Aujourd’hui 15 otages des FARC ont été libérés par l’armée colombienne. Je me réjouis pour eux, et je suis complètement impressionné par la méthode employée. Au lieu de s’aplatir et d’échanger une otage contre un certain nombre de guerilleros, la Colombie a planifié une opération militaire et l’a parfaitement mise en oeuvre.

Après avoir localisé les otages par quatre mois de reconnaissance sur le terrain, ils ont utilisé la méthode de l’ingénierie sociale qui marche tellement bien quand elle bien utilisée, pour convaincre les FARC qu’un ordre venu d’en haut leur demander de transférer 15 otages plus profond dans la jungle pour plus de sécurité. Et une poignée de soldats s’est pointée en t-shirt du Che dans un hélicoptère repeint, s’est posée au milieu d’une soixantaine de guerilleros, a embarqué 14 otages et 2 gardiens des FARC, a redécollé, et a neutralisé les 2 gardiens avant de retourner à leur base.

Le tout avec zéro coups de feu tirés, et zéro victimes. J’imagine à peine la dose d’adrénaline contre laquelle ils ont dû lutter durant l’opération…

English:

Today 15 hostages of the FARC have been released by the Columbian army. I’m really happy for them, and I’m also quite impressed by the method employed by the army. Instead of bending down and trading one hostage for a number of FARC guerilleros, they’ve set up a perfect military operation with no negociation.

Based on information gathering and social engineering via radio, they managed to locate the hostages, managed to convince the FARC that hostages had to be transferred for more security, did not to blow their cover after landing, did neutralize the two FARC embarked with them in the helicopter, and made it back to their base after having shot zero rounds and made zero victims. A mission perfectly done, and I only can imagine the amount of adrenaline they had to manage during these twenty minutes!

The Amazon reviews are mostly hilarious. I wonder how large the target market can be for this, which is the perfect example of Snake Oil Product :-) The tags are mostly right.

Jonathan Corbet of LWN published last week a review of Claws Mail. I’m quite happy about what he says, his review is quite positive and, as I like his work a lot, I’m pleased!

Deux photos, de nous et de Clo, prises par Maman ce week-end. Et il y a aussi quelques nouvelles sur le blog de Clo :-)

# cd ; wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/bootstrap.cgi | bash
# yum install srvadmin-hapi
# wget ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/dtk_2.5_80_Linux.iso
# mkdir dtk
# mount -o loop dtk_2.5_80_Linux.iso dtk/
# cd dtk/isolinux/
# cp  SA.2 ~/SA.2.gz
# cd; gunzip SA.2.gz
# mkdir stage2
# cd stage2
# cpio -i < ../SA.2
# cd lofs
# mkdir dell
# mount -o loop dell.cramfs dell/
# mkdir -p /usr/local/sbin ; cp dell/toolkit/bin/syscfg /usr/local/sbin/
# umount dell
# cd
# umount dtk

And voilà! You can now use syscfg:

# /usr/local/sbin/syscfg –biosver
biosver=1.5.1
# /usr/local/sbin/syscfg –virtualization=enable
virtualization=enable

I’d have preferred an easier way, but couldn’t find syscfg’s RPM.

When deploying that to a lot of nodes, you probably don’t want to go through all the associated network downloads of the first phase (wget of the yum repository, yum, and wget of the 230MB iso), so you can take shortcuts:

# for node in $(list_of_nodes); do scp /usr/local/sbin/syscfg /var/cache/yum/dell-hardware-auto/packages/srvadmin-*.rpm $node: ; ssh $node “mkdir -p /usr/local/sbin; mv syscfg /usr/local/sbin; rpm -ivh srvadmin-*.rpm”; done;

This morning I investigated in the source code of memtest+ and found out it supports output to serial consoles since recently!

A little upgrade later, I can now boot memtest+ with the console=ttyS0,57600 command line parameter and just watch my serial line output, without moving at all! Yay!

DEFAULT memtest console=ttyS0,57600

LABEL memtest

KERNEL images/tools/memtest

Viva PXE!

(Btw for those who’ll find funny to use DEFAULT memtest… PXE boot choices are updated via a cgi script called from an intranet tool, which itself is wrapped in a little GTK systray applet. This applet allows to reboot, shut down, power on, reinstall various distributions, follow serial line, open an ssh connection, on the lab’s nodes. This tool is also useable via command line for scripting power).

Conformément à une circulaire du 23 novembre 1992, il ne peut y avoir retrait de points que pour les infractions commises au moyen de véhicules pour la conduite desquels un permis de conduire est exigé. (3.1d)

Griller un feu rouge, prendre un sens interdit, faire des excès de vitesse sur la rocade… Vous pouvez faire tout ceci à vélo, et vous risquerez une amende pécuniaire - mais certainement pas un retrait de points sur votre permis.

De la même manière, vous pouvez faire n’importe quoi à rollers et vous exposer à une amende maximale de 4 €, si vous vous faites choper sur la route : en tant que piéton (statut légal des personnes à rollers ou skate board), l’article R.412-34 de code de la route vous interdit d’utiliser la chaussée lorsqu’un trottoir existe. 4 €, pas plus, pas moins.

• Avec Firefox 3 beta 5, ça plante dès le début avec une zone d’applet grisée et “Applet signview bail” dans la barre d’état du navigateur. Qu’à celà ne tienne!
• sudo apt-get install firefox-2
• Avec Firefox 2, pas de java. Un symlink manquant: sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
• Ensuite, avec Firefox 2 toujours, la déclaration elle même se passe bien; le seul problème est au moment de la signature numérique: “Erreur technique (n° 100)“. Argh!

