Mirza A. Ahmed

My adventure at an abandoned insane asylum started out early in the day. In the morning after breakfast nine of us got together in downtown Montreal. Synchronized our GPS maps and headed out in five cars. Our destination was an insane asylum located south of Montreal in Franklin, Quebec; just about 600 feet (200 meters) north of the American & Canadian border. This insane asylum, shutdown and abandoned since the mid 1990’s, has a long and creepy history of their ill treatment of sane as well as insane people.

The buildings have several underground tunnels that connect them to various locations in the Covey Hills and across the border into the United States near Lake Placid. There were rumors that children abducted from the United States would be brought into this insane asylum through these tunnels to be experimented on by the doctors at this institute. The search for missing children would most likely end at the national borders thus no one would be successful at locating these missing children. This insane asylum was initially established for the treatment of insane people, however many sane and innocent people, both adults and children were sent to this and other similar institutes as punishments.

We all know from history how in the colonial America, anyone who went against the church/authorities were labeled as “witches” and were tortured and killed. Later as time elapsed, anyone who opposed the authorities were said to be insane and sent to an insane asylum to be “treated”. They were left there for indefinite amount of time. It was an easy way to get rid of anyone who disagreed with authorities. Many such people ended up here at this particular insane asylum.

In addition, the province of Quebec in Canada, unlike other provinces had the church control the schools and hospitals until the reforms of the recent times. Anyone opposing the authorities would get sent down to these institutes. There was a huge class action law suit against the government of Quebec for their activities in 1950. The subject of the lawsuit dealt with children forcefully taken from their mothers and sent to this insane asylum to be raised there instead of being sent to orphanages. Back then if a young unmarried girl got pregnant, the child would be forcefully taken from her and sent out to the insane asylum to be raised.

Of course the insane asylum is no place for a child to be raised. Not only were they amongst some crazy people, they were also put through many experiments and drug trials at the institute. Dr. Ewen Cameron a famous psychiatrist who lived in upstate New York and worked in Quebec, has been now known to have performed many such experiments. After an United States Congressional hearings in the 1970s it was discovered that Dr. Cameron was involved in many experiments on unwilling subjects during the 1950s and 1960s in Quebec because those experiments were not authorized to be performed on American Citizens.

Reference material on the experiments at this insane asylum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron

http://www.freedommag.org/english/canada/vol004i1/page10.htm

http://www.flavinscorner.com/cameron.htm

Having such a spooky history this site is definitely worth a visit. Having most of all the windows sealed off its very dark and scary inside. Surprisingly the pictures all came out clear and well lit.

These were my pictures taken at the site. On the internet however, I’ve found others who has visited the same site you can view some more pictures that were taken by them:
http://www.pbase.com/ninadev/dora_covey_hill

http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread_archive.asp?fid=1&threadid=46901

Mirza A. Ahmed

Lately there’s been so much talk of the newly released OS from Microsoft: Windows 7. I’ve been using it for a few months on a virtual hard disk, as well as on a real system. Even though there were some issues in installing some older binary executable of certain software (for which only the newer versions are supported), thus far I’ve given it two thumbs up.

But if you asked me, I’d say Microsoft should just give Windows 7 as a free upgrade to (genuine) users of windows vista, instead of selling it for $30 (to students in the US or $40 CAD in Canada or $200-$400 retail). Just think of it as a gesture to show their appreciation to the users for sticking by their crappy software for the past 26 yrs (before that their OS was pretty good actually).

