The Luckiest Disaster ~ Baby Hit by Train

Breaking News! I was shocked when watching the news on TV. What a world luckiest baby.

A six-month-old baby had a miraculous escape after his stroller rolled off a railway station platform and into the path of an incoming train. The incident, which happened at Ashburton railway station in Melbourne, Australia, was captured by CCTV. The footage shows the baby's mother momentarily letting go of the stroller, which then rolls over the edge of the platform. Second later, a train pulls in to the station. The stroller and baby were dragged 30 meters further up the track before the ...

How Possible a Bed Would Move

I was looking for Ipoh and Penang's attractions in TripAdvisor and was curious about what Hotel in Ipoh is worth staying. So I navigate to Ipoh Hotels link.

Apparently Regalodge Hotel is the best budget hotel in Ipoh. The hotel is as cheap as Excelsior but way newer and cleaner. I might want to consider it if I have a chance to visit Ipoh again for work. http://www.regalodge.com.my

I then read some reviews of Hotel Excelsior (yeah.. I just want to know if anyone has any special experience in the hotel) and found this pretty 'funny' review:

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I have two complains, though:

1) The complimentary baby cot I asked for was damaged and can be unsafe if your child loves to climb or play inside the cot.

2) I was given two single beds joined side by side to form a queen size bed. The problem is the beds move! So while sleeping, don't be surprised that the beds gradually move apart, leaving a gap in the middle for you to fall through!

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Can anyone tell me how possible a bed can move by itself? I have stayed in Hotel Excelsior before and the bed is definitely not the 4 legs wooden bed like what you see in the jail.

The beds actually look like this:

Unless you are doing intense workout on the bed, the bed MIGHT move a little. But the beds move and leave a gap in between while you were doing nothing on bed but sleeping? And the gap is big enough for one to fall?

Hmm... anyone who is good in physics can tell me how did it happen?

Oh.. by the way, the carpet in the room is not a smooth type, but a rough type.

HITB Conference

I attended Hack In The Box conference 3 days ago for 2 days and it was awesome! Is there any job in the world that basically the company just hire us to attend all sorts of conference or seminar or talks or whatever you call, and all we need to do is to write a report about what we have learnt. Cool isn't it? (keep dreaming)

HITB is the premier network security event in Asia and the Middle East. The main aim of the conference is to enable the dissemination, discussion and sharing of deep knowledge network security information.

The conference fee is quite expensive though, RM499! Thank goodness my company sponsored me and John, the key person who perform penetration test in my company. I arrived at Crowne Plaza Mutiara just on time, the traffic in KL was terribly congested. The interior of Crowne hotel is actually way more grand than its exterior.

The organizer made me wear this tag and secured it with a piece of metal so the tag can't be removed unless you cut it. Which means I was forced to wear this stupid thing to eat, to shit, to sleep, to date, to swim, to fight, to whatever you can imagine, for a good 2 days. What a brilliant idea!

These teams were beating their brains out to exploit rival teams’ daemons to get their flags. The game is called Capture The Flag War - CTF.

Teams of 3 will have a set of daemons / services running on their machines and they need to exploit rival teams’ daemons to get their flags. Submit the flag to obtain offensive points. Keep your daemons up and running to obtain defensive points.

In CTF-WMD, each team will manage a country and each country will start with the same number of population (also known as HP or HitPoints). Teams will need to launch warheads at rival countries or disable their warheads or utilities in order to gain offensive points. For defensive points, all the team needs to do is keep their utilities up.

Heard that Korean's team won. If you are good in hacking and network security, you might want to consider participating in this competition next year (it's held every year), it's a very high chance that you would be spotted by renowned companies and hire you if you won.

There were 4 main speakers of the conference of all have been a hacker for a few decades.

Keynote 1: Joe Grand aka Kingpin (President, Grand Idea Studio)
Keynote 2: Rop Gonggrijp (Hacker and Activist)
Keynote 3: Ed Skoudis (Co-Founder, InGuardians)
Keynote 4: Julian Assange (Founder of WikiLeaks.org)

Joe Grand, hardware hacker/expertise, showed us how he cracked the smart card so he has unlimited value of the card to pay for the parking. But John told me the device that is used to analyze the smart card chip costs more than 100k (he didn't say in which currency) -_-". I'm not sure how true it is though. Gonna google a bit.

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, told us he has been hacking since age 7! He was convicted of attacks on the US intelligence and publishing a magazine which inspired crimes against the Commonwealth. Genius are all weird. If you want to know more about him, google is your best friend.

I tried to wiki him but surprisingly he isn't in the wikipedia. How could someone like XiaXue who blogs about nothing but her rantings and pinky stuffs is found in Wikipedia whereas a WikiLeaks founder who has been hacking since age 7, is not interesting enough to be in Wikipedia.


Another interesting booth, Lock Picking Village, shows you how to hand pick the locks.
Visit here -> http://conference.hackinthebox.org/hitbsecconf2009kl/?page_id=358

The two members from the Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL) were demonstrating to the audience how to use simple tools to unlock the lock.

The lockpick tools that they sell are expensive though, a simple tool in a size of a credit card costs RM100! I was tempted to buy one but I couldn't think of any reason that I need one except to show off. There was a man who wasn't hesitate at all to buy a set of toolkits which costs USD400!! hmm... might be a professional thief.

These 2 Russians are funny. They are one of the developers of nmap. (my source is so not accurate :-p Thanks LD)

The 2 speakers, Fyodor, co-author of X-Probe and The Grugq, who has spent several years researching anti-forensic techniques and also the author of Hash, showed us all sort of funny 'illegal' tradings on the internet in Russia.

