What I Find Online

Sleep. Sleep is good.

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:09:26 -0500

Sleep. Sleep is good.

Ghost means never having to touch /etc/hosts again

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:05:53 -0500

Ghost means never having to touch /etc/hosts again:

Ghost from Bodaniel Jeanes is a Ruby gem that lets you manage your local host names without futzing with /etc/hosts.

To install:
sudo gem install ghost
And then from the command line:
$ ghost add mydevsite.local
  [Adding] mydevsite.local -> 127.0.0.1

$ ghost add staging-server.local 67.207.136.164
  [Adding] staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164

$ ghost list
Listing 2 host(s):
  mydevsite.local      -> 127.0.0.1
  staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164

$ ghost delete mydevsite.local
  [Deleting] mydevsite.local
Aside from basic list, add, and delete options, Ghost provides powerful import and delete_matching operations to import files or delete entries based on pattern matching.

[Source on GitHub]

Thieves cut hole in roof and rappel down to steal 20 Apple laptops from a Best Buy, never touching the floor or setting off any motion detectors.

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:58:56 -0500

Thieves cut hole in roof and rappel down to steal 20 Apple laptops from a Best Buy, never touching the floor or setting off any motion detectors.:

growingup:

They never touched the floor — that would have set off an alarm. They didn’t appear on store security cameras. They cut a hole in the roof and came in at a spot where the cameras were obscured by advertising banners. They left with some $26,000 in laptop computers, departing the same way they came in — down a gas pipe that runs from the roof to the ground outside the store.

Long-Exposure Shot of a Roomba's Path Shows Beautifully Organized Chaos

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:37:58 -0400

Ever wonder what the path of a Roomba looks like as it cleans your house? It’s an amazing combination of randomness and precision, as shown by this long-exposure shot.

The shot was taken by shutting off all the lights in the room for 30 minutes and taking a long exposure of the path the Roomba took while cleaning up. It’s beautiful and surprising. I always assumed it worked with using some sort of grid, but that clearly isn’t the case at all. [Doobybrain via The Daily What]

via gizmodo.com

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Moleskine Notebooks « Stuff White People Like

Sun, 10 May 2009 15:35:39 -0400

Since all white people consider themselves to be “creative,” they are constantly in need of products and accessories that will allow them to capture their thoughts. One of the more popular products in recent years has been the Moleskine notebook.

This particular type of notebook is very expensive and was quite popular with writers and artists in the olden days. Needless to say, these are two properties that are highly coveted in the white community. In fact, it’s a good rule of thumb to know that white people like anything that old writers and artists liked: typewriters, journals, suicide, heroin, and trains are just a few examples.

Much like virtually everything else that white people like, these notebooks are considerably more expensive yet provide no additional functionality over regular notebooks that cost a dollar. Thankfully, since white people only keep their most original and creative ideas in the Moleskine, many of them will only be required to purchase one per lifetime.

But the the growing popularity of these little journals, is not without its own set of problems. One of the strangest side effects has been the puzzling situation whereby a white person will sit in an independent coffee shop with a Moleskine notebook resting on top of a Apple laptop. You might wonder why they need so many devices to write down thoughts? Well, if a white person has a great idea, they write it by hand, if they have a good idea, it goes into the computer.

Not only does this help them keep their thoughts organized, but it serves as a signal to the other white people in the shop that the owner of both instruments is truly creative. It screams: “I’m not using my computer to check email and read celebrity gossip, I’m using it to create art. Please ask me about it.”

So when you see a white person with one of these notebooks, you should always ask them about what sort of projects they are working on their free time. But you should never ask to actually see the notebook lest you ask the question “how are you going to make a novel out of five phone numbers and a grocery list?”

via stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

This is hilarious!

Posted via web from kennethreitz’s posterous | Comment »

.:kenneth's:findings:.

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:28:56 -0400

Clipboard: Friendpaste is a Code-Friendly Text Sharing Tool

Friendpaste is a web-based clipboard tool that can quickly shares snippets of plain text and computer code with friends or co-workers.

Friendpaste supports simple text sharing for revision, or you can lock your pastes against viewing and editing with a password. You can use formatting for dozens of different kinds of code, and it has a revision and annotation system so the friends you share your code with can leave smarter comments. One of the great code-centric features is the ability to leave a comment based on the line number of the code you are reviewing making it easier to reference comments to their appropriate place. If you have a trick or service up your sleeve for sharing your clipboard contents with friends and colleagues, sound off in the comments below.Thanks Steve!

