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theatlantic: 'Please Contact Us': It's Been a Tough Week for...

2013 Oct 11, 9:25


theatlantic:

'Please Contact Us': It's Been a Tough Week for the Nobel Prize's Twitter Feed

Tales of temporary rejection from an organization not used to being ignored.

Read more.

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laughingsquid: Fake Movie Posters Based on Fictional Films...

2013 Aug 26, 4:12


laughingsquid:

Fake Movie Posters Based on Fictional Films Mentioned on ‘Seinfeld’

PermalinkCommentshumor seinfeld jason-bateman tina-fey

solarbird: Perfect.

2013 Jul 28, 1:46


solarbird:

Perfect.

PermalinkCommentshumor glasses cosplay

URI functions in Windows Store Applications

2013 Jul 25, 1:00

Summary

The Modern SDK contains some URI related functionality as do libraries available in particular projection languages. Unfortunately, collectively these APIs do not cover all scenarios in all languages. Specifically, JavaScript and C++ have no URI building APIs, and C++ additionally has no percent-encoding/decoding APIs.
WinRT (JS and C++)
JS Only
C++ Only
.NET Only
Parse
 
Build
Normalize
Equality
 
 
Relative resolution
Encode data for including in URI property
Decode data extracted from URI property
Build Query
Parse Query
The Windows.Foudnation.Uri type is not projected into .NET modern applications. Instead those applications use System.Uri and the platform ensures that it is correctly converted back and forth between Windows.Foundation.Uri as appropriate. Accordingly the column marked WinRT above is applicable to JS and C++ modern applications but not .NET modern applications. The only entries above applicable to .NET are the .NET Only column and the WwwFormUrlDecoder in the bottom left which is available to .NET.

Scenarios

Parse

This functionality is provided by the WinRT API Windows.Foundation.Uri in C++ and JS, and by System.Uri in .NET.
Parsing a URI pulls it apart into its basic components without decoding or otherwise modifying the contents.
var uri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com/path%20segment1/path%20segment2?key1=value1&key2=value2");
console.log(uri.path);// /path%20segment1/path%20segment2

WsDecodeUrl (C++)

WsDecodeUrl is not suitable for general purpose URI parsing.  Use Windows.Foundation.Uri instead.

Build (C#)

URI building is only available in C# via System.UriBuilder.
URI building is the inverse of URI parsing: URI building allows the developer to specify the value of basic components of a URI and the API assembles them into a URI. 
To work around the lack of a URI building API developers will likely concatenate strings to form their URIs.  This can lead to injection bugs if they don’t validate or encode their input properly, but if based on trusted or known input is unlikely to have issues.
            Uri originalUri = new Uri("http://example.com/path1/?query");
            UriBuilder uriBuilder = new UriBuilder(originalUri);
            uriBuilder.Path = "/path2/";
            Uri newUri = uriBuilder.Uri; // http://example.com/path2/?query

WsEncodeUrl (C++)

WsEncodeUrl, in addition to building a URI from components also does some encoding.  It encodes non-US-ASCII characters as UTF8, the percent, and a subset of gen-delims based on the URI property: all :/?#[]@ are percent-encoded except :/@ in the path and :/?@ in query and fragment.
Accordingly, WsEncodeUrl is not suitable for general purpose URI building.  It is acceptable to use in the following cases:
- You’re building a URI out of non-encoded URI properties and don’t care about the difference between encoded and decoded characters.  For instance you’re the only one consuming the URI and you uniformly decode URI properties when consuming – for instance using WsDecodeUrl to consume the URI.
- You’re building a URI with URI properties that don’t contain any of the characters that WsEncodeUrl encodes.

Normalize

This functionality is provided by the WinRT API Windows.Foundation.Uri in C++ and JS and by System.Uri in .NET.  Normalization is applied during construction of the Uri object.
URI normalization is the application of URI normalization rules (including DNS normalization, IDN normalization, percent-encoding normalization, etc.) to the input URI.
        var normalizedUri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("HTTP://EXAMPLE.COM/p%61th foo/");
        console.log(normalizedUri.absoluteUri); // http://example.com/path%20foo/
This is modulo Win8 812823 in which the Windows.Foundation.Uri.AbsoluteUri property returns a normalized IRI not a normalized URI.  This bug does not affect System.Uri.AbsoluteUri which returns a normalized URI.

