I wasted Thursday in a daze. I hadn't gotten drunk or anything but for some reason I woke up around noon, and felt dizzy and tired until about 1:30AM. Needless to say, I really needed any available time to work on my final papers, so I stayed up until 3:30 writing and woke up at noon again today.
In that context there was nothing to shake me awake like a one-on-one talk with Eleanor Zelliot, the dean of international Ambedkar studies. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is the guy who was born an impoverished Untouchable in rural India, secured an American education, authored the Indian Constitution, reformed the Hindu Code, and converted over three million Untouchables to Buddhism. Yet he plays second fiddle to Gandhiji.) I had scheduled this meeting with Prof. Zelliot because I wanted to know more about the current state of Ambedkar Buddhism for long term graduate study. But she was rather confused, because she thought I had called her over for something related to my thesis-- which is on State Shinto, a subject she knows nothing about. Nonetheless I had a great conversation. I learned about Mayawati, the TBMSG's successful Pali program, that Babasaheb did not burn the full Manusmriti but only the anti-shudra sections, and that there is no such thing as Hindu studies in India, a fact which astounds me. Apparently they are worried that academic study of Hinduism will lead to more right wing stuff than currently exists. But in fact academic study in America has created such comprehensive refutations of Hindutva as Was Hinduism Invented? and The Hindus: An Alternative History, while banning the practice in India must have been the direct cause of all the false professors of the sort parodied here.
Anyway, I've got to go before I get seriously distracted from finals again.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
How I was hacked
In November 2008 I was living in a hostel in Tokyo which had set up some computers for my use in their lounge. These computers were all infected with keyloggers. Some Russian guy hacked me and added some spam links to shii.org. I removed them, changed my password, and didn't think about it for a year.
On 5 November 2009 I woke up to a dozen e-mails from people worried about my website being blocked by Google's malware detector. Indeed, I discovered, there were malicious iframes on every page of my website. I cleaned them out, but I still had no clue how it had happened.
Only with the help of DreamHost tech support did I discover that I had been rather lazy when my website got hacked. They didn't do too much to tell me why it had happened though, so I pieced this together by looking through logs this morning (and I'm rather proud of myself).
What I should have done
When I was hacked I should have scanned every page that was modified in the past X days and fixed all the hacks.
What happened because I didn't do this
I had forgotten about the shii.org/tech/ directory entirely. The hacker put a php file in this directory and executed it a year later. Thankfully all it did was add iframes to every page pointing to malware Google already knew about and blocked. Google was also right to block my website, because a file had been uploaded to /temp/index.php which served malware to a single unsuspecting user on the afternoon of Nov. 5th.
Why DreamHost is awesome
They discovered and deleted the back door when I asked them to determine the source of the hack. Of course, this should have happened automatically, but it required them to notice this error log, which probably happens far too often:
For people who can't read Apache logs: DreamHost is aware of this kind of exploit and put in a rule to prevent their box from getting rooted. The only fool affected by this hack was me.
On 5 November 2009 I woke up to a dozen e-mails from people worried about my website being blocked by Google's malware detector. Indeed, I discovered, there were malicious iframes on every page of my website. I cleaned them out, but I still had no clue how it had happened.
Only with the help of DreamHost tech support did I discover that I had been rather lazy when my website got hacked. They didn't do too much to tell me why it had happened though, so I pieced this together by looking through logs this morning (and I'm rather proud of myself).
What I should have done
When I was hacked I should have scanned every page that was modified in the past X days and fixed all the hacks.
What happened because I didn't do this
I had forgotten about the shii.org/tech/ directory entirely. The hacker put a php file in this directory and executed it a year later. Thankfully all it did was add iframes to every page pointing to malware Google already knew about and blocked. Google was also right to block my website, because a file had been uploaded to /temp/index.php which served malware to a single unsuspecting user on the afternoon of Nov. 5th.
Why DreamHost is awesome
They discovered and deleted the back door when I asked them to determine the source of the hack. Of course, this should have happened automatically, but it required them to notice this error log, which probably happens far too often:
[Wed Nov 04 23:21:37 2009] [error] [client 213.163.xx.xx] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 404 (phase 4). Pattern match at RESPONSE_BODY. [file "/dh/apache2/template/etc/mod_sec2/99_dreamhost_rules.conf"] [line "9"] [id "10000001"] [msg "Backdoor access"] [severity "CRITICAL"] [tag "MALICIOUS_SOFTWARE/TROJAN"] [hostname "shii.org"] [uri "/tech/eula.php"] [unique_id "SvJ87EWjqwYAAB0XDO0AAAAX"]
For people who can't read Apache logs: DreamHost is aware of this kind of exploit and put in a rule to prevent their box from getting rooted. The only fool affected by this hack was me.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Iraqi Kurdistan
My website went down so I can no longer post cool stuff I find on the Internets to my wiki. Instead, I'll be posting it to this blog. Here are some pictures of Kurdistan. I'm not going to visit there anytime soon but it's kind of awesome. (read more)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
V with a Vendetta
The season premiere of V promised a remade version of this classic tale of alien visitation that was relevant to the modern day. Instead, what we got was Left Behind In Space. I mean, quite seriously, that there is no philosophical difference between this series and the neoconservative paranoid schizophrenia of Left Behind. Let's match this up, side by side:
The basic plotline
Left Behind: A mysterious person appears out of nowhere, capturing for no apparent reason the devotion and praise of the entire world, except for a small team of devoted rebels who seem to sit on the sidelines rather than doing anything meaningful, but it doesn't matter because they know the Truth.