To me a newly released OS from Microsoft is just like a new girlfriend. In the beta releases you are amazed by the pretty look and feel of the new OS. It does everything better, faster and makes your life easier. It even does things that you could never even imagine from its predecessor. Everyone praises your new OS. You have so much fun with it, and you are in love. Then, just as you commit yourself to the general release of this new OS, it consumes all your [system] resources, corrupts your memory, infects you (your system) with transmittable infections and viruses, constantly nag and whine (alerting you) of your faults and errors (ie. “general protection fault”, “fatal exception error”, “windows protection error”, “kernel32.dll error”), as well as complain about things that you are completely clueless about what they are (ie. “Error 0×81000370″, “Error 404″), requiring a fix on the second Tuesday of every month, and eventually is bound to give you the blue screen of death. And just like a new girlfriend, if you can hold off from committing yourself exclusively to this new OS, an even better OS will soon come your way (Windows 8 has already been under development and is said to be128bit OS).

Though Windows has come a long way from the days of being required to reboot the system after a simple change of IP address, it still makes me want to get a powerful, secure, stable, reliable and FREE yet completely user friendly OS with a sexy name like “SUSE” (OpenSUSE Linux) for my system.

Mirza A. Ahmed

Last week a new tool was released by sysinternals called “Disk2vhd”. It converts physical disk into virtual disk format. It runs on windows XP and server 2003. download it from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Mirza A. Ahmed

Here’s a tool for those concerned with developing applications (for the MS platform) that secured in their file I/Os. MiniFuzz is a very simple fuzzer designed to ease adoption of fuzz testing by non-security people who are unfamiliar with file fuzzing tools or have never used them in their current software development processes. MiniFuzz is a basic testing tool designed to help detect code flaws that may expose security vulnerabilities in file-handling code. This tool creates multiple random variations of file content and feeds it to the application to exercise the code in an attempt to expose unexpected and potentially insecure application behaviors.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b2307ca4-638f-4641-9946-dc0a5abe8513

Mirza a. Ahmed

Here’s a tool for those concerned with developing applications (for the MS platform) that secured. BinScope is a Microsoft verification tool that analyzes binaries on a project-wide level to ensure that they have been built in compliance with Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) requirements and recommendations. BinScope checks that SDL-required compiler/linker flags are being set, strong-named assemblies are in use, up-to-date build tools are in place, and the latest good ATL headers are being used. BinScope also reports on dangerous constructs that are prohibited by SDL.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=90e6181c-5905-4799-826a-772eafd4440a

Mirza a. Ahmed

I know I’ve not been blogging for a while since my research supervisor got me over worked. I’ve come across this little article about SQL queries for DB testing on MSDN that I’d like to share.

http://blogs.msdn.com/securitytools/archive/2009/09/10/some-useful-sql-queries-for-software-testers.aspx

Mirza A. Ahmed

Its seems that Twitter is now being used by hackers to control BotNets.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/botnet-tweets

Mirza A. Ahmed

Times are tough. In this global economic recession we all need to work extra hard just to make ends meet. Private employers in the U.S. cut about 485,000 jobs in May and another 473,000 jobs in June. Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, which will in turn lead to home foreclosures and destitution. Well, the story of economic hardship does not end there. I just read an interesting article [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080603764.html ] about how Nigeria’s Online Scammers are also suffering from a 40% profit cut.

Mirza A. Ahmed

KDE 4.3.0 has been released, and from the pictures on the web, it looks really good. I’ll have to give it a try soon. Check it out for yourself:

http://dot.kde.org/sites/dot.kde.org/files/kde430.png

http://kde.org/announcements/4.3/

Mirza A. Ahmed

I’ve finally decided to take Windows 7 out for a test drive. If you guys still haven’t downloaded Windows 7, do it now.

You can download Windows 7 release candidate XP mode:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=487f1e8b-f868-4c1e-a047-1b2306c0f592

Or if you want to go virtualized, download Windows 7 release candidate Windows Virtual PC mode:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=4c3a0944-a2e6-4f01-9c57-5b55885875cc

Note: Microsoft’s Virtual Pc is not supported on Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic.