Friendpaste

via kennethreitz.tumblr.com

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Setting up custom domains - Posterous Help

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:26:03 -0400

You can set up a custom domain using Posterous. Here’s the skinny:

Find a domain you like using Instant Domain Search. Most great domain names are taken, but there are a few gems out there left yet.

Register your domain using Go Daddy or register.com. This should usually cost about $10 per year. Avoid the extra fees around website hosting, and other services. All you need is a Domain Name Registration, probably for the period of 2 years.
Using GoDaddy? See below for some additional screenshots of how to configure your domain.

Create an A record from the desired internet address to the following IP address hosted by Posterous: 67.207.139.81

Click Manage » Edit Site to set your custom domain to www.yourdomain.com.

You’re done!

via posterous.com

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New Zealand’s Legal Prostitution « Unreasonable Faith

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:43:30 -0400

Since 2003, prostitution has been legal in New Zealand. Contrary to what the right-wingers may have thought, the country didn’t denigrate into a nation of violence and sexual abuse.

Instead, it cleaned up the underground world of prostitution and turned it into a legit business, giving sex workers the same protection as regular workers. They can turn down work without fear of being beaten or killed. Health standards mean less sexually transmitted diseases. Sex workers can get quality clients instead of only those desperate enough to risk criminal charges.

So it’s been a success. Should the US and the rest of Europe do the same thing? I think so. Do you?

via unreasonablefaith.com

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New Zealand’s Legal Prostitution « Unreasonable Faith

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:41:50 -0400

Since 2003, prostitution has been legal in New Zealand. Contrary to what the right-wingers may have thought, the country didn’t denigrate into a nation of violence and sexual abuse.

Instead, it cleaned up the underground world of prostitution and turned it into a legit business, giving sex workers the same protection as regular workers. They can turn down work without fear of being beaten or killed. Health standards mean less sexually transmitted diseases. Sex workers can get quality clients instead of only those desperate enough to risk criminal charges.

So it’s been a success. Should the US and the rest of Europe do the same thing? I think so. Do you?

via unreasonablefaith.com

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John Titor

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:14:08 -0400

via en.wikipedia.org

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20 things to do when you're failing an exam anyways, how to fail an exam, exams that suck | What Really Sucks

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:36:51 -0400

W00T! If exam fever has you! and you have already made mind that you will FAIL this exam then why you are tensed? Chill out! because you already know you are going to fail this exam. Do it with fun, I suggest you 20 ways to fail an exam with extra ordinary fun and making it memorable moment of your life. Here they are:

Come into the exam wearing night clothes. Chew gum loudly with all the disgusting noises and blow bubbles.

Bring things to throw at the instructor when she/he’s not looking. Blame it on the person nearest to you.

Go into the exam room. Sit down, put on a helmet with the blast shield down and tell the professor the Force will guide your pen.

Bring a water pistol with you, and start shooting in the middle of the exam.

Upon receiving the exam, look it over, while laughing loudly, say “you don’t really expect me to waste my time on this ?!?!

Run into the exam room looking about frantically. Breathe a sigh of relief. Go to the instructor, say “Gotta go.” and run off.

Get the exam. 20 min into it, throw your papers down violently, scream out “F*** this!” and walk out delightedly.

As soon as you get your exam paper pretend puking on it (better is that you really puke on it), hand it over to the teacher and leave in a calm manner.

Bring a black marker. Return the exam with all questions and answers completely blacked out.

Bring a giant cockroach into the room and release it on a girl nearby.(It works awesomely).

Upon receiving the exam, look it over, while laughing loudly, say “you don’t really expect me to waste my time on this ?!?!

Answer the exam with the “Top Ten Reasons Why Professor “Somebody” is a Terrible Teacher” .

Leave the whole exam blank after writing ‘THERE ARE ALWAYS MARKS FOR NEAT WORK’.

Bring cheat sheets of any other subject (make sure this is obvious… otherwise you’re not just failing, you’re getting kicked out too) and staple them to the exam, with the comment “Please use the attached notes for references.”

