So did you attend the talk?
After about half an hour i just couldn't take it :-) t was just a presentation describing what harm viruses can do and what we can do about them(his suggestion was keep updating the anti virus).
Of course no real description of the basic architectural flaws of FAT32 and NTFS nor an explanation of how permissions are handled by the Unix model and its file system.
He also made a statement that ``anti virus companies create virises and release them into internet" of course he did not bother cite any names(gee i wonder why :-) ) to which the crowd went Ohh!!!
Then he started on mediocre network security - what is a port scan, some common port scanners blah blah blah then saying that they are dangerous ``as they tell you which ports are open" to which the crowd went Ahh!!!
i think this was the time i felt like puking and decided to leave.
Anyway throughout the lecture i NEVER heard the following terms : SUID, SGID, sticky bits(and their misuse), Rootkits, nor anything about certain very interesting kernel modules.
Oh yeah, As usual(as i've read) he arrived pretty late(even in comparison to IST, Indian Stretchable time)
If so did you know ask him some
questions to test him?
no i left well before Q&A, or in his case Q --A. Anyway i did talk to the people who sat through the entire thing in the canteen the next day, one person did hold his stand at the end asking ``how does someone hack(sic)?" to which Fadia replied ``i cannot revel that". The question was repeatedly asked and the reply was the same, with the given justification as ``ethical reasons". When he was `ping -f -s 65535` with even more requests he is said to have mentioned some vague thing about ``interchanging bits in a program" which neither the person telling me nor i couldn't make much sense of.
Since we are on the topic, i would like to mention that the speaker after him was Dr Godbole an operating systems whiz from IIT, engineering students may recall his book on the topic, one of the best written by an Indian author and probably the only one i've read which describes Netware in detail with a theoretical as well as practical perspective.
In fact Dr Godbole, eventhough a pretty well off guy with no shortage of work decided to take sabatical's during his work to go and teach adivasis' in remote areas of Maharashtra. A very rare thing for a silicon valley type techie.
i missed his lecture(because of my leaving early) and that was really stupid of my part. i guess it kind of taught me to be a little more patient.
Regards,
- vihan