If you are using Windows 7 on Windows Virtual PC then get the following RemoteApp:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=26a2de17-8355-4e8d-8f33-9211e48651fb

Mirza A. Ahmed

Last week Microsoft published its Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-034 – Critical, which included many security updates for vulnerabilities of various versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer on different platforms. Since Microsoft’s Severity Rating for the vulnerabilities is rated Critical, I’d recommend everyone to make the updates.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-034.mspx

Mirza A. Ahmed

Sophos published a 20 pages long whitepaper titled “Security Threat Report: July 2009″.
https://secure.sophos.com/security/whitepapers/sophos-security-threat-report-jul-2009-na-wpus
Some interesting facts discussed in the paper includes:
23,500 new infected webpages are discovered every day. That’s one every 3.6 second.
The US hosts more malware, relays more spam than any other country.
15 new bogus anti-virus vendor websites are discovered every day.
89.7 percent of all business email is spam.
Approximately 6,500 new spam-related websites are discovered every day – one new website every 13 seconds.

Last week, Nmap 5.00 was released. you can get it at http://nmap.org/. According to their site “this the most important Nmap release since 1997″. I’ve always thought Nmap to be one of the most important tool for network and security professionals.

I found this open source tool which makes your internet browsing much safer. It runs on top of a virtual machine. Loads its own linux kernel with memory protection and RBAC. Runs all on RAM. I thought it was pretty cool. http://www.pentest.es/inmunos.php

Some information that you already knew and some that you didn’t know:
Read the Cisco 2009 Midyear Security Report.
http://cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/Cisco_2009_Midyear_Security_Report.PDF

I was just browsing through various online computer shops and retailer’s website, searching for a good backup solution for my data. This product, http://iosafe.com/ seems to be something worth investing in to protect you valuable data.

Lately I’ve noticed an increased spread of Instant Message Viruses. I first noticed the spread of virus and malware that infects the IM software back in 2006, however these days I see an increase in such infections. Its really annoying when I get these automated messages sent to my IM client from a friend who has my messenger ID on their messenger list, most of the time they are not even aware of it happening. If I happen to click the link on the message I would be sent to a website that will download a malware into my system, which then will infect my IM client to further propagate the malware to all those individuals whose IM user ID is saved on my list. You people should really get a good antivirus and use common sense when clicking on links on IM messages.

A few months ago I’ve watched the movie “One Week” ( http://www.oneweek.ca ). Now I watch a lot of movies these days, on average at least about 2 movies per week. Of all the movies that I’ve seen lately, I can honestly say that “One Week” was one of the best movies that I’ve seen in a while. You guys can get more info on the movie at IMDB ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104806/ ). As it’s a Canadian movie, you folks down south in the United States might have not seen it, but I highly recommend that you do. A search on the internet today (June 14) found a copy on Megavideo ( http://www.megavideo.com/?v=W3TW4ZJI ).

As I was doing my research on “Game Theory”, which is a field in applied mathematics, I recalled the game theoretic inconsistencies in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. ”A Beautiful Mind” is an unique and quite interesting movie, that focus on the life of a mathematician John Nash. The actor Russell Crowe plays the role of John Nash. The movie is a fictional account of the life of John Nash. It has gotten 4 academy awards and many other nominations, thus was a great Hollywood success. Yet it was inaccurate in terms of the theories represented within the movie.

The major mathematical inconsistency was during this particular scene when John Nash was in a bar with three of his friends trying to pick up women at the bar. The women that they were all considering included four brunettes, and a blonde, where the blonde was viewed as the most desirable amongst Nash and all of his friends. According to the movie, Nash comes up with his great theory during this very moment analyzing the interactions of these women and his friends. This is supposedly the source of the famous theory of “Nash Equilibrium”. According to the movie, Nash explains the theory to his friends as such; “if we all go for the blonde, we block each other, and no single one of us is going to get her. So then we will move on to one of her friends, but they will all give us the cold shoulder because no one likes being second choice. But what if no one goes for the blonde? We don’t get in each other’s way, and we don’t insult the other girls. That’s the only way to win”. Then, in the movie, Nash thanks the blonde woman for helping him come up with his theory, who obviously had no idea as to what he was saying.