Call the teacher over. Repeatedly call him/her. When he answers, wait 5 seconds, then say “We’re taking an exam teacher!”

Stare at people doing their exams. When you catch their eye…give a BIG smile and wave fervently.

If it is a written exam, relate everything to your own life story.If the exam is math/sciences related, make up the longest proofs you could possible think of.

Every 5 min. stand up, collect all your things, move to another seat, and continue with the exam.

Complete the exam with everything you write being in mirror image.

After completing a question loudly sing “TA-DAAAAA.”

via whatreallysucks.com

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Apple keyboard: With added pretentiousness

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:23:00 -0400

If you’re unhappy about Apple’s new two-tone keyboard design, you might be surprised to hear you’re not alone. Designer Steve Lee just couldn’t take it any more — and decided to take matters into his own hands.

With just a cheap can of white spray paint, he transformed the Qwerty annoyance into what he calls “possibly the most pretentious keyboard in existence”.

These pictures are for your viewing pleasure. If you’re wondering whether Lee took the keys off before painting them, the answer is no. He says he left them on and sprayed thin coats of paint over the entire thing.

via crave.cnet.co.uk

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5 Ways to Screencast Your Linux Desktop | LinuxHaxor.net

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:27:52 -0400

1) Istanbul:

Istanbul is one of the more widely used desktop recording software out there. You can download Istanbul from here. Debian and Fedora users should be able to install it from the repo. Istanbul has a very simple interface (or lack of). When you first start up Istanbul, you will see a small red button on your desktop panel.

Right click on the button and it will give you options and ways to record you desktop by window you choose or desktop area you select by mouse.

You can stop recording you session by left clicking on the record button, and it will prompt you save the screencast:

By default, Istanbul saves your video in Ogg format.

2) Wink:

Wink gives you more control over you Screencast than any Linux screencast software I have tried, and the fact that it doesn’t actually takes videos in the conventional sense of taking videos of your desktop screen, it gives you more control over your video. Wink takes video by taking screenshots of your desktop in frames per second. If you set your Wink to take 20 frames per second and take one minute worth of screencast with wink, it will have roughly 1200 screenshots of your desktop in one minute, which you can edit one screenshot at a time giving you more control over the video. Wink saves the video in shockwave format which you can later convert into whatever format you wish to.

You can download wink from it’ website here.

Wink will not work with newer distros of Ubuntu 8.04, or any Linux distros with libexpat.so.1 file located in /usr/lib/. A temporary solution that worked for me was to simply rename the file to libexpat.so.0, even thoughI didn’t have any problem with my system after doing this and everything worked ok, it is not highly recommended as it might effect other program using this file. You can rename it back to it’s original format when you are done. A permanent solution would be to recompile the program and link it to the new libraries; or wait for it to be officially updated by the author.

To start doing screencast with Wink, start a new project with File –> New, and select the screen size you would like to record.

(click for larger view)

You will see that by default it capture 50 frames/second in Time capture Mode.

After selecting OK a window will pop up giving your shortcuts for video capture.

Select “Minimize To Tray”. From the desktop panel right click on the icon and select “Start Timed Capture”, to start capturing your desktop.

You can select “Stop Timed Capture” whenever you think you are done with your work. It will tell you how many frames have been captured.

To get your video you have to render all the image files into a video file. And now you have a video of your desktop.

Render Images:

Save file options:

3) Xvidcap:

This is a nice little video capturing app that does the job, however for me it was a little too buggy for my liking. You can download xvidcap from here. When you start xvidcap, it will give you red square to work with, which represents the space that will be captured, you can drag the square to your liking, depending on how much you want to capture. To start capturing just click onthe red button. Other options including the ability to choose a screen area to capture and detach the frame area from the video capture selection. However if you select the whole desktop screen or large portion of the desktop screen, this will slow down your computer to a crawl.

4) vnc2swf:

Another popular, but inconvenient, way to screencast desktop is to use vnc2swf to record desktop sessions. vnc2swf works by connecting to vncserver and recording sessions. Debian users can use this program by installing sudo apt-get install pyvnc2swf. Others can download from it’s website: http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/

To start recording, assuming you have vnc server installed, just type this command in the terminal vnc2swf -o test.swf -N -S localhost:0 and it should pop up a simple window for recording purpose.

For more options check out the official documentation.

