Hacker’s diary

Amusing fact #1: .NET framework does not have built-in class to load RSA private key from PKCS#1 (PEM) representation. I borrowed this: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/162194/Certificates-to-DB-and-Back Amusing fact #2: creating an RSA key […]

A couple of hours ago my Outlook at work stopped working getting stuck on “trying to connect”. The Exchange Server appeared to be alive. Restarting and rebooting did not help. […]

I have just run into a problem: a test passes fine on the CI sever, but breaks on my machine. Reason: it gets a wrong config file. Root cause: when […]

The following code does not work as expected: $xml = simplexml_load_string(“<root><a/><b>text</b></root>”); $node = $xml->xpath(“/root/a”)[0]; if ($node) process($node); // process($node) may not be called for some valid nodes Unlike most other […]

I have discovered a bug in PHP 5.4.4: a simple XPATH does not work. $xml = simplexml_load_string(“<root><a/><b>text</b></root>”); $node = $xml->xpath(“/root/b”)[0]; // $node is null $node evaluates to FALSE This is […]

TL;DR: XML signatures are trouble, because they are ridiculously hard to implement right. XML signatures in PHP are double trouble, because of lack of decent libraries. .NET security libraries are […]

I did a clean install of Windows 10 on a brand new SSD. Good things: It was relatively straightforward and quick. It also rebooted seamlessly without requiring me to remove […]