Unfortunately, though this was a good scene with great acting by Russell Crowe, this was not a Nash Equilibrium in this “non-cooperative game”, and mathematically inaccurate according to game theory. We can work backwards and see that the Nash Equilibrium is where any one of the men chooses the blonde by unilaterally deviating from the strategy, and three of the men chooses her friends. Since this is a simultaneous game, obviously there is no “first move advantage”.

Are criminals getting more stupid these days? A man robs a bank in Columbia, South Carolina, then logs on into Myspace and posts a message “One in the head still ain’t dead!!!!!! On tha run for robbin a bank Love all of yall.” Referring to the gun shot scar that’s on his face and his bank robbery. How stupid is that? Its as if he was wanting to get caught. Whats even more interesting is that while he was in South Carolina, he stayed at a friend’s place who turned him in to the FBI when he saw hi friend’s face on TV taken from the bank’s surveillance video.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30995882/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522701,00.html

I was reading how Cisco presented its strategy for electric power infrastructure network, where the power will be distributed over cisco’s IP networks. This seems to be a technology with lots of potentials. From a security perspective its very interesting to me how they are working out the security details
http://investor.cisco.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=384501

Recently I’ve found out that about 1 in every 20 persons suffers from the compulsive desire to shop. It’s not just women; men are just as likely to suffer from this compulsive shopping, compulsive buying, shopping addiction or shopaholism. Whichever term you may choose to use, the symptoms are the same for this impulse control disorder. Whenever I feel overwhelmed with deep feelings of sorrow, going through the process of purchasing shoes, clothes, or electronic gadgets always successfully elevates my mood. I consider “retail therapy” to be a way of coping with depression. So what has attracted my sight this week? Again, it’s T-shirts.

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=727

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=730

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=1015

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=1486

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=1017

P.S. I have taken the “are you a shopaholic” test here: http://www.queendom.com/tests/access_page/index.htm?idRegTest=726
And the result was as such, on a score of 0 to 100, I scored a 75 on the shopaholic scale. Their recommendation for me was as follows:

When it comes to fashion, you place a fair amount of importance on being up-to-date, and likely feed your need to be “ahead of the game” by having all the latest threads, gadgets and home décor imaginable. The problem is that no matter how many possessions you have, chances are it will never be enough – you’ll always end up wanting more. You need to realize that material possessions aren’t everything.

Today as I was sitting in my office reading through several boring papers and articles, then suddenly this has really gotten me all excited. It’s a small list of 7 things that we all can do to overcome our Ego. Written by Wayne W. Dyer, Ph.D, the article “Seven Steps for Overcoming Ego’s Hold on You” can be found here http://spiritlibrary.com/wayne-w-dyer/seven-steps-for-overcoming-ego-s-hold-on-you.

I’m amazed by how simple yet true his ideas are and it is highly effective in freeing ourselves from our own ego. As of Feb 2009, by resolution was to improve the man that I am everyday one step at a time, and this particular 7 step guide will be very useful. To briefly summarize the point that Dr. Dyer has mentioned, we need to:

1. Stop being offended
2. Let go of your need to win
3. Let go of your need to be right
4. Let go of your need to be superior
5. Let go of your need to have more
6. Let go of identifying yourself on the basis of your achievements
7. Let go of your reputation

I honestly believe that if we can really do each of the 7 things mentioned above, we can be the person whom we truly are meant to be.

