Distributed Denial Of Service

As usual, I was listening to security now podcast episode #8, and Steve Gibson was talking about the DOS and how it works, and what is the different between DOS and Distributed DOS. I found it very interesting topic and I heard a lot of information I never heard about it.
DOS stands for Denial Of Service, and it is simply a packet traffic that might cause problems for the other end. When a client want to establish a TCP session, the first packet sent from the source (web browser for instance) to the destination (server for instance) is called SYN packet. When the server receive the SYN packet, it allocate number of resources (memory, processor etc) and send back a SYN/ACK packet. If the sender is keep sending this packet (SYN packet), the server will keep allocating resources to the clients till it run out of resources. So DOS does not consume the connection bandwidth ! it attack and consume the server resources.

Conversely, Distributed DOS does consume and attack the conection bandwidth. It simply works by infecting a large number of computers (hundreds to thousands), and tell these computers to attack a single end-user. These computers act as slaves and start sending traffic to this end-user (SYN packet or any other packets). One of the most popular DDOS example is ping packet attack (ICMP packet).

So as a conclusion, DDOS consumes the victim's connection bandwidth, while DOS attacks the victim's resources.

ISP Technology is My New Challenge

Recently, my upper management decided to put me in the ISP department as a line manager. I'm happy with this development because I spent almost a year and half in Atheeb Telecoms keep moving from position to another without having a clear role or responsibility.

When I joint Atheeb I worked for data center project and PMO corporate for almost eight months. Then, I have been moved to work for network integration with IT project. I was following up and tracking the integration issues in addition to my envolvement in the data center project. After I got the PMP certificate last October I joint the network PMO team. My role was to manage the network program as well as developing the project management methodologies in the network department. It was very exciting opportunity for me to practice my knowledge in project & program management.

Eventually, I end up in the ISP department. I said eventually because this is my position as per the final structure. This is a good news for me and at the same time it triggers a new challenge for me in the coming days. ISP technology is a moden technology and it is an interesting feild to be specialized in. I'm intending to focus and consuntrate my reading on this technology. I'll first build my study plan so that I can schedule my time, and to cover all its topics.

Hope insha'allah my plan works, and I got succeed in my new challenge.

The curse of Bahrain

Every time I go to Bahrain, I got an embarrassing position or a difficulty. I have visited Bahrain three times and each time I face a problem. I start thinking may be there is some kind of curse or bad luck in my visits to Bahrain.

My first visit to Bahrain was in Sep 2006 with my friend Abdulmalik. When we reach Dammam we started looking for a car rental shop. We cannot go with our car because my freind's car was registered under his father's name. Our condition was to rent a car and return it to the shop Friday morning, but unfortunately no shop open at that time. We keep looking for very long time and at the end we found one shop that has a branch opens 24|7. We got a car from it after we loose around 3 hours. In my second visit in the summer of 2007, I had a traffic violation and I have to pay it before I can get the traffic permit to cross king Fahad causeway. The problem was not because of the violation, but because I don't have any account in Al-Rajhi nor Al-Riyad bank to pay the violation amount. In addition, the time was 4:00 pm and the banks close at 4:30 !! I tried as fast as I can to find a bank banch and I did it. The employees in the brach were very cooperative and they helped me to pay it.

The reason I'm writing this article is because I faced a very strange position in my third visit last weekend. I tried to prove the curse is not true, but unfortunately this was not the case !!

I rented a car for the same reason in my first visit (my car was registered under my father's name). I prepared every single required document. I made sure that I have no traffic violations, my driver license still valid, and I have the authorization letter from the car rental shop. When I reached the administration of traffic in the causeway, I gave them all my papers. The guy checked every document, and he made sure I have no violation, license still not expired, and the authorization letter is available. I was starring at him and I am pretty sure that there will be a problem somewhere. He looked at me and said "The company has two traffic violations !", I said "Whaaat ? but I have nothing to do with the company !", he said "You cannot take the car outside the kingdom unless the company cleared its record", I told him "My friend, is there any problem in my documents !?", he replied "Call the company, and tell them to pay the amount, otherwise I cannot help you". I called the company and we sort it out immediately.

After my third visit, I proved that the curse is not a myth or something that does not exist at all. No it is exist, but it is something related to psychology sciences any I'm sure everybody has one (or more) :)

New Year ... New War

Two days before we said farewell to 2008 with all its happiness and sadness events. In the same time we received 2009 with our hopes and wishes. With this new coming year no one (even the pessimistic people) expect this beginning of 2009.

Israel started this year (or even a few days before) with a new war on Palestine. Israel government claims that the purpose of this war is to stop Hamas's attacks and missiles, while in the field you see some thing totally different ! You can clearly notice that most of the victims are from children, women and old people !! Are they terrorists ? Are all of them criminals ?? Are they the one who throw the missiles ?

I don't think there is any body who has a bit of humanity and he is happy with what is happening in Gaza. No religion or law or even tradition in the world agree on this carnage. No matter who is responsible for this, whether Hamas or Israel, the war should stop on innocents people. I have no comments on the pictures, since it tells all the story.