What do you get when you spend over $1500 to rent a moving container?

Not much except a continued hassle from the 800-Get-ASAM folks

Shitty

Ass

Moving

is what it stands for.

The 800 Get a Sam website advertises”

SAM TAKES THE STRESS OUT OF MOVING AND STORAGE

Moving across town or across the country? Need extra storage space? Meet sam, the ultimate portable storage container.

sam containers are approx. 16′ long, 8′ wide and 8′ high, holding the contents of a typical 1,500-square-foot home (basement, garage, patio and attic items may require an additional sam).

sam solves your moving and storage needs, and does it for less. If you’ll do the loading, sam will do the rest – pickup and delivery included.  The safe, secure, simple storage and moving solution – It’s sam.

Let’s start with my experience.

We ordered a container – only to have the company miss their delivery date.   They arrived the next day (after 5 PM) with a unit that was soaking wet inside and with a broken door.

The driver stated – well the door came open while I was driving down the highway – so I pulled over and used a hammer to get it shut.  Sorry – only unit I have… you will have to deal.

It took over 30 calls (YES THIRTY) and we finally got another unit 4 days later… (mind you the entire moving crew we had to help – was long gone doing what they should in a work week – working)

When the unit arrives at our new home – The driver knocks down the lines leading to the house – refuses to place the container how we can best unload it – and drives off.

So – explain to me how did SAM help solve my moving and storage needs?  -  If you consider the safe, secure, and simple storage / moving solution including providing a unit that is completely soaked, doors that will not close, ripping up the driveway (at both locations) and also knocking down wires safe and convienent – let me see you a bridge that goes from London to Brooklyn for $1500

My vote for 1800-Get A Sam is Get a different Carrier.

---

Linux NULL pointer dereference due to incorrect proto_ops initializations
————————————————————————-

In the Linux kernel, each socket has an associated struct of operations
called proto_ops which contain pointers to functions implementing various
features, such as accept, bind, shutdown, and so on.

If an operation on a particular socket is unimplemented, they are expected
to point the associated function pointer to predefined stubs, for example if
the “accept” operation is undefined it would point to sock_no_accept(). However,
we have found that this is not always the case and some of these pointers are
left uninitialized.

This is not always a security issue, as the kernel validates the pointers at
the call site, such as this example from sock_splice_read:

static ssize_t sock_splice_read(struct file *file, loff_t *ppos,
struct pipe_inode_info *pipe, size_t len,
unsigned int flags)
{
struct socket *sock = file->private_data;

if (unlikely(!sock->ops->splice_read))
return -EINVAL;

return sock->ops->splice_read(sock, ppos, pipe, len, flags);
}

But we have found an example where this is not the case; the sock_sendpage()
routine does not validate the function pointer is valid before dereferencing
it, and therefore relies on the correct initialization of the proto_ops
structure.

We have identified several examples where the initialization is incomplete:

- The SOCKOPS_WRAP macro defined in include/linux/net.h, which appears correct
at first glance, was actually affected. This includes PF_APPLETALK, PF_IPX,
PF_IRDA, PF_X25 and PF_AX25 families.

- Initializations were missing in other protocols, including PF_BLUETOOTH,
PF_IUCV, PF_INET6 (with IPPROTO_SCTP), PF_PPPOX and PF_ISDN.

——————–
Affected Software
————————

All Linux 2.4/2.6 versions since May 2001 are believed to be affected:

- Linux 2.4, from 2.4.4 up to and including 2.4.37.4
- Linux 2.6, from 2.6.0 up to and including 2.6.30.4

——————–
Consequences
———————–

This issue is easily exploitable for local privilege escalation. In order to
exploit this, an attacker would create a mapping at address zero containing
code to be executed with privileges of the kernel, and then trigger a
vulnerable operation using a sequence like this:

/* … */
int fdin = mkstemp(template);
int fdout = socket(PF_PPPOX, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);

unlink(template);

ftruncate(fdin, PAGE_SIZE);

sendfile(fdout, fdin, NULL, PAGE_SIZE);
/* … */

Please note, sendfile() is just one of many ways to cause a sendpage
operation on a socket.

Successful exploitation will lead to complete attacker control of the system.

——————-
Mitigation
———————–

Recent kernels with mmap_min_addr support may prevent exploitation if
the sysctl vm.mmap_min_addr is set above zero. However, administrators
should be aware that LSM based mandatory access control systems, such
as SELinux, may alter this functionality.

It should also be noted that all kernels up to 2.6.30.2 are vulnerable to
published attacks against mmap_min_addr.

——————-
Solution
———————–

Linus committed a patch correcting this issue on 13th August 2009.

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=e694958388c50148389b0e9b9e9e8945cf0f1b98

——————-
Credit
———————–

This bug was discovered by Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes of the Google
Security Team.

–
————————————-
tavisosdf.lonestar.org | finger me for my gpg key.
——————————————————-

i4i- a Toronto company has been awarded $290 Million dollars in damages from Microsoft – from a Texas Judge.  Furthermore the Judge tells Microsoft to stop selling any Word Products.

This all comes down to an issue with XML coding -and a patent that i4i owns.   The All About Microsoft blog explains in more detail the Custom XML issue at the heart of the court decision.

I have been a mac user now for a little over 1 year – going on 2 I guess.

I have been happy thus far with my experience – however for 2 days I have not been able to power on my macbook pro.

Kinda frustrating.

I mozied on over to the apple website and simply typed into the search tool my serial number and then – cant boot – I am given a simple procedure http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411

Voila – it worked very well  I am pretty pleased that the support channel online works so well. Now if I could only say the same for HP and that ML350 Server we are having issues loading an OS onto.

This past June nMAP 5 was released.  NMap has come a long way since I first laid my hands on it – and its nothing like it was day 1 – thats for sure.

Nwo with NCat – Ndiff – Zenmap and even NSE – I think any serious IT professional would have this in their toolbox.

the release of Nmap 5.0. Nmap has come a long way since I first used it and it’s growing to be more powerful each and every day. With such powerful addons as NSE, Ncat, Ndiff and Zenmap, Nmap is a must-have for your toolbox.

It is 9:15 AM and not one tweet into my iPhone, on my Facebook - welcoming me back to another day in the world of Chaos and sin…

I decide to tweet – and voila – an API Error – i visit the site – and its offline -

I thought it was amazing that the Twitisphere just up and left the planet for some time – dark – dead – doornailed -

We use twitter for notifications as well as e-Mail and SMS  and even telephone – but I was taken back when I did not get a tweet about twitter being offline.

I actually had to visit their blog -   I felt so 2008!

At roughly 9:00am (EDT) this morning, the Twitisphere fell silent (or at least significantly fewer twitters).

Twitter’s blog announced the popular site was under DDoS.

For all those using CentOS – like VineHosting … We are happy with this resolution:

The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward.

The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS distributions.

We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed upon issues.

More information will follow soon.

Original Letter

Well – I have now had the iPhone for a little over 24 hours.
I am quite impressed – but I would really love to have the Google Voice application.

I think it is sad that Apple is blocking the app.
your thoughts?