University Student....

Starting today, I am officially an University Student.

Had my first class today, and ya know what???

It feels good to sit in class again. I also got my new

laptop from the university. I had a little disagreement

with my laptop. At university, at the laptop desk, my

laptop was set-up with the university network. So

now I am using it at home, I tried to add my fingers

to the fingerscanner. It was complaining about some

security not enabled. It turned out, since I was trying

to add my fingers to an NT-domain account, I need to

connect to the university VPN first. Well, there was a

nice icon on my desktop, saying 'Connect to VPN'.

But trying to connect always failed.... It turned out,

I needed to use the Cisco VPN icon in the start menu

in stead.... well... then what is that icon doing on my

desktop.... so far for a pre-installed system. Well...

Lazarus was pre-installed. Nice... if you don't know

it, it's a FreePascal based RAD-IDE. I am developing

my BlaatScrobble Application in it anyways.

I am rambling again, am I. Anyways... so... today...

my first day at university and I got a new toy to

play with. A new laptop, that needs to be tamed.

Oooooh... I should stop writing this blaat now,

I got to do my homework ;)

BlaatSchaap Coding Projects

Untill Christmas, I have worked on the

website and I put it online just before

Christmas. The front page, the forums

and the photos have been improved.

Check http://www.blaatschaap.be

As I have one free month before university

starts, I have been coding a bit the past days.

I have continued coding on the new BlaatBot

project. I suppose I have mentioned my plans

for this bot before. Completely modular. All

functionality loaded into libraries. As a result,

there is more overhead then in my older bots,

loading the libraries and parsing the data

between them, but in the end, it's supposed

to be more flexible. So far, I think I have the

interfacing done, I hope, I won't run into

missing stuff, but for now, I think I got

all protocol features I need supported.

So, now I am working on the first major

module, integration of the bot with the

website. So far, it can login and logout.

Well, more stuff will be added soon, but

I have done enough coding for today again.

Working on the bot integration, I will have

to add some more XML APIs to the website.

When the bot has enough features, I will

focus on the website again.... or... well..

maybe I should take a look at the libre.fm

client project first....

Anyways, that' s it for now, thanks for

reading, cya next time.

Hijacking accounts... some thoughts

So, as you read in my previous post,

some of my accounts were hacked

last week. I recovered my access to

Facebook and Gmail, due the option

to recover your password.

I could not do this on my Last.FM and

SourceForge.net account, because the

attacker also changed my email address,

to make recovery impossible.

Since the attacked accounts shared the

same password, I changed passwords on

other sites that share the same password.

Some sites, like ning.com, did send me a

confirmation about the changed password.

I think this is a good option, to send a

confirmation about changes. I am thinking

to add this feature to BlaatSchaap.be as well

next update.

I am just thinking. If the website is 'hacked'

and someone gained access to the account,

but NOT to the email address, then this appears

to be good behaviour. But what happens if the

reverse happens. If someone hacked access

to the email address, uses the recovery option

to gain access to the website, and then changes

the password.

In that case, this offers no value. I suppose, I should

also store the IP address that requested the password

change, just to be sure.

Then, e-mail address changes. Some sites send a

confirmation mail to the old email addess if you

try to change your email address on the site. This

is good behaviour *if* the old email address is still

working. At one time, I had the problem, one of

my (webmail) email providers disappeared from the

internet (I used to have this andre@mailmij.nl email

address, untill BigFish, the company behind it, disapeared)

My point being. What if my reason to change email

address is the fact that I cannot access the old

one.

Hacker alert!

Last night, my gmail and facebook accounts

were hacked. It looks like the hacker only

changed my password. I was able to recover

the password.

Possibly other accounts are comprimised as

well, if I find out, I will add it to this blog too.

If you received an email from me last night

(between midnight and 11:00 AM, CET)

it was not sent my be, but by the hacker!

Edit: It appears only facebook and gmail were

compromised. Still looking for a suspect.

Edit2: Seems Last.FM was attacked as well,

I cannot recover this one since it seems the

attacker changed email-address as well.

Possible SourceForge.net too.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas! God Jul! Vrolijk Kerstfeest! Frohe Weihnachten! Bonne Noël! Hyvää Joulua! Feliz Navidad!

I haven't been blogging in english lately. So, it's

Christmas, so I wish everyone a merry christmas.

What else to tell. I quit my job to go to university

in Februari. So, I am going to be a student again ^^

Well... I guess, that's all for now, merry christmas!!

GRRRRRRRR

My laptop is broken!!!!

Developing....

So, I am working on my scrobbler application. So far so good.

As I mentioned before, when coding, I prefer to code for a *nix OS.

Windows coding seems so ... weird...

So, I had the idea to write a dll in cygwin and load it in a windows

app, to avoid the weird WinSock API. When you code a basic IPv4

app, it's almost the same, except for the fact WinSock needs to be

'started' before it can be used. When coding an application with

IPv6 support... you'll find a lot of functions, like gethostbyname2,

missing from the windows world. Really, what are they thinking?

Oh well... the conclusion... writing a cygwin dll and trying to load

it in a windows app doesn't seem to work. I have compiled the

code, without the IPv6 support, as a native windows dll, and

that version works, so I guess, it's safe to assume the cygwin

part is the cause of trouble here.

Well... I suppose, I will continue on the native windows version,

and add IPv6 support later. Both last.fm and libre.fm don't seem

to have IPv6 enabled servers anyways, so, it won't hurt much

to leave that support out for the time being. For now, the library

had basic scobble support, as in, it submits, but doesn't process

the server reply yet, and other stuff lacking too, that will need

to be fixed before I can release a binary version of this app.

Also, there are no plugins available yet. I suppose, I will look at

those after the scrobbler library is finished. I will have to look

at some IPC. Still not sure what I will do there, since I like to

keep it portable, but on the other hand, a platform specific

implementation could be an option.

There is progress, yes, but there is still a lot to do...