Pinar Yanardag's Blog

Since I successfully unlocked & signed into my Google account last week (it was only one step further: an edge or 3g connection! :)), I am happly using Android. It has nice features and geeky enough–except it rapidly drains battery (i turned brightness down to 0% as a workaround, but still sucks).

I am currently writing this entry via its browser. But I get bored.. Let’s be a bad girl ;P

*pinar hits enter*
*pinar types “reboot” to address bar*
*pinar hits enter*
…………………………………………………………………………….

Wha? What happened? Why my phone restarted? Aww, did it evaluate everything i write as a system command? I must kiddin’, huh? :)

But unfortunately, I’m not kiddin’… It is really the most bizarre flaw I’ve ever seen.. You can read more from here.

PS#1: Note that, only Android 1.0 TC5-RC29 or earlier are vulnerable and a patch has released already.
PS#2: Don’t even try to type “rm -rf /” :P
PS#3: Oh, and there’s that, too.
PS#4: Aomm, and there was that, too.

Finally, I returned to hometown after a painful roadmap (San Jose -> Denver -> Frankfurt -> Istanbul). But the only thing that makes those hours quickly spendable is the people I met –hopefully I can always find some interesting people to talk with :) This time, at my last transit flight (after 4 + 9 hours on air) I met with two men, it was really funny. In fact I just asked if they want a dark Twix or not, but one of them told me he’s just too tired to eat. So I wondered if they’re from CA, too.. Then we started to talk. After a while, I realized one of them was wearing a Microsoft t-shirt :)

- Uhmm.., you’re working for Microsoft?
+ Yes, we are.
- Oh, I’ve just attended to a summit in Google. Actually.. I am working for a Linux distribution.

Then we started to laugh.. and some kind of funny fan stuff. Then it went like that:

+ So what are you doing exactly?
- I am from the security team, I am tracking vulnerabilities and fixing them. And you?
(they started to laugh, and I was trying to figure out why :))
- Hey, what’s wrong? :)
+ We’re from Microsoft’s security team!

I think it was a really nice conjunction, think about that: you find somebody to talk -> you’re colleagues -> and you’re working in the same specific area + they are from a very different point of view.. So we talked about security, open source, Microsoft & Novell and so on. And Android! Damn, despite unlocking it successfuly, I still can’t sign in my Google account.. They were really nice people and shared their knowledge about unlocking phones :) So I realized I have some extra things to do rather than just network unlocking.

And at last.. the funniest part of our conversation:

+ So why are you working for open source anyway?
- For freedom! :)

PS: I spent my Halloween in California’s Great America and had a lot of fun. :) Picturezz ->