My most recent horrifying experience with a person suffering from Obsessive Indecisive Disorder (OID) had made me reminisce on the words of the British musician Joe Jackson. Particularly, this one song from the mid/late 80’s by Joe Jackson titled “You Can’t Get What You Want”. Here Jackson repeatedly mentions that “You Can’t Get What You Want, Till You Know What You Want”. It appears that Mr. Jackson’s advice was foolishly ignored by my good friend, who just happens to be extremely terrible at making decisions in her life. She will make one decision and within several hours if not minutes she will have changed her mind to make another decision countering the previous one. Now those of us familiar with the works of Aristotle know of the story of the Buridan’s ass, which is a figurative description of a man who suffers from indecision. It refers to a paradoxical situation where an ass that was placed exactly in the center between two stacks of hay of equal size and quality. The ass will have eventually starved to death since it cannot make any rational decision to start eating one rather than the other. Of course by no means am I denying the importance of making good decisions, however if we constantly remain incapable of making a decision due to our fear of failure, then we might as well starve to death. What is it that makes certain people so incapable of making a decision? It might be that they refuse to compromise, and want everything in life, or it may very well be an issue of a lack of self-confidence. Regardless of the cause, one thing is for certain. “You Can’t Get What You Want, Till You Know What You Want”.

Here is the lyric to the entire song “You Can’t Get What You Want” by Joe Jackson:

Sometimes you start feelin’ so lost and lonely
Then you’ll find it’s all been in your mind
Sometimes you think someone is the one and only
Can’t you see, it could be you and me?
But if there’s any doubt
Then I think I’ll leave it out

’cause I’ll tell you one thing
You can’t get what you want
Till you know what you want
Said you can’t get what you want
Till you know what you want

Sometimes you keep busy reaching out for something
You don’t care, there’s always something there
Sometimes you can’t see that all you need is one thing
If it’s right, you could sleep at night
But it can take some time
But at least I’m here in line

’cause I’ll tell you one thing
You can’t get what you want
Till you know what you want
Said you can’t get what you want
Till you know what you want

Sometimes you can’t see that all you need is one thing
If it’s right, you could sleep at night
But it can take some time
But at least I’m here in line

’cause I’ll tell you one thing
You can’t get what you want
Till you know what you want
Said you can’t get what you want
Till you know what you want

In 5th century BC ancient Greece, a teacher of rhetoric, Thrasymachus, ridiculed the value of behaving justly. According to Thrasymachus the reasoning behind why being an unjust man is better than being a just man is as follows.

The just man everywhere comes out worse than the unjust man. First in their dealing with each other, where the one enters into a partnership with the other, nowhere will you discover that the just man comes out with more than the unjust man, but less. And then in those matters pertaining to the city, whenever there are taxes, the just man pays more than that what is equal, and the unjust less. Or when there is a distribution of goods, the just man gains nothing but the unjust man gets much of it. And when each holds office, it belongs to the just man if he suffers no other penalty to have his own affairs suffer and to benefit nothing from the state because of his justice, and to displease his relatives and acquaintances when he would not be willing to serve them on account of his injustice.

I find this argument presented by Thrasymachus to be a very compelling one. I would agree with him that being an “unjust” individual is more beneficial than being a “just” individual. From what I can understand, our world has plenty of people who are completely motivated by self interest and driven by personal gain. More so than there are those who are inspired to serve the needs of humanity. What I believe is that these individuals are “good” because of their choice rather than their lack of options. They could have just as easily chosen to be “not so good” and benefited more from doing so. Yet they consciously made the decision to define themselves, while rejecting all temptations of the “not so good” life.

As of April 21st, 2009 Bluetooth 3.0 specifications were adopted. Visit https://www.bluetooth.org for more details about Bluetooth 3.0. According to its specification it has a new MAC & PHY layers, but what makes it very interesting to me is that it can make use of IEEE 802.11 (ie. Wi-Fi) as a transport. This gives Bluetooth, which till now had a maximum speed of between 1 to 3 Mbps, an extended speed of over 20Mbps. I can already see how this advancement of Bluetooth technology can become handy in many applications.

I was just sitting in my office today, listening to “Not Meant to Be” by the “Theory of a Dead Man”. I’ve always liked this song, but the most powerful words in the entire song in my opinion are when he says “Nobody wins when everyone’s losing”. Now this statement is true to me at so many different levels of both my professional life and my personal life. When we analyze our lives in light of Game Theory, which is a form of mathematical modelling derived from applied mathematics, used to solve or at least explain very complex problems in the fields of social sciences, economics, biology, engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, and philosophy. It has become useful in multitude of situations ranging from solving and/or predicting economic problems to planning warfare and military strategy.

