English – Page 31 – May Contain Traces of Bolts

Old history

I am the current maintainer of OpenSSH for FreeBSD, and have been since 2002. I am also the author and maintainer of the PAM implementation used by FreeBSD, and of several of the accompanying PAM modules. Finally, I was a member of the FreeBSD Security Team for several years, served as Assistant Security Officer and Acting Security Officer, and authored or co-authored around 20 security advisories between 2002 and 2004.

I have been asked to comment on SecurityFocus advisories 7467 and 7482, regarding timing attacks against certain versions of OpenSSH that were distributed with FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x releases.

The short version is that no FreeBSD 4.x or 5.x release was ever vulnerable. Read on for the long version. Continue reading “Old history”

The Amazing Headless Mechanic

You have to admire the composition of this photograph, taking by a friend waiting for a ride home:

Me: “OK if I just change the fuel filter first, while the engine is cold? It’ll only take a minute or two…”

Her, to her boyfriend: “I’ll be a little late tonight…” Continue reading “The Amazing Headless Mechanic”

Ten years

That’s how long, to the day, I have been a FreeBSD committer.
Ten years seems like a long time when you write it down on paper, or say it out loud, or try to imagine who and where you will be in ten years’ time; but when I think back on my time as a FreeBSD committer, it’s hard to believe it’s really been that long.

The strangest part is seeing younger (or rather, more recently anointed) committers defer to me. I’m not the old tenured professor! I’m not the sage on the mountain! Look at phk, he’s the old fart, not me! I’m still a rookie! I practically haven’t done anything for the project! I mean, apart from libfetch, and pseudofs, and the PAM stack, and OpenSSH, and the Tinderbox, and stints as Bugmeister and Security Officer, and…

This is where my train of thoughts derails, when I realize how much I’ve actually done (although I don’t even come close to people like phk, jhb, or rwatson), and oh shit, it’s actually been ten years!

Update: when I told my wife about this, her immediate reaction was “and they say men can’t commit to anything…”

Oh, and another thing

I also forgot to mention that I replaced the stock steering wheel with a three-spoke leather sports steering wheel:

Yes, it’s an action shot, but in my defense, I was driving slowly and looking at the road instead of the camera, which is why the photo is crap :-) Continue reading “Oh, and another thing”

In the land of the blind…

Being seriously burnt out and in general need of Getting Away From It All, I drove out to my mother-in-law this afternoon. Not only is she an All-Around Nice Person, but she has a garage with a level concrete floor. When you own and maintain a fifteen-year-old car, you’d better have a garage with a level concrete floor, or know someone who does.

The main reason I needed a level concrete floor this time around is that today was the last day I could legally drive with studded winter tires, and it is much easier to change tires using a hydraulic floor jack on a level concrete floor than to do so using a mechanical screw jack on uneven asphalt. That, and my summer tires were actually in my mother-in-law’s garage…

I figured that while I was at it, I might as well put the car up on jack stands and change the rear right caliper bearer. The old caliper bearer was so deformed by rust that the brake pads were practically stuck. Continue reading “In the land of the blind…”