hypatia dot ca

U of T has off-campus access to research papers and other resources. This is obviously super useful. There are a couple of ways of logging into their web-based proxy service, and they are all annoying. So I made a bookmarklet:

UTL Proxy

Drag this link to your bookmarks bar, then go to a restricted URL like the one I’m currently reading and click it – you’ll be directed to U of T’s central web login page if you’re not cookied already from something like UTORmail.

Once you’re cookied you’ll be able to do this until your session goes idle.

The javascript is pretty basic, but due credit is owed to the University of Manitoba.

Today at the meshU conference I gave a talk about secure programming, with a focus on the web.  There were 2 token slides for the C and C++ devs out there, which ended up working perfectly because there were only two people in the room who wrote C/C++ :)

I mostly touched on stuff from OWASP’s vast collection of resources,specifically their top ten principles of secure programming, and their top ten web application vulnerabilities.  Slides are after the jump, but I wanted to include some related links to things which came up during the talk:

• SANS says to have good, visible security contact info
• Some more web app hacking learning resources from RSnake

Enjoy the slides!  Slideshare messed up the formatting of the additional notes, so for full effect I’d download them from here.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had the following exchange a bit ago on twitter:

and the reverse:

The line-dancing totally makes the second one.

And now back to your irregularly scheduled program which will not contain random videos too often, I promise. These were just too awesome not to share :)

-Leigh

I’m pleased to announce that I’m working with Xelerance this summer to mentor students participating in the Google Summer of Code program.  We have a bunch of interesting ideas up and have been talking with potential participants on IRC (#xelerance-gsoc on irc.freenode.net).  We are mentoring three sets of projects, related to openswan, DNSSEC tools, and Off-The-Record Messaging.   If you’re interested in participating as either a student or mentor in any of these, I’m reachable at leigh at hypatia dot ca, and of course on freenode under the username hypa7ia.

This is the first year Xelerance (and I) have participated in the program.  I’ve been reading lots of the collected wisdom from previous years on the mentor email list and around the web.  I’ve really enjoyed talking with students so far and can’t wait to read the applications as they come in.

-Leigh

I’m going to buck the trend and not name names on my post for Ada Lovelace Day 2009.  Instead I want to salute the women of the Ubuntu Women project for making participating in Ubuntu and in Open Source software in general just a little more supportive, friendly, and welcoming.  Unless one comes into our spaces to troll or harass, in which case the banhammers are swiftly dealt :)

Over the years (and it’s been years now!) I’ve hung out in #ubuntu-women on freenode, participated in the mailing list, and run into U-W participants at conferences around the world.  Through this, I’ve gained an invaluable support network, a place to vent to my peers, a great group of male allies (by which I mean guys who support the U-W project), and a bunch of fantastic friends.

Ada Lovelace Day is all about role models, and I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of women to look up to than the ones I hang out with every day in #ubuntu-women.  Thanks for all the great conversations, and let’s keep working hard on bug number 1!

I would be remiss to not mention my friend Behdad Esfahbod’s post for ALD, because he picked me to write about.  I’m delighted and honoured that he wrote about me. ETA: looks like Joey DeVilla and Karen Fung did too!

-Leigh