Breaking the Rules for a better Tomorrow

Society: a bunch of entities interconnected and related through geography,physiognomy,  "culture", "beliefs" and/or institutions. The human version of this is quite fascinating: multicultural yet global, chaotic yet organized in its own way.That's where the Rules come in: laws derived from common sense, approved by the commoners and enforced for the common Good! 

These rules are however more tested and contested than not, more bypassed and purposely misinterpreted than not.Just think about the percentage of the world's population in jail, the number of crimes, the number of activists, the amount of law enforcement and military personnel out there. 

Rules are meant to be broken and often are, or to the least misused and abused for personal gain. My argument is simple: breaking the rules is not a nemesis to progress, on the contrary, it induces it. Indeed, because of infractions and through the complaints of activists and revolutionists, laws are repealed, modified and created; i.e. "mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all".

Lets now look at all this from the computing technology perspective. The Society here is the Internet (diverse, interconnected, global) and other communication channels. Hackers play the roles of rule breakers, eager to test the system in place and show/fix weaknesses. Unfortunately, very few global rules exist, leaving the society at the mercy of wrongdoers.

Anonymous, Cyberwarfare, Viruses, Trojan horses, Malware, Stuxnet, Flame, stolen Linkedin passwords hashes, botnets, cell-phone hijacking, software key generators, illegal music and video download, Web vulnerabilities (SQL Injections, Cross-Site Scripting), privacy policies on websites, etc... These infinite avenues to abuse the system for fun and profit have got governments and cyber-security experts on high alert. What can we do to stop or at least reduce this?

White-hat hackers of the world, this is a calling: Learn how to break the rules, and use that knowledge to the make the Interweb a better place.

Also, check out this interesting conversation between Gary Mc Graw and Bruce Schneier, two big names in cyber-security: click here.

So You Think You Can....... Run For Office?

While at  a birthday celebration, some pictures of me were taken in a questionable state (you know C₂H₅OH) and I asked not to be shot again, just like I always do (not very photogenic), justifying my request by saying that I did not want these pictures to pop out years from now when I am campaigning for a public office . The joke flirted with my brain probably because I have been following the ongoing US presidential republican primary elections and I am shocked by how the most meaningless controversies are used to bring down adversaries.

I would have probably forgotten about this stuff if it wasn't for one sentence that one of my good friends, who was also in a happy place, said as a rebuttal to my comment: "Yeah, I could see you run for office". On the spot, I did not react to it, but its been bogging my mind since then. What in the world is there about me that shouts trustworthy or acclaimed leader and public servant, I have no idea... Heck I'm not sure I would vote for myself, I don't think I have seen enough of the world to be a leader of men.With that said, let's assume I actually do have the necessary predispositions. On what grounds, where, how and for what kind of office could I possibly seek election? (Notice that I said election and not nomination by an elected official).


In the US first of all, there is very little chance of that happening, I would probably need to start at a very local position in a county and maybe work my way up to congress or gubernatorial positions and besides these usually require the subject to have the U.S. citizenship (for at least 7 years to seek the House of Representatives), which is not a possibility for me right now. However, if I had a choice, I would definitely be registered independent as I am not from around here and i am already fed up by all the partisans woes.

My best bet is then in my beloved Cameroon, even though the current regulations in place do not encourage a young mind to come and serve and the environment is not really prone to people with a strict sense of duty and morality (not that I have any). If I manage to overcome these big walls that cloud the political spectrum, there is still the challenge of the message I would pass to the constituents I hope to represent. In the specific case of Cameroon, there is this concept (actually true or not) that the only way the country is gonna get better is by killing everybody that is older than 10 as they are already corrupted. My personal belief is that development is not happening majorly (not the only reason but i think the most important one) because the population does not love their country anymore.. I mean they wish they could (just looking at how patriotic we get when our soccer team is playing), but the condition in which their family live is a civic deal breaker. My campaign platform will then be based on restoring the pride and patriotism (Paix-Travail-Patrie n'est ce pas?). A tentative slogan would then be:


Fier d'etre Camerounais!
Proud to be Cameroonian!               


So would you vote for me if you had a chance? Why or why not?

What Do I Want Today?

Over the past 6 months or so, I have been slowing down drastically in terms of achievement: I am running late on almost all my class projects (including my thesis), I haven't written a blog post in ages, etc...