We live our lives according to the laws of Zero-Sum Game Theory, according to which the total benefit to all players in the game, for every combination of strategies, always adds to zero. Meaning that a player can benefit only at the equal expense of other player’s loss. In reality, the principle of this theory does not hold true for most parts of our lives. The laws of Zero-Sum Game Theory only applies to activities such as robbing a bank, or gambling our money away at the casino. Of course, I do know of a few people whose lives are completely encapsulated by crime and gambling, however most people would agree that that’s not much of a life that they have given themselves. For the rest of us, our lives are governed more by the laws of Non-Zero-Sum Game Theory, where a gain by one player does not necessarily correspond to a loss by another player.

But if we continue to “play” our life according to any “strategy” which maximizes the other player’s losses or minimizes their gains, as is defined by MiniMax or MaxMin Theorem, then certainly the “Theory of a Dead Man” holds true, as we all lose this “game” of life and most certainly “Nobody wins when everyone’s losing”.

Here is the lyric to the entire song, which I can relate to in so many ways, and I’m sure many of you can as well.

It’s never enough to say I’m sorry
It’s never enough to say I care
But I’m caught between what you wanted from me
And knowing that if I give that to you
I might just disappear

Nobody wins when everyone’s losing

It’s like one step forward and two steps back
No matter what I do you’re always mad
And I, I can’t change your mind
I know it’s like trying to turn around on a one way street
I can’t give you what you want
And it’s killing me
And I, I’m starting to see
Maybe we’re not meant to be

It’s never enough to say I love you
No, it’s never enough to say I try
It’s hard to believe
That’s theres no way out for you and me
And it seems to be the story of our life

Nobody wins when everyone’s losing

It’s like one step forward and two steps back
No matter what I do you’re always mad
And I, I can’t change your mind
I know it’s like trying to turn around on a one way street
I can’t give you what you want
And it’s killing me
And I, I’m starting to see
Maybe we’re not meant to be

There’s still time to turn this around
You could building this up instead of tearing it down
But I keep thinking
Maybe it’s too late

It’s like one step forward and two steps back
No matter what I do you’re always mad
And I, I can’t change your mind
I know it’s like trying to turn around on a one way street
I can’t give you what you want
And it’s killing me
And I, I’m starting to see
Maybe we’re not meant to be

It’s like one step forward and two steps back
No matter what I do you’re always mad
And I, baby I’m sorry to see
Maybe we’re not meant to be

Ok so I was doing a little bit of window shopping yesterday. It was a nice and bright sunny day, I got out of my office around 6:30pm and since the malls are open till 9pm, I decided to walked to the mall which is about 5 to 10 min walk depending on your speed and fitness level. I came across two t-shirts that really caught my attention, but with the economic downfall, I decided that I will not purchase them both. Now I need everyone’s help choosing between them.
So here are the two t-shirts that I really liked:

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=1561 I don’t know if its really worth $86 (on top of that, in Montreal GST & QST would add to a final total price of over $100).

http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_2&products_id=902 This one is priced a bit more reasonably at $66 (plus tax makes it like $85).

You can go to http://www.afflictionclothing.com to find other t-shirts or to locate an Affliction store near you or one of their Retailers. However you will not be able to locate Retailers in Canada from that website.

Hey folks, you have noticed by now that my blog located at www.mirzaahmed.com. has been inaccessible. I was occupied with other issues to renew my hosting services with serverseas. I apologize for the inconvenience, just bare with me while I fix the problem. Till then I will be blogging from here temporarily. Aditionally, my former email address: mirza (AT) mirzaahmed.com will no longer be valid, therefore please send me emails at mirza (AT) mirzaahmed.info to reflect my new web address.