So Katrina's presentation on the trinity of Trixbox, Vitelity and Lylix indicated how far we've come from the world of hard copper some of us used to know. An infrastructure that used to (and still could) run a company thirty to a hundred grand is now something you can have for about the cost of the support and the hardware. At the heart of open source PBX-alternative telephony is an app called Asterisk and it's free and well-supported. Features like "Place On Hold Forever" sold me instantly. There are even ways to program this system if you're hardcore about hitting back at phone solicitors.
This'n'll be hard to top. But next meeting will be the SANS man. Stay tuned.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Open Source Savings and WAP Situations
Here's an even NEWER schedule, since it's looking good for two, count 'em, two guest speakers at HLUG:
April 11th - Katrina the (OOPS - C++, not Java) Programmer on Linux Telephony
(specifically an open source PBX alternative that can save companies thousands)
April 25th - A Fortune 500 I.T. guy will give a talk on Wireless Access Point security largely from a Windows perspective. Why should we be interested? He uses BackTrack for testing, and better than me (although I do take credit for introducing that distro a few meetings ago).
May 9 - The World's Worst Linux Distribution
You have to come to the meeting to find out what it is... and watch it work. I'm using it on a daily basis. Airsickness bags provided.
May 23 - The Amazing Multi Distribution CD (although I already gave the talk to Helmut and a few others on the Wednesday after my car problem). Not all distros run on all machines but this is a pretty good scattershot approach...
April 11th - Katrina the (OOPS - C++, not Java) Programmer on Linux Telephony
(specifically an open source PBX alternative that can save companies thousands)
April 25th - A Fortune 500 I.T. guy will give a talk on Wireless Access Point security largely from a Windows perspective. Why should we be interested? He uses BackTrack for testing, and better than me (although I do take credit for introducing that distro a few meetings ago).
May 9 - The World's Worst Linux Distribution
You have to come to the meeting to find out what it is... and watch it work. I'm using it on a daily basis. Airsickness bags provided.
May 23 - The Amazing Multi Distribution CD (although I already gave the talk to Helmut and a few others on the Wednesday after my car problem). Not all distros run on all machines but this is a pretty good scattershot approach...
Friday, April 3, 2009
Teaser
I might just have a schedule change for the 25th (fourth Sat.), since a guest speaker may just be able to do a show on WAP security. This would push the other shows later; Katrina's PBX alternative show will keep its slot. Stay tuned.
Friday, March 27, 2009
HEAVILY ALTERED Schedule For Presentations
Rick subbed for me due to car trouble (ask me about it later; it was really stupid) causing me not to make it to the presentation last Sat. First time in two years I blew it! Don't impeach me!
April 11th - Katrina the Java Programmer on Linux Telephony
I don't know anything about this subject, which is why she's giving the talk rather than me.
April 25th - The World's Worst Linux Distribution
(not in my opinion but probably in yours)
May 9th - The Amazing Multi Distro CD
SEE! HEAR! FEEL the power and incredibleness of NINE distros on one live CD.
---
As always, second and fourth Saturdays at 2 within the Hal-PC offices.
April 11th - Katrina the Java Programmer on Linux Telephony
I don't know anything about this subject, which is why she's giving the talk rather than me.
April 25th - The World's Worst Linux Distribution
(not in my opinion but probably in yours)
May 9th - The Amazing Multi Distro CD
SEE! HEAR! FEEL the power and incredibleness of NINE distros on one live CD.
---
As always, second and fourth Saturdays at 2 within the Hal-PC offices.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Amazing Multiple Distribution
I don't EVEN believe it but I'm going to throw another new-distro show at you. This one's unprecedented. Suppose I told you that one could cobble together several TOTALLY UNRELATED distributions onto one live CD. Not DVD, CD. That would be nice, eh? Say, a security distro, a general use distro, then one with a bunch of media stuff, plus memtest-86 or some other tool. That's four distinct entities. Suppose I could show you a CD with considerably MORE THAN THAT on it?
And not only are they all crammed onto the (NOT DVD) CD, but that I have an i386-type laptop old and common enough that all the distros actually work and are OK to demonstrate on it? One review article of this collection disc that came up on a search consisted of about 40% complaints about what hardware platform the particular Linux distributions understood, and the reviewer had to hop from machine to machine to get his article done; not needed with my rig. I think his stuff was so new that neither Windows, Mac, Linux or whatever would be updated or drivered-up at press time.
Oh, yes. We'll see this on the 28th at 2pm, same bat time, same bat channel at Hal-PC HQ - barring preemption due to speakers' schedules, in which case we'd bump it one meeting. Plus we'll take a survey for what presentations people want to see in upcoming weeks. Oh, and I think it's a good idea to insert yet another continuing agenda item: we will henceforth brazenly rip off at least one Linux Journal article per meeting!
