Ruxcon 2011 Video

Hey faithful readers. All two of you. The videos from last years Ruxcon conference in Melbourne are now live here. My talk on GCC plugins and malware techniques is here.

-Matt

ISPCS and Wing Flapping

Ok yeahhhhhh. So umm, my research has been pretty craptastic, in my opinion. I haven't cured cancer, proven that P!=NP, or found a solution to the halting problem. Ultimately, I have been pretty worried that my research isn't quite novel enough for a PhD. Well, I mean, it is somewhat neat but I can't say we have anything ground breaking. But that's research.... so I tell myself.

On the other front, some of the stuff at work, primarily our research in the high precision timing stuff, has landed two papers at the 2012 International Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization (ISPCS). While I don't think I wrote much if any for the papers, I am cited as an author on both. I suppose my work-research, or being on the team, landed my name in the papers. And this means... trip to San Frantabulous Sisco! So, after SanFran, and some other stuffs, I plan on heading to Virginia to meet up with family, friends, and the scary right-wing republicoast for a bit of a break. Oh! And maybe catch some mad Peanut Fest action. Neeeee nenenennnenen Hawwwwww! Sooooo... if you read this... and want to be graced by the sexxyness (me... duh!) then drop me an email. I need to hangout with friends!

-Matt

Rawr!

So I was tossing around some ideas with one of my advisers, +Peter Schachte, and I realized: There is no programming language, that I am aware of, which has built-in versioning primitives/keywords. Personally, I think extending a language to reflect the concept of a specific version of the program, or source file, can be a useful feature. Versions help track bugs, aid application development, and can enforce security. Such a language feature could make use of certain library functionality or even use a specific version of a library based on language keywords or primitives decorating the source code. Peter is full of good ideas, and brain storming with him is quite valuable. Anyways, back to the point, extending a language to add these sprinkles is not always a trivial task. How would others make use of such features, unless compilers were built/modified to address such added functionality (rhetorical question... no question mark will follow). Anyways, what can be done; however, is use a plugin-capable compiler, and write a plugin to bolt-on such features.

Well, I did not target this concept fully, but it led me to what I thought was a decent idea. A GCC compiler plugin which automatically adds a version and timestamp to any file being compiled. This data can be extracted by looking at the binary file's read-only data section, '.rodata.' Such a plugin is simple to use: just add the proper gcc flag `-fplugin=identisaurus.so' and blammo, it's done. This, folks, is the birth of the identisaurus. You can obtain this bad boy here:
http://github.com/enferex/identisaurus/.
*RAWR!*

-Matt

Ruxmon Talk

So I was given the chance to speak at the monthly Ruxmon security lectures here in Melbourne. While many people were off at Blackhat and Defcon this month, the room we were in was packed. In fact, I would say about 45-50 or so humans showed up! It was a blast, and I feel my communication went well. The talk I gave was on PDFs, PostScript, the security concerns of these data formats/languages, and the PDFResurrect. The slides I have posted here.

-Matt

10 Years!

That's right my faithful reader(s)? I have been in Melbourne two years now! Today is my two year anniversary!

-Matt

There comes a time in every mans life...

When one must seek other methods of relief... yep

Blow some stuff up for me!

So, it's the 4'th of July here. Not an independence day. Putting all nationalism aside, as both myself and Einstein look negatively upon the concept nationalism. I want all my buddies back home to do me a favor. Get the biggest dang fireworks, cross a few state borders if necessary, and light that puppy up! Happy Blow Stuff Up Day!

-Matt