For those who haven’t read this yet, I would recommend you to do so especially to those who possess the Nokia Series60 platform either 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.1 devices. It seems that your phone SMS/MMS capability will be disrupted or affected and most of the time the target will be the vulnerabilities that exist in Symbian 8 through 9.2. Even though other phone’s functionality will not be affected, still in this video it shows that even the phone switched off due to this hack.

So.. for further reading, just visit the Darkreading.com here or straight to the advisory produced by Mr.Tobias Engel. There is a list of all the phone models affected by this hack. That’s why I’m using Sony Ericsson though lol

Info on S60 platform can be found here

HANDS OFF IJN PLEASE…

Finally, I’ve received my GIAC GCIH Certificate this morning. The best thing is GIAC took all the trouble to make sure that any GIAC certification holder not only receive their certificate but also received their respective certificates in frame. Well I did see one of my colleagues CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) certificate and to be honest and no offense to their holders, it looks like what Nisha’s got when she graduated from her kindergarden school.

Now my GCIH certificate is on display temporarily along with my books and other precious possession on my table at the office. Kudos to GIAC for their effort.

Hopefully this shud be a good indication of better things to come in 2009

Ahh… 2009. Another new year and perhaps thousands of people will start blurting their so called new year resolutions etc. Well I did stop making any new year resolution many many years ago because never once I managed to fulfill my so called new year resolution. LoL. It seems that on each of these new years, there is always another unfulfilled resolutions piling up on my head. So my last resolution is the only resolution that I managed to fulfill which is ” To stop making any new year resolution”. Anyway, despite this circumstances, I still want to wish all of you a Happy New Year. May 2009 be prosperous and peaceful to all of us. (I’ve celebrated my new year last Monday though)

New Wallet

Wifey loves creating surprises to me. She surprised me by giving me a wrist watch (which is missing this morning) during our first Anniversary dinner. Then she gave me a pen engraved with both of our names on it (which is nowhere to be found either). Another surprise was when she successfully managed her online business as well ( Initially I have doubt and take it for granted when wifey informed me of her intention). But the best surprise of all was the news and the birth of our naughty twins. I tried my best to surprise her but failing miserably especially when I tried to send the flowers to her during her birthday. The company tasked to send the flower called wifey because they didn’t found her old office. Duh..

Anyway last night, she surprised me with a new Coach wallet. OK I did mention to her that it would be awkward for me to wear any item that has Coach as its brand but then I would be stupid to reject that gift eh?

So this wallet is lil bit odd and non conservative on its design. It has 3 compartments and the place to keep the money is in the middle of the wallet. I found it lil bit awkward especially when I want to retrieve my money. I just dun have the exact idea on how to hold the wallet properly. Maybe it will take some time to familiar with this design.

Need to flip up the other compartment to access the “money compartment”

When every compartment is in place, it just like other wallet. Don’t look at my marriage card eh..

Anyway I am so grateful to wifey for the gift. This is one of the reasons why I married wifey hahaha

p/s: So guys, if you have plan to give your spouse/girlfriend/mistress/”scandalous partner”/ dark lover(kekasih gelap) one or more branded handbags or other items (yeah shoes as well. My mom bought her new Clarks shoes from wifey), you can visit wifey’s blog at http://mylilshoppe.blogspot.com

Anyway, saying my name won’t guarantee that you will get any discount though but you can try hehehe

Another p/s: This is my 500th post. What a way to end 2008 and to begin 2009 with 501st post. Not bad for a lazy bum like me eh

Happy New Year…

After two nice weeks of holiday, I am back at the office today. But not before me and wifey send Iman to the long awaited Kindergarden class and collecting Nisha’s last semester Report Card (and also purchasing her exercise books and other school items for next year - which is around the corner btw).

Anyway, what a way to enlighten my first day at work when I received an email from one of our clients.

” Dear *Ehem

We’ve discovered that there are two events that required immediate attention from our firewall logs.

Today 4:29:09 Firewall_ID SYN flood! From External_IP:Ephemeral_Port to web_server:http_over_ssl port, proto TCP (zone Untrust). Occurred 1 times.