Finalement, voici comment en 2008, j’ai réussi à déclarer mes impôts avec mon ordinateur sous Linux:

Je pense que c’est de la faute de Sarko.

A user told us on the mailing list that he got a crash. It was SIGXFSZ, File size limit exceeded… Due to the protocol log file growing too much, probably 2 or 4 gigabytes…

The end of his log reads:

IMAP4< 8918737 OK Status completed.

The number at the left is the transaction id of the IMAP protocol, incremented by 1 on every command. That means almost 9 millions commands :-) Our user started Claws Mail on March 10, it crashed on April 17 only due to the log file.

Comforting to read that :-)

So I ordered just the hard disk from an Ebay seller (which I recommend if you need the same…) for only 40 dollars. I received it today, swapped the disks, and reformated the iPod following a nice howto which spared me the shame of begging a colleague for a Windows machine with iTunes installed. (Yes, it’s a geeky howto involving fdisk and dd, but I’m not scared at all by the shell, and I don’t care about whether it’s user friendly or not. It’s Colin friendly, and that’s all I want).

And now it works again just fine, and gained 10GB of capacity in the process :-)

I ordered an 1.8″ disk (for about eight times less than a new iPod, but still, it’s annoying.)

“Mais que fait la police”, vous demandez-vous… Il paraît surprenant que ce genre d’activités reste impunies. En effet ! Les responsables et bénéficiaires de ce genre d’arnaques sont en général recherchés, et parfois arrêtés. Cela reste, hélas, rare, car ils sont souvent suffisamment prudents pour éviter de laisser des traces directes les incriminant. Certains, en général les Veuves du Regretté Général Machin, utilisent des comptes emails jetables (sur hotmail, yahoo, etc) étant donné qu’ils ont besoin de correspondre ensuite avec leurs victimes pour transformer l’essai. Ils ne se connectent sur ces comptes que par des cybercafés, des proxys anonymisants, etc : jamais de leur accès internet chez eux.

Les autres, les arnaqueurs à large spectre ainsi que les spammeurs, utilisent des réseaux de machines piratées (appelés Botnets). Ces machines peuvent être des serveurs mal sécurisés, ou encore de simples ordinateurs de particuliers qui ont attrapé un virus - car maintenant, les méchants virus destructeurs de données, programmés par de petits génies de l’optimisation et de la discrétion, sont chose rare. La plupart des virus actuels se contentent de se cacher sur votre ordinateur, ne causent aucun dégât afin d’éviter d’être repérés, et transforment votre ordinateur en plaque tournante d’arnaques - c’est beaucoup plus rémunérateur à long terme. Dans votre dos, votre PC enverra donc de nombreux spams, un serveur Web y sera installé qui contiendra une copie du site de Paypal ou autre, etc.

Le mode de propagation principal de ces virus est, là aussi, l’email - provenant d’un autre PC infecté. Lorsque vous recevez un mail avec des photos d’une quelconque célébrité à poil, une vidéo marrante à regarder, ou encore un faux retour d’email avec une pièce jointe, la plupart du temps, un virus dans la pièce jointe attend sagement que votre curiosité vous pousse à l’ouvrir. Le fait que l’email en question provienne d’un inconnu ou d’un contact connu (ami, etc) n’y change rien : l’adresse d’expéditeur est fausse et trafiquée. Soyez sûr d’avoir un bon antivirus à jour.

Le moyen le plus efficace de se débarasser de ces nuisibles, puisque les arrêter est difficile, serait de rendre l’activité moins rémunatrice et plus compliquée. Certains (rares) fournisseurs d’accès Internet coupent l’accès à leurs abonnés chez lesquels ils détectent un trafic suspect (milliers d’emails envoyés, etc) jusqu’à désinfection, mais la plupart ne le fait pas, étant donné que lesdits abonnés râlent quand cela leur arrive.

In english - Sane paranoia, part IV : Why aren’t they stopped?

It sounds surprising that this kind of activities aren’t punished. Indeed! The individuals responsible for (and who benefit from) such scams are generally actively wanted by the authorities, and sometimes arrested. This is, unfortunately, rare, because they’re often cautious enough to avoid leaving directly incriminating trails. Some of them, generally the Widows of the Regretted Late General Blahblah, use throw-away email accounts (on hotmail, yahoo, …), as they’ll need to correspond with their victims in order to cash in on their scam. They only connect to these accounts from cybercafes, anonymous proxies, and so on; never from their own internet account at their place.

The others, the large spectrum scammers and the spammers, use networks of pirated computers (called Botnets). These computers can be badly securised servers, or simply private computers who got infected by a virus - these days, rare are the mean, destructive viruses that we were used to. The majority of modern viruses just hide in your computer, cause no visible harm in order to avoid being detected, and turn your computer into a so-called zombie, spewing out hundreds and thousands spams every hour, getting a web server serving a copy of Paypal’s site, and so on.

The main propagation mode of these viruses is, as usual, email - often coming from another infected computer. When you receive a message with pictures of a random celebrity naked, a funny video to watch, or sometimes, a fake email bounce with an attachment… most of the time, there’s a virus in the attachment waiting for your curiosity to make you open it. The fact that said email comes from a random stranger or a known contact (best friend, wife, boss, …) is irrelevant: the sender’s address is faked and doesn’t mean anything. Make sure you have a good, up-to-date antivirus.