Equality

This functionality is provided by the WinRT API Windows.Foundation.Uri in C++ and JS and by System.Uri in .NET. 
URI equality determines if two URIs are equal or not necessarily equal.
            var uri1 = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("HTTP://EXAMPLE.COM/p%61th foo/"),
                uri2 = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com/path%20foo/");
            console.log(uri1.equals(uri2)); // true

Relative resolution

This functionality is provided by the WinRT API Windows.Foundation.Uri in C++ and JS and by System.Uri in .NET 
Relative resolution is a function that given an absolute URI A and a relative URI B, produces a new absolute URI C.  C is the combination of A and B in which the basic components specified in B override or combine with those in A under rules specified in RFC 3986.
        var baseUri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com/index.html"),
            relativeUri = "/path?query#fragment",
            absoluteUri = baseUri.combineUri(relativeUri);
        console.log(baseUri.absoluteUri);       // http://example.com/index.html
        console.log(absoluteUri.absoluteUri);   // http://example.com/path?query#fragment

Encode data for including in URI property

This functionality is available in JavaScript via encodeURIComponent and in C# via System.Uri.EscapeDataString. Although the two methods mentioned above will suffice for this purpose, they do not perform exactly the same operation.
Additionally we now have Windows.Foundation.Uri.EscapeComponent in WinRT, which is available in JavaScript and C++ (not C# since it doesn’t have access to Windows.Foundation.Uri).  This is also slightly different from the previously mentioned mechanisms but works best for this purpose.
Encoding data for inclusion in a URI property is necessary when constructing a URI from data.  In all the above cases the developer is dealing with a URI or substrings of a URI and so the strings are all encoded as appropriate. For instance, in the parsing example the path contains “path%20segment1” and not “path segment1”.  To construct a URI one must first construct the basic components of the URI which involves encoding the data.  For example, if one wanted to include “path segment / example” in the path of a URI, one must percent-encode the ‘ ‘ since it is not allowed in a URI, as well as the ‘/’ since although it is allowed, it is a delimiter and won’t be interpreted as data unless encoded.
If a developer does not have this API provided they can write it themselves.  Percent-encoding methods appear simple to write, but the difficult part is getting the set of characters to encode correct, as well as handling non-US-ASCII characters.
        var uri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com" +
            "/" + Windows.Foundation.Uri.escapeComponent("path segment / example") +
            "?key=" + Windows.Foundation.Uri.escapeComponent("=&?#"));
        console.log(uri.absoluteUri); // http://example.com/path%20segment%20%2F%20example?key=%3D%26%3F%23

WsEncodeUrl (C++)

In addition to building a URI from components, WsEncodeUrl also percent-encodes some characters.  However the API is not recommend for this scenario given the particular set of characters that are encoded and the convoluted nature in which a developer would have to use this API in order to use it for this purpose.
There are no general purpose scenarios for which the characters WsEncodeUrl encodes make sense: encode the %, encode a subset of gen-delims but not also encode the sub-delims.  For instance this could not replace encodeURIComponent in a C++ version of the following code snippet since if ‘value’ contained ‘&’ or ‘=’ (both sub-delims) they wouldn’t be encoded and would be confused for delimiters in the name value pairs in the query:
"http://example.com/?key=" + Windows.Foundation.Uri.escapeComponent(value)
Since WsEncodeUrl produces a string URI, to obtain the property they want to encode they’d need to parse the resulting URI.  WsDecodeUrl won’t work because it decodes the property but Windows.Foundation.Uri doesn’t decode.  Accordingly the developer could run their string through WsEncodeUrl then Windows.Foundation.Uri to extract the property.