What is happening to me? I used to be this over achieving monster that wanted to have a doctorate degree, succeed in all aspects of his life and someday impact the life of millions. Now I feel like I'm constantly settling.
What is happening to me? I am not on drugs (well that's if you do not consider Jack Daniels as one); I passed the age of puberty a long time ago (I think...); I just do not feel that drive that I used to have, I am not excited about anything anymore (although I've been trying to have lots of fun lately).
What is happening to me? That's the question I asked myself when I woke up today after having my first 9-hours sleep in a long time, even though I have less than 36 hours to study for a final and write a 2500-words paper. 


Then, I realized that I do not recall dreaming during my sleep; In fact I don't recall the last time I actually dreamed something else than nightmares or past events. I just do not have any sense of fantasy anymore. Better yet, I think I lost my ability to fantasize a long time ago. I therefore decided to switch the question from What is happening to me? to What do I want out of Life?
I observed that my past adrenaline rushes were always, in some way, connected to pleasing someone else, and that the last time pleasing myself was at the top of my priorities goes back to my childhood years. I have lost the ability to DREAM for myself.

In light of all this, I decided to create another blog, where I will archive what I want, ranging from a simple meal to World Peace. This will remind me and whoever needs it, that dreaming and dreaming BIG is good, heck it's necessary to a fulfilled life.


Check out the new blog HERE.

Investing in AFRICA

Countless times, I have been asked by Americans and even some fellow Africans what I thought would be the best way to bring about development to the continent. To dodge long and unpleasant potential ideological debates, I usually say that the best catalyst would be changing the mindset of the population, which is very difficult (voire impossible) and it is not something an external third-party can achieve; I also mention that making a significant impact would require dealing with local government officials: good luck with that! And then we switch straight to the weather...:)).
In all seriousness, I thought about the areas in which members of the diaspora like myself or even foreigners can give back to the mother continent, not to change the face of the world overnight, but to make those little actions that could impact the life of a few key people every year. Here they are with some concrete examples of what someone can realize:

1) Infrastructure: 

This is a huge pool of possibilities. Most African countries suffer the lack in infrastructures: Limited means of transportation (roads, trains, effective public commute either urban and inter-urban), buildings (like schools, hospitals, etc...) or access to basic resources like water or electricity. A successful member of the diaspora could organize a fundraising to build a well or a building that could be used as school or hospital in a rural area.
2) Tourism: 
The perception of Africa from most foreigners is that of a gigantic zoo/jungle (i.e. a huge land of natural environment where animals and Man cohabit in harmony), but the guides and guards of the "Park" just happen to die of hunger, malaria and AIDS while constantly fighting each other.Okay I admit, this is little exaggerated; a friend of mine makes my point better and funnier, check out her blog post. Working on preserving our landmarks as well as our fauna would definitely attract tourists and then we would be able to show our wonderful our community-based lifestyle can be.

3) Education and Health Care:

For a more effective, yet slower and long term impact, there is always actions towards educating the youngsters and provide with ways to fight against the not so deadly (avoidable and curable) sicknesses that are killing them. A good and simple idea could be to provide tuition scholarships to the smartest kids in a school or help them become the teachers, the doctors or engineers that will tomorrow work in the infrastructure built in 1).

4) Artistry and Values:

I have heard so many times that the African population is loosing its identity. Apparently, we want so much to integrate the globalization that we tend to loose those values that make us who we are. So I believe that anything that could be done to golden our identity is highly welcomed. Examples include art galleries, cinema promotions and why not book and music publishing provided the contents focus on African cultural heritage.

5) Technology and Telecommunications:

This is probably the area where I will personally try to work some magic. It is a definite win in terms of business: the adoption of cell phones skyrocketed in a few years, more than 33% of the population in Cameroon (from CIA papers) now own a phone compared to the less than 5 out of 100 households in 2000. The venue of the Internet is also a big game changer (just think about the impact that social media had in the recent government overthrow in Egypt). If only we could make the hardware less expensive and bring forth faster and cheaper internet..... Education in technology would also be a big plus.


There you have it. There is a lot more that can be done, and I might actually be wrong in many aspects, this a is just what I feel is best.
In the comments section you can debate specific subtopics or propose your own solutions.

"I ate his Liver with Some Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti!!"

Frightened or excited (because you know this quote)? Well settle down..... Sometimes when my brain stops paying attention to my workload, i.e. when I need to be entertained and its 2:00 am in the morning, I look through the IMDB database for high rated movies that I have not yet seen, learn about them and plan on watching them in a near future.