Can you imagine there are actually people who sell ICQ number? Before that I can't even imagine there are people who are still using ICQ. Anyone of you still remember your ICQ number? Is your ICQ number 6 digits or 8 digits? Mine is 7 digits, you can try to add me if you want, my ICQ number is 6051605 :-p... no joke, I still remember it!

Ok, the whole idea about selling ICQ number is that people prefer 6 digits ICQ number than 8 digits ICQ number, just to show off, I guess. The ICQ number that they sell are those lucky numbers like 116688, 996688 (why sound so like Chinese). Russians are simply brilliant.

Another funny trading in Russia is that people sell proxy online. For those who are not familiar with proxy, a Proxy site is a web page which allows you to browse your favorite web sites -- even though your access to those web sites might be blocked by a content filter. So if you find that your bloody company blocks your favorite websites, use the web proxy sites to get around the block. By the way, you can actually get free proxy online if you google it, not necessary have to purchase it.

The most classic one is that there are people who offer the service to TAKE DOWN TWITTER.COM. So if you want to take down twitter.com (for don't know what bloody reason) for 1 day, all you need is to pay USD 80 to the hacker who offers the service.

There are many more funny tradings in Russia but I don't think you can google it unless you understand Russian language. According to the speakers, those hackers who offer these services are not really a mafia, those are just young dudes who are still studying and wanted to make some money in a funny way.

Cyberworld is just another interesting world which will eventually dominate the world.

More info about HITB:
http://conference.hackinthebox.org/hitbsecconf2009kl/

p.s. Not many photos as my cellphone camera sucks, can't even zoom.

Laos Trip Update

My Laos Trip update in my travel blog -> Travel & Living Bliss

That Luang Stupa

Barbecued sticky rice

Learn to Respect the Tak Bat (Morning monk’s round)

Kid in Laos

Haunted Hotel

If you follow my blog, you probably already knew that I've just back from Ipoh.

Each time I was assigned work in outstation, the very first thing that flashes into my mind is that which hotel I'll be staying. Sometimes we can't choose which hotel to stay if the client insists to book the hotel for us. Like the case in Ipoh, the client told me they have booked Hotel Excelsior. So I immediately googled it online. I wasn't convinced of the pictures in its official website so I further googled and noted that it's actually the oldest hotels in the city which was built in 70's

-_-" -_-" -_-" -_-" -_-" -_-"

I suddenly had this eerie feeling that drove me to google more. But I didn't find any interesting information so I just ignored this uncomfortable eerie feeling.

When I arrived at the hotel, my first impression was that it looked bloody old and smelled bloody old. Serious, it smelled like 70's! I don't know how long they have not changed the hotel carpet. Then soon I went into the room, looked quite clean though, but I felt as if I had entered a world of 70's. EVERYTHING IS SO OLD. I bet all the furniture are from 70's! The antique chair is red in color! Who in the world would use red antique chair???

I then found a bible -_-"... sweat again... is there any hidden message with the bible in the room?

When the darkness fell upon the land, the eerie feeling grew stronger. I doubted if there was any guest staying in the same floor as me. It was so quiet that I didn't hear human at all. I started to blame Don for not accompanying me to Ipoh. I watched tv whole night while chatting and blogging online to divert my attention. I was doing good, I was proud of myself for doing this good. Until I was ready to hit the sack, my body suddenly got very itchy and the air conditioner didn't seem to produce cool air. So whole night I felt itchy and hot, not to mention about the continuous sound from the air-con that roused me from my sleep.

As a result, I stayed awake for the whole night till the break of dawn. Can you imagine how torturing? It was my first night.

The next day when I was in the client's office meeting up with their IT manager and Ipoh colleagues, we chatted about my accommodation. I told the IT manager I stayed in Excelsior and he just looked 'quiet'. Then my colleagues asked me how was the stay, the IT Manager immediately said 'Not OK'. He then said the hotel isn't comfortable to stay.

hmm... I sensed something not so right.

In the second night I finally saw human. I was pretty sure there were few families stayed next to my rooms because I heard the laughter and people walking passed my room. It made me felt 'Thank God' and I slept better that night. The third night I slept quite soundly probably I was exhausted from the sleepless nights.

Finally I back to KL today. When I told John, my colleague from EY, he was like 'which hotel did you stay? Don't tell me it's the famous haunted hotel in Ipoh.'

Haunted?? Shit!! 'Excelsior wor'

'That's the haunted one lah!'

OMFG!!

John then continued 'Last time when I worked in Deloitte many of us were sent to Ipoh. We all had a bad time staying in Excelsior. Some of us heard the sound of the kid weeping or people slamming the door in the midnight. It's just so well known that this hotel is haunted'

I then googled it again with 'Hotel Excelsior Ipoh Haunted' and I finally found out that this hotel used to be the highest class hotel in the city and also the tallest building in the city. So many people chose this hotel to commit suicide -_-".

Bloody hell! If this hotel is so haunted, I'm sure the client would have heard about it before. I swear I will not want to stay in this hotel ANYMORE! If the client wants to challenge my persistence, I will QUIT my job and tell everyone in EY that this hotel is haunted so nobody would want to travel there!

Bloody stingy!

p.s. My mum said if there is bible in the room it means there is something fishy about the hotel. p.p.s. But also take note that in Christian country, bible is very common in each hotel room.