NTPsec dodges 8 of 11 CVEs because we’d pre-hardened the code

While most of the NTPsec team was off at Penguicon, the NTP Classic people shipped a release patched for eleven security vulnerabilities in their code. Which might have been pretty embarrassing, if those vulnerabilities were in our code, too. People would be right to wonder, given NTPsec’s security focus, why we didn’t catch all these… Continue reading NTPsec dodges 8 of 11 CVEs because we’d pre-hardened the code

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Too clever by half

The British have a phrase “Too clever by half”, It needs to go global, especially among hackers. It can have any of several closely related meanings: the one I mean to focus on here has to do with overconfidence in one’s intelligence or skill, and the particular bad consequences that can have. It’s related to… Continue reading Too clever by half

Automatons, judgment amplifiers, and DSLs

Do we make too many of our software tools automatons when they should be judgment amplifiers? And why don’t we write more DSLs? Back in the Renaissance there was a literary tradition of explaining natural philosophy via conversations among imaginary characters. I’m going to revive that this evening because I had an IRC conversation this… Continue reading Automatons, judgment amplifiers, and DSLs

Symbols in SRC-SCCS

The SCCS back end to SRC doesn’t support named symbolic references to numbered revisions, because SCCS masters don’t include a symbol table. This is one of the things RCS added. Goddess help me, I’ve figured out how to shoehorn in this feature. And probably should not do it.

SRC goes SCCS

I needed a break from serious work yesterday, so SRC now speaks SCCS as well as RCS. This wasn’t difficult, I had SRC carefully factored in anticipation from when I originally wrote it. I can’t say I think this feature will be actually useful; SCCS is pretty primitive, and the SRC support has some annoying… Continue reading SRC goes SCCS

SRC 1.0 is released

If you were reading A&D a year ago, you may recall that I invented a new version-control system to occupy an odd little niche that none of the exiting ones serve very well. Well, actually, it’s a shell around a very old version-control system that makes a reasonable fast version-storage manager but has a crappy… Continue reading SRC 1.0 is released

Announcing sshexport

I struck a small blow for better security today. It started last night on an IRC channel with A&D regular Susan Sons admonishing the regulars to rotate their ssh keys regularly – that is, generate and export new key pairs so that is someone cracks the crypto on one out of your sight it won’t… Continue reading Announcing sshexport

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Cometary Contributors

I released reposurgeon 3.30 today. It has been five years and a month since the first public release. In those five years, the design concept seems to have proved out very well, finding use in many repository conversions. But the project exhibits an unusual sociology; I don’t get lots of casual contributors, only a few… Continue reading Cometary Contributors

NTPsec’s beta is released

You’ve heard me uttering teasers about it for months. Now it’s here. The repository is available for cloning; we’re shipping the 0.9.0 beta of NTPsec. You can browse the web pages or clone the git repository by one of several methods. You can “wget https://github.com/NTPsec/ntpsec/archive/NTPsec_0_9_0.tar.gz” to get a tarball. This is an initial beta and… Continue reading NTPsec’s beta is released

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Hieratic documentation

Here’s where I attempt to revive and popularize a fine old word in a new context. hieratic, adj. Of or concerning priests; priestly. Often used of the ancient Egyptian writing system of abridged hieroglyphics used by priests. Earlier today I was criticizing the waf build system in email. I wanted to say that its documentation… Continue reading Hieratic documentation

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I improved time last night

Sometimes you find performance improvements in the simplest places. Last night I improved the time-stepping precision of NTP by a factor of up to a thousand. With a change of less than 20 lines. The reason I was able to do this is because the NTP code had not caught up to a change in… Continue reading I improved time last night

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