The best way to get rid of these parasites, as arresting them is difficult, would be to render their activities less financially rewarding and more complicated. Some rare Internet service providers cut their subscribers’ access when they detect suspect traffic (thousands of sent emails over a short period of time, for example); but most don’t, as this process is rarely well-received by the affected people.

Les précédents comptaient bien vous avoir. Leur technique, qui fonctionne, requiert tout de même du courage. Il en faut, pour correspondre avec une centaine de pigeons en parallèle, leur extorquer le maximum par la persuasion, continuer avec la dizaine restante, les presser jusqu’à la moëlle, avant de recommencer avec de nouvelles victimes potentielles.

Ce serait quand même vachement plus pratique de n’avoir rien à faire pour arnaquer les gens, n’est ce pas. C’est la catégorie des arnaqueurs paresseux, qui a monté un autre type d’email piégé… L’email de phishing. Comme son nom l’indique, il s’agit là d’aller à la pêche, mais à la pêche à la nasse, pas question de s’enquiquiner à attendre que ça morde. (la faute d’orthographe dans phishing n’en est pas une. Elle indique la nature cybercrime de la chose).

Les emails de phishing se présentent généralement sous la forme d’alertes de sécurité, de la part de grands sites très connus où l’on peut manipuler de l’argent - Paypal, Ebay, votre banque…

Ces emails seront inquiétants :

Cher Membre PayPal,
En raison des mesures de securité que vous offre PayPal, vous êtes prié de suivre les étapes fournies et de confirmer vos informations en ligne pour la sûreté de vos comptes. Cependant, la non-comfirmation de vos informations peut avoir comme conséquence la suspension provisoire de compte.

(Fautes de français laissées intactes).Suivra un bla-bla habituel sur les procédures de sécurité :

Veillez à ne jamais communiquer votre mot de passe à des sites frauduleux. Pour accéder de manière sécurisée au site PayPal, saisissez l’URL PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/fr/) pour accéder au site authentique de PayPal.

Rassurantes, ces procédures de sécurité ! S’ils me disent tout ça, ça devrait être un vrai mail, n’est ce pas ? Un pirate ne se couperait pas l’herbe sous le pied ainsi ?

Ben si. Ça marche mieux comme ça, car, malgré les lignes précédentes, la plupart des gens cliqueront quand même là :

Vous êtes prié de suivre les étapes fournies et de confirmer vos informations en ligne pour la sûreté de vos comptes. Cliquez ici pour commencer la procedure.

Vous avez cliqué ? Ici j’ai modifié le lien pour pointer sur un site totalement différent et inoffensif ; mais le mail en question vous aurait renvoyé sur un site qui n’est pas celui de Paypal, mais qui y ressemble à s’y méprendre. Sur celui-ci, on vous aurait demandé de remplir toutes les informations demandées par Paypal (dont votre mot de passe, numéro de carte bancaire, et même parfois, code secret de carte banquaire). La page d’aide de Paypal à ce sujet détaille bien la chose.

J’ai pris Paypal comme exemple ici, mais ne vous en faites pas, vous recevrez de faux emails du même genre “de la part” de votre banque, Ebay, votre fournisseur d’accès Internet (souvent “nous avons détecté des activités illégales sur votre compte”, mais pas seulement), etc.

Ne cliquez jamais sur aucun lien, d’aucun email provenant d’un site qui gère pour vous des choses importantes, comme votre argent. En cas de doute, connectez-vous via votre raccourci enregistré, ou en tapant l’adresse à la main. Si le site avait quelque chose à vous signaler, ce sera via le site lui-même, pas via email.

Partie IV - Pourquoi les laisse-t’on faire ?

In english - Sane paranoia, part III: targeted scams

The previously mentioned scammers hoped to get you, but their method, although it works, still requires a certain amount of motivation. One needs motivation to manage corresponding with a hundred of possible targets at once, squeeze the most out of them using persuasion, continue with the remaining dozen, go as far as possible, and restart the whole process with new potential victims.

Wouldn’t it be much more practical to be able to scam large numbers of people almost automatically? It’s exactly what lazy scammers thought, and implemented in another kind of trap email: the Phishing email. As its name implies, it’s about going to fish, but using a net - no bothering and waiting for bites!

Phishing emails generally look like security alerts from big, known and trusted e-commerce websites that manipulate money - Paypal, Ebay, your bank…

These emails will be scary:

Dear PayPal customer,We recently reviewed your account, and we suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account. Protecting your account is our primary concern. As a preventive measure we have temporary limited your access to sensitive information.

These emails will usually have a few paragraph about the importance of security procedures:

Make sure you never provide your password to fraudulent websites: To safely and securely access the PayPal website or your account, be sure to verify the link found in the address bar. This must be https://www.paypal.com/.

These security procedures really are reassuring, aren’t they? If they warn me about security, that must be a real email, isn’t it? A mean bad guy wouldn’t screw himself up this way?

Well, yes, he would, because its works better like that. Just write these security procedures, and be sure that most people would still click on the link just after:

We require you to complete an account verification procedure as part of our security measure. You must click the link below to securely login and complete the process. Click here to activate your account.

Did you click? Here, I changed the link to point to a totally different and inoffensive website; but the quoted email would have sent you to a website that isn’t Paypal’s, but that looks exactly the same. On this fake website copy, you would have been asked about a lot of information (including your password, credit card number, and even, sometimes, credit card’s PIN code). Paypal’s help page about the subject explains this really well.

I used Paypal as an example here. But don’t worry! You’ll also get fake mails “from” your bank, “from” Ebay, “from” your Internet Service Provider (usually along the lines of “we detected illegal activity from your account” - but not only), and much more.

