Hack is the new Magic

It's pretty likely that you will be a subject of scorn and ridicule if you explain things you don't understand as "magical", "mystical", or acts of God. So in the technology realm it seems that popular media uses "hack" in place of "magic". I've started using the following word replacements when reading online "news':

• hack = magic
• nerd = witch
• geek = wizard
• cyber = medieval
• code = incantation
• jailbreak = dark magic
• DRM = white magic
• enhance = magnify

It really makes reading the online "news" more magical!

Quick PuTTY registry backup from the command line

Here is some strung together windows commands to backup PuTTY registry keys:

@echo off
For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%a-%%b) For /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ("%TIME%") do (set mytime=%%a%%b)

echo Backing up PuTTY registry to .\PuTTY-sessions-%mydate%_%mytime%.reg regedit /e .\PuTTY-sessions-%mydate%_%mytime%.reg HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions

Hope that works for you.

Manually add libdvdcss.dll to Handbrake on 64-bit Windows 7

I was looking for a process that would allow someone to manually add  libdvdcss.dll to a 32-bit Handbrake version 0.9.6 install on 64-bit Windows 7.  After a bit of web searching the process that seems to work for many is:
1. Download GStreamer WinBuilds v0.10.6 GPL (x86) (GStreamer-WinBuilds-GPL-x86.msi ) from OSSBuild Downloads.
2. Install GStreamer.
3. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.6\bin
4. Copy libdvdcss-2.dll to C:\Program Files (x86)\Handbrake
5. Rename libdvdcss-2.dll to libdvdcss.dll

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Check Handbrake Windows 7 64-Bit DVD Ripping for a 64-bit oriented guide.

Digital Curation / Digital Asset Management TTPs for digital forensics artifacts

Started looking into Digital Curation / Digital Asset Management techniques, tactics and procedures.  I’m mostly interested in curating and preserving digital forensics artifacts -- hard drive images, memory images, network trace captures, event log files, etc.—to support team oriented forensics analysis and annotation of large scale digital corpora.  I prefer to use open source technologies. Fortunately for me, professional digital archivists are already working the issues!

• There is a  list of candidate technologies at the Open Source Digital Asset Management page. 
• The Digital Curation Exchange provides a searchable resource directory. 
• Also,  Leslie Johnston from the  Library of Congress posted a short  list of  tools for digital curation.

The Council on Library and Information Resources provides an overview of the challenges in their December 2010 report  titled “Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections”.  A bit on the lighter side…the “Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report” from IDEALS investigates preservation of video games and interactive fiction.

Netzob–Reversing protocols

Just saw Netzob on free(code) today.  It looks like it combines protocol format recovery (vocabulary) and control flow recovery as automaton.  They use grammar inference (specifically Angluin L*)  to generate a modified Mealy machine.  Very cool!  I previously did some work inferring protocol control flow as FSM  using a few GI algorithms.  I’m off to the netzob code repository to have a look…

Storage Virtualization for home use

I have several odd size SATA drives that I might be able to put back to work…so I’m looking for a storage virtualization system.  At the moment it looks like Windows 8 Storage Spaces or the Linux based Greyhole might be the best fit for my home use scenario.  Greyhole is the storage pooling system used in Amahi.

IQEmu–Launch Windows apps in a VirtualBox sandbox on Linux host.

IQEmu launches  Windows applications in a virtualized sandbox on Linux hosts.  Currently works best with VirtualBox for the virtualization backend.  Source is available via github.