Trygve Vea is happy hacking :)

I’m 28 now.

Those people who invented the term “grownup” were weird. There’s no such thing.

With a lot of help from my friend Zerd, I finally managed to get bump mapping to work. I’ve been pondering on how bump mapping can be used with 2D graphics – and after playing around a bit, I don’t see any reason not to use this.

A built version for Windows can be downloaded here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1287557/bumptest.zip … The source code is included, and it builds fine on Linux. It also works just fine in wine if you don’t want to bother building it. The code is fairly minimal.

A couple of screenshots with light illumination from different sides; (NOTE: This looks better in motion)

When I started as a system administration at my old job, one of my first tasks was to help a consultant – from a company I won’t name – with their proprietary solution for “Secure Internet”. My workplace needed a secure way to download files, and their solution should cover all this… in various interpretations of “secure”.

The design was fairly simple:

1. Clients connect to a terminal server (being Citrix or RDP, it doesn’t really matter).
2. The Internet connected session can’t access the secure network, but is able to store files on a temporary home directory in the DMZ.
3. The files in the DMZ are picked up and transmitted by email to a special account.
4. On the MS Exchange server, a trigger reacts on incoming emails to this particular account, and then writes the attachment to the user’s home directory.
5. The user can access the downloaded files inside the secure network.

If we say that it’s acceptable for the user to deal with untrusted files downloaded from the Internet, this is a fair design. It does the job. However, this is not what I wanted to present to you. I think it’s more interesting to look at how the file-transfer is performed.

When the user saves his file at his temporary home directory in the DMZ, a scheduled job runs and picks up the file. The same job constructs an email formatted like this:

FROM: filelockaccount@acme.org
TO: filelockaccount@acme.org
SUBJECT: \\fileserver\home$\username\filelock\iloveyou.exe
ATTACHMENT: iloveyou.exe


On the Exchange server, the trigger picks up the email, and writes the attachment to the path defined in the subject. The Exchange server ran this job with administrative privileges.

To see whether this could be exploited, I used an Internet connected computer outside the network – just connected via ordinary ADSL. I made Outlook Express use the ISP’s SMTP-server, and made an email formatted like this:

FROM: filelockaccount@acme.org
TO: filelockaccount@acme.org
SUBJECT: \\somewebserver\c$\OMGLOLZ.txt
ATTACHMENT: OMGLOLZ.txt


A couple of minutes later, I could see OMGLOLZ.txt in the root of C:\ on somewebserver. We also tested whether we had access to potentially execute malicious code… and since the magic process on the Exchange server ran with administrative privileges, we definitely could.

Turns out the secure way of downloading files from the Internet could be used to compromise server security in the entire network.

The hole were patched shortly after, and I got my attaboy.

• Get better at drawing.
• Make a chiptune.
• Participate in more competitions, more often.
• Co-create a game with someone (compo or not, whatever – it’s for fun).
• Post more stuff on this blog.
• Release more code.
• Release more tutorials.
• Enjoy life more.

I drew a guy, he has weird proportions, but I’m happy with him. I didn’t attempt to create Cody from Final Fight, but I was thinking about his colors. I didn’t put a lot of work in it.

(Looking at the ambitious-level of my own goals, it’s easy to understand why I’m usually not happy with my own effort.)