UPCOMING TOPIC:
Airsickness bags will be provided. Stay tuned.
And not only are they all crammed onto the (NOT DVD) CD, but that I have an i386-type laptop old and common enough that all the distros actually work and are OK to demonstrate on it? One review article of this collection disc that came up on a search consisted of about 40% complaints about what hardware platform the particular Linux distributions understood, and the reviewer had to hop from machine to machine to get his article done; not needed with my rig. I think his stuff was so new that neither Windows, Mac, Linux or whatever would be updated or drivered-up at press time.
Oh, yes. We'll see this on the 28th at 2pm, same bat time, same bat channel at Hal-PC HQ - barring preemption due to speakers' schedules, in which case we'd bump it one meeting. Plus we'll take a survey for what presentations people want to see in upcoming weeks. Oh, and I think it's a good idea to insert yet another continuing agenda item: we will henceforth brazenly rip off at least one Linux Journal article per meeting!
UPCOMING TOPIC:
THE WORLD'S WORST LINUX DISTRIBUTION
Airsickness bags will be provided. Stay tuned.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
DOCUMENTATION of the Security Distro program
On Saturday (yesterday now) I gave rundowns of four fairly current Linux distributions on live CD's.
(By the way, I apologize for making light of the STD distro last entry. I expect to be blown off the air any hour now.)
These distros feature pre-installed security and forensics tools, some command-line and some graphical - and a few with options in both directions. FCCU (a Knoppix-based product from the Belgian Federal Crime Control Unit) and DEFT (a small but serviceable Xubuntu-based distro with a forensic or repair/recovery emphasis) were the first two, but the stars of the show were my personal favorite of the moment, Protech, and a tough contender, BackTrack.
Protech is based on Ubuntu and uses Fluxbox as a thin desktop environment, helping low-mem machines like mine. It has many well-known useful tools like filesnarf, wireshark, Metacoretex, kismet, gkismet, airsnort, cowpatty and so on. There's also a firewall (Bastille) included, THREE honeypots including La Brea, two kit finders (chrootkit and rkhunter) and sticks with the spreading and very considerate ethic of automajically ejecting your live CD during shutdown before reboot. This distro is also one of a growing group that (unlike live-only concepts such as STD, TRK and others) is written with the option of HDD install in mind. Protech (as well as BackTrack 3 mentioned next) want to be your desktop as well, not just a live CD. It's your choice.
BackTrack 3 (or try this link if needed) is the most current final version of this distro (with 4 out in either alpha or beta by now). It offers more of everything and is insecure.org's result for most popular Linux security distribution; it's the most comprehensive distro I've seen so far and its organization is clever. At least every category of tool is represented with multiple tool options in almost all. Some categories have over 50 options. Talk about a shortcut reload strategy - you'd spend a lifetime installing and updating individual tools otherwise. In addition to the usual crowd (the SleuthKit / Autopsy package, tinyproxy, truecrypt, nMap, Zenmap, TCPtraceroute, SNMPwalk and so on, there's an "archive" category which includes only one option. But it's an important one, one that I've harped upon for years, claiming that everyone should take note. It's a link to archive.org, the maintainers of a search function called the Wayback Machine (a reference to the original Rocky and Bullwinkle show). Need to research a web page no longer in existence? If you know the URL, just plug it in and Zap - there's multiple hits on the dates that archive.org recorded the contents. I've tried it on pages of my own. Your mileage may vary, but maybe they'll have snapshotted what you need.
To cinch the deal, BackTrack has a boot-up option offering two desktops: Fluxbox for low-mem situations and KDE 3.5 for the full-service customer (and in a light enough build to run well on a P3 866 with 256 on the ram). I'm sticking with Protech for the moment, but BackTrack may win me over.
More info to come on the show in 2 weeks (HLUG does presentation meetings on the second and fourth Saturdays, 2pm, at the HQ of the Houston Area League of PC Users).
(By the way, I apologize for making light of the STD distro last entry. I expect to be blown off the air any hour now.)
These distros feature pre-installed security and forensics tools, some command-line and some graphical - and a few with options in both directions. FCCU (a Knoppix-based product from the Belgian Federal Crime Control Unit) and DEFT (a small but serviceable Xubuntu-based distro with a forensic or repair/recovery emphasis) were the first two, but the stars of the show were my personal favorite of the moment, Protech, and a tough contender, BackTrack.
