sheepy.org - sheepy goings on...

So it would appear that Debian "fixed" a problem in OpenSSL a few years ago. Unfortunately this "fix" has meant that they have had to release this security announcement.

Now this vulnerability is quite bad, so much so that Debian have stated the following:

It is strongly recommended that all cryptographic key material which has been generated by OpenSSL versions starting with 0.9.8c-1 on Debian systems is recreated from scratch. Furthermore, all DSA keys ever used on affected Debian systems for signing or authentication purposes should be considered compromised; the Digital Signature Algorithm relies on a secret random value used during signature generation.

Ben Laurie has posted a great blog entry as to why this so stupid. This quote from that entry sums the problem up nicely:

Secondly, if you are going to fix bugs, then you should install this maxim of mine firmly in your head: never fix a bug you don’t understand.

Another site that I've just added to my feed list.

Quite a few things on here I wasn't aware of such as:

find . -name 'file-*' -delete

is much faster than

find . -name 'file-*' -exec rm {} \;

although I need to test how it compares to:

find . -name 'file-*' | xargs rm


BASH Cures Cancer

So I've been playing with conky again and wanted it to check all my email accounts for new mail.

I found this script but I wanted to check multiple accounts and show the total mail count in my inbox.

After some hacking here is what I came up with... and yes I've removed the base64 encoding as it doesn't add any security what so ever!

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require "optparse"
require "net/imap"
#
# Parse options
#
def parse_options(args)

  # Hash to hold options
  options = Hash.new

  parser = OptionParser.new do |opts|

    opts.on('-H host', '--host host', 'Host') do |v|
      options[:host] = v
    end

    opts.on('-u user', '--user user', 'User') do |v|
      options[:user] = v
    end

    opts.on('-p password', '--password password', 'Password') do |v|
      options[:password] = v
    end

    opts.on('-h', '--help', 'Displays usage information') do
      puts opts
      exit 1
    end
  end

  # Parse Parameters
  begin
    parser.parse!(args)
  rescue OptionParser::ParseError => e
    puts "Parse Error: " + e
    puts parser.to_a
  end

  # Check for required params
  if (options.has_key?(:host) && options.has_key?(:user) && options.has_key?(:password))
    #
    # Return options
    #
    options
  else
    puts parser.to_a
    exit 1
  end

end
options = parse_options(ARGV)

#
# Lets check some mail!
#
imap = Net::IMAP.new(options[:host])
imap.login(options[:user], options[:password])

#
# Get total mail
#
status = imap.status("inbox", ["MESSAGES", "UNSEEN"])
puts "#{status['UNSEEN']}/#{status['MESSAGES']}"
imap.disconnect

Just found a few scripts that look like they will make the process of ripping a DVD somewhat easier (for backup purposes of course!)

• undvd
• dvd2mkv

  Although the 2nd one rips to Matroska format which can play on your phone :)

Might have actually found a theme I like for gvim :)

http://dengmao.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/vim-color-scheme-wombat/