Decode data extracted from URI property

This functionality is available in JavaScript via decodeURIComponent and in C# via System.Uri.UnescapeDataString. Although the two methods mentioned above will suffice for this purpose, they do not perform exactly the same operation.
Additionally we now also have Windows.Foundation.Uri.UnescapeComponent in WinRT, which is available in JavaScript and C++ (not C# since it doesn’t have access to Windows.Foundation.Uri).  This is also slightly different from the previously mentioned mechanisms but works best for this purpose.
Decoding is necessary when extracting data from a parsed URI property.  For example, if a URI query contains a series of name and value pairs delimited by ‘=’ between names and values, and by ‘&’ between pairs, one must first parse the query into name and value entries and then decode the values.  It is necessary to make this an extra step separate from parsing the URI property so that sub-delimiters (in this case ‘&’ and ‘=’) that are encoded will be interpreted as data, and those that are decoded will be interpreted as delimiters.
If a developer does not have this API provided they can write it themselves.  Percent-decoding methods appear simple to write, but have some tricky parts including correctly handling non-US-ASCII, and remembering not to decode .
In the following example, note that if unescapeComponent were called first, the encoded ‘&’ and ‘=’ would be decoded and interfere with the parsing of the name value pairs in the query.
            var uri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com/?foo=bar&array=%5B%27%E3%84%93%27%2C%27%26%27%2C%27%3D%27%2C%27%23%27%5D");
            uri.query.substr(1).split("&").forEach(
                function (keyValueString) {
                    var keyValue = keyValueString.split("=");
                    console.log(Windows.Foundation.Uri.unescapeComponent(keyValue[0]) + ": " + Windows.Foundation.Uri.unescapeComponent(keyValue[1]));
                    // foo: bar
                    // array: ['','&','=','#']
                });

WsDecodeUrl (C++)

Since WsDecodeUrl decodes all percent-encoded octets it could be used for general purpose percent-decoding but it takes a URI so would require the dev to construct a stub URI around the string they want to decode.  For example they could prefix “http:///#” to their string, run it through WsDecodeUrl and then extract the fragment property.  It is convoluted but will work correctly.

Parse Query

The query of a URI is often encoded as application/x-www-form-urlencoded which is percent-encoded name value pairs delimited by ‘&’ between pairs and ‘=’ between corresponding names and values.
In WinRT we have a class to parse this form of encoding using Windows.Foundation.WwwFormUrlDecoder.  The queryParsed property on the Windows.Foundation.Uri class is of this type and created with the query of its Uri:
    var uri = Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com/?foo=bar&array=%5B%27%E3%84%93%27%2C%27%26%27%2C%27%3D%27%2C%27%23%27%5D");
    uri.queryParsed.forEach(
        function (pair) {
            console.log("name: " + pair.name + ", value: " + pair.value);
            // name: foo, value: bar
            // name: array, value: ['','&','=','#']
        });
    console.log(uri.queryParsed.getFirstValueByName("array")); // ['','&','=','#']
The QueryParsed property is only on Windows.Foundation.Uri and not System.Uri and accordingly is not available in .NET.  However the Windows.Foundation.WwwFormUrlDecoder class is available in C# and can be used manually:
            Uri uri = new Uri("http://example.com/?foo=bar&array=%5B%27%E3%84%93%27%2C%27%26%27%2C%27%3D%27%2C%27%23%27%5D");
            WwwFormUrlDecoder decoder = new WwwFormUrlDecoder(uri.Query);
            foreach (IWwwFormUrlDecoderEntry entry in decoder)
            {
                System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("name: " + entry.Name + ", value: " + entry.Value);
                // name: foo, value: bar
                // name: array, value: ['','&','=','#']
            }
 

Build Query

To build a query of name value pairs encoded as application/x-www-form-urlencoded there is no WinRT API to do this directly.  Instead a developer must do this manually making use of the code described in “Encode data for including in URI property”.
In terms of public releases, this property is only in the RC and later builds.
For example in JavaScript a developer may write:
            var uri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri("http://example.com/"),
                query = "?" + Windows.Foundation.Uri.escapeComponent("array") + "=" + Windows.Foundation.Uri.escapeComponent("['','&','=','#']");
 
            console.log(uri.combine(new Windows.Foundation.Uri(query)).absoluteUri); // http://example.com/?array=%5B'%E3%84%93'%2C'%26'%2C'%3D'%2C'%23'%5D
 
PermalinkCommentsc# c++ javascript technical uri windows windows-runtime windows-store

Words with Hints Windows 8 App Development Notes

2013 Jul 4, 1:00

My second completed app for the Windows Store was Words with Hints a companion to Words with Friends or other Scrabble like games that gives you *ahem* hints. You provide your tiles and optionally letters placed in a line on the board and Words with Hints gives you word options.