Protech is based on Ubuntu and uses Fluxbox as a thin desktop environment, helping low-mem machines like mine. It has many well-known useful tools like filesnarf, wireshark, Metacoretex, kismet, gkismet, airsnort, cowpatty and so on. There's also a firewall (Bastille) included, THREE honeypots including La Brea, two kit finders (chrootkit and rkhunter) and sticks with the spreading and very considerate ethic of automajically ejecting your live CD during shutdown before reboot. This distro is also one of a growing group that (unlike live-only concepts such as STD, TRK and others) is written with the option of HDD install in mind. Protech (as well as BackTrack 3 mentioned next) want to be your desktop as well, not just a live CD. It's your choice.
BackTrack 3 (or try this link if needed) is the most current final version of this distro (with 4 out in either alpha or beta by now). It offers more of everything and is insecure.org's result for most popular Linux security distribution; it's the most comprehensive distro I've seen so far and its organization is clever. At least every category of tool is represented with multiple tool options in almost all. Some categories have over 50 options. Talk about a shortcut reload strategy - you'd spend a lifetime installing and updating individual tools otherwise. In addition to the usual crowd (the SleuthKit / Autopsy package, tinyproxy, truecrypt, nMap, Zenmap, TCPtraceroute, SNMPwalk and so on, there's an "archive" category which includes only one option. But it's an important one, one that I've harped upon for years, claiming that everyone should take note. It's a link to archive.org, the maintainers of a search function called the Wayback Machine (a reference to the original Rocky and Bullwinkle show). Need to research a web page no longer in existence? If you know the URL, just plug it in and Zap - there's multiple hits on the dates that archive.org recorded the contents. I've tried it on pages of my own. Your mileage may vary, but maybe they'll have snapshotted what you need.
To cinch the deal, BackTrack has a boot-up option offering two desktops: Fluxbox for low-mem situations and KDE 3.5 for the full-service customer (and in a light enough build to run well on a P3 866 with 256 on the ram). I'm sticking with Protech for the moment, but BackTrack may win me over.
More info to come on the show in 2 weeks (HLUG does presentation meetings on the second and fourth Saturdays, 2pm, at the HQ of the Houston Area League of PC Users).
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Got Somethin For Ya
A few things are coming up in the future, like the Linux telephony subject and the rep-from-the-wonderful Linux Journal BUT FIRST let's look at this Saturday's 2pm show at Hal-PC: remember about a year ago when I did the show about Linux security distros? The stars of that show were STD and Hakin9 Magazine's yearly-or-so live CD. Well, there's two others that deserve a look - and not H-9's latest one, either. Although the version I showed last time (3.0, I think) was a crowd pleaser due to offering the KDE desktop with all its goodies, the latest version (3.1.2) is too heavy to run on my antique Louis XIV laptop. And STD offers many tools not updated in some years, plus is a bit scruffy in appearance. And we can't have that. So we'll move on to two other examples.
And I won't tell you which ones they are until you see them. Nyah nyah nyah. It'll be hard to guess since there are so many of these things, and as is often the case with OSS (open source software) security projects, many of these distros are out of date and reside in a Sargasso Sea of broken links. But here's a little help.
Clue: the first one will be one that claims to be the most popular security package going (and there may be more than several that make this claim).
Clue: the second one will be heavy on tools of a... suspicious nature, so I'll demonstrate it without using it online. It apparently is written by a couple of white hat penetration testers, but just in case that's a cover story I'll airgap the thing. To use it online (risking a few auto-updates) would only rile up Allan at the other end of the hall. Besides, due to the date and time of the event (plus location) he'd immediately know it was me. All told, this second specimen is the slickest thing I've seen so far, has a compact desktop option AND the tools are pretty current.
A possible extra will be two attempts at using a particular tool (often included in security distros) to do some data recovery, one attempt of which is guaranteed to fail. I can't resist putting you through this since failure is often instructive. BE THEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
And I won't tell you which ones they are until you see them. Nyah nyah nyah. It'll be hard to guess since there are so many of these things, and as is often the case with OSS (open source software) security projects, many of these distros are out of date and reside in a Sargasso Sea of broken links. But here's a little help.
Clue: the first one will be one that claims to be the most popular security package going (and there may be more than several that make this claim).
Clue: the second one will be heavy on tools of a... suspicious nature, so I'll demonstrate it without using it online. It apparently is written by a couple of white hat penetration testers, but just in case that's a cover story I'll airgap the thing. To use it online (risking a few auto-updates) would only rile up Allan at the other end of the hall. Besides, due to the date and time of the event (plus location) he'd immediately know it was me. All told, this second specimen is the slickest thing I've seen so far, has a compact desktop option AND the tools are pretty current.
A possible extra will be two attempts at using a particular tool (often included in security distros) to do some data recovery, one attempt of which is guaranteed to fail. I can't resist putting you through this since failure is often instructive. BE THEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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