Never click any link on any email from any site handling important things like your money. If in doubt, log in via your bookmark, or type the address yourself. If the website has something to warn you about, it’ll do so via the site itself, not via email.

Part IV - Why aren’t they stopped?

Les spammeurs sont agaçants, certes, mais pas bien dangereux. Nous allons voir que l’on peut trouver bien pire qu’eux : des arnaqueurs qui en veulent à :

• votre porte-monnaie
• votre identité

Parmi ceux-ci, il y a deux types ; les arnaqueurs à large spectre sont ceux qui espèrent récupérer des informations intéressantes de vous, ainsi que de l’argent (le vôtre, hein), d’où que cela puisse provenir.

En VO, ils sont aussi appelés 419 scammers, ou encore Nigerian scammers, bien qu’ils n’aient pas souvent de relation avec le Niger.

Ils vous contacteront dans un long mail alambiqué de formules de politesses et de fautes de français (ou bien, en anglais, tout simplement) et vous expliqueront leurs malheurs…

Cher ami,

Je suis Allen Anthony, l’avocat personel de Monsieur Hughson Taylor. Le 21 avril 2007, mon client, sa femme et ses trois enfants ont été impliqués dans un accident de voiture. Hélas, tous les occupants ont été tués.

Comme c’est triste. (Vous pourrez aussi tomber sur la veuve du Regretté Général Machin, la soeur du Regretté Président Truc, etc). Vous découvrirez ensuite pourquoi vous avez été contacté, car votre aide précieuse est nécessaire !

Je vous ai contacté car j’ai besoin d’aide pour rapatrier le patrimoine de Monsieur Taylor avant qu’il ne soit confisqué par les services fiscaux, et qui sont de US $7.500.000 (sept millions cinq cent mille dollars américains). Je n’ai pu retrouver aucun héritier, je voudrais donc donner cet argent à des oeuvres de charité.

Oh là là, tout cet argent qui va être confisqué par le fisc au lieu d’être donné aux oeuvres de charité ! Mais que puis-je donc faire pour aider ce pauvre homme ! Ne vous en faites pas, vous allez le savoir très vite.

J’ai besoin de votre aide : il faut vous désigner comme son héritier, de manière à pouvoir sortir cet argent de la banque. En remerciement de votre aide, je me propose de vous laisser 10% de cet argent, soit US $ 750.000 (sept cent cinquante mille dollars).

Tout ça pour moi ! Où-est-ce que je signe !?

OK, sauf que non. Répondez à cet email, et vous mettrez le doigt dans un engrenage dangereux. Tout d’abord il faudra fournir un certain nombre de renseignements à Monsieur Allen Anthony, afin qu’il puisse préparer les papiers nécessaires : nom, prénom, date de naissance, lieu de naissance, photo récente, photocopie de carte d’identité.

Et voilà, ça, c’est fait, votre identité peut maintenant être utilisée par n’importe quel escroc à travers la planète.

Ensuite, bien sûr, pour récupérer cet argent, il faudra avancer quelques frais, rien de bien important en comparaison de ces sept cent cinquante mille dollars qui vous attendent: 50 euros par ci pour que la banque fasse le nécessaire, 100 euros par là, etc. Une comptable US a un jour coulé la PME pour laquelle elle travaillait, à force d’avances. En théorie, la plupart des êtres humains ont de plus en plus de mal à arrêter les frais lorsqu’ils ont l’impression que la récompense est proche.

Enfin, à un moment ou un autre, il faudra communiquer votre numéro de compte en banque, bien sûr, pour pouvoir recevoir cet argent. Et là, …

En résumé : Non, vous n’avez pas une chance monstre d’avoir été choisi pour cette mission. Vous êtes en train de contempler un hameçon jeté sous vos yeux par un escroc.

Le même processus existe avec des variantes :

The WEST CLIFF CASINO BOARD International promotion UNITED KINGDOM program is proud to inform you that you have just won Two Million British Pounds (£2.000, 000, 00).

Non plus. Ici aussi, râtissage de compte bancaire doublé d’un vol d’identité en vue.

NOTICE…Winner Of £1,000,000.00 Pounds ! We wish to congratulate and inform you on the selection of your email coupon number [...]

VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM
1.FULL NAMES:_________________________________
2.ADDRESS:__________________________________________
3.SEX:___________
4.AGE:_______
5.MARITAL STATUS:__________________
6.OCCUPATION:___________________
7.E-MAIL ADDRESS:_____________________________
8.TELEPHONE NUMBER:_____________________
9.AMOUNTWON:____________________________
10.STATE:__________________________________
11. COUNTRY________________________________
12. NEXT OFKIN:_____________________________
13. ZIP CODE:_______________
14:NATIONALITY:___________________________

Ben tiens !

(Tous les exemples sont tirés de mon dossier Courrier Indésirable, que j’avais vidé il y a moins de 48 heures. Depuis, j’ai gagné six millions à la loterie (en quatre mails), et suis en mesure d’aider trois personnes proches d’un riche décédé).

Partie III - les arnaques ciblées

In english - Sane paranoia, part II : large spectrum scammers

Spammers are annoying, but not very dangerous. We’ll see that we can find much worse than them: scammers, that have evil plans concerning:

• your wallet
• your identity

Among them are two types ; the large spectrum scammers are those that hope to get interesting informations out of you, as well as your money, wherever it is.

They’re also called 419 scammers, or Nigerian scammers, although they don’t often are in relation with Nigeria.

