Hackosis

Got to get this t-shirt:

Get your t-shirt here.

Freenet is a relatively new P2P project in which members act similar to that of a cluster, donating hard drive space and bandwidth. It is similar to the Tor network in the fact that connections are encrypted and re-routed through other members of the network.

What’s different about Freenet is that you also dedicate parts of your hard drive for file storage. What is even more interesting is that you have no control over what is stored in your ‘data store’. Less popular files are deleted to make room for more popular files. The files are encrypted so that you ‘might’ not be held responsible for what lies within your data store.

Freenet is not only for storing files, but also allows you to create Freenet websites called ‘Freesites’. Also usenet, email, and more is possible on the Freenet.

Freenet is open source and runs anywhere Java runs. Windows, Linux, or Mac should work fine. After installing the interface is accessible through a web browser. Remember, Freenet is still in alpha stage so there may be some bugs.

Read more and download at the Free Network Project website.

Open source, cross platform Vidalia is a Tor GUI that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Simply put, Vidalia makes it really easy to setup, configure, turn on and off, and configure relays for the Tor network. Complete with bandwidth graphs and network maps, Vidalia should have everything you need to get started and stay on the Tor network.

After installing Vidalia, it is as simple as pointing your browser’s proxy setting to 127.0.0.1:8118 to start using the Tor network.

You can even choose which country to originate your connection from. Don’t get too frisky now. ;)

Vidalia Homepage | Vidalia Downloads | Vidalia Screenshots | Vidalia Support

Monitoring your website on a shared host is vital to the well being of your existence on the internet. There are several online services that will do this for you in exchange for a small price. While they may be a bit more accurate, I would like to share with you how to use RRDTool to monitor your website’s response time yourself.

image via rrdwiki (didn’t use mine because it hasn’t completed a full cycle yet.)

NOTE: I am using Ubuntu based Linux Mint. This process should be the same on other Debian based distributions. If you are not running a Debian based distribution, you may have to modify some paths to the rrdtool executable. Some of this procedure has been taken from the rrdwiki.

The first step is to install RRDTool:

sudo apt-get install rrdtool

Read the rest of this entry …

pdftk is an open source, cross platform PDF super manipulator. This goody allows you to split, merge, rotate, decrypt, encrypt, watermark, change metadata, attach files, detach files, repair, and more.

From the site:

“If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.”

pdftk is command line only, so you might want to check out the examples for syntax. If you aren’t into command line, there are some GUIs available.

Get the full scoop along with package installers at the pdftk site.

Dear Vyatta,

During the past couple of months I have been attempting to replace my Cisco 7500 with your routing software. The Vyatta product looked very promising and supported all the protocols and features that I needed including BGP, Bandwidth Management (through the kernel), VRRP, in addition to standard routing with TCP/IP.

I have run into many issues with the Vyatta software. Just to name a few — VRRP limitations, BGP Routing Policy limitations, static routing bugs, not being able to delete static routes and policy configurations, and more.

I am sad to say, good bye Vyatta. I have enjoyed the past two months getting to know you. You have what seems a wonderful team of individuals working towards the better. I would like to send a thanks to the support group and everyone on the mailing list, they were wonderful.

I will continue to support what the Vyatta team is trying to do. Unfortunately, the software is still premature. I, however, am looking forward to the next release so I can give it another try.

I am sure I could force the software to work, but I would hardly be confident with that procedure. That being said — Vyatta cannot replace my Cisco 7500 core router.

Farewell,

Shane

OK, I admit it, I am a BIG geek and proud of it. How do I know this? A good sign is when I start to get the urge to craft my own TCP/IP packets.

Whether you want to test your custom built app, or wreak havoc on the network — packETH allows you to create the perfect Ethernet packets with limitless possiblities through a GUI interface.

By specifying a custom payload, source MAC, destination MAC, source IP, destination IP, you can appear as sending from and to anyone on the network. packETH also allows you to specify how many packets to send up to and infinite amount and speed.

packETH is Linux only and included in Debian based Distributions, and possibly others. Sectools.org has a list of the top 4 packet crafting utilities if packETH doesn’t float your boat or find your lost remote.

You wouldn’t dare to send 4 million broadcast pings originating from an enemy coworker at wire speed, would you?

image by recursion_see_recursion

Port Knocking is a way to open ports on a firewall by attempting to connect to a predefined sequence of closed ports. Once the correct connection attempts are made, the firewall opens the ports to let the source of the connection attempts in through the firewall.

In other words, it is like a combination lock for your firewall/Linux machine.

How is this useful?

There could be several reasons that you would implement port knocking. The best example I can think of is that the system administrator is working on the road, never knowing where he/she would be connecting from.

Usually, I block all ports, except for only network ranges that should connect. Port 80 is a good example, for a web server, where all hosts would be accepted. Port 22, for SSH, would be a good example that I would only allow access from a few, specific addresses. This would be a problem if I worked on the road.

Port knocking would avoid the hassle and allow me to open the firewall from where ever I might be, as long as I knew the sequence of ports to make a connection attempt to.

Ducea.com has written a tutorial if you are interested in implementing port knocking.

Open source, Windows, Linux, and Nokia compatible — AutoScan Network allows the use of many important tools to manage your network infrastructure. With multi-threaded scanning, equipment monitoring, OS detection, telnet client, Tenable Nessus client, SNMP, and more.

AutoScan Network could easily serve as a personal one stop shop for all of your network management needs.

AutoScan Network is open source software and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

AutoScan Network Homepage | AutoScan Network Features | AutoScan Network Screenshots | AutoScan Network Downloads

Peter from FOSSwire wrote up a nice tutorial on securing SSH in 5 simple steps and covers the following:

1. Disable SSH protocol 1
2. Enable key-based logins
3. Don’t enable password-based logins
4. Don’t run on port 22
5. No remote root logins

Personally, I would also implement iptables and port knocking to take it one step further. Do you have any other tips for securing SSH? If so, leave a comment.