkinstall'ing".

Samba: Migrating a Windows-based PDC to Linux.

2005-09-05T10:18:00.000+05:00

Back at the campus, they are toying with the prospects of implementing a Linux-based Primary Domain Controller (PDC). Consequently, I have been studying Samba and general domain and workgroup concepts since last weekend.

If I would take a shot in the dark, I would say migrating a PDC to Linux should not be that difficult. At least, reading the docs, I certainly don't get that impression.

I'm reading "Using Samba, 2nd Edition" by Jay Ts, Robert Eckstein, and David Collier-Brown. It can be read online.

Back!

2005-09-05T10:09:00.000+05:00

I'm planning on reviving my lightly populated blog. I figured I'm
doing my fair share of reading but when it comes to writing, I have
been letting myself slack off. It is high time I started writing
again.

Nuff said!

My Pet Peeves with Netsolir.

2005-04-10T10:51:00.000+05:00

Saturday, 9 April 2005

I bought my first modem on the August of 2001, three days before my first year at the high-school was to start. With the help of a good friend who used to live in the neighbourhood, I purchased my first Internet connection from Netsolir. To this day, I have been a loyal post-paid customer of Netsolir.

By the time this article finds its way to my low volume blog archive, I would have moved to a different, more reliable ISP. I have long given up on the services Netsolir provides. But what took me so long to make this decision once and for all was my generosity to give them one more chance to prove themselves to me that they are worth the money and time I put to and on them. I feel I have been more generous than I should be, for their services show no perceptible signs of improvements -- on the contrary, their services continue to deteroriate over time, and add up to the annoyance and frustration I have to suffer as a result of which.

Months earlier from now, I realised I wasn't getting eny e-mails to the e-mail account that I have with my ISP. And that happened during the time when the mailing lists to which I had been subscribed to with that e-mail address were all getting flooded with e-mails. A few days later I came to the realisation that every single e-mail I had sent, using Netsolir's SMTP server, never really got off the mail queue running on the servers. I was angry. I investigated the problem by opening up a raw session with the SMTP host, and discovered that the POSTFIX MTA (mail transport agent) running on my ISP's mail servers was in fact pushing messages into its queue. I waited a few more days, thinking that something that might have deferred the sending of the messages might have caused the messages to be left off in the queue and would fix itself. But, nothing came and went, despite the agonising wait. I tried budging the technical support personnels, but got nowhere with them, as the only advice I continually got was that of re-setting my Outlook Express settings and trying again. I'm positive I did not mistake the technical support number for the customer support, unless someone had took the trouble of mapping the two numbers the other way around. Days came and went, and I was without any e-mails. I could not send anything. I knew I had received some very important e-mails during that black-out, and only hoped that I would get them back as soon as whatever was wrong with the mail servers got fixed (by itself, or by someone). It indeed did get fixed, but, praise my misery, the mail queue handler dropped almost all of the e-mails that may have tried to find their way into my mailbox. I was furious, and I did not know what to do, and I had lost some exceedingly important e-mails, about which I have no information to date. I tried to put it all behind me.

And I did. Until, it happened again. And this time, it persisted to a whole week during which I neither got an e-mail, nor could send any. Struggling with the technical support staff, I finally managed to convince them something was wrong -- an understatement, yes. In return, I was only told that my complaint will be forwarded upstairs and will be solved in no time. In time to come, I would notice that by "no time" they meant another three quarters of a week.

Everything went back to normal. Until -- yes, that bloody until again -- I shocking discovered that I could not access my account management page at the ISP's home-page because, simply and stupidly, I was not using Internet Explorer, version this or that. I had a look at the source of the page which was causing the message box to appear, and fair enough, I saw a silly, unacceptably lame javascript tag which prevented browsers that did not send a browser-identification string with "Internet Explorer" in it anywhere from accessing the website further. I tried faking the browser-identification string with
Konqueror, as Firefox still does not support that feature, but all I could get through to was the initial login prompt -- it just wouldn't verify my login credentials and allow me access to something I have paid with my dad's hard earned money for. I was enraged, and made the technical support staff at my ISP feel it, not just once, not even twice or thrice, by as many as six times. Months have lapsed since my last call to the technical support, and I still cannot access my account management page -- I still cannot find how many hours I have consumed and how many are left. And I just don't have it in me to get up and call technical support again. I would feel insulted if I did.

