Michael Warkentin mwarkentin

Comprehensions in Python the Jedi way

Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit.

I frequently deal with collections of things in the programs I write. Collections of droids, jedis, planets, lightsabers, starfighters, etc. When programming in Python, these collections of things are usually represented as lists, sets and dictionaries. Oftentimes, what I want to do with collections is to transform them in various ways. Comprehensions is a powerful syntax for doing just that. I use them extensively, and it's one of the things that keep me coming back to Python. Let me show you a few examples of the incredible usefulness of comprehensions.

How to setup AWS lambda function to talk to the internet and VPC

I'm going to walk you through the steps for setting up a AWS Lambda to talk to the internet and a VPC. Let's dive in.

So it might be really unintuitive at first but lambda functions have three states.

No VPC, where it can talk openly to the web, but can't talk to any of your AWS services.
VPC, the default setting where the lambda function can talk to your AWS services but can't talk to the web.
VPC with NAT, The best of both worlds, AWS services and web.

Cryptographic Best Practices

Putting cryptographic primitives together is a lot like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, where all the pieces are cut exactly the same way, but there is only one correct solution. Thankfully, there are some projects out there that are working hard to make sure developers are getting it right.

The following advice comes from years of research from leading security researchers, developers, and cryptographers. This Gist was [forked from Thomas Ptacek's Gist][1] to be more readable. Additions have been added from

Shakespeare Sonnet++ Postmortem (incident #465)

Date

2015-10-21

Authors

jennifer
martym

A curated list of AWS resources to prepare for the AWS Certifications

A curated list of awesome AWS resources you need to prepare for the all 5 AWS Certifications. This gist will include: open source repos, blogs & blogposts, ebooks, PDF, whitepapers, video courses, free lecture, slides, sample test and many other resources.

What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn

Disclaimer: This piece is written anonymously. The names of a few particular companies are mentioned, but as common examples only.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I'd known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I'm not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would

WannaCry|WannaDecrypt0r NSA-Cyberweapon-Powered Ransomware Worm

Virus Name: WannaCrypt, WannaCry, WanaCrypt0r, WCrypt, WCRY
Vector: All Windows versions before Windows 10 are vulnerable if not patched for MS-17-010. It uses EternalBlue MS17-010 to propagate.
Ransom: between $300 to $600. There is code to 'rm' (delete) files in the virus. Seems to reset if the virus crashes.
Backdooring: The worm loops through every RDP session on a system to run the ransomware as that user. It also installs the DOUBLEPULSAR backdoor. It corrupts shadow volumes to make recovery harder. (source: malwarebytes)
Kill switch: If the website www.iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com is up the virus exits instead of infecting the host. (source: malwarebytes). This domain has been sinkholed, stopping the spread of the worm. Will not work if proxied (source).

update: A minor variant of the viru

Serverless plugin author's cheat sheet

This cheat sheet provides a detailed overview of the exposed lifecycle events and available commands (and entrypoints) of the Serverless framework, that can be hooked by plugins (internal and external ones). The document is structured by the commands invoked by the user.

Lifecycle events are shown as the globally available outer events (all providers) and sub lifecycle events that are provider specific in the called order. Currently only the AWS provider is shown. If you have information about the other provider,

	...

	action_with_slack_notification = %(banaction)s[name=%(__name__)s, port="%(port)$
	slack[name=%(__name__)s]

	action = %(action_with_slack_notification)s

	...