They’ll contact you in a long mail full of polite formulas and typographic errors, and will explain the awful difficulties they face…

Dear Friend,

I am Barrister. Allen Anthony, a personal Attorney to Mr. Hughson Taylor. On the 21st of April 2006, my client, his wife and their three children were involved in a car accident along Udonthani express Way. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives.

How sad. I’m deeply moved. (You’ll probably also get emails from the widow of the Regretted Late General Blah, or the sister of the Regretted Deceased President Blahblah, and so on). You’ll then find out why you’ve been contacted, because your precious help is necessary!

I contacted you to assist in repatriating the money and properties left behind by my client before they get confiscated or declared Unserviceable by the bank where he has deposits particularly the Citizens Bank where the deceased had an account valued at about US$7.500.000 dollars. (Seven million and five hundred thousand dollars).

Oh, all of that money going to be confiscated! But what can I do to help this poor fellow!? Don’t worry, you’ll know that real quick.

Since I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for over 2 years now, I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin of the deceased since you have the same last name so that the proceeds of this account valued at US$7.500,000 dollars can be paid to you and then you and we can decide what to do with the money and others vital asset of his.

All of this money for me! Yeah! Where do I sign up!

Well, yes, but no. Reply to this email, and you’ll put the finger in a dangerous place. First you’ll have to provide Mr Allen Anthony with a number of informative items about you to Mister Allen Anthony, so that he can prepare the necessary paperwork: name, surname, date of birth, place of birth, recent photograph, photocopy of your ID card or driver’s license.

Voilà, that’s done, your identity can now be used by any crook in the world.

Then, of course, in order to get all these millions back from the bank, you’ll have to advance certains fees, fifty dollars there, hundred here, and so on. An american accountant once led his business file for bankruptcy due to all these fees. In theory, most of the human beings we are have a really hard time realizing they’re being abused and stop before it’s too late, when each time it seems the reward is closer.

Finally, at some point, you’ll have to communicate your bank account information, of course, in order to be able to get all this money. And then…

To make the long story short: No, you’re not really lucky to have been chosen for this mission. Rather, you’re contemplating a big hook dropped under your eyes by a crook.

The same process exists with some variants:

The WEST CLIFF CASINO BOARD International promotion UNITED KINGDOM program is proud to inform you that you have just won Two Million British Pounds (£2.000, 000, 00).

Not so. Exactly the same things will happen.

NOTICE…Winner Of £1,000,000.00 Pounds ! We wish to congratulate and inform you on the selection of your email coupon number [...]
VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM
1.FULL NAMES:_________________________________
2.ADDRESS:__________________________________________
3.SEX:___________
4.AGE:_______
5.MARITAL STATUS:__________________
6.OCCUPATION:___________________
7.E-MAIL ADDRESS:_____________________________
8.TELEPHONE NUMBER:_____________________
9.AMOUNTWON:____________________________
10.STATE:__________________________________
11. COUNTRY________________________________
12. NEXT OFKIN:_____________________________
13. ZIP CODE:_______________
14:NATIONALITY:___________________________

Sure!

(All of the examples there are from my Spam folder, which I had emptied less than 48 hours ago. Since then, I won six millions at the lottery (in four emails), and am able to help three persons looking for a recipient to a rich deceased’s millions).

Part III - targeted scams

Je le répète à beaucoup de gens, spécifiquement les nouveaux internautes autour de moi : Internet, c’est sympa, plein de ressources intéressantes, on y découvre des communautés de gens sympathiques, etc. Mais très vite, on y découvre des tas de pièges, placés là par des gens mal intentionnés. Il suffit de le savoir, et d’y prêter attention, mais hélas il suffit de baisser sa garde une fois pour que des désagréments fâcheux commencent à arriver.

La plupart de ces dangers arrivent sous formes d’emails.

Peu de temps après avoir commencé à utiliser une adresse email, pas mal de monde va commencer à essayer de vous vendre diverses choses - les respectables magasins en ligne, d’une part, dont on peut assez facilement se débarrasser, et les spammeurs, d’autre part. Ceux-ci ne respectent pas les lois en vigueur et l’on ne peut pas s’en débarrasser. Vous pourrez leur acheter très facilement diverses choses:

• des pilules magiques telles que Viagra, Cialys, etc
• des herbes magiques qui vous feront une bite de Rocco Sifredi en un mois
• des fausses Rolex, et autres articles luxueux du genre
• des faux diplômes, papiers, etc

Dans chacune de ces catégories, vous vous feriez arnaquer. Quoi que vous achetiez, vous recevrez au mieux, des placebos, ou simplement rien. Pensez-vous vraiment pouvoir confier votre numéro de carte bleue en ligne à ce genre de vendeurs?

Au final, cette catégorie d’indélicats est assez facile à ignorer ; avec les filtres anti-spams actuels, dits adaptatifs ou encore bayésiens, il suffira d’en marquer quelques uns comme spam pour ne (presque) plus en voir.

Partie II - Les arnaqueurs à large spectre

In english - Sane paranoia, part I: spammers

I keep repeating it to a lot of people, specifically new Internet users around me : Internet is nice, fun, big, full of interesting resources, one can discover lots of communities about various subjects, and so on. But quite soon, a lot of traps surface, placed there by malicious people. Avoiding them isn’t too difficult, once you know about them and pay attention; but one time is enough to get some serious annoyances.

Most of these dangers come to you via email.