Today 4:29:08 Firewall_ID SYN flood! From Another_External_IP:Ephemeral_Port to Web_Server:http_over_ssl port, proto TCP (zone Untrust). Occurred 1 times.

Did you guys detect these events or not? If not then please explain why? ”

I think I shud continue my vacation though…

http://smu.edu/newsinfo/stories/oldest-christmas-card.asp

I would like to wish the readers who celebrate Christmas a Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you. May this day becomes the start of prosperous, harmony and peaceful years for all of us.

Take care and happy Holidays guys and gals

Image source : http://www.cvconline.org/

As you know, for these two weeks, I’ve became not only the father of my children but also as the mother as well. Wifey tried her best to be with us in any given chance, in fact she came here last weekend to spend her time with the kids and of cause with her lovely, handsome, and nice husband Anyway, today we ran out of Adam and Ariff essential item which is their daily, routine milk. I thought perhaps I could go to the store and purchase another tin tomorrow but when I look at the milk container, I think it wont last beyond tonite.

So to avoid my boys crying unnecessarily, I grab the car keys and head straight to the nearest store (around 6 km from the house). The car belongs to my mom and as my parents along with my sister are having their deserved holiday at Chiengmai, Thailand, I have the liberty to use mom’s car and along with it I also have to hear my mom’s favourite radio channel. No Hitz, no Mix, no Light and Easy. Just local radio stations. So as I’m too lazy to make any changes or look for my favourite station’s frequency, I just tag along and listen whatever came out from the speakers.

During the news, it was reported that during a meeting with “ulama’s and umara’s” in KL, our Deputy Prime Minister who is also the Finance Minister repeating what the 2nd Finance Minister has told the Malaysian few times ago that our beloved country will not affected with the global economy crisis next year. BUT immediately after that, another news reporting that few companies are expected to lay off some 1500 to 2000 workers some time next year (2009). The minister who responsible in this matter was reported giving some stern warning to these companies that they have to follow all the procedures for the retrenchment exercise.

Doesn’t it sound lil bit strange where at one part the news said that we will not be affected by the economic crisis or in other words, nothing to be worried as these economic meltdown/crisis will have no impact on our own economy. But in other part, few companies have plan on laying of few thousands workers in 2009. Is there something that these companies know that we didn’t?

Hmm I guess perhaps this is the time for me to open back my thick, Longman published Economics book. Maybe I can learn something from there.

p/s: My colleague who worked in one of the largest banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia told me that currently they are preparing for the expected negative economic impact on KSA economy due to the current economy climate which expected to reveal its truly ugly face in 2009. Nothing to worry eh

con·do·lence
(kən-dō’ləns)  Pronunciation Key

1. Sympathy with a person who has experienced pain, grief, or misfortune: paid a visit of condolence to the grieving family. See Synonyms at pity.
2. An expression or declaration of such sympathy.

noun
- an expression of sympathy with another’s grief; “they sent their condolences”

My former colleague informed me that my CSO’s father passed away this evening. As my CSO’s late father’s house is nearby my father’s, my former colleague fetch me from my father’s house and went straight ahead to visit my CSO.

We went there as friends who tried to give at least some moral support in this tragic moment for him and his family as well. One of my colleagues drove straight from KL to Kuantan to pay a visit of condolence. Even though there’s nothing much we can do but we tried our best to lend a moral and spiritual support in this testing time.

To my CSO,

“Semoga roh Allahyarham di tempatkan di kalangan orang yg soleh dan beriman”

Al-Fatihah.

I’ve mentioned many times that the three key elements in managing your network security is Human, Process and Technology. Once you have the right combination and properly managed these elements, I think some how some way you’ll be OK. Anyway, just like the Risk Equation where risk = threat x vulnerability x asset value, the most difficult factor to manage is the one that related to human. You can evaluate, identify, perform feasibility studies on the technology that can be implemented in your network where hopefully this technology can be fully optimized in its usage with an acceptable cost. For process, we can follow, identify the acceptable standards which can be the guidelines or benchmark of our own acceptable usage policies and regulation. How about human?

I used to be an instructor at two colleges in Kuala Lumpur. From that experience I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how detailed, how interesting, how wonderful the teaching methods and material as if the students don’t have the right attitude to learn, those things will be useless. Some of them even have the guts to tell me that they came to that college because they HAVE to and not because they WANT to.

