2017 ACM-ICPC Regionals Asia-Manila Experience

We have two teams from ICS for this event held at Ateneo de Manila University last December 13-15, 2015. It is good to have been part of this event again after a long break. Thanks to Sir Clinton Poserio, head coach of the Eliens team, for inviting me. The ICS alumni have been a great help in providing financial support. A team from National University of Singapore was the winner in the competition. The top team from the Philippines was from the Ateneo de Manila University. The contest website is here.

DEC{}DE 2017: Transforming Security Experience

We attended this one-day event sponsored by Trend Micro last Nov. 29. The morning session was devoted to keynote sessions and the afternoon on technical sessions which included a hands-on lab.
Majority of the talks focused on the modern threats and attack approaches. The speakers also presented interesting statistics on the security landscape. With the growing security threats, the speaker from FBI urged the cooperation among the industry, government, and the academe. A common attack nowadays is the Business Email Compromise (BEC) wherein employees are subjected to phishing attacks resulting to the spread of malware, particularly ransom ware. With the growing popularity of the crypto-currencies, attackers are also taking advantage of user resources for mining without their consent. There were also talks on cloud security(Amazon) and application of machine learning techniques to security(Microsoft). A final takeaway from the event is that "security is a habit.".

A list of good-sounding adjectives and word for titles and presentations

(Last updated: 2022-11-28)

• sustainable
• inclusive
• comprehensive
• novel
• modern
• exclusive
• multidisciplinary
• interdisciplinary
• collaborative
• pioneering
• innovative
• modern
• monumental
• scientific
• professional
• superior
• *-proof (ex. hack-proof)
• *-resistant (ex. tamper-resistant)
• *-preserving (ex. privacy-preserving)
• free
• tested
• timely
• unparalleled
• profitable
• encompassing
• generic
• secure
• safe
• efficient
• effective
• revolutionary
• futuristic
• forward-looking
• latest
• advanced
• interactive
• user-friendly
• infinite
• certified
• complete
• emerging
• excellent
• sensational
• practical
• powerful
• proven
• sizable
• reliable
• non-deterministic
• non-intrusive
• (more to follow)

NCITE 2017 Experience

This year's NCITE was held at Leyte Normal University, Tacloban City, Leyte. We presented a paper on distance estimation using RSSI for drones. Together with me are four colleagues from ICS. The food was good and we really enjoyed the presentations. 

CHED Centers of Excellence in IT (Department Websites)

Below is a list of the department websites of CHED's CoE in IT released in 2015.

1. Angeles University Foundation
2. University of the Philippines Los Banos
3. Ateneo de Naga University
4. Cebu Institute of Technology University
5. University of the Philippines Cebu
6. Mindanao University of Science and Technology
7. Asia Pacific College
8. Ateneo de Manila University
9. De La Salle University 
10. National University
11. Technological Institute of the Philippines - Manila
12. Technological Institute of the Philippines - QC
13. University of the Cordilleras
14. Silliman University

Reference: CHED CMO No. 38 2015

Creating a USB drive Windows 7 installer from Ubuntu 16.04

If you have an .iso file for the installer, do the following:

1. Mount the installer .iso using loopback device
    #mount win7.iso /mnt
2. Identify the device name in linux of your USB drive (ex. /dev/sdc)
    #fdisk -l
3. Open gparted on the USB drive device
    #gparted /dev/sdc
4. In gparted delete all partitions then do the following:
    a. Create a new partition table, select type: 'msdos'
    b. Create an NTFS partition
    c. Through "Manage flags" option, check 'boot'
    d. Exit from gparted
5. Copy all the contents of /mnt to the root of the newly prepared USB drive
6. Unmount the newly prepared USB drive (which was mounted automatically by the Ubuntu file manager when inserted earlier)
6. Install ms-sys (https://launchpad.net/~lenski/+archive/ubuntu/ms-sys/+files/ms-sys_2.2.0-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb)
7. Install the boot sector
    #ms-sys -7 /dev/sdc
8. Unmount /dev/sdc
9. Umount /mnt

CNSEC 2017

In line with the offering of a new Special Topics course on Computer and Network Security, SRG hosted the Computer and Network Security 2017(CNSEC2017) Workshop last June 17-18, 2017. The objective of the workshop is to provide computer security related hands-on activities for the ICS faculty. SRG prepared two activities, one on buffer overflow exploitation and another on SQL injection. Contests were held to test the participants knowledge.  Winners of the “Olympus has fallen” stack overflow exploitation contest are Mam Maan, Sir TJ, and Miguel. Clinton won the “Attack on Titan” SQL injection contest.  