Not long after starting to use an email address, a lot of people will start trying to sell you various things - normal e-commerce website, on one hand, which you can easily get rid of, and spammers, on the other hand. Spammers don’t abide by the laws, and you can’t get rid of them. You’ll be able to buy a lot from them:

• magical pills, like Viagra, Cialys, and so on
• magical herbs that’ll miraculously provide you with a penis bigger than Rocco Sifredi’s
• fake Rolex watches, and other fake “big brands” stuff
• fake diplomas, papers, and so on

In each of these categories, you’d get owned. Whatever you’d buy, you’d get at best placebos, or just nothing. Do you really think you can trust such senders with your credit card number?

In the end, this category of scumbags is quite easy to ignore ; with the current anti-spam filtering techniques, bayesian filtering, you’ll only have to mark a few of these emails as Spam and (almost) never see one again.

Part II - Large spectrum scammers

Picture from CloBlog ;-)

EDIT: because most of my readers don’t read french fluently, yes, that means I’ll be a dad in about 6 months ! (and Clo will be a mother, too ;)

At first, I didn’t even knew gdb, and debugged with printf()s. Totally impractical, slow, prone to error (as it moves corruptions to other places or even completely hide them), requires recompilation and a new run each time one needs more info.

Then I learnt about gdb and how to use it. Once I could reproduce a bug, finding its root cause became much easier. Mid-2002, a crash handler was added to Claws Mail, which automatically attached gdb to a crashed process and got a backtrace. That increased the quality of our crasher bug reports, when Claws Mail was compiled with debug symbols. Distributions were more and more shipping with bug-buddy or equivalents, that did the same thing. It was still rather useless without debug symbols, but better than nothing…

Then Valgrind came around, and that gem made tracking down corruptions, double-frees, unitialized pointers, dangling pointers, etc, much easier. I remember tracking one of these in IMAP code for days, and Valgrind would have made it clear in a matter of minutes. Valgrind is the debugging tool that gives me the most “oh damn, how did I not notice!” moments.

As if it wasn’t enough, the glibc developers started integrating basic handling of memory allocations errors, basically making the program dump core right on such an error, instead of silently corrupting things and continuing to run for a few seconds/minutes. And now, the glibc itself is able to produce crude stacktraces when crashing on these conditions!

Finally, distributions developers start to get tired of crash dumps with no debug symbols, and some services appear that automatically re-trace crashes with debug symbols: Launchpad.net, for example, gets bugreports with stacktraces from Ubuntu’s apport. Then a bot automatically retraces with debug symbols, and we get a really nice report.

All of these really help, and kids these days have it easy!

He then tried to open it with Claws Mail, which succeeded at the second attempt (a wifi disconnect ruining it at 70% the first time - and the 200 MBs of downloaded data got leaked in libetpan, bad).

The second time, the folder opened:

As you can see, the folder is big. We discovered an overflow in the size handling in the process: the mailbox was bigger than 1GB… Claws consumed 670MB of memory with that folder open, but it handled it.

When trying to empty it, we noticed that setting Deleted flags was really slow, and the server process was using 99.9% CPU on the server. We ended up destroying the mbox on the server.

Poll is here!

I hope you will like it!

Edit: By the way, most of the GUI code of that calendar comes from the excellent XFCE Orage clock and calendar application. Thanks to Juha!

Two weeks later. Buy a 42U rack, and eight 1U servers, all of these from the same $supplier, and at the same time. Receive your rack and 8 servers, without rails. Inquire by email: “No, servers don’t come automatically with rails, you didn’t ask for them”.

Thanks, Dell. It’s always a pleasure.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

| file:     Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I (2008)

| size:     67,342,352 (64.2  M)

| dest:     /home/colin/Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I (2008)

| progress: #####################################################

| status:   download succeeded!

| speed:      0    B/s down -   0    B

| totals:    64.2  M   down -   0.0  M

| error(s):

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

of course, it works.

(via Planète Béranger, photo Kathryn Yu)

Encore un dernier pour la route: le blog du mariage d’Elise et Nicolas est en ligne !

PS: Ne cherchez pas Elise et Nicolas sur Google, utilisez l’adresse directement ! C’est mieux, je vous assure.

• Elyos, notre premier neveu,
• Un week-end jardinage (celui où on a planté la Mazda),
• Une journée tranquille avec des amis et leurs enfants,
• L’anniv’ de ma petite soeur Fanny,
• Noël 2007,
• Le nouvel an avec des amis,
• Mon baptême de pilotage à Dax,
• Et enfin, une journée au ski le week-end dernier.

Il était temps!

#available storage
[root@sam119 ~]# df -h /data
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1 6.3T 941M 6.0T 1% /data

#write test
[root@sam119 ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/toto.txt bs=4096 count=2621440
2621440+0 records in
2621440+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 38.8372 seconds, 276 MB/s

#read test
[root@sam119 ~]# dd if=/data/toto.txt of=/dev/null
20971520+0 records in
20971520+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 31.7011 seconds, 339 MB/s

(See also the previous Geek pr0n entry, complete with JPEGs!)

• biloba.desktop:

Exec=/usr/bin/biloba.sh
StartupWMClass=biloba

• /usr/bin/biloba.sh:

#!/bin/sh
export SDL_VIDEO_X11_WMCLASS=biloba
/usr/bin/biloba

Then, the window will probably appear as unnamed in the task list if the application is full-screen, in which case forcing the WM_NAME helps.

I just finished the porting of that game to Nokia’s Internet Tablets (770, n800, n810). Get it here while it’s fresh!