Despite all that, I gave them one last chance -- call me stupid, but that is how far I am willing to go with a commitment I made years ago. Only this time I knew for sure that that was going to be the last straw. And, indeed, it was the straw that broke it all. For the last two days now, I'm continuously being haunted by DNS name resolution problems. The only fix is to overwrite the dynamically assigned primary and secondary DNS addresses to those of other reliable service providers over the Internet. And, unsurprisingly, it all of a sudden starts to work with the new DNS addresses. That is just the last bloody straw. As soon as my account expires some time this month, I will bid farewell to Netsolir and to my commitment with it which I had made years ago. A man can only bear so much. Like I said, giving them another chance and expecting they would out of nowhere fix themselves would be a blow to my self-esteem -- it would insult me more than anything else equally insulting.

Thank you and goodbye!

--
Ayaz Ahmed Khan

  Copyright (c) 2005 Ayaz Ahmed Khan
 
   Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted
  in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Rain

2004-07-13T14:12:00.000+05:00

It finally rained today. I wouldn't call it a downpour, nor just a drizzle, or just a shower. It just rained. And it had to, for it hadn't rained for a year. The weather had been absolutely pleasant throughout the week and the one before, with a consistent cover of grey, water-filled clouds above.

The wind had been blowing violently, but died down just today. As usual, it left behind a thick cover of dust on surfaces all over inside the house. I seriously find that annoying. Having dusted my study the other day, I just don't like to see it dirt filled the next day. But it happens. That's the only annoyance I find in the wind.

I went to the University yesterday, to get some work done at the Linux laboratory, and spent the entire seven hours from half past eight to half past three, in the lab freezing at about twenty degress, the air-conditioners there running at no more than sixteen degrees. I didn't realise how beautiful the weather had been outside. Not that if I did I would've got outside and would've spent the day wandering and enjoying the weather instead of sitting in a freezing room, but still. Down in Karachi, such weather is a revelation.You're more than just lucky if you get to enjoy it.

--
Ayaz Ahmed Khan

Compilers and Programming Instructors.

2004-07-07T23:25:00.000+05:00

"Every project should be compiled either on Turbo C++ or Borland C++ compiler. If you're working on any other compiler, shift over to TC or BC this instant".

Twisting my face to form as much of an ugly grimace as I could, I winced at the bytes I read from an e-mail sent to me by my C++ course instructor five days before the project was due. I had worked half of the code on g++ in Linux. But despite my efforts to convince her, I gave in -- or had to. I did finish the project on TC, but had had to write the code from the bottom-up, because TC didn't permit use of STL with user-defined class support, of namespaces, and a couple of other features my code had come to heavily depend on. Worse yet, TC couldn't handle a project strewn across multiple-source files. I had had to rewrite my code. And to that end, I had hated it to any possible degree.

As I resentfully switched from one platform to another, the sudden lack of interest in programming that project left its aftertaste into the final product. What I produced on TC at the end of the week was a 1500-lines of source code littered with bugs. Bugs both naive and subtle in nature. I just couldn't force to bring myself to terms with the situation I had unprecedently been put into. Why would I have had? I was only doing it so impeccably on g++.

I'm sick and dirt-tired of programming instructors who force students into using one particular compiler. Sometimes, the compiler in question is embarassingly old, outdated and, at times, flat-out frowned upon by the professionals. And that very fact grinds horrificaly on the students. But I'd be damned if there were anything the dirt poor student can do about it. And such is the irony of life.

Many, here, think that defiance is more idiotic than the mere thought of mutiny against a cold-hearted bitch dictator. But, of course, what worth is what many think about the issue at hand or just about anything else. I wouldn't even hear their opinions with 3-inch big ear plugs.

Sir, you don't even deserve my spittle.

--
Ayaz Ahmed Khan

Suffering is a fact of life. Either you learn to go by it or you don't. -- Heather, Silent Hill 3.