assorted pieces of random gobbledygook

I just spent 15 minutes of my limited life chasing a frigging Safari bug. Apparently on my last logout, Safari didn’t close the PubSub [that’s Apple’s framework for dealing with RSS feeds] sqlite3 database properly. This led to a hang upon the next startup, and every subsequent startup. After a little bit of fun with gdb and lsof, I figured out that it was lock that was held on the PubSub database (located in ~/Library/PubSub/Database). I simply moved that heap of bitrot away and everything is dandy again. As expected, Safari recreated it.

I just ran across the following gem [via BoingBoing, yeah I know it’s old, I just saw it now though]: AirPower, a wiki dedicated to documenting power outlets at airports all around the world. I usually start scouring the airport for power outlets on multi-leg flights once I’ve completed a leg. The scariest story happening to me was circa 1998, travelling back from Melbourne through Hong Kong. Guards/military armed with submachine guns scared me away from the power outlet I was using. I don’t actually know what they said to me as they didn’t speak English, I just unplugged and got the fuck away from the outlet. Maybe it was just a friendly question, I don’t feel like taking chances in the presence of guns though.

Two accessories I recently bought which I can heartily recommend:

Bräda, a laptop support cushion which makes having your laptop sitting on your lap really comfortable. No more frying my balls!

Also, after having dropped my iPhone two times in the first two days already, I went to Media Markt in Berlin and bought a crystal hard case as well as a rubberized soft case. I didn’t like both very much. I’ve now settled on a Brando aluminium (aluminum, for our Amerikkkkkan readers) case. Tough, sturdy, flippable cover. Yeah, you can’t use the touch screen through the plastic protective screen, that bugged me at first. There’s a model without the protective cover as well, but buying that wasn’t an option since the screen will be the first thing my phone drops on if I decide not to protect it.

I just set up a cross-compiling environment for the iPhone and compiled dns2tcp for the iPhone. Dns2tcp is a DNS tunnel written in C that I can heartily recommend, it however could be a little bit more stealthy. Using DNSSEC KEY RRs clearly is NOT stealthy. If you trust me somewhat, you can download the iPhone binary for dns2tcpc. I should roll that in a package, but I’m too lazy to do that at the moment.

I really have to say: from a usability perspective, this baby rocks. Putting my security researcher hat on, I however have to say: Shame on you, Apple! I’m taking bets as to how long it takes till we see the first worm for the iPhone. What’s interesting is that the baseband firmware of this phone is one of the few that I’m aware of that is ARM-based and which largely seems to be written in C. In my opinion this phone is an ideal platform for the A5/1 cracking project.

As for MobileScrobbler: yes, it really rocks. It actually far exceeds my expectations! Overall, I fear a decline of software quality with the release of the iPhone SDK. Thus far, every piece of third party software I tried simply was a pleasant experience…