Phasor Burn

This is an example of a successful imap login as seen in the mailbox.log in Zimbra. (one single line, though it is appearing word-wrapped here)


2008-05-18 01:10:24,999 INFO [ImapSSLServer-2009] [name=sue@example.com;ip=1.2.3.4;] imap - user sue@example.com authenticated, mechanism=login


Compare what happens with a bad password (one nice log line followed by 20 lines of stack trace)


2008-05-18 01:10:25,109 WARN [ImapSSLServer-2010] [ip=1.2.3.4;] imap - login failed
com.zimbra.cs.account.AccountServiceException$AuthFailedServiceException: authentication failed for bob@example.com
Code:account.AUTH_FAILED
at com.zimbra.cs.account.AccountServiceException$AuthFailedServiceException.AUTH_FAILED(AccountServiceException.java:120)
at com.zimbra.cs.account.AccountServiceException$AuthFailedServiceException.AUTH_FAILED(AccountServiceException.java:116)
at com.zimbra.cs.account.ldap.AuthMechanism$ZimbraAuth.doAuth(AuthMechanism.java:112)
at com.zimbra.cs.account.ldap.LdapProvisioning.verifyPasswordInternal(LdapProvisioning.java:2795)
at com.zimbra.cs.account.ldap.LdapProvisioning.verifyPassword(LdapProvisioning.java:2768)
at com.zimbra.cs.account.ldap.LdapProvisioning.authAccount(LdapProvisioning.java:2647)
at com.zimbra.cs.account.ldap.LdapProvisioning.authAccount(LdapProvisioning.java:2626)
at com.zimbra.cs.security.sasl.AuthenticatorUtil.authenticate(AuthenticatorUtil.java:25)
at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.authenticate(ImapHandler.java:1012)
at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.login(ImapHandler.java:988)
at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.doLOGIN(ImapHandler.java:984)
at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.executeRequest(ImapHandler.java:435)
at com.zimbra.cs.imap.TcpImapHandler.processCommand(TcpImapHandler.java:151)
at com.zimbra.cs.tcpserver.ProtocolHandler.processConnection(ProtocolHandler.java:160)
at com.zimbra.cs.tcpserver.ProtocolHandler.run(ProtocolHandler.java:128)
at EDU.oswego.cs.dl.util.concurrent.PooledExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)


WTF is the point with including all that java stack trace garbage in the log when it is a simple bad password?

Catch the bad password event, log it, and move on.

Do not dirty my logs with stupid stack traces that just fill up the disk and provide no value.

I see this in many other java products too, btw. Including where I am currently working. Gives me endless heartburn.

Lazy. Ass. Java. Propeller Heads. Learn to use Log4J or whatever and keep those stack traces for only really dire circumstances.

I met Father Joe, a Catholic priest who works with people with AIDS. This sounds cloyingly virtuous, unless you have AIDS. More on him in another column. But I thought, “A Christian who acts like one. What a concept.” I’m accustomed to thinking of Christians as mean fundamentalist Protestants who want to kill anyone they can find in the name of Jesus. I realized that I had grown to think of the whole religion as a species of fraud. Here was a guy who apparently took the New Testament seriously. Tough as a boot sole, razor smart, swears like a sailor. If he isn’t careful, he’s going to give Christians a good name.

I certainly don’t agree with Fred on every level, but sometimes he comes up with gems like the one above, which was found in this article about Thailand.

Data recovered from Seagate drive in Columbia shuttle disaster

Simple uncontrolled atmospheric rentry and meteoric-like impact just doesn’t cut it for destroying that questionable data.

Neither does shredding into 1mm squares.

Just use thermite and vaporize that disk. If you are the type that wears tinfoil hats, that is.

That might be a bit hard to read. Here’s the interesting bit in close up

Yes, that actually happens.

Over and over again in some cases.