Approaches to IT security

What are the right approaches to IT security? Is it a technical matter? Or, a management matter? You may see my slides regarding this topic.

Download

Jinan's winter in my imagination

The Moat at early morning, Jinan, China
* Originally photographed by WANG Xueyou, photoshopped by CHEN Jing.
* Published under authors' permissions.

Jinan's winter

Large size (1369 x 885)
The Moat at early morning, Jinan, China
Ricoh GR Digital, F/8.6, 1/2 sec, 6 mm, ISO 64, Spot Mode, 07:48, 30 December 2006
(Photographed by WANG Xueyou, published under author's permission)
* The next post, Jinan's winter in my imagination is located here.

Jinan, my hometown!

Jinan, the Springs City: the Jinan Dialect, the Daming Lake, the Thousand Buddha Mountain, and Yang Rou Chuan...

Jinan, China

Experiencing rogue upgrade to WMP 11

I felt frustrated tonight, because of the bloody, unintended, and uncontrolled upgrade to Windows Media Player 11. I intended, or I thought the system was intended, to install a small patch of Windows Media Player 10 as its update window notified, but the result was that a big WMP 11 was compulsively installed, even I tried to stop the installation and the upgrade program explicitly said it did not install the new version.

Windows Media Player 10/11's update is a malware, a rogueware, a rogue!

Let's see what happened one bye one:

1. A notification window pops up after Windows Media Player 10 starts. I am told that it should be an update.


2. WMP 10's update window persuades me to agree patching it. I am now told that it should be an upgrade, not an update.


3. It now becomes a setup. The setup wizard asks to exit WMP and all other programs. It seems to be a big upgrade?


4. Cheating continues! Windows is being upgraded with WMP 11, not WMP 10!

Specifically, a small setup loader of WMP 11 (not a small patch of WMP 10!) is first downloaded and installed. The loader next downloads the rest parts of WMP 11, though the window is still titled "Windows Media Player 10". There is no extracting action before the large setup file is downloaded, so its progress bar keeps still like the following for a long time. This window cannot be closed.


The 1 megabytes (MB) mentioned in the screenshot in step 2 is just for the setup loader of WMP 11. What's the real size of WMP 11? 25 MB! See the screenshot below. That's why I used the word "persuade".


5. "Windows Media Player 11" appears for the first time! From now, the installation is no longer under control.

You cannot close the following window. You cannot actually stop the installation. You may click the Cancel button and it subsequently shows "canceling updates", but the installation actually continues. Still cheating!


6. It claims that WMP 11 is an update, and the update is not installed. It lies.


7. It is a setup of WMP 11, not WMP 10. The setup is actually finished, not "not possible to complete Setup" as its screen says.


8. The setup program quits after unknowingly installing WMP 11.




10.

'Does pirate copy of SQL2005 work'

I today noticed an interesting Google search that brought a Chinese visitor to one of my blog articles attacking software piracy in China. Its keywords in English are the title above. My blog article was the first result of that search, hehe.

The original Google search in Chinese:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=zh-CN&q=SQL2005盗版的可以用吗

The relevant Google search in English:

http://www.google.com/search?q=does pirate copy of SQL2005 work

An angry British Telecom customer

The conclusion: Better never call private numbers to promote something..., especially NOT to BT customers, hehe. :-))) BTW, BT also stands for Bian Tai (变态, Metamorphosis or Metamorphous) in Chinese Pinyin. ;-)

Google Video / MP3

Google's holiday doodles for Australia

SMH: Saddam + New Year Fireworks

The first issue of 2007's Sydney Morning Herald (No. 52,819)
Large size (1280 x 960)
Canon IXUS 50, F/4, 0.8 sec, 8 mm, ISO 50, Pattern Mode, 20:07, 1 January 2007