W2k's Journal: If I try to submit another story, slap me. Hard.

Yeah, yeah, grousing about rejected submissions is lame, I get it. I'm gonna do it anyway. It does get on my nerves when I submit a story, watch it rise to orange in the Firehose, only to be completely ignored. Seven hours later, some Anonymous writes another submission about the same thing. That submission rises to green, but the editors just ignore it. More than 24 hours later, someone posts an (arguably) inferior story about the same thing, and lo and behold, it is published.

This was my submission:

Vista Protected Processes DRM broken
Submitted by W2k on 12:59 Friday 06 April 2007
W2k writes
"It's a well-known fact that Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system contains DRM features, intended to keep a user from manipulating protected digital content that passes through his system. One core part of the DRM in Vista is Protected Processes. In short, a protected process is given special privileges by the operating system to keep other processes from accessing its memory or injecting their own code into its execution path. For example, running a media player as a protected process would make it theoretically impossible for a hacker to read encryption keys for DRM:ed content from its memory space. Well, not any longer. ReactOS developer and well-known kernel hacker Alex Ionescu has published on his blog a tool that can protect or unprotect any process, no questions asked. Screenshots of the tool in action are provided, but no source code."

This is what some AC posted 7 hours later, also didn't get published:

Vista "Protected Processes" Compromised
Submitted by Anonymous Coward on 19:42 Friday 06 April 2007
An anonymous reader writes
"Protected processes, which were introduced in Windows Vista to allow DRM software to be hidden from the prying eyes of reverse engineers, have today had their security called into question by the release of D-Pin Purr (http://www.alex-ionescu.com/?p=35) by Alex Ionescu of ReactOS (http://www.reactos.org/) fame. His tool allows protection to be added and removed to or from arbitrary processes, circumventing the usual security checks. This could enable malware to hide itself from bona-fide scanning / removal software by hiding inside a secured process, and opens the door to some inventive attacks on the DRM pathways of Vista."

This is what finally gets posted onto the front page, more than 24 hours after my original submission:

Vista Protected Processes Bypassed
Posted by CowboyNeal on 18:41 Saturday 07 April 2007
Anonymous Hero writes
"Security Researcher Alex Ionescu strikes again, this time with a proof of concept program that will arbitrarily enable and foremost disable the protection of so-called 'protected processes' in Windows Vista. Not only threatening Vista DRM and friends, it's also another step towards hardened and even more annoying malware. Normally, only specially signed processes made by special companies (decided by Microsoft) can be protected, but now the bad guys can protect any evil process they want, including the latest version of their own keylogger, spambot, or worm, as well as unprotect any 'good' one."

I've read the FAQ and I understand the whole omelette thing, but this is just stupid. Not only do I think my take on the story was better (more informative, more links, written first) but it took almost two full days for the story to make it onto Slashdot's front page! Even fscking PRINT MEDIA does better than that!

Alex Ionescu's blog entry: 2007-04-06 00:29
My submission to Slashdot: 2007-04-06 11:59
Slashdot story appears: 2007-04-07 17:41

Judge for yourself. All the times are UTC, unless I made a mistake (they're UTC+1 in the copy-pasted submissions above). So, what if there were "enough" stories posted already on friday and the editors simply decided to hold off posting anything else until saturday? Well, that doesn't still explain why they chose the (arguably) poorly-written submission over mine.

Will this long whine/rant change anything? Probably not. I am writing this as a reminder to myself not to submit any more stories. And to stop using the firehose, as the editors seem to ignore it anyways. In fact, I'll be quite content just reading the worthwhile stories (while blocking all ads) and modding down the trolls (which is easy since I seem to be getting modpoints several times each week now).

Bye!