I wrote this the first time by building a regular expression to check against my dictionary of words which made for a slow app on the Surface. In subsequent release of the app I now spawn four web workers (one for each of the Surface's cores) each with its own fourth of my dictionary. Each fourth of the dictionary is a trie which makes it easy for me to discard whole chunks of possible combinations of Scrabble letters as I walk the tree of possibilities.

The dictionaries are large and takes a noticeable amount of time to load on the Surface. The best performing mechanism I found to load them is as JavaScript source files that simply define their portion of the dictionary on the global object and synchronously (only on the worker so not blocking the UI thread). Putting them into .js files means they take advantage of bytecode caching making them load faster. However because the data is mostly strings and not code there is a dramatic size increase when the app is installed. The total size of the four dictionary .js files is about 44Mb. The bytecode cache for the dictionary files is about double that 88Mb meaning the dictionary plus the bytecode cache is 132Mb.

To handle the bother of postMessage communication and web workers this was the first app in which I used my promise MessagePort project which I'll discuss more in the future.

This is the first app in which I used the Microsoft Ad SDK. It was difficult to find the install for the SDK and difficult to use their website, but once setup, the Ad SDK was easy to import into VS and easy to use in my app.

PermalinkCommentsdevelopment technical windows windows-store words-with-hints

wilwheaton: cameron-stewart: My contribution in full to the...

2013 Apr 4, 5:34








wilwheaton:

cameron-stewart:

My contribution in full to the #bartkira project. This was tons of fun to do.

Holy shit.

Everything’s coming up Milhouse

PermalinkCommentshumor comic art mashup simpsons akira

laughingsquid: An ‘American Psycho’ Parody Starring Huey Lewis...

2013 Apr 4, 5:33


laughingsquid:

An ‘American Psycho’ Parody Starring Huey Lewis & Weird Al

Hey its the high school band audition judge from Back to the Future.

PermalinkCommentshumor weird-al huey-lewis american-psycho video

It is not just another Team Fortress 2 map. No.  It has a laser...

2012 Sep 21, 4:26


It is not just another Team Fortress 2 map. No.  It has a laser death cat.

THE GRIND (by Thecorp303)

PermalinkCommentshumor mod tf2 game video-game video

Stripe CTF - SQL injections (Levels 0 & 3)

2012 Sep 5, 9:10

Stripe's web security CTF's level 0 and level 3 had SQL injection solutions described below.

Level 0

Code

app.get('/*', function(req, res) {
var namespace = req.param('namespace');

if (namespace) {
var query = 'SELECT * FROM secrets WHERE key LIKE ? || ".%"';
db.all(query, namespace, function(err, secrets) {

Issue

There's no input validation on the namespace parameter and it is injected into the SQL query with no encoding applied. This means you can use the '%' character as the namespace which is the wildcard character matching all secrets.

Notes

Code review red flag was using strings to query the database. Additional levels made this harder to exploit by using an API with objects to construct a query rather than strings and by running a query that only returned a single row, only ran a single command, and didn't just dump out the results of the query to the caller.