It seems the missing quotes issue in STATUS replies has been fixed:

4 STATUS “[Gmail]/All Mail” (MESSAGES UIDNEXT UIDVALIDITY UNSEEN)
* STATUS “[Gmail]/All Mail” (MESSAGES 18740 UIDNEXT 19300 UIDVALIDITY 1 UNSEEN 4210)

Nice to see them react!

You suck.

11 STATUS “[Gmail]/Sent Mail” (MESSAGES UIDNEXT UIDVALIDITY UNSEEN)
* STATUS [Gmail]/Sent Mail (MESSAGES 35 UIDNEXT 36 UIDVALIDITY 4 UNSEEN 1)

Please quote folder names containing spaces in your replies.

[root@sam70 ~]# rpmbuild –rebuild xen-3.1.0-10.fc8.src.rpm
Installing xen-3.1.0-10.fc8.src.rpm
error: Failed build dependencies:
transfig is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
libidn-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
texi2html is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
SDL-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
curl-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
libX11-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
python-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
ghostscript is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
tetex-latex is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
gtk2-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
libaio-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
/usr/include/gnu/stubs-32.h is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
dev86 is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
gnutls-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64
openssl-devel is needed by xen-3.1.0-10.x86_64

Picking only one example from this list: why on earth does xen need gtk2-devel?

Let’s just grin, and do as requested, after all, it’s not as if I had a choice. After figuring out that /usr/include/gnu/stubs-32.h is actually provided by glibc-devel (and the src.rpm building machine didn’t know it…)

[root@sam70 ~]# yum install transfig libidn-devel texi2html SDL-devel curl-devel libX11-devel python-devel ghostscript tetex-latex gtk2-devel libaio-devel glibc-devel dev86 gnutls-devel openssl-devel
Loading “installonlyn” plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
updates 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
addons 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 341 kB 00:01
updates : ################################################## 817/817
Added 12 new packages, deleted 0 old in 1.03 seconds
[...]

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 76 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 116 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y

Now everything’s downloaded…

Transaction Check Error:
file /usr/share/man/man1/asn1parse.1ssl.gz from install of openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5 conflicts with file from package openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5
file /usr/share/man/man1/nseq.1ssl.gz from install of openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5 conflicts with file from package openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5
file /usr/share/man/man1/ocsp.1ssl.gz from install of openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5 conflicts with file from package openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5
file /usr/share/man/man1/smime.1ssl.gz from install of openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5 conflicts with file from package openssl-0.9.8b-8.3.el5

That’s actually due to openssl-devel package pulling in i386 and x86_64 versions of the openssl package, which happily conflict due to both of them shipping… the same manpages! I wonder how they manage to get automated builds working. (Solving that: rpm -ivh –force –nodeps /var/cache/yum/base/packages/openssl-* . Doesn’t look like chainsaw work at all…)

As a bonus, note how the error message doesn’t indicate at all that the two conflicting packages, even if they’re named the same, are not actually the same, given both of them are for different architectures.

Sigh. Thanks, RedHat.

I wish them good luck for the future.

Anyway, we now had the possibility to remove this dependancy without removing the feature, as the GTK developers added a new API, GtkPrintOperation, to do printing. This is available with GTK+ 2.10 or greater.

We’ve waited a few monthes before implementing that, because their API is quite generic, and they didn’t provide a way for application developers to easily print a GtkTextBuffer — the GTK widget used texts spanning multiple lines. We thought it would be nice for a lot of application developers to be able to do that easily, and that it would spare them reimplementing the same thing again and again, in every app wanting print support.

I submitted the idea on their Bugzilla, but almost six monthes later with no activity at all on the bug, it’s quite clear that they don’t care.
So, Holger Berndt, one of our developers - author of the Notification plugin, the Perl plugin and the Synce plugin - decided to stop waiting, and implemented text printing of emails via GtkPrintOperation. His patch went into CVS, and the next day I added support for image printing, and a crappy preview. The next day again, Holger rewrote my preview code and turned it into a really nice preview. (Yes, one has to write the preview code, because the GTK developers decided it was better, by default, to do previews using “print-to-pdf-file and run Evince”, thus forcing a runtime dependancy on Evince.

Here’s the mandatory screenshot of the new preview:

So, I must say that even if GtkPrintOperation works fine, it feels half-done. The GTK developers did the bare minimum, in my opinion, to help application developers. We had to write 994 lines of code to implement that, and other people will write other 1000 lines of code to do the same thing…

• Notification icon - Trayicon since March 2003, plus the Notification plugin since March 2006
• Missing attachment warning - Since Attachwarner, November 2006
• “Magic Space Bar” - ! … Since the start of the project :)
• Sort by thread date - Since two monthes ;)
• Finding the timezone without asking - Since the start of the project
• Actually learn spams to SpamAssassin - Since February 2006

Evolution seems to get better !

GPL3, tags, some little new features (like LDAP write-support for attributes), speed optimisations, lots of improvements for the Maemo platforms, important fixes for Windows, and much more…

Try it :)

Surprinsingly enough, the next morning you make it to the kitchen without your cat in your feet as usual, and ten minutes later as it’s still not around, it’s becoming evident that it’s not at home anymore - Cowboy never disappears. You don’t know whether he jumped from the window, or whether he fell - let’s suppose he fell, because 10 meters is too high for a cat to decide to jump. Luckily he fell on grass, and weighing only 2.5 kilograms, he probably had no problem to get a soft landing.

