Binary reverse engineering advice requested
I have a linux-amd64 binary from some random vendor that probably does some useful stuff but I'd like to convince myself that it doesn't include any glaringly obvious backdoors. The vendor seems like a juicy target for supply chain compromise, so while I think they're probably not malicious I can't say the same about their deliverables.
I figure I should open it up in radare2 and take a look, that way I also get a chance to learn more about a tool that's been on my "should really learn that" list for a long time.
Got a pointer to a tutorial, book, or video that'll walk me through the UX?
Should I be using another UI or tool than radare2?
Boosts welcome!
@pagrus so noisebridge is moving, and they have some ISP gear on the roof that needs to move. Can you rustle up some monkey attention? They apparently haven't had the most success getting things scheduled via the normal channels :)
@vortex_egg happy for the follow but I'm mostly over at @eqe , feel free to follow there too if you like
covid, research
Source: Los Alamos National Labs
COVID 19 predictions by state.
An amazing graph made the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, look up your state:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Got a GPU wu overnight but apparently the OpenCL kernel doesn't like my Radeon, yay a fun bug to root cause! (Not sarcasm, I love having a broken thing with a worthwhile motivation to understand it)
Wifi nonsense, security?
This morning the wifi+docsis router provided by my expensive "business class" isp suddenly doesn't have wpa2 enabled anymore. The ssid is the same as yesterday, just unencrypted classic wifi rather than wpa2.
Haven't checked the nameplate yet but iirc it's fcc cert says it's a cisco product (the front panel branding is comcast).
Is this isp fuckery or is this some malware hitting that router config command injection bug that made the rounds yesterday?
Sad and ironic that Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib" is essentially inaccessible (out-of-print, existing copies are expensive collectors items and the author refuses to allow it to be distributed electronically) to a generation of programmers who need it most.
Medium article, Rust
https://notamonadtutorial.com/sonic-a-minimalist-alternative-to-elasticsearch-written-in-rust-7f3612ecb47b?gi=9f73377e5cf0
#Rust again
Rust is the shiznit! I'm glad people are using Rust. We're all tired of techbros but I don't really care as long as it's free software.
The repo is here: https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic (MPLv2)
The Google+NASA quantum supremacy paper (in early preprint version as leaked from the NTRS server) is available at https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/09/here-is-the-quantum-supremacy-using-a-programmable-superconducting-processor-paper.html
And Scott Aaronson has reasonably balanced blog post about it at https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4317
rms, resignation
RMS has resigned as FSF president and from the board of directors: https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns
Work mumbling 10 months in
Wrote a few lines of code yesterday and today that might actually go to production ... It's been a while, the last 6 months has been all data analysis and designing tests and debugging interactions between vendor subsystems and advising other teams rather than coding. Bit odd for title of "software engineer"...
Not how I expected this job to go but one does the work that is needful. Review season is just past and everything I got was glowing so I guess it was the right call.
aka @eqe. still not sure I don't see why my son shouldn't grow up to be queen of perijovian space.