Level 3

Code

@app.route('/login', methods=['POST'])
def login():
username = flask.request.form.get('username')
password = flask.request.form.get('password')

if not username:
return "Must provide username\n"

if not password:
return "Must provide password\n"

conn = sqlite3.connect(os.path.join(data_dir, 'users.db'))
cursor = conn.cursor()

query = """SELECT id, password_hash, salt FROM users
WHERE username = '{0}' LIMIT 1""".format(username)
cursor.execute(query)

res = cursor.fetchone()
if not res:
return "There's no such user {0}!\n".format(username)
user_id, password_hash, salt = res

calculated_hash = hashlib.sha256(password + salt)
if calculated_hash.hexdigest() != password_hash:
return "That's not the password for {0}!\n".format(username)

Issue

There's little input validation on username before it is used to constrcut a SQL query. There's no encoding applied when constructing the SQL query string which is used to, given a username, produce the hashed password and the associated salt. Accordingly one can make username a part of a SQL query command which ensures the original select returns nothing and provide a new SELECT via a UNION that returns some literal values for the hash and salt. For instance the following in blue is the query template and the red is the username injected SQL code:

SELECT id, password_hash, salt FROM users WHERE username = 'doesntexist' UNION SELECT id, ('5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8') AS password_hash, ('word') AS salt FROM users WHERE username = 'bob' LIMIT 1
In the above I've supplied my own salt and hash such that my salt (word) plus my password (pass) hashed produce the hash I provided above. Accordingly, by providing the above long and interesting looking username and password as 'pass' I can login as any user.

Notes

Code review red flag is again using strings to query the database. Although this level was made more difficult by using an API that returns only a single row and by using the execute method which only runs one command. I was forced to (as a SQL noob) learn the syntax of SELECT in order to figure out UNION and how to return my own literal values.

PermalinkCommentssecurity sql sql-injection technical web-security

paulftompkins: shahruz: Promo on IFC for the upcoming Comedy...

2012 Feb 29, 10:13
[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

paulftompkins:

shahruz:

Promo on IFC for the upcoming Comedy Bang Bang TV show!!!

BE EXCITED.

I am excited Paul.

PermalinkCommentshumor video comedy-bang-bang

Dad holding bear suit Alex

2011 Dec 31, 11:21

PermalinkComments

Dad holding bear suit Alex

2011 Dec 31, 11:19

PermalinkComments

Hey, Bethesda! Let's settle this! : The Word of Notch

2011 Aug 17, 4:52This is awesome: "I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. ... If we win, you drop the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with." I could have been a lawyer if things worked this way.PermalinkCommentsminecraft game law quake3

YouTube - Fallout New Vegas E3 2010 Official Trailer

2010 Aug 14, 3:29PermalinkCommentsvideo fallout fallout4 videogame avlater

Sarah by Atlantis Resort

2010 Feb 28, 11:35

sequelguy posted a photo:

Sarah by Atlantis Resort

PermalinkCommentssarah bahamas nassau atlantisresort

Diversity Inc Photoshopped Cover Closeup

2010 Feb 26, 5:00

sequelguy posted a photo:

Diversity Inc Photoshopped Cover Closeup

Jen's going away surprise for me was to add to my Diversity Inc cover artwork with my own photoshopped cover. Note the attention to detail in the headlines.

PermalinkCommentsme photoshop office diversity microsoft billgates

Wedding Cake Table

2010 Feb 25, 1:18

sequelguy posted a photo:

Wedding Cake Table

PermalinkCommentswedding beach cake club bahama abacos

Video: Project Natal invades Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

2009 Jun 12, 12:37"Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda brought along his baby, Project Natal, and let Jimmy Fallon, John Krasinski, and Stephen Moyer go to town. The footage has made its way onto Hulu and while these are pretty much the same demos for Ricochet and Burnout Paradise that we saw at E3 last week, they're still impressive."PermalinkCommentsvideo humor videogame natal xbox360 jimmy-fallon

E309: Scribblenauts DS settles Kraken vs. God vs. Keyboard Cat debate

2009 Jun 5, 3:27Looks cool and includes things like Keyboard Cat and Looong Cat.PermalinkCommentsgame nintendo video scribblenauts internet meme

E309: New Super Mario Bros Wii, the trailer

2009 Jun 3, 3:40The New Super Mario Bros for the Wii looks cool. I always wanted the multiplayer featured here in the previous games.PermalinkCommentsfor:hellosarah mario wii nintendo video videogame
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