Skowronek

Posts Tagged ‘Software’

Yet Another Firefox Bug (YAFB)

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Mozilla ups unpatched Firefox flaw to ‘high severity’; Preps fix by ZDNet‘s Larry Dignan — Mozilla has given a proof of concept Firefox vulnerability a “high severity” rating because an attacker can collect session information such as cookies and history, according to Mozilla security chief Window Snyder. Snyder said the vulnerability will be patched with Firefox 2.0.0.12, which will be pushed out “shortly.” On Jan. 22, Snyder confirmed a proof of concept […]

Open Source OS vs Windows, A Cost Comparison

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I was browsing tech articles today and ran across this comparison of Red Hat, Canonical [Ubuntu], and Windows. Now, before I begin on this brief but ever so relevant diatribe, let me preface my rant with the fact that I have been a regular user of various Linux flavors (Mandrake, Red Hat, Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, etc.) since the late 1990’s, so though I am not a system administrator, I have a fair amount of Linux administration experience.

Over the past few years, when approached with the question of which OS one should run on their corporate network, I unwaveringly respond, “Windows XP” [of course]. The principle argument being that most small businesses cannot afford a full-time system administrator to administer a non-Windows network. It is nice to now have some numbers to support my argument. Keep in mind, I do not state one way or the other which OS is more secure, reliable, or robust. I only mention this for the simple fact that running a Windows based network, over the long run, will almost always be more affordable.

Compete solely on price, no thanks

SSDP Discovery Service on Port 5678

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Tonight, I arrived home hoping to jump right in to my “moonlighting” gig only to discover that an issue with my computer from this morning had persisted. For some reason, something, some application was causing a consistent amount of traffic (not large amounts of it mind you) across my local Ethernet connection. Fortunately for me, I am somewhat tech savvy and thus commenced troubleshooting to discover the source rogue application.

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Firefox Memory Leaks Know No Bounds

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I have a love-hate relationship with Firefox. I have used it in tandem with Internet Explorer since the days of the original Mozilla browser, each one having it’s own pros and cons. To be quite honest, Firefox zealots make me laugh since most of them have been around the web about as long as my kid sister, and yet seem to have the experience and wisdom of of Elmo when it comes to the “browser wars”.

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Custom, Undocumented YouTube Player Parameters

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Apparently, YouTube has a few undocumented parameters that can effect the display of certain elements of an embedded player. I ran across this post in their developer forums following a request by a work associate to figure out how to hide the options displayed at the end of a played movie. Here is the list of known parameters along with the URL to the actual post:

  • rel = 0/1 -> value for showing related videos
  • color1 = hexadecimal color code -> value for the base color
  • color2 = hexadecimal color code -> value for the over color
  • border = 0…x -> value for the border width
  • autoplay 0/1 -> value for automatically starting the video to play
  • eurl = http://www.yourwebsite.com -> I believe this is the referring URL. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
  • iurl = Path to the thumbnail image (I believe)

Custom URL parameters for YouTube embedded players

Silverlight Live Streaming

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While reading another Silverlight development articles, I ran across a new service/feature Microsoft is offering for Silverlight developers/practioners. They claim to offer 4GB streaming services for free. I’m not sure all the stipulations and/or limitations, but hey, it’s not YouTube!

Microsoft Downloads moving to Silverlight

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I ran across the new Microsoft downloads web site last night. Apparently, they have decided to program the entire site in Silverlight. First impression, nice work. Then came the questions: why did they do the entire page in Slight? Are they really expecting this sort of page load time for every Slight application? In spite of it’s snazzy new interface, I’m not sure I’m buying this move. It is reminiscent of the old Java applet days.

Index of /wp-content/uploads

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Tonight, whilst experimenting with the various advanced Google search techniques (hacks) to locate web content, I had an epiphany. Any web directory/folder that has indexes enabled (show an index of the contents of the folder of no directory index file exists) will list the contents of said directory with the phrase “Index of” followed by the actual root-relative path to available list of assets. This is due to the fact that the directory/folder does not have an index document/file present, so the web server spits out the entire list of the folder’s content. But I digress.

I have been using WordPress as my blogging platform for a few years now. Before that was a hybrid of PHPBB and custom PHP application I wrote. WordPress works great and has robust features that make blogging a snap for the more technical (such as myself, ehem) and also for the less technical netizens out there. Now, one of these great features is the ability to upload pictures and files (content) through a web interface. What a great concept (this is where the epiphany came in) except if you weren’t planning on listing up the contents of your entire uploads folder to the world. which happens to be the case with some (okay a lot of) default installations of WordPress.

Lets say you “Google” the “Index of” any WordPress uploads folders (/wp-content/uploads). You don’t have to be a rock scientist (yes, that was a joke) to realize the possible implications. Let me give you an idea of the figure as of tonight: 4,143,000 indexes. That’s 4,143,000 WordPress installations that have directory indexes enabled and are completely wide open to crawlers and spiders that can pilfer (argh) their content.

Try it yourself: http://www.google.com/search?q=Index+of+%2Fwp-content

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