Ruxcon 2012

Wow! This years Ruxcon, hacker/tech conference, was great! There was a great line-up of talks, and plenty of things to do (CTF, hanging out, parties, lock picking). I was on the staff, and did just a minor bit of writing for the handbook, Saturday party organizing, and some MCing... Yes, they let me near the mic. Anyways, I had a blast! One of the greatest things of Melbourne... this con!

-Matt

San Francisco Pics

Well, I am now back in Melbourne. Man, my trip to San Francisco, and then to home in VA, was great. It was nice to catch-up with friends and family. Anyways, after tons of flying, and getting two pat-downs (yes, I denied being scanned by some of the new scanners at the airport), I am back. Sure, the TSA peeps told me that the scanners were "radio wave" based. Well, radio waves are safe and do not produce ionizing radiation. But, in principle, I just denied the scan. So I got the love-touch from the TSA dudes. And yes, the pat-down is a slow process, I wonder if this is intentional, as to convince people to go through the scanners. Anyways, pics, not of the pat-downs, are here.

-Matt

Satanic Canaries and Binary Runtime Hardening

A while back I started writing some stack canaries to play with GCC RTL. Anyways, this exercise resulted in Satanic Canary, a series of stack canaries implemented as a GCC-plugin. This software can be obtained here. With that said, I also wrote an article talking more in depth on this topic. Linux Journal just published it in their October 2012 edition.

-Matt

San Frangoatpenis

Wow. It has been a helluva week. My manager and myself rocked the Plugfest at ISPCS and then we presented two papers, one a piece. The papers went well, but the test-lab/demo/plugfest was pretty stressful. Lots of coffee consumed. Ultimately, I had a blast.

Anyways, I went to Haight Ashbury today, and let me just say. I know I might look a bit stoner like, but I could not tell you how many people were so generous to offer me some of their medical plant material. I turned them down, even though I am vegan and appreciate plants. I also went to the Amoeba store, per recommendation of my manager. Amazing record store... best one ever! FRIKKIN' HUGE METAL SECTION. It as if the pit of Satan's anus ruptured open, and the contents spilled out upon the back wall of their lovely store. I love Haight Ashbury. Oh, and I met a dude there who recommended a Brazilian band to me Goat Penis. And this dude also rocks this website: http://www.metalifestyle.com. Afterwards, I walked to the park at the end of Haight and chilled there for a bit. Laid on the grass, hungout.

-Matt