x page 38 - Dave's Blog

Search
My timeline on Mastodon

Super Mario World “Completed” in Under 3 Minutes by Corrupting the RAM | minimaxir

2013 Apr 3, 4:46

This is essentially an AV exploit against Super Mario World that results in running the end game code. Watch the video. “…there’s a glitch that’s been known for a while, where Yoshi can end up in the “I have an item in my mouth” state, but not actually have an item in his mouth. When he spits out this nothingness, the game crashes. …That address did not contain code, and so the system crashed. But wait a second. What if, by some sheer coincidence, that address did contain code? The specific address dropped him in somewhere amongst various data for the game’s internal random number generator, and the random number generator can be manipulated in a TAS. Could the game be coerced into running arbitrary code?…”

PermalinkCommentshumor game hack mario

Zelda Starring Zelda (by Kenna W) Original NES Legend of Zelda...

2013 Mar 18, 2:17


Zelda Starring Zelda (by Kenna W)

Original NES Legend of Zelda ROM modified to swap Zelda and Link: play as Zelda saving Link.

PermalinkCommentsNintendo rom hack programming Zelda legend-of-zelda

Jeopardy! - The Exciting (And Amusing) Teen Tournament...

2013 Feb 21, 4:02


Jeopardy! - The Exciting (And Amusing) Teen Tournament Conclusion (Feb. 12, 2013) (by thechadmosher)

Leonard on Teen Jeopardy was the best.

PermalinkCommentshumor tv jeopardy

math - What is JavaScript's Max Int? What's the highest Integer value a Number can go to without losing precision? - Stack Overflow

2013 Feb 5, 11:23

In JavaScript numbers are 64bit floating point numbers which have 53 bits of mantissa. That means you can accurately represent [-2^53, 2^53] as integers in JavaScript. Aka [-9007199254740992, 9007199254740992].

PermalinkCommentsjavascript math integer technical programming

Retweet of TriciaLockwood

2013 Jan 9, 1:45
.@parisreview So is Paris any good or not
PermalinkComments

laughingsquid: The Truth About Phones on Airplanes

2013 Jan 7, 11:57


laughingsquid:

The Truth About Phones on Airplanes

PermalinkComments

Stripe CTF - Level 8

2012 Dec 7, 2:07
Level 8 of the Stripe CTF is a password server that returns success: true if and only if the password provided matches the password stored directly via a RESTful API and optionally indirectly via a callback URI. The solution is side channel attack like a timing attack but with ports instead of time.

(I found this in my drafts folder and had intended to post a while ago.)

Code

    def nextServerCallback(self, data):
parsed_data = json.loads(data)
# Chunk was wrong!
if not parsed_data['success']:
# Defend against timing attacks
remaining_time = self.expectedRemainingTime()
self.log_info('Going to wait %s seconds before responding' %
remaining_time)
reactor.callLater(remaining_time, self.sendResult, False)
return

self.checkNext()

Issue

The password server breaks the target password into four pieces and stores each on a different server. When a password request is sent to the main server it makes requests to the sub-servers for each part of the password request. It does this in series and if any part fails, then it stops midway through. Password requests may also be made with corresponding URI callbacks and after the server decides on the password makes an HTTP request on the provided URI callbacks saying if the password was success: true or false.
A timing attack looks at how long it took for a password to be rejected and longer times could mean a longer prefix of the password was correct allowing for a directed brute force attack. Timing attacks are prevented in this case by code on the password server that attempts to wait the same amount of time, even if the first sub-server responds with false. However, the server uses sequential outgoing port numbers shared between the requests to the sub-servers and the callback URIs. Accordingly, we can examine the port numbers on our callback URIs to direct a brute force attack.
If the password provided is totally incorrect then the password server will contact one sub-server and then your callback URI. So if you see the remote server's port number go up by two when requesting your callback URI, you know the password is totally incorrect. If by three then you know the first fourth of the password is correct and the rest is incorrect. If by four then two fourths of the password is correct. If by five then four sub-servers were contacted so you need to rely on the actual content of the callback URI request of 'success: true' or 'false' since you can't tell from the port change if the password was totally correct or not.
The trick in the real world is false positives. The port numbers are sequential over the system, so if the password server is the only thing making outgoing requests then its port numbers will also be sequential, however other things on the system can interrupt this. This means that the password server could contact three sub-servers and normally you'd see the port number increase by four, but really it could increase by four or more because of other things running on the system. To counteract this I ran in cycles: brute forcing the first fourth of the password and removing any entry that gets a two port increase and keeping all others. Eventually I could remove all but the correct first fourth of the password. And so on for the next parts of the password.
I wrote my app to brute force this in Python. This was my first time writing Python code so it is not pretty.
PermalinkCommentsbrute-force password python side-channel technical web

Windows Remote Desktop via Internet

2012 Dec 7, 2:04
To setup my home Windows dev box to be accessible from outside I followed two main steps:
Last time I had to do this there was a service named dynamicdns.org which seems to still exist but no longer appears to be free. Instead I used dnsdynamic.org which is free and has a web API as well as links to and instructions for setting up native tools to dynamically update my IP address.
PermalinkComments

laughingsquid: Solitaire.exe, A Real Deck of Cards Inspired by...

