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  The mystery of Duqu Framework solved

The Quest for Identification In my previous blogpost about the Duqu Framework, I described one of the biggest remaining mysteries about Duqu – the oddities of the C&C communications module which appears to have been written in a different language than the rest of the Duqu code. As technical experts, we found this question very interesting and puzzling and we wanted to share it with the community. The feedback we received exceeded our wildest expectations. We got more than 200...

   Duqu,Code mystery,OO C,C++     2012-03-21 09:29:18

  Reducing Code Nesting

"This guy’s code sucks!" It’s something we’ve all said or thought when we run into code we don’t like. Sometimes it’s because it’s buggy, sometimes it’s because it conforms to a style we don’t like, and sometimes it’s because it just feels wrong. Recently I found myself thinking this, and automatically jumping to the conclusion that the developer who wrote it was a novice. The code had a distinct property that I dislike: lots of ...

   Code nesting,Readability,Maintainability,Reduction     2012-01-02 08:13:46

  A Python Optimization Anecdote

Hi! I’m Pavel and I interned at Dropbox over the past summer. One of my biggest projects during this internship was optimizing Python for dynamic page generation on the website. By the end of the summer, I optimized many of dropbox.com’s pages to render 5 times faster. This came with a fair share of challenges though, which I’d like to write about today:The ProblemDropbox is a large website with lots of dynamically generated pages. The more pages that are dynamically generat...

   Python,Anecodate,Optimization,Efficiency     2011-10-25 10:33:20

  The Number One Trait of a Great Developer

Maybe the best programmers aren’t those who spectacularly solve crazy problems, but those who don’t create them, which is much more silent. – Lena HerrmannWhen I look around at other companies hiring Ruby on Rails developers, I see them focusing on three major traits: Super-smart; Large community following; Deep Ruby knowledge. They’re all wrong. While these are great aspects in moderation, they all miss the number one quality of a fantastic developer: Judge...

   Developer,Trait,Judgement,No. 1     2011-11-05 06:49:19

  I'm Retiring from PHP

I am retiring from PHP as my language of choice for personal side projects and new programming ventures. This was not an easy decision to come to, but one that I think is necessary for my love of programming to continue. You see, I'm not only a programmer because I love programming, but because I can not do anything else. History It all started in 1999 when I was in 8th grade. The Internet was really starting to get interesting and I wanted to start programming. I had picked up...

   PHP,Scala,Programming,Language     2011-06-27 07:36:25

  Roundup on Parallel Connections

A lot of blogging and follow-up discussion ensued with the announcement that IE8 supports six connections per host. The blogs I saw: IE8: The Performance Implications IE8 speeds things up IE8: 6 Connections Per Host IE 8 and Performance Testing IE8.s Connection Parallelism IE 8 Connection Parallelism Issues It’s likely that Firefox 3 will support 6 connections per server in an upcoming beta release, which means more discussion is expected. I wanted to pull all the facts into one place an...

   Browser,Concurrent connection,Persistent     2011-09-05 01:51:44

  10 Things Beginner Developers Should Know

If you are a novice developer, it might be confusing about where you should start, because the field is broad and provides many options for you. There are so many questions you might ask yourself, such as “What programming language should I learn?” or “Should I also know front-end, or only back-end?” And I am sure there are much more than that. Well, in order for you to be able to start with an advantage against the others, I’ve decided to help you start your ...

   Advice,Software developer,Beginner     2011-12-29 01:41:04

  Three Simple Ways to Improve the Security of Your Web App

It seems like web app security has entered the public conscious recently, probably as a result of the press covering the activities of groups like Anonymous and incidents like security breaches at several CAs. Here are a couple of quick security tips to improve the security of your web apps. Think of these as low-hanging fruit, not as a substitute for thorough analysis of your app’s security. If there’s interest in this topic we can do more posts, too - let us know in the com...

   Web app,Security,X-FRAME-OPTIONS,SSL     2011-12-08 10:10:20

  Why I Won’t Hire You

I will be very honest with you in this post. Most interview articles only show obvious mistakes, as if most people don’t know showing up late is bad form. I will tell you the things I didn’t really know about until I was the one interviewing, and interviewing for a variety of positions and person-types. No interview prep article ever prepared me in the right way for how interviewers really think. That is what I will be sharing with you today. When you first walk in...

   Career,Hire,Preparartion,CV,Resume     2012-01-11 04:38:19

  FTP Must Die

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is specified in RFC 959, published in October 1985. The attempt in this specification is to satisfy the diverse needs of users of maxi-hosts, mini-hosts, personal workstations, and TACs, with a simple, and easily implemented protocol design.That's from the introduction. Does anyone here know what a TAC is? I don't. I had to look it up, since the acronym wasn't even expanded in the RFC. It took three tries in Google, and I finally found it in some obscur...

   FTP,Future,Death,Trend,Protocol     2012-02-06 08:13:36

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