Following this logic, I stumbled upon the  film "Silence of the Lambs" which depicts interactions between an FBI agent Clarice Sterling and a famous human eating, ex-psychiatrist and sociopath Dr. Hannibal Lecter (You've probably heard of Hannibal the Cannibal), the title of the post is a quote from the movie.

I was surprised to learn that he is a fictional character from a series of novels. I always figured from the notoriety of the name that Hannibal was a real person that existed in the past, turns out this movie made it famous. I was even more intrigued when the part of the Doctor was played by English actor Anthony Hopkins whose breathtaking performance in Instinct scarred me for life.


So I watched the film, liked it so much that I found and watched the sequel Hannibal right away and yes my next Halloween costume will be the #1 villain in the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains list: Dr. HANNIBAL LECTER.

P.S: From a post on geek Love to a post about a Halloween type horror story.... My life is messed up!!! :)

The Guide to Geek Love

I happen to think of myself as a computer enthusiast, or as the society describes it: having geek tendencies (did you know that roots for the word geek mean freak or crazy?). It is a general consensus that "we" are not meant to participate in human relationships, and I am no exception to this rule considering my personal disastrous dating history. Being a faithful listener of the Buzz Out Loud tech podcast, I wanted to share the guidelines to finding geek love posted by a listener, in the Computer Love section of episode 1487 of the show (this has been a little modified and I added some comments, the original can be found here).

Based on my experience, this is my guide to finding geek love:

1. Get Real. I had a couple of internet dates, and while my wife and I met in real life, we did most of our early flirtation via email. The problem with that is that I did a very plausible online impression of someone with his life in gear, but in real life I was much more messed up. You really have to meet me in person to realize how annoying this can be. But I found someone who kind of likes it.

Comment: Yeah, this is totally me, online I am a serious, funny and well organized kid....In real life, not so much :(.

2. Hope for Failure. The percentage of the general population who will intentionally date a geek is probably in the low teens. Add to that your own criteria (weight, height, hair color, Star Trek vs. Star Wars, has a job, bathes) and your pool starts shrinking. This is not a bug, it's a feature. A bad date or a rejected pickup is not a disaster, it's just another iteration in your own personal sorting algorithm (Comment: I love this line). 

3. Define Success. I knew I was in love because my happiness had become contingent on hers, and when I was with her, I was a better version of myself than when I wasn't. Of course, I'm kind of an idiot, so it took me a long time after falling in love to even realize that it had happened. I almost drew charts, but even I recognized that would be a bit much. Instead, I proposed. Ineptly. But she said yes anyway.

We've been married 5 years. We have a 4 month old who just outgrew his first Star Wars onesie and a three year old who starts most of her sentences with ""Well actually..."" Love is good.

Comment: This is the mushy part that I hate when others talk about the love thing.

All in all, if you know a geek, just give him/her some Love. It may not look like it, but "we" always have a lot to offer.

Digital Forensics Debut: Honeynet Challenge 7

In case you didn't already know, I recently developed interest in Digital Forensics witch is a branch of Computer Science that deals with recovering and/or analyzing data from media devices like hard drives and RAM, usually in an attempt to determine the how and the why of computer related attacks on individuals and businesses (Thanks Wikipedia...).I am fairly new to the topic and before December, I am supposed to master the subject contents (My degree thesis is on Linux Forensics- I will probably talk more about it some other time).

To have a better feeling of the field and get some hands-on experience, I joined the Computer Forensics Group at JMU. As beginners, we participated in the Honeynet Challenge No 7 (see http://www.honeynet.org/challenges/2011_7_compromised_server), which provided us with an image of the hard drive and the RAM of a compromised Linux machine and we had to figure out what happened.

The group spent a few days on it using open source tools like Autopsy for file system browsing, the beta version of Volatility 1.4 and Volatilitux. Though we were not among the winners, we were half a point shy of a 4-way tie for 3rd place (i.e. 6th out of 16 participants). That's pretty good for beginners :D.

Hopefully, we will do better the next time. Oh and yeah, the group next project involves Facebook and is very interesting :).

P.S: You can get a copy of our submission upon request.

The Confession: Discussing Religious Morals with Jack Bauer

We have all been fans of 24 right? The innovative show (in terms of story line) where Jack Bauer the secret agent solves terrorist and conspiracy plots in 24 hours, not hesitating to use the most drastic techniques (extensive torture and even shooting his team and family members) to uncover the truth? Wait you don't know what I am talking about? Shame on you :).