I encountered the same attitude when I was given the task to enhance and beef up our current operations. That of cause left me puzzled and wondering why they want to be in this industry at first place. I know that most of my counterparts are facing the same problem. This mean that I need to devise something which will hopefully change this scenario and perhaps improving our services as well. But again it comes to the individual wills and resolution.

What should I do? Any ideas?

p/s: One of my colleagues is taking over one of the units in our department and from my observation, he is the best candidates to take that position. As a support unit, I will try my best to assist him in performing his tasks which I know are not that easy and very critical. In fact if I was instructed to take over that unit, I am more than happy to decline that position. Honest. So to “abg” you have my full support and I wish you a very good luck. Lets work together and make things happen.

As a human, I always have the softer side of me. I always fond of kids, small kids that is. I can’t stand seeing any kids crying. It either overwhelmed me with pitty and sadness or it will drives me crazy (especially when they are crying in the middle of the nite.. Hahaha). My tears nearly rained down from my eyes when I held my newborn child for the first time when I performed the obligatory “azan” and “iqamah” because everytime I recited those holy verse to their ears, they will look straight into my eyes. Another one is when they call me “papa” for the first time. Again I have to hold back my tears when hearing that word coming from their mouth for the first time. I felt it when Nisha called me “papa”, same feeling when Iman uttered that word and yesterday when Adam called me “papa”. I think my friend Mr. Adli from CyberSecurity put it nicely when he commented,

“That must have felt better than Pwn1ng a box or finishing your slides 2 minutes before the MC calls your name to take the stage Priceless! Congratulations bro! “

Yeah, you are right Mr.Adli. It is a Priceless moment

MCKK ‘93 TT Session
Last Tuesday, me, my bedmate in 1989-the blogging doctor, Mr Faisal Fauzi or fondly known as Pogymn and Mr Taufik Ali had this ad hoc TT session thanks to swift organization by the blogging doctor. Even though there was some venue changes but still it posed no problem to all of us. It always nice to see my former school mate, who are now grown up, married (some of them and congrats to my friend Qaiser for finally married last few weeks), has their own children to worry about and yes, some of the things can never be changed eh? We have a good discussion on current issues like the current economy, politics (of cause) and many others. Oh yeah, also I’ve been invited to a function this Saturday for re-establish the MCOBA for Kuantan branch this Saturday. So another get together event that I’m looking forward to attend.

IE 0-dayz.
I just read about this for quite some time. I get the news from the SANS handlers’ Diary and soon POCs, exploits published in various websites and in fact Microsoft have to produce out of band security patch for their IE. What happen if you ignore all the hoopla of these security fixes, patches, bulletins, announcement etc? It is your machine, your own WIMP OS and definitely your own Internet Explorer browser after all rite? Well if you choose to ignore these news, fixes, patches etc then the possibility of you to surrender the ownership of your machine to other is high. Yeah physically you still possess the hardware but then the behavior of the software will be dictated and determined by others that doesn’t required them to be there physically. How’s that? ;)  So if you guys still using IE (like wifey unfortunately :P) better read this news, update and patch your IE and the latest patch released by the Microsoft doesn’t replace the old ones, you need to have both of them installed together.

Too many things to do? Use alternative browser instead like one of my favourites, Mozila Firefox. In fact they’ve released the 3.0.5 version that fixes few security issues. You can read it more either from the Mozilla website or from Handler’s Diary. I’ve updated mine already.

MobWars

This is a game similar to Torn City but of cause with some differences as well. Actually this game is one of the application available in Facebook and I’ve been invited by my former boss, Mr Namesnaw to join his Mob in that game. I always try my best to resist this kind of temptation as the moment I involve this thing, it would be difficult for me to stop. I have a bad experience with Torn City btw. But then we are only human and tend to succumb to our weaknesses :P. There’s no day (or time in this case) that I would not plunge into this Mob Wars game. Now, the reason I browse to my facebook account is just because of Mob Wars LoL. Worst come to worst, maybe I can try this Facebook vulnerability to win eh ?