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2007/01/09

 

Analysis of Microsoft's Suicide Note (part 1)

by oday — posted at 2007-01-09 17:59 last modified 2007-01-09 18:27 Copyright 2006 Oliver Day, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

 

Oliver Day is a former corporate hacker turned student. While at eEye Digital Security he wrote audits for the Retina Vulnerability Scanner and was a Principal Security Consultant for @stake. He has written an unpublished book on SAN security and found a variety of exploits in web-based applications. He is contributing to BadVista.org a series of posts about the presence and implications of the “content protection scheme” in Microsoft Windows Vista. This post is the first in that series.

 

[editors note: this is becoming far too long a post for a single entry and will be serialized over the coming week]

 

In a controversial technical analysis Peter Gutmann goes into fantastic detail about the recently released Vista operating system and its content protection scheme. One thing became clear to me after reading this analysis. Vista is being marketed to content producers, not consumers. If Windows XP was Microsoft’s attempt to embed a browser into the operating system then Vista is the attempt to embed DRM. Digital Rights Management technology has been applied to literally every ring of the OS architecture.

 

Vista's target market is content producers and the underlying philosophy of the user experience will be far different then what many consumers expect it will be. Microsoft has attempted to plug the infamous “analog hole” as much as is possible by forcing all data through encryption algorithms. For those unaware of the “costs” of encryption it is sufficiently high. Pushing HD audio and video content through encryption/decryption routines is a tremendous strain on any system currently available and in the near future. Even with the application of Moore's Law a conservative estimate could place affordable and usable systems within this new content system 5 years away. It will be interesting to see how these restrictions will be spun by the large marketing and PR teams since none of these innovations will benefit consumers in any way. The job that has been handed to these PR and marketing teams is to dress up a product designed with every restriction a producer has asked for and make a consumer want to buy it. One of the most quotable lines from the Gutmann analysis sums this up perfectly as, “breaking the legs of Olympic athletes and then rating them based on how fast they can hobble on crutches.”

 

In the past when I have delivered lectures to web application developers I would caution them to never trust user input. Perhaps developers took this philosophy a little too far. The entire operating system now seems to have turned against the user. Zero tolerance drivers and regulation code will lock the system down if any type of deviance is detected. So called “tilt bits” will signal an attack on the system if anything is found out of the ordinary. These changes won’t enhance user security unfortunately as they were designed to protect only “premium content”. Medical data, credit card numbers, and other private things that do deserve this level of protection are completly ignored. Untrusting of any environmental changes the system will shut down or degrade performance in response to a perceived attack.

 

http://badvista.fsf.org/blog/analysis-of-microsofts-suicide-note-part-1

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This seems difficult, at first glance, but really, it’s not.

 

At all.

 

From the time you get all your hardware plugged in to the time you’re doing some massive parallel processing, depending on your needs, can be anywhere from 2 hours to 10 minutes. And this simple guide will help you get there.

 

Get the Hardware

 

Now, mind you, I’m not trying to do this as cheaply as possible, but I am trying to do this with as much bang for your buck as possible. These are the things you need to get.

 

PCs: Duh, kinda the barebones necessity in a cluster, and I have a recommendation: eMachines T5212. It’s got a Pentium 805 Dual core Processor with each core running at 2.66ghz, for a total of 5.32ghz per machine, and 2×1MB L2 cache, which while not stellar, is pretty respectable. It’s also got 1gb of RAM and a 200gb hard-drive, so storage problems go away pretty quickly too. There’s a lower model with half the ram and a smaller hard drive, the T5216, but I need the RAM, so I go with the T5212. At Best Buy and other stores, these run about 534.99 for just the tower. Mind you I have chosen this box for the hardware’s compatibility to the software we’ll be using in a later step.

 

Network Cables: You’re going to need at least one for each PC, and probably a couple more if you have an external device or PC acting as your DHCP server and/or gateway.

 

Network Hardware: You’re going to need a switch big enough for all your PCs to connect (or a series of small ones that you can daisy chain together). Life will also be a lot easier if you have a ONE DHCP server for all of your machines. All the machines need to be on the same IP subnet, but don’t need to be on the same network switch or in the same geographic area.

 

Setting Up your Hardware:

 

In my personal configuration, I have a small network appliance that acts as a dhcp server, router, and print server, so I use that as the base of my networking needs. I then have a series of smaller switches which have 1 (count them, 1) link total back to the DHCP server. This is important for me, so that network traffic on the cluster doesn’t bog down the rest of my home network. How else could I play Halo while factoring 100 digit prime numbers? This will also help your cluster have fewer jumps between nodes.

