Reducing the repetitive java code

Just came across this neat hack of reducing your boilerplate java code. The project lombok is one such micro framework that injects the commonly occurring code based on the passed annotations. It is not an annotation processor, but rather an IDE integration that adds code on the fly.
After downloading, run the jar and specify your eclipse installation. You then need to restart the eclipse for the changes to take place. One of the most used annotation is the @Data annotation that wraps various other annotations in itself.
In case of this annotation name creating conflicts, the user can opt for member specific annotations .
eg:

import lombok.Data;

@Data

public class Pojo{

    private String name;

    private int id;

    private float weight;

....

}
In this case, we only need to specify the member fields and all the getters/setters as well as commonly overridden methods like toString and hashCode would be auto-generated by the IDE.
There are provisions for other IDEs and command line execution also for non-eclipse users which make this a nifty tool to use.

Repairing your problematic display drivers

I am sharing a recent experience with my laptop. It is a MSI CR-500 that houses an Nvidia GeForce 8200m G graphics card. In previous Ubuntu(11.04 and earlier) versions, the stock graphics driver resulted in suboptimal displays and compiz and other desktop polishing tools were not able to be installed.

Out of habit, I tried to install a custom Nvidia binary driver into my newly installed Ubuntu 12.04 last week but the graphics driver failed to install correctly. The newer linux kernal did not allow my exsiting drivers to install so had to download a newly released driver. Undaunted, I tried installing a new driver, but it failed and my graphics display manager went kaput.

To get the things back, I simply reinstalled the Ubuntu and got my settings back. Here's what I did:

Booted off 12.04 livecd/pen drive

• In install option window, went to manual drive partitioning option
• Selected the partition containing the 12.04 and set its mount point to /
• Did not select the format disk option – to retain my earlier settings and installations.

It gave me a warning specifying deletion of files.

The OS got restored in 20 minutes and I was good to go!

NOTE : Nothing much got deleted as I was having a fairly new OS with not much loaded components. Surprisingly, the java7 unzipped at /usr/local/lib was untouched, but the scala installed at /home/sumit was removed.

Practical Malware Analysis: Book review

Practical Malware Analysis: Book review

This is my review of the book, practical malware analysis by Michael Sikorski and Andrew Honig done  under the Oreilly Blogger Review Program.

This book teaches you the techniques and strategies followed by professionals to analyze and identify malware. As windows continue to be the most used OS in the world, it is not surprising that malware ranging from annoying worms to cyber weapons like stuxnet continue to spread using different means over the windows operating system.


Being a security book,  I was looking forward to a lot of exercises and security tools that would assist me in finding details about the malware that I might require. The book does the necessary job but often strays off its topic as it delves into the basics for what is more than sufficient, creating discontinuity in reading the text.

Tools such as OllyDbg, IDA pro, Win Dbg,etc are given in sufficient detail and various chapters are dedicated to their various uses in analysis and reverse engineering, which will be beneficial to an security professional. From a casual user point of view, the expansive details might be more of theoretical annoyance and the book is at places too advanced into the details.

On the nicer features in this book, there is a keen focus on practical implementation of the things taught at the end of each chapter in form of a set of labs that the end user is expected to complete. For me, this worked very well as I was able to skim across various chapters and perform lab routines to reinforce my understandings.

One of the caveats of having an extended introduction of various terminologies is that they seem stretched a bit too long. The book deals almost exclusively with the windows OS, so the name of the book should've been Practical Windows Malware Analysis which would aptly reflect the target environment of the book. As a user, it was a rewarding experience in reading from the book if the order of chapters were followed and the lab exercises done.