Memoirs of a Roadie

Where The Birds Always Sing

Posted on 4th April 2008

Peter N M Hansteen

This week I was at The UKUUG 2008 Spring Conference, where I gave two talks on testing. While I was there I met Peter N M Hansteen. The name didn't ring any bells, and it was only when I was in conversation with Peter that he happened to drop the snippet of information that he was part of Bergen LUG, who implemented RFC1149.

Okay for most people that probably doesn't mean that much, but for real geeks this is one of the guys that implemented RFC1149!

So what is RFC1149? It's full title is "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", which also goes by the acronym of CPIP ... Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol. Yes you read that right Carrier Pigeon. There was a later revision of the RFC which allowed for Sparrowhawks, but in 2001 Bergen LUG took it upon themselves to attempt a practical experiment to prove the RFC1149 actually worked. You can see all the photos and reports of the event, to which they invited Alan Cox along as an impatial witness, on their website. Peter can be seen in this picture, on the far left.

The reason I know all this, is that in the first version of my Understanding Malware talk, I used it as a humous aside. Amusingly, Peter did a talk about Spam and Malware at the UKUUG conference. It's a small world :)

Incidentally my photos for the UKUUG 2008 Spring Conference are now online. Click the links below:

• UKUUG 2008 Spring Conference - Day One
• UKUUG 2008 Spring Conference - Day Two
• UKUUG 2008 Spring Conference - Day Three
  

From Russia Infected

Posted on 6th March 2008

Yesterday MessageLabs got a mentioned on the BBC News site, under the title of Infective Art. The Metro Newspaper in the UK also ran with the story, Cyber crime art revealed.

I'm currently touring the UK with a presentation entitled Understanding Malware, which takes the six types of malware, and using the MessageLabs "Know Your Enemy" campaign images, explains a little more about what they are. The presentation has gone down very well so far and there have been some healthy discussions afterwards, with attendees trying to understand how we can get better at getting rid of malware threats from the inbox. It's unlikely to happen altogether any time soon, but with companies like MessageLabs on the case we are making it harder for the malware to get through.

I shall be taking the presentation to more parts of the UK, so if you have a user group that might be interested, please feel free to get in touch and invite me along. Note that the presentation is not a programming language or operating system talk, and is more about technology and social engineering. I shall be submitting it to LUGRadio Live, YAPC::NA and YAPC::Europe this year, so if I don't make it to your local user group, hopefully you'll be able to make one of those conferences. As an added bonus I also have some freebie giveaways for anyone who can answer the questions during my persentation, courtesy of MessageLabs :)

Happy Home

Posted on 8th January 2008

There's a question that has crossed my mind on occasion, but I've never been able to find an answer. Even Wikipedia draws a blank. Someone out there must have a story, although in all likelihood verifying whether it's the right one is another matter. The question is actually in two parts, and while the first might be possible to answer, the second is probably lost in midsts of time.

Why was 127.0.0.1 chosen as the IP address for localhost, and who chose it?