Setting up a Drone Programming Environment using DroneKit on Windows 7

1) Download and install APM Planner 2 for Windows.

2) Download and install Python 2.7 for  Windows. Make sure the following options are set.

1. Install for all users
2. Destination directory: C:\Python2.7
3. Add python.exe to Path

3) Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) to test if the installation was successful.

1. >python -V

4) Install virtualenv

1.  >pip install virtualenv

5) Create and activate the dronekit virtual environment.

1. >md SRG-Bots 
2. >cd SRG-Bots
3. >virtualenv dronekit_env
4. >dronekit_env\Scripts\activate.bat

6) Install the required packages. This may take a while.

1. >pip install dronekit dronekit-sitl mavproxy wget

7) At this point the required packages have been installed. Start dronekit-sitl.

1. >dronekit_env\Scripts\dronekit-sitl.exe copter-3.3

8) Open a new command prompt then run mavproxy.

1. >cd SRG-Bots
2. >dronekit_env\Scripts\activate.bat
3. >python dronekit_env\Scripts\mavproxy.py --master tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 --sitl 127.0.0.1:5501 --out 127.0.0.1:14550 --out 127.0.0.1:14551

9) Run APM Planner 2.

10) Open a new command prompt. Download and run an example.

1. >cd SRG-Bots
2. >dronekit_env\Scripts\activate.bat
3. >python
4. >>>import wget
5. >>>wget.download('https://github.com/dronekit/dronekit-python/raw/master/examples/simple_goto/simple_goto.py')
6. >>>quit()
7. >python simple_goto.py --connect "udp:127.0.0.1:14551"

SenseDev'17 Experience

SenseDev is a five-day workshop on wireless sensor networks hosted by the University of San Carlos Talamban Campus in Cebu City last March 20-24, 2017. The resource persons were from Coventry University. Participants came from all over the country, mostly from Luzon. Before the actual workshop, we were asked to prepare a virtual machine (for VirtualBox). The virtual machine setup was automated using vagrant using a vagrant file provided by the resource persons. Included in the virtual machine are source code for TinyOS and OMNET++ for programming the TelosB mote. The first day of the conference included a field trip and socials night. The remaining days were devoted to the actual workshop. We were divided into groups where each group must develop a simple project to be presented at the last day of the workshop. Our project won the best project award.

PCSC 2017 Experience

The conference was held at the University of San Carlos Talamban Campus in Cebu City last March 16-18, 2017. The venue for the plenary sessions is nice and the food was great. There were a lot of student participants also. Several  pre-conference workshops were hosted by different schools. I attended the Women in Computing workshop which featured talks by some of the top women in computing from the Philippines. The paper presentations were divided into different tracks. I attended the Computer Networks and Cloud Computing where we presented our paper. There were six from ICS who attended the conference. The best paper for the conference came from National University.

Encrypting home directory in Ubuntu 16.04 after install

I will be traveling so I decided to encrypt my home directory just in case my laptop is lost or stolen.

1. Log in as target user  
2. Install required packages
• sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils
3. Create a temporary admin user
4. Log out target user
5. Log in as temporary admin user
6. Encrypt target user home directory
• sudo ecryptfs-migrate-home -u target_user
7. Encrypt swap partition
• sudo ecryptfs-setup-swap
8. Log out temporary admin user
9. Log in as target user
10. Record encryption passphrase
• ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase
11. Reboot then log in as target user. Check if everything is working.
12. Clean up by removing the backup folder and temporary admin user.