5) Recordmydesktop:

Another fairly widely used desktop recording application which runs in command and has a graphical frontend, debian user can install both with apt-get, sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop, others can download from their project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/recordmydesktop. Recordmydesktop works the same way as Istanbul and has almost the same look and feel down to the desktop panel shortcut. But RMD has more advanced options that are missing in Istanbul. the options are self-explanatory and should be fairly easy to configure.

via linuxhaxor.net

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Clipboard: Friendpaste is a Code-Friendly Text Sharing Tool

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 11:03:49 -0400

Friendpaste is a web-based clipboard tool that can quickly shares snippets of plain text and computer code with friends or co-workers.

Friendpaste supports simple text sharing for revision, or you can lock your pastes against viewing and editing with a password. You can use formatting for dozens of different kinds of code, and it has a revision and annotation system so the friends you share your code with can leave smarter comments. One of the great code-centric features is the ability to leave a comment based on the line number of the code you are reviewing making it easier to reference comments to their appropriate place. If you have a trick or service up your sleeve for sharing your clipboard contents with friends and colleagues, sound off in the comments below.Thanks Steve!

Friendpaste

via lifehacker.com

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Moleskine Icons by =pica-ae on deviantART

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:52:04 -0400

via pica-ae.deviantart.com

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99 ways to improve your web site

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:34:05 -0400

This is a list of tried and true ways to improve your web site presence.

If you’re launching a new site, or new content, write an introduction and submit it to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and Netscape. See 23 Top Social Bookmarking sites for more great places to submit your content.

Create a Yahoo Group in your niche.

Create a MySpace account and use it to publicize your site.

Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.

Create a Technorati account and “claim” your blog.

Submit your site to free, search engine friendly directories. An excellent list can be found at Info Vilesilencer.

Conduct a survey. This is an excellent way to generate offline publicity.

Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.

Syndicate your sites content by using an RSS feeds.

Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, FeedCat, rssmad, Feeddirectory and Feedfury.

Write an article related to your site and submit it to article sites.

Sign up to StumbleUpon and get your friends to Stumble your site.

Create a custom 404 page so that even if someone encounters an error on your site, they are re-directed somewhere nice.

Set up a 301 redirect to take traffic from your non-www address to your www address. See here for more info.

Add a link to your site in the signature of any forums posts.

Tell your friends about your site. It’s free advertising.

Spell cheek your stile. Nothing appears more amateur than a site with typos or spelling mistakes.

Test your site and make sure it appears correctly in all major browsers.

Buy enough hosting. No one likes a slow site.

Don’t worry about Page Rank.

Offer something for free. Free is good. People tell their friends about free stuff.

Tell your neighbors, you never know what contacts they might have.

Offer your users as many ways as possible to contact you. MSN, Skype, Yahoo etc all complement email, phone and a real address.

Advertise your site on Craigslist. It’s free, relevant and localized.

Do NOT use frames.

Submit your site to DMOZ.org and forget it.

Create an XML site map of your site and submit it to Goggle.

Get a custom t-shirt made with your web site url on it, and wear it often.

Ask a large breasted lady to wear one too.

Sign up with an affiliate program to sell your product, or if you’re a publisher, make some cash!

On your Contact Page ask people if they mind receiving your newsletter.

Send out a newsletter!

Go to a free seminar for Web site owners. You might learn something.

Find quality and relevant blogs and leave a comment (with a link back to your site of course).

Don’t pay people to submit your site to search engines. It’s a waste of money.

YouTube and Google Video are excellent portals on which to launch a viral campaign.

Giving away an ebook is an excellent way to generate traffic to your site.

Sponsor a Wordpress theme or a phpListDirectory template.

If you sell products that are advertised on television by the manufacturer, add “As Seen on TV” to your site!

Avoid proprietary technologies like Java and Active X.

Put downloadable content on your site, but make sure it’s not manufacturer specific - so mp3 rather than wma.

Learn about CSS. It’s the new HTML.

Contribute to related subject areas on Wikipedia.

Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.

Have user friendly page names - most tools comes with some way to avoid www.yourdomain.com/pgInfoPages.cfm?cx=50799399822B393B

If you must have a Flash homepage, make sure you have a “Skip Intro” link.

Tell your local rag about your site. These newspapers are desperate for stories.

Become a leading authority on your chosen subject.

