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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • I taught myself QuickBasic as it was the only thing I knew that was related to copying C64 BASIC out of magazines. (QBasic was packaged with DOS 3.11 I think and I was able to get a full copy of QuickBasic somehow. That was about +30 years ago? Dunno. I was about 12 at the time.) I didn’t know what other languages were out there besides TurboPascal. I did learn simple Pascal, but that was a short chapter.

    I actually met someone else in the area that was learning to code, and of course, we wanted to write a game. The only way to code for a mouse at the time was to write an INT33 handler, so it kicked off our interest in asm. (I still use asm for MCU stuff on occasion, but it’s limited.) I quickly diverged into writing some really nifty… eh… “boot sector code” so that kicked off my career in security.

    And yeah, it’s the same phenomenon for me: I just think in terms of bits and bytes getting shifted around and I still refuse to believe in “magic”. (Slight jab at Rust coders there, but in good fun.)

    Fast forward to today, I train “kids” fresh out of college as part of my job now. The first thing I do is start giving them weird tasks that require they actually understand how something like an fopen() actually works.

    (Funny story. I refused to “show my work” in math class for simple f(x) problems as I viewed it as unoptimized code. Lulz. I was such an autistic dork.)


  • That, 200%!

    When I started in computers, years ago, I transitioned from QuickBasic directly into assembly. Ever since then, I can kinda “read the Matrix” (Blond, Brunette, Redhead…) and forget about how confusing a raw binary or how a mess of a dmp looks to someone else. (To me, I really just see patterns and nothing massively complicated.)

    “It’s just data.” - You would be surprised how fuzzy that statement is for some people. It’s almost exactly like telling someone who doesn’t speak any English that “the sky is blue”. It’s totally cool though! Learning about the internals of any computer is really just a very long chain of “aha moments” as many concepts aren’t intuitive.


  • remotelove@lemmy.catoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldSecrets
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    3 months ago

    I would look into something like Doppler instead of Vault. (I don’t trust any company acquired by IBM. They have been aquiring and enshittifying companies before there was even a name for it.)

    Look into how any different solutions need their keys presented. Dumping the creds in ENV is generally fine since the keys will need to be stored and used somehow. You might need a dedicated user account to manage keys in its home folder.

    This is actually a host security problem, not generally a key storage problem per se. Regardless of how you have a vault setup, my approach here is to create a single host that acts as a gateway for the rest of the credentials. (This applies to if keys are stored in “the cloud” or in a local database somewhere.)

    Since you are going to using a Pi, you should focus on that being a restricted host: Only run your chosen vault solution on it. Period. Secure and patch it to the best of your ability and use very specific host firewall rules for minimum connectivity. Ie: Have one user for ssh in and limit another user account to managing vault, preferably without needing any kind of elevated access. This is actually a perfect use case for SELinux since you can put in some decent restrictions on the host for a single app (and it’s supporting apps…)

    If you are paranoid enough to run a HIDS, you can turn on all the events for any type of root account actions. In theory once the host is configured, you shouldn’t need root again until you start performing patches.


  • I dump memory more often than you would think. It’s usually not obfuscated or encrypted in any meaningful way even though it is fairly trivial to do so.

    It’s good practice to scour through any bloatware installed on windows laptops. Since bloatware is generally written by the lowest bidder, you can find all kinds of keys and phone-home urls (sometimes with all the parameters) and other weird things. Just fire up a decent hex editor and search for strings in the dump file. You don’t need to know jack about reverse engineering either.






  • I second the litterbox with a cover suggestion. It should help a bit, or at a minimum, keep the scratching confined to the litterbox itself.

    Still, scratching like this isn’t uncommon for cats. What I have noticed with my cats over the years is that they start young learning to cover the smell but they forget “why” they do it and “scratch whatever” out of habit as they get older. (I am talking many years or transition, btw.)

    Once cats get really old, having them used to a litterbox cover helps if they start to miss the litter completely. (We had an “old man” once that just forgot how to aim and his butt always ended up over the edge of the box.) Still, not something you hopefully need to worry about any time soon.

    TBH, each cat behavior is unique. Watch and adapt as you can.




  • remotelove@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.mlWhy do we hate SELinux?
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    3 months ago

    Its just complex

    When a security mechanism becomes more complex to manage than what it is supposed to protect, it becomes a vulnerability itself.

    If you had a minimal system that you built from the ground up yourself and wanted to only have that system function in very specific ways, SELinux would be perfect. I would go so far as to say it would be nearing perfection in some ways.

    Sorry, but in the real world, ain’t nobody got time for that shit. If you use auto configuration tools or pre-canned configs for SELinux on a system you are unfamiliar with, it’s more likely to cause application issues, create security gaps and will likely be shut off by a Jr. admin who really has no fucking clue what he is doing anyway.

    It’s just easier to keep your system patched and ensure basic network security practices anyway.

    It’s not impossible to manage these days. In the early days it was, but most everything is automagic now. If I am not mistaken, SELinux can be enabled to ‘log only’ which would give you data better handled by a HIPS anyway. (Don’t quote me on that.)







  • I installed it and tried it on occasion, but it never worked for finding any coupons. It was the only extension I had that I kept disabled because I always thought it’s interaction with the browser and web pages was sus as fuck.

    TBH, it was more of a curiosity I kept around to explore one day. I also dissect and detonate malware a few times a week, so I just treated Honey as such.

    (That folder named “malware” on my computer is actually real. I pitty the poor soul who steals it thinking its just a joke to store my private data.)

    Unrelated: I finally got my first .SVG downloader today, actually. Whoever the fuck thought it would be a good idea to add a script tag to SVG needs to be put down.