 

Your Software:

 

I strongly recommend the use of ClusterKnoppix. It’s a great tool, and is very stable. It uses the 2.4 debian kernel, and has openMosix installed and configured for auto-detect (which means nodes are essentially plug-and-play, though not really, and I’ll discuss why later). You’ll need one copy for each box, unless you choose to commit the knoppix image to the hard-drive of each machine. It’s not necessary, but it may be easier if you don’t have a stack of CDR’s at your disposal.

 

Booting up the Cluster:

 

This is probably the easiest part of the process. Place a ClusterKnoppix CD in each box, and boot it up. I can vouch that this hardware is compatible and you won’t have any issues loading, so now you’re ready to work! NOTE: If you do this with other hardware, I can’t guarantee things are going to work so swimmingly, and I am nowhere near qualified to help you trouble-shoot your hardware. If you have a DHCP server and DNS somewhere on your network, your cluster should be live to the internet, so you can pick up your code off other boxes on the network or from a CVS server somewhere out there in the intarwebs. There is a version of GCC and G++, though I can’t think of the version numbers off the top of my head (feel free to check the link on the side of this blog, I’m sure its there somewhere).

 

Making your Mosix Cluster a Beowulf

 

There’s two methods, but they essentially do the same thing. The first is to commit a knoppix image to the hard-drive of one of your boxes. There are tools for formatting and repartitioning the harddrive in the utilities menu in KDE (I think it’s GTPart that’s installed, as well as a few others). Follow the instructions from http://www.knoppix.org or from any other live-distribution site (they’re a little extensive, else I would include them here). The second is to commit an alteration image to your hard disk, and then boot knoppix from this alteration image (a new feature to Knoppix that I’ve never used, so once again, check the intarwebs).

 

Either method you choose, I would strongly recommend you use LAM/MPI (or openMPI if you so strongly desire the biggest and baddest). The nice thing about this setup, is that you do not need to configure each machine with lam, or configure your root node with machine lists of all the other nodes in the network. All you have to do is create multiple processes on the node that has MPI installed, and openMosix will balance the cluster. It’s truly beautiful. In order to run a process in mpi, follow these simple instructions (for lam):

 

bash$: lamboot

 

<some output here>

 

bash$: mpirun -np (some number of processes) <your executable name> <your arguments>

 

That’s it. You don’t even need to compile your binaries using the MPI compilers, assuming they don’t use the MPI libraries. If they do, use mpic++ or mpicc as you would g++ or gcc, respectively.

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Ok, so my bro installed Vista RC1 on our slave with dual boot but now we want to uninstall it. How can this be done without fucking up the boot sequence. Can i simply delete all OS related shit on the slave? I would, but i'm weary about the dual bootness.

 

 

yeah, and change your boot.ini file on the main drive. just delete the vista from the boot sequence.

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Woman sets herself on fire in Seattle hotel elevator

 

Seattle Times staff

 

A woman set herself on fire in the elevator of a downtown hotel this morning, according to the Seattle Fire Department.

 

The woman, who hasn't been identified, suffered burns to 60 percent of her body and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, said Seattle fire spokeswoman Sue Stangl. The woman had been a guest at the Marriott-Waterfront.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003516343_webfirehotel09.html

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Woman sets herself on fire in Seattle hotel elevator

 

Seattle Times staff

 

A woman set herself on fire in the elevator of a downtown hotel this morning, according to the Seattle Fire Department.

 

The woman, who hasn't been identified, suffered burns to 60 percent of her body and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, said Seattle fire spokeswoman Sue Stangl. The woman had been a guest at the Marriott-Waterfront.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003516343_webfirehotel09.html

 

 

serves her right

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ok, I have a 10/100 fast ethernet switch router. 5 ports. Port 1 has the internet going IN, port 2 has the internet going OUT to this computer port 4 has the internet going to my sister's computer, and port 5 goes upstairs to my room. Port 3 is empty.

The problem is, I plugged my computer in upstairs for the first time today in port 5 and since then, port 4 has stopped working.

What can I do to get internet through all ports?

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ok, I have a 10/100 fast ethernet switch router. 5 ports. Port 1 has the internet going IN, port 2 has the internet going OUT to this computer port 4 has the internet going to my sister's computer, and port 5 goes upstairs to my room. Port 3 is empty.

The problem is, I plugged my computer in upstairs for the first time today in port 5 and since then, port 4 has stopped working.

What can I do to get internet through all ports?

 

 

you checked out your configuration at 192.168.1.1 ?

i'm unfamiliar with this problem. tried unplugging the router and plugging it back in?

that sometimes works.

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you must mean casek's link? cuz i clicked the phonetrace link and not twirling penises here.

 

*edit: i've been had.

 

ahahaha....shiiiittt....:lol:

 

sorry guys, but i had to.....

i thought i had been had by Casek with scroogle lol!!!

someone got me with this really bad- the network admin called me down and took away my comp "priviliges" for a semester, it kinda sucked......

sorry again, but u gotta admit it was funny....:scrambled:

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