Well, Kiefer Sutherland, the actor who played the charismatic role in the show has done it again; This time in a smaller scale, through a 10-episode web series that he created: The Confession. The plot is rather simple: a professional killer (played by Kiefer) and a priest engage in the only truthful conversation that can happen, in my opinion, between such characters, i.e. the meaning of good and evil, all in the secrecy of a confessional.

I absolutely love the format of this series. It is web-only (mainly on hulu.com, unfortunately available only in the US, deals are signed for internatinal distribution, I just don't know what sites), 7-10 minutes per episode and really fast-paced.

Good Job on this one Kiefer, can't wait for more of your projects or more web-only specials like this one. See the trailer below:

Breaking Out of "Jail" : Restricted Shell

No, I am not writing a sequel for the show "Prison Break", though I would love to see it come back to the screens :).

If you have never used a Linux or Unix-like terminal to administer a computer (yeah, it's a geeky post), you better stop reading now. The purpose of this post is to give some ideas on ways to get out of restricted shells on Linux systems.

- "But what is this restricted shell thing you are talking about?".
I assume as a Linux user (if you are not, you should have stopped reading by now :D), you know that each time a terminal is launched, a special program is started to read your commands: The Shell. There exist many shells (Boune shell or bash, Korne Shell or kshell, and more) and they are very powerful as you might expect. However, mostly in production environments where multiple users can remotely access a shell of a machine, it is good practice for administrators to apply restrictions on the commands that a normal user can execute on the host with the help of restricted shells (a good example is rbash and this post How to restrict access with rbash describe a way to implement it).

- "So how do I break out of this restrictive "prison"?", two words: Shell Escapes.
Many command-line applications provide a way to fall back into a shell, restrictive or not. The one I will mostly talk about is offered by vi/vim the text editor, since it can permit you to access an unrestricted shell following these instructions:

1. Once in vi/vim, type ESC, then:

• Type “:set shell=/bin/bash”
• Type “:shell” and VOILA!!!!! 

Unfortunately, vi/vim also has a restricted version rvi/rvim in which this trick will not work. If you are stuck with rvi, you can try the following methods to access vi with other applications:

2. Using the text-based browser lynx:

• open a local file with lynx (e.g.: $ lynx /etc/passwd)

• type “o” to open the options; change the second option (Editor) to “/bin/vi” and save the changes to go back at the main page.

• Type “e” to edit the file with vi
• Follow instructions in 1.

3. Using the mail (local email client) command:

• $ set VISUAL=/bin/vi
• $ mail -s "subject" "destination email"
• Type "~v" on the next line to edit the mail with vi.
• Follow the instructions in 1.

There are various other ways to obtain the same result, this was just a the tip of the iceberg.
ENJOY YOUR FREEDOM!!!


UPDATE: Guess what?? The browser Elinks is also vulnerable to shell escapes. This is based on the feature (hacking feature?) allowing users to edit the contents of text boxes on a webpage using external editors (i.e. using other applications on the machine... Yayyy vi/vim). All you have to do is setup the $EDITOR environment variable with "/bin/vi" and the rest is history... Wait you need more details?? OK:

• $ set EDITOR=/bin/vi
• Open a webpage containing a text box (should be easy to find on the Internet. If you can not, well lmgtfy!!!).
  
• Navigate to the text-box area and Enter to edit, the press F4 (or whatever is used in the configurations) to edit the text box externally, and you should see something familiar :=)

Specialization is for Insects

It's been ages since my last post! I have been (and still am) outrageously busy with my academic work. Hopefully, I will fill the gaps by posting a little more than usual in the upcoming months.

Today, I wanted to mention and briefly discuss the following "quote":

"A human being should be able to
change a diaper,
plan an invasion,
butcher a hog,
conn a ship,
design a building,
write a sonnet,
balance accounts,
build a wall,
set a bone,
comfort the dying,
take orders,
give orders,
cooperate,
act alone,
solve equations,
analyze a new problem,
pitch manure,
program a computer,
cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently,
die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects. " - Robert Heinelein - Time Enough for Love.

In this world where there is so much to discover, people tend to stir their lives towards one or two areas they master or have expertise on. Robert Heinelein suggests that as human beings, we can and should do as many activities as we can. This reminded of a quote that I loved to say when I was younger to explain to my friends why I loved going to school (I was the biggest nerd ever at that time, I have met worse than me recently!!!):

"Il est parfois mieux de connaitre quelque chose de tout que de connaitre tout d'une chose." (Translation)