Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Bye 2010. Thanks for everything.

I will keep this short and simple. Some people, as always, will get annoyed. Some people will feel that IddSalim is attacking them (the blog, not the person). Some people will say, ‘Go Salim! Tell dem! Say what we would love to say but are too scared to say’.

2010 has been a testing year. I made a few friends and enemies (due to misunderstanding) and met some brilliant and inspiring people. I will dedicate this post to the people and organizations that have shaped my Life in 2010.

1 – Safaricom

After I blogged about ‘Hacking Mpesa for Fun and Profit’ I attracted bad blood from Mpesa Department and a barrage of nice and not-so-nice emails and reactions from Safaricom and Vodafone. The blog was about how to Export the Mpesa SSL client certificates from IE to Mozilla and Opera.

An Innocent article that should have earned me some Bonga Points. But NOOOO!! Ohh No! This was seen as a direct ATTACK to Mpesa and Vodafone over-reacted. Our Mpesa PayBill contract was revoked out of fear that I know so much about Mpesa and could hack it. (My God!).

There were questions that were raised that I wish to answer, before end of 2010. Q: (How did Salim gain access to Safaricom Lan. How did he do a vulnerability Assessment on Mpesa. Why does he hate .NET apps that much?) A: (I do not have any priviledged access to Saf. Just the kawaida bambanet access. What I discovered about Mpesa is as open to any hacker worth his salt as it was to me. As an act of Good faith, I can share all I know and my Security Analysis of the Mpesa System. The information I had/have is for the pre-november-update Mpesa system. If All the issues have been fixed now, then there is nothing to fear.).

2 – Google

After my Interview with Google, I was enlightened. I was humbled. I was taught to never ignore even the most minute details in IT. Finally, I understand true inheritance and polymorphism. I finally understand and can write my own optimization and logic algorithms. Finally, I was forced to learn Python. Real learning. From Scratch. To Understand the language. Not just to know how to solve problem X. Thank you Google for the challenge. Talk to you soon.

3 – Buju, Too, Vera and Shazie

It finally got to my code cranium. All code without scrilla makes Salim an un-focused coder. That is All I will say.

4 – Partnerships and Relationships

Biggest lessons fall in this category. There are people who will stick with you no matter what. There are those that will RUN away at the first sight of trouble. There are those who are there to USE you to gratify their egos. There are those who are there to PROFIT from your efforts. There are those who will STEAL from you, without a moment’s hesitation. There are those who will KEEP AWAY from you as soon as they start ‘doing well’.There are those that will smile at you then stab you wearing the proverbial VELVET glove.

I have met all these people.

5 – This blog

One year old now and I have met, befriended and equally and annoyed more people than the last 8 years of my life. I had to pull down extremist blog posts (#mashogaHatuwapendi) and some posts got me into trouble due to misunderstandings #SafaricomGotmeWrong. But all that is water under the Athi Bridge.

We will do alot of business together next year. Cant wait to forge long-lasting data relationships once 2011 starts.

Wazi.

Back to code.