hackinSTACK

I was all ready to publish an entry last night on how horrible most of the PCB design tools I’ve used are, when today I stumbled upon the new version of Cadsoft Eagle v5.0 and OH MY! did they ever fix alot of the headaches from before.

The interface has been polished up, non-standard buttons have been changed and functionality is much more intuitive. It still has its quirks from what I have seen, but the new version shows a real leap in their development of the product. I was able to finally put together some designs that had long sat on the shelf due to my inability to figure out certain bugs in either how the software was designed, or how I was trying to use it.

I strongly suggest going and checking it out. I will be publishing another longer article soon on some new things I’ve been working on and what functionality in the new version helped me accomplish those goals. Look for the info as soon as I can get them together…

I’ve learned recently that good security testing is all too often a shadow of a larger skillset - good debugging knowledge. Because of this I’ve been following many more of the blogs of individuals on the Windows debugging and advanced troubleshooting teams and learning more about the tools they use to peer deeply into applications and systems.

Two of the programs which come up often in their troubleshooting are WinDBG and Process Explorer. Having used each extensively over the last few months I noticed a cool new (to me at least) feature in Process Explorer tonight and thought I would share it - this is the DEP and ASLR status tags.

To enable the identification tabs right-click on the column headings in the main window. This brings up a menu which allows you to select the appropriate tags…

Now you can quickly identify running programs having these features enabled. This is very similar to the information from David Maynor’s LookingGlass utility. (whose link seems to come and go in my bookmarks)

I prefer to have less applications that are more universally powerful than having to download a hundred different software utilities, each with specialized tasks, but YMMV.

I will start this by saying I am no audiophile…

I am however, in search of a good audio experience across a wide range of listening preferences. (movies, television, some background music for the occasional house party, etc…) So last night I began my installation/upgrade of my home theater system. The first part consists of putting in new in-ceiling speakers. The condo came with the wiring already run for a surround system, which is pretty nice. But, without having heard a decent set of speakers in about 10 yrs I started by looking around at what was affordable and offered good quality.

(more…)