Well it’s that time of year again. It was only a year ago earlier this month that I summited that large volcano a mere 60 miles away from Seattle known as Mt. Rainier. It was a great experience, but I didn’t really have any plans to do it over again…until rnast and I agreed to climb the mountain, he for the first time and myself for the second so I could hopefully have a clear view from the summit. ...

OK, so perhaps the title is a little misleading, but here’s an interesting excercise in taking a look at issues that have been patched within the .NET framework. There’s a great tool out there by Lutz Roeder called .NET Reflector. Reflector allows you to generate source code (C#, C++, ILAsm, heck even PowerShell) from .NET assemblies. This will be our primary tool for this task. There was an advisory last month regarding some critical vulnerabilities in the .NET Framework (MS07-040). There was one in issue in particular that was quite interesting: ...

As August continues to move on, I must shift gears. It’s been a busy one so far. I spent 10 days in Vegas, which felt like a month. I didn’t even remember what it was like to live in my own house when I returned home. BlackHat and DefCon were great, though. Met up with lots of great people both old and new and have subsequently burned all the pictures I took while down there. ;) ...

It was earlier this year that I became a PCI Qualified Security Assessor. For those not familiar with the Payment Card Industry, this basically means that I am now certified to validate an organizations compliance to the PCI DSS standards, a set of standards enforced by the PCI Security Standards Council to attempt to prevent credit card data theft such as the incident at TJX earlier this year, which has ultimately cost them $118 million. My experience in a broad set of security technologies as well as several years spent auditing various financial institutions left me well-positioned to achieve this certification. Nevertheless, I am always on the lookout for useful references I can continue to rely on. ...

I stumbled across an odd little easter egg in the most recent beta build (5060) of Parallels. If you want to check the version number and go to About Parallels Desktop, a quote from Through the Looking Glass starts playing via the voice synthesizer. Kind of freaked me out when I had my headphones cranked up, but no music turned on yet. I posted it to Parallels forum to see if anybody else noticed it.

I’m more than halfway done with Vegas so far. BlackHat was fun. DefCon starts up today and I’ll be chilling at the CTF table. My 10-day Vegas tour is almost done… I knew it would be a long haul, and that is certainly proving to be the case thus far! Only three more days.

My August is going to be interesting. Here’s what it’s looking like. Vegas, baby...Vegas. 10 days. And then if I make it back home from Vegas My parents are coming to town, yay! Part of the reason is the Arthur Murray Summer Showcase RNast comes to town and we both attempt to summit Mt. Rainier That being said, if you’ll be in Vegas for either Black Hat or DefCon let me know as you should stop by the booth and say hi and pick up an invite for the Saturday night party. :-D ...

Hello from the MLS All-Star game in Denver, CO! I was in the right Irish pub at the right time! ;-) Update to the story. I went out and grabbed a drink last night at a local Irish pub in Denver. While sitting there with my co-worker, we noticed somebody behind us who happened to have some tickets for sale to the MLS All-Stars vs Celtic FC soccer game that night, which was a pretty big game. The last time I saw a live MLS game was way back in 2001 when I saw the Chicago Fire play. While I was up grabbing a hot dog, I also nearly bumped into David Beckham…or at least the security staff that surrounded him. I didn’t quite know what was going on when one of his staff asked me to stay back and then I saw the swarms of girls surrounding the blond-headed Beckham. I had my phone on me, but couldn’t really get a good picture. I did hold a little kid up to see him and got a great picture with somebody else’s phone, though!

Being the busy guy that I am, Sunday is the one day of the week when I get a little down time. I’ve usually got something to keep me occupied during the day, but Sunday nights are when I allow myself to slow down. I go to Whole Foods and pick up a fresh steak or pork chop. I used to cook it in my oven, but lately I’ve been using my fancy new grill. Does this not look like the best meal ever?! ...

It’s 11pm on Sunday night and I’m finally winding down my weekend. And the weekend began with the 4th of July on Wednesday! I had a few people over, barbequed, and then walked down to GasWorks Park, one of the most popular places to watch fireworks in Seattle. A couple people were stuck at my place afterwards, so after a couple games of pool we moved on a game of Scrabble that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. ...