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Tweet from Open Culture

2016 Nov 2, 4:31
Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual. How to Subvert Organizations with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944) http://bit.ly/2dbnooU 
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Cdb/Windbg Commands for Runtime Patching

2016 Feb 8, 1:47

You can use conditional breakpoints and debugging commands in windbg and cdb that together can amount to effectively patching a binary at runtime. This can be useful if you have symbols but you can't easily rebuild the binary. Or if the patch is small and the binary requires a great deal of time to rebuild.

Skipping code

If you want to skip a chunk of code you can set a breakpoint at the start address of the code to skip and set the breakpoint's command to change the instruction pointer register to point to the address at the end of the code to skip and go. Voila you're skipping over that code now. For example:

bp 0x6dd6879b "r @eip=0x6dd687c3 ; g"

Changing parameters

You may want to modify parameters or variables and this is simple of course. In the following example a conditional breakpoint ANDs out a bit from dwFlags. Now when we run its as if no one is passing in that flag.

bp wiwi!RelativeCrack "?? dwFlags &= 0xFDFFFFFF;g"

Slightly more difficult is to modify string values. If the new string length is the same size or smaller than the previous, you may be able to modify the string value in place. But if the string is longer or the string memory isn't writable, you'll need a new chunk of memory into which to write your new string. You can use .dvalloc to allocate some memory and ezu to write a string into the newly allocated memory. In the following example I then overwrite the register containing the parameter I want to modify:

.dvalloc 100
ezu 000002a9`d4eb0000 "mfcore.dll"
r rcx = 000002a9`d4eb0000

Calling functions

You can also use .call to actually make new calls to methods or functions. Read more about that on the Old New Thing: Stupid debugger tricks: Calling functions and methods. Again, all of this can be used in a breakpoint command to effectively patch a binary.

PermalinkCommentscdb debug technical windbg

Retweet of waxpancake

2015 Feb 3, 8:12
Those magic, semi-private tweets I wrote about? Internally, Twitter calls them "nullcasted tweets." https://medium.com/message/stupid-tricks-with-promoted-tweets-57325552109d …
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(via Classic pro-science-careers music video PSA: Chemical...

2012 Jun 29, 10:03


(via Classic pro-science-careers music video PSA: Chemical Party)

Xeni says: “The EU wasn’t always so terrible at promoting science careers through funny internet music videos! (thanks, Guido)”

PermalinkCommentshumor chemistry video

Content ID Run Amok: Isaac's Lip-Dub Proposal Removed from YouTube

2012 Jun 7, 3:14

Waxy roundup of DMCA takedown process stupidity.

So the Scripps TV broadcasts are indexed by YouTube, and the Content ID robots do the rest. And because Content ID disputes are judged by the copyright holder, complaints are routinely ignored or denied.”

PermalinkCommentscopyright youtube dmca tv

Privacy through Obscurity

2012 Mar 9, 3:30

With Facebook changing its privacy policy and settings so frequently and just generally the huge amount of social sites out there, for many of us it is far too late to ensure our name doesn't show up with unfortunate results in web searches. Information is too easily copyable and archive-able to make removing these results a viable option, so clearly the solution is to create more data.

Create fake profiles on Facebook using your name but with a different photo, different date of birth, and different hometown. Create enough doppelgangers to add noise to the search results for your name. And have them share embarrassing stories on their blogs. The goal is to ensure that the din of your alternates drowns out anything embarrassing showing up for you.

Although it will look suspicious if you're the only name on Google with such chaff. So clearly you must also do this for your friends and family. Really you'll be doing them a favor.

PermalinkCommentstechnical facebook stupid internet privacy

Dare To Be Stupid | Vinyl Rewind on blip.tv

2011 Jul 1, 10:04Eric outs himself as a Weird Al fan covering Dare To Be Stupid and I get a mention.

On a related note, have you seen the Perform This Way video from Weird Al's latest album? It took me way too long to realize that wasn't Al's body. Performing this one live is going to make the Fat suit look like a cake walk.PermalinkCommentseric-callero weird-al memories history

Thought Experiments and Design Principles

2010 Jan 29, 3:54

Raymond Chen has some thought experiments useful for discovering various kinds of stupidity in software design:

Tim Berners-Lee's principles of Web design includes my favorite: Test of Independent Invention. This has a thought experiment containing the construction of the MMM (Multi-Media Mesh) with MRIs (Media Resource Identifiers) and MMTP (Muli-Media Transport Protocol).

The Internet design principles (RFC 1958) includes the Robustness Principle: be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. A good one, but applied too liberally can lead to interop issues. For instance, consider web browsers. Imagine one browser becomes so popular that web devs create web pages and just test out their pages in this popular browser. They don't ensure their pages conform to standards and accidentally end up depending on the manner in which this popular browser tolerantly accepts non-standard input. This non-standard behavior ends up as de facto standard and future updates to the standard essentially has had decisions made for it.

PermalinkCommentstechnical design principles software development

Awesome Spokesmen Billy Mays and Vince Offer

2009 Apr 8, 4:06PermalinkCommentspersonal2 infomercial stupid vince offer billy mays

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> I played WoW, I became a terrorist (story!)

2008 Dec 29, 12:22"This wasn't my fault. Anyone could have dropped his stupid iPod in the toilet. It's really the government here. I mean, at this point the building contained six customs officials, an army of policemen, people from various security agencies, a bomb squad, and a couple of detectives."PermalinkCommentsipod toilet humor airplane plane security terrorism wow

Bloody Xmas: Macabre Plush Toys Are Perfect Xmas Gift for Future Psychokillers

2008 Dec 29, 12:06Too bad I missed these before Christmas: "Why buy a stupid Elmo when you can permanently disturb that young mind with a cute knitted plush rabbit killed with a giant carrot? Or a beautiful tiger eating some human remains? I love these."PermalinkCommentshumor death macabre stuffed-animals toy gizmodo via:jen-johnston gift

Chumby will be cool, despite its name

2008 Feb 19, 1:51PermalinkCommentschumby review flash linux
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