checksums
I learned to appreciate the value of the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) algorithm in my 8-bit, 300 baud file transferring days. If the CRC of the local file matched the CRC stored in the file (or on the server), I had a valid download. I also learned a little bit
captchas
An eagle-eyed CodeProject reader posted a comment to my ASP.NET CAPTCHA Server Control article pointing out one French developer’s very thorough attempts to defeat common CAPTCHA techniques. He compares lots of visual CAPTCHAs side by side and comments on their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the “best” CAPTCHAs
security
My personal turning point on the importance of managed code was in September 2001, when the NIMDA worm absolutely crushed our organization. It felt like a natural disaster without the “natural” part – the first notable port 80 IIS buffer overrun exploit. We got literally zero work done that day, and
security
I stumbled across an interesting article outlining how to beat the MSDN visual CAPTCHA algorithm with some .NET code. Unfortunately, the author (a Microsoft MVP) demonstrated his “crack” by testing it on the blogs of other MVPs: (if you were one of the 94 people i comment spammed) sorry about
technology trends
Next week, millions of college students and young professionals will head home for the Thanksgiving holidays. We’ll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and... Please. Let's be frank. We are going home to
asp.net
I finally bit the bullet and formatted my ASP.NET CAPTCHA server control as a CodeProject article. This version of the control has a few significant improvements over the last version: * Optimized with use of HttpModule and Cache objects * Removed ViewState for Captcha text (this isn’t secure, doh) * Added
software development concepts
Here’s a data point supporting my hypothesis that users will jump through any hoops to get things for free as in beer. It’s the SourceForge top downloads list: Seven of the ten top downloads are pure p2p file sharing clients. The other three directly relate to media ripping.
security
Microsoft gets blamed for a lot of security problems, and for the most part, they deserve it. There’s no excuse for the irresponsible “on by default” policy that resulted in so many vulnerable Windows 2000 IIS installations. That’s why Nimda was so devastating. Windows 2003 has a great
security
This Slate article highlights an interesting statistic: A few years ago, Microsoft set up the Windows Error Reporting Service to help find out where crashes come from. After a Windows application – or your whole PC – shuts down, a box pops up asking you to send a confidential error report. Using