2012 Nov 19, 4:56


laughingsquid:

Solitaire.exe, A Real Deck of Cards Inspired by the Windows 98 Solitaire PC Game

PermalinkCommentshumor solitare game cards windows

A Slower Speed of Light Official Trailer — MIT Game Lab (by...

2012 Nov 13, 7:41


A Slower Speed of Light Official Trailer — MIT Game Lab (by Steven Schirra)

“A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. A custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics engine allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay. These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect; the searchlight effect; time dilation; Lorentz transformation; and the runtime effect.

A production of the MIT Game Lab.

Play now for Mac and PC! http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

PermalinkCommentsscience game video-game mit 3d light-speed

(via Comedy: Great Job, Internet!: Here’s Patton...

2012 Oct 31, 6:47


(via Comedy: Great Job, Internet!: Here’s Patton Oswalt’s Halloween costume)

PermalinkCommentsadam-savage patton-oswalt spider-man Halloween

“Jon Hamm And Adam Scott’s ‘greatest Event In Tv History’...

2012 Oct 12, 8:41


Jon Hamm And Adam Scott’s ‘greatest Event In Tv History’ Was A Tribute To A Forgotten ’80s Classic
If you know more about Simon and Simon than its intro and general premise, you’re better at TV than I am. If you’ve never heard of Simon and Simon, you’re the BEST at TV because, honestly, Simon & Simon — a CBS series about two mismatched brothers who ran a private detective service; it ran for eight seasons — wasn’t good.

Source: Uproxx

PermalinkCommentshumor jon-hamm adam-scott video

DSL modem hack used to infect millions with banking fraud malware | Ars Technica

2012 Oct 1, 6:33

According to the links within this article, although the root URI of the router requires authentication, the /password.cgi URI doesn’t and the resulting returned HTML contains (but does not display) the plaintext of the password, as well as an HTML FORM to modify the password that is exploitable by CSRF.

The attack… infected more than 4.5 million DSL modems… The CSRF (cross-site request forgery) vulnerability allowed attackers to use a simple script to steal passwords required to remotely log in to and control the devices. The attackers then configured the modems to use malicious domain name system servers that caused users trying to visit popular websites to instead connect to booby-trapped imposter sites.

PermalinkCommentstechnical security html router web dns csrf

Ben Goldacre’s TED talk on publication bias, drug...

2012 Sep 28, 3:55


drug companies hiding the results of clinical trials.

(via I did a new talk at TED, on drug companies and hidden data.)

PermalinkCommentsscience video ted

Nathan Barnatt makes awesome videos. This is a playlist of my...

2012 Sep 26, 2:21


Nathan Barnatt makes awesome videos. This is a playlist of my favorites of his. (via http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIjrVnNvXzb8N5tjV3fowJqYwuDM__WVf)

PermalinkCommentsNathan-barnatt video music dance humor

Kim Dotcom’s Megabox: Music service or malware? | Ars Technica

2012 Sep 26, 6:40

Megabox is an ad-replacer - replacing ads on the web as you browse with its own. Ignoring security concerns, I hope this doesn’t result in over prescriptive laws that endanger things like Greasemonkey.

To listen to songs through Megabox, users will have two options—purchasing the music through the service, or installing “Megakey” software onto their computer to listen for free. The Megakey software, as Dotcom explained to Torrentfreak, acts like ad-blocking software—except that it isn’t. Megakey allows most advertisements to appear, but replaces about 15 percent of the ads served up by websites with ads hosted by Megabox.

PermalinkCommentstechnical music ad mega megadotcom megabox

laughingsquid: hi-Call, A Bluetooth Handset Glove

2012 Sep 26, 6:24


laughingsquid:

hi-Call, A Bluetooth Handset Glove

PermalinkCommentshumor phone cell-phone blue-tooth video

The Lucille Bluth/Mitt Romney Tumblr confirms that saying awful rich person things is all about context

2012 Sep 24, 7:33

Mitt Romney quotes on screen shots of Lucille from Arrested Development works surprisingly well.

PermalinkCommentshumor arrested-development mitt-Romney politics

Patent Office tries “Stack Overflow for patents” to find prior art | Ars Technica

2012 Sep 20, 2:27

Welcome news. Glad to hear they’re looking for improvements.

… the USPTO has also worked with Stack Exchange, … to create a new site called Ask Patents. … Examiners or others looking for prior art can post questions about a specific application, and members of the general public can respond with evidence that an applicant was not the first to invent the subject matter of the application.

PermalinkCommentsip law patent stack-exchange technical uspto

theatlantic: How the 8.5” x 11” Piece of Paper Got Its...

2012 Sep 19, 6:37


theatlantic:

How the 8.5” x 11” Piece of Paper Got Its Size

Why do we use a paper size that is so unfriendly for the basic task of reading? According to a very interesting post by Paul Stanley, the rough dimensions of office paper evolved to accommodate handwriting and typewriters with monospaced fonts, both of which rendered many fewer characters per line. “Typewriters,” he explains, “produced 10 or 12 characters per inch: so on (say) 8.5 inch wide paper, with 1 inch margins, you had 6.5 inches of type, giving … around 65 to 78 characters.” This, he says, is “pretty close to ideal.”

Read more. [Image: Picsfive/Shutterstock]

PermalinkCommentstechnical paper history
Older EntriesNewer Entries Creative Commons License Some rights reserved.