Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

You thought that after the International Obfuscated C Code Contest, the Obfuscated Perl Contest, the International Obfuscated Ruby Code Contest and even the Obfuscated V contest nothing could surprise you anymore? Think again.

The goal of the annual Underhanded C Contest is to

write innocent-looking C code implementing malicious behavior. In many ways this is the exact opposite of the Obfuscated C Code Contest: in this contest you must write code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, and yet it must fail to perform at its apparent function. To be more specific, it should do something subtly evil.

This year's challenge: covert fingerprinting. Write a program that performs some basic image-processing operation, but hides a unique fingerprint in the image it outputs.

The submission deadline is July 10th, 2005.

(via Bruce Schneier)

why the lucky stiff (of Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby fame) has some very helpful insights on how the Ruby garbage collector works and when it is invoked. This knowledge will come very handy when you try to optimize your Ruby programs.

Read his article The Fully Upturned Bin for all the gory details.

I'm currently trying to reduce the backlog regarding my Debian work. Today I packaged the new upstream release of Crimson Fields, a turn-based strategy game in the tradition of Battle Isle (tm).
Expect more updated packages and a few ITPs (Intent To Package) soon.

The RWTH Aachen is organizing a two-week Summerschool Applied IT Security. It takes place from September 19 to September 30 in Aachen, Germany.

There will be multiple lectures on a broad range of security topics as well as several hours per day where the students will be hacking and researching "offensive information warefare".

The course itself is free, but you have to pay and organize your hotel etc. yourself.

The FAQ, the homepage from last year's summerschool and the paper "An Offensive Approach to Teaching Information Security" (PDF) by the organizers provide more information.

I'd like to go, but I'm not sure whether I will find some hotel which is cheap enough for a poor student like me ;-) We'll see.

(via disLEXia 3000)

While reading parts of "What's the Best Geek Joke You Know?" on Slashdot, I stumbled upon this snippet from an IRC log from bash.org:

t0rbad> so there i was in this hallway right
BlackAdder> i believe i speak for all of us when i say...
BlackAdder> WRONG BTICH
BlackAdder> IM SICK OF YOU
BlackAdder> AND YOUR LAME STORIES
BlackAdder> NOBODY HERE THINKS YOURE FUNNY
BlackAdder> NOBODY HERE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR STORIES
BlackAdder> IN FACT
BlackAdder> IF YOU DIED RIGHT NOW
BlackAdder> I DON"T THINK NOBODY WOULD CARE
BlackAdder> SO WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT FAG
*** t0rbad sets mode: +b BlackAdder*!*@*.*
*** BlackAdder has been kicked my t0rbad ( )
t0rbad> so there i was in this hallway right
CRCError> right
heartless> Right.
r3v> right