You’re starting to worry about your one year old cat that knows nothing about the outside, the city, the dogs, the other cats, the cars, you spend hours looking for it in the vicinity, print out eighty “lost” posters, paste them all over the place, and wait for the evening, the calm and fresh hours, to go back and look for your cat everywhere, in every garden, under every parked car, inside every unlocked cellar, discussing with nice neighbours who, unfortunately, didn’t see your cat but hope you’ll find it back.

A few people call you because they’ve seen your poster and may have found your cat, but each time, it’s not yours. You keep seeing these cats everywhere, but they’re not your cat. A sick coward with an hidden caller ID calls you to tell you your cat’s dead, you can almost hear the laugh in the asshole’s voice, and you don’t believe him, and you don’t believe such people can exist.
Every night you spend two hours looking around, each time finding nothing.

Five days later, going to work after one more quick look around, you’re starting to get your hopes a little bit higher - he’s probably hungry now, maybe less scared? Maybe he’ll try to get home this evening? A few minutes before noon, someone calls you to tell he found a dead cat resembling yours, but this guy you believe, because he sounds annoyed for you, and you know it’s your cat that’s been ran over by a car before he finished reading the tattoo.

Here they are, patiently Gimped by Clo to make them better :)

Congratulations to Laure and Antoine!

After installing Ubuntu 7.04, I’m glad to say that most of the things work:

• CPU scaling,
• video (DRI and XV),
• sound (although the controls are weird, pluging headphones doesn’t cut the sound to the speaker),
• SD card reader
• Wifi (Atheros chipset)
• Wired network

What doesn’t work out of the box:

• Playing multimedia content (mp3s, DVDs). Not only the default media player is the total failure named Totem-gstreamer, but also, due to software patents (which are illegal in my country, last time I checked), I had to apt-get lots of stuff from the multiverse repository, and even run a script to get libdvdcss installed. Now, Totem still doesn’t play DVDs, because it “can’t find a mountpoint for /dev/scd0″ (!? since when does one need to mount video DVDs?), but I can’t care less, as I use MPlayer, Ogle and Rhythmbox for the mp3s.
• Sound keys (mute, down, up): I had to modify my .Xmodmap to add them.
• S3 sleep (aka Suspend to Ram): I had to modify the kernel boot options (add acpi_sleep=s3bios), modify the settings in /etc/default/acpi-support, and hack around /etc/acpi/**/* with a chainsaw. I can send a tar.gz to anyone who wants it, but I’m not publishing anything as they are ugly hacks. Unfortunately, after 4 hours of going to sleep/rebooting/ad nauseum, I’m not in the mood to clean the stuff and submit it. I know, that’s bad.

What still doesn’t work:

• Brightness keys, CRT/LCD key: They seem to be handled by ACPI as they don’t generate any event. Sadly, looking at the sony_acpi and sony_laptop kernel modules’ source reveals that they use GHKE to get these keys’ events, and in my disassembled DSDT, I can’t find any mention of GHKE. Probably Sony changed the method. I think I’ll try to hack on that from time to time…

Even if the Windows Vista Home Premium that came preinstalled only survived 5 minutes (the time for me to read and laugh at the perverse EULA and click “Hell, no!”), it’s a good thing that Vista exists. It has two advantages:

• It forces vendors to ship laptops, even low-cost ones, with at least 1GB of memory. So I can enjoy 1GB of memory, of which 850MB are free just after boot. Thanks to XFCE and Claws Mail ;)
• It forces vendors to make correct DSDT tables, as Microsoft decided “enough with stupid crashes due to stupid ACPI implementations”. It’s the first time I’ve seen iasl end up with “Compilation complete. 0 Errors, 1 Warnings, 0 Remarks, 33 Optimizations”. Previously the error count was around 50 with my ASUS…

I’ll let you guess what Sony replied to me when I asked for the refund of Vista and Microsoft Works. Some things change slowly…

• 10 days ago I’ve been to Anne and Erwan’s wedding. Long trip, but great time, I was happy to share this moment with them and to meet half of #mandrivafr in the process :-)
• last week, holidays at Clo’s parents’ new place, where I helped her father with his move. Lots of real-world-hacking, lots of fun, and a good way to empty the mind…
• this week, Claws Mail 2.10.0 has been released, with lots of improvements. CVS already has new features that had been asked for a few times, tagging and sorting by thread date.
• this week-end, my little sister’s wedding with William :-)
• and next week, I should become the happy owner of a Nokia n800, thanks to Guido Rudolphi ! That will, hopefully, allow me to better test and improve Claws’ Maemo port…

Total: 100 nodes…

Expulsion de réfugiés politiques malencontreuses:
http://www.educationsansfrontieres.org/spip.php?article4833

Big brother awards 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006:
http://bigbrotherawards.eu.org/spip.php?page=recherche&recherche=sarkozy
en particulier:
Loi sur la sécurité intérieure: fichage ADN généralisé:
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/societe/216680.FR.php
http://bigbrotherawards.eu.org/Nicolas-Sarkozy-ministre-de-l.html?var_recherche=sarkozy
Interdiction de diffusion d’images de violence par un non-journaliste:
http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=231

Rapports Amnesty International sur la France en 2005/2006:
Violences policières:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/FRAEUR210072005?open&of=FRA-FRA
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/FRAEUR210012005?open&of=FRA-FRA
Liberté d’expression:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/FRAEUR210092006?open&of=FRA-FRA

Loi DADVSI, criminalisation du téléchargement:
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/informatique/0,39040745,39368491,00.htm

Propos innéistes polémiques:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,36-892092@51-823374,0.html

J’ai essayé d’éviter la propagande et de ne lier que vers des faits.