V: A mysterious alien species appears out of nowhere, capturing for no apparent reason the devotion and praise of the entire world, except for a small team of devoted rebels who seem to sit on the sidelines rather than doing anything meaningful, but it doesn't matter because they know the Truth.
Philosophy of peace
Left Behind: The mysterious person promises peace for all mankind, which we all know means that they are actually building the foundations for an evil reign of terror.
V: The mysterious species promises peace for all mankind, which we all know means that they are actually building the foundations for an evil reign of terror. Also, universal health care!
Philosophy of reporting
Left Behind: One of the main characters is a reporter who, despite personal misgivings, goes along with the mysterious person's plan to censor the media. This character is one of the Good Guys because of his unexpressed doubts.
V: One of the main characters is a reporter who, despite personal misgivings, goes along with the mysterious species' plan to censor the media. This character is one of the Good Guys because of his unexpressed doubts.
Philosophy of religion
Left Behind: The church is a place where the disillusioned can gather to discuss the unlikeliness of peace on earth. It is the home of the Good Guys.
V: The church is a place where the disillusioned can gather to discuss the unlikeliness of peace on earth. It is the home of some of the Good Guys.
Take-home message
Left Behind: Those who promise peace may secretly be representatives of the Antichrist.
V: Those who promise peace may secretly be reptilians from outer space.
Friday, October 30, 2009
"Hither, ye lucky few"
Winter.
Most of my classmates have come down with H1N1. Those who haven't are participating in a college-wide blind date night. It's just me and Orange Pekoe in here right now.
A year has come and gone since my trip to Japan. Unfortunately, my attempt at chronicling it in my diary became less reliable with every month. Slowly, I reconstruct bits and pieces. I seem to remember spending a good amount of time living with an irritable anthropology professor. There's the strange memory of sneaking around in a construction site--twice--getting arrested the second time. Where did my summer go? I believe that aspect of my life was robbed from me, and this time for good. There'll be no more summers from now on.
My senior thesis is on State Shinto's relationship to the Western "religious-secular" dialectic. Earlier in this blog, I made a statement that Shinto was a religion with no system of ethics that was hijacked by the government during the Meiji period. I'd like to retract that now. I'll be writing about that subject on this blog if anyone's interested, but that's not why I've decided to start writing again.
There's a good variety of interesting things sitting in front of me. A bag full of potpourri. An out-of-print book on an alleged 1st century history text of unknown provenance. Ambedkar's The Buddha and His Dhamma. And here's something interesting-- a brochure for the JET program, and a half-finished JET application in an envelope.
Yes, this is where we left off, isn't it?
Most of my classmates have come down with H1N1. Those who haven't are participating in a college-wide blind date night. It's just me and Orange Pekoe in here right now.
A year has come and gone since my trip to Japan. Unfortunately, my attempt at chronicling it in my diary became less reliable with every month. Slowly, I reconstruct bits and pieces. I seem to remember spending a good amount of time living with an irritable anthropology professor. There's the strange memory of sneaking around in a construction site--twice--getting arrested the second time. Where did my summer go? I believe that aspect of my life was robbed from me, and this time for good. There'll be no more summers from now on.
My senior thesis is on State Shinto's relationship to the Western "religious-secular" dialectic. Earlier in this blog, I made a statement that Shinto was a religion with no system of ethics that was hijacked by the government during the Meiji period. I'd like to retract that now. I'll be writing about that subject on this blog if anyone's interested, but that's not why I've decided to start writing again.
There's a good variety of interesting things sitting in front of me. A bag full of potpourri. An out-of-print book on an alleged 1st century history text of unknown provenance. Ambedkar's The Buddha and His Dhamma. And here's something interesting-- a brochure for the JET program, and a half-finished JET application in an envelope.
Yes, this is where we left off, isn't it?
The beginning
If you stayed subscribed to this blog you're a really cool person. Leave a comment.
Interesting thing. I was going to change the name of the blog but I discovered that if I changed the URL someone else would be able to take this one. So, screw that.
Interesting thing. I was going to change the name of the blog but I discovered that if I changed the URL someone else would be able to take this one. So, screw that.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The end
I'm not sure if I could accurately say that college has been moving too quickly for me to finish this blog properly. I don't think I could say anything very interesting in conclusion. My life continues to change day by day, and the summer and fall are over; since December 22, it has been Grouchy Winter. I invite you to read my LiveJournal for continued updates from Minnesota.
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