Donate money to a charity and most will place a link on their site back to you.

Abide by the W3C standards - it will help your site in the long term.

Your local community sports teams offer cheap, but highly effective sponsorship opportunities.

Publicize your site on related forums - but don’t spam!

Ask bloggers to write about your site or product - in return for a link of course.

Offer a competition related to something in the news - so football around the time of the World Cup etc.

Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site so people can easily recommend you to their mates.

Have a Site map on your site to allow users to navigate around quickly and to aid the search engines.

Have a nice keyword rich title at the top of each of your pages. Users and search engines both like descriptive titles.

Include a Feedburner button on your site so people can easily subscribe to your feed.

If you use PPC then create a landing page for each of your AdWords - it’ll boost your conversations no end.

Appear on Dragons Den.

Create a Press section on your site where can you store all your press releases, logos and banners.

Add a link to your site from within your eBay profile.

Ask your friends to give you honest feedback on your site.

Gain exposure by submitting photos and pictures to Flikr.

Share your banners on banner exchange sites.

Make sure it’s easy for your users to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Create a “lens” for your site on Squidoo

Ask friends, colleagues and associates to “Add to Favorites” your blog on Technorati.

You can add a Bulletin to your MySpace account promoting your site that all your MySpace Friends will see.

Respond to your customers emails promptly. No one likes to wait 3 or 4 days for an acknowledgement of their contact with you.

Get a professional Copywriter to give your site a once over. If you are on a tight budget, limit it to just the homepage.

Make a list, Top 10’s work well. Update it regularly to give your visitors a reason to return.

What did you learn today? Tell other people and they might learn something too.

Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.

Deep link directories are an excellent way to promote inner pages of your site.

Meta tags might carry less weight than previously, but you should still have them on every page.

Ask your Gran for feedback on your site. Never ignore the silver surfers.

Include a “Add to your Technorati favorites button” on your site.

Google Analytics is free and will tell you all you need to know about who’s visiting your site.

Search engines will find you. Don’t pay money for your site to be submitted.

Don’t be afraid to link to other sites, especially if they are relevant and to highly respected sites.

Keep It Simple Stupid: use CSS to control layout, style and colors and use HTML text rather than graphics to represent text.

Validate your HTML and CSS. It’ll help ensure your site displays well in all browsers.

Small page sizes and optimized graphics will give your site a snappy feel and won’t require users to wait around for it to load.

If you plan to submit your site to lots of directories or article sites, create an email especially for this. Delete it when you’re finished to avoid spam.

Link baiting means, to write killer content that people will want to link to. Like a 101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence list!

If your chosen field is technology related then write a white paper. That’s a posh name for an article.

Google receives roughly 50% of all search requests, Yahoo 25% and MSN just 10%. That’s a good rule of thumb as to how much emphasis to put on each.

Make sure you have a robots.txt file in the root of your Web site. You can use this to control search engines, but if nothing else it’ll reduce the number of 404 errors in your Weblogs.

Free online games, a forum or chat rooms will give your users a reason to come back to your site.

Ebooks with re-seller rights make an excellent free gift for your site.

Upload your product feed to Froogle. It’s FREE!

This is an excellent list of Top 25 Social Bookmarking Sites

Search out unanswered questions on Yahoo! Answers and add your site as the source.

PageRank is vanity, ranking is sanity.

Yahoo are catching up with Google with an excellent set of webmaster tools called Site Explorer.

Don’t buy traffic. It’s un-targeted and won’t convert.

Pay Per Click advertising gets you fast results - and if it’s handled well can be very profitable.

Upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when they bookmark your site.

And that’s it!

via pro-dezign.com

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Contact Syncing for Massive Productivity Booster | KennethReitz.com

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:21:06 -0400

Google significantly increased my quality of life recently. How? Let me explain.

While I am a firm believer that cloud computing should never be viewed as a replacement for the current desktop/ model, I must say that I am now a huge fan of storing my data on the internet. Not all of my data, keep in mind, but information that needs to be accessed by multiple computers, of course – but that goes without saying.

I have always had the problem of not being able to keep track of all my data. I switch computers and operating systems so often, I can’t keep track of my contacts at all. And when I update one, I have to go through and update many different databases – not the most efficient method.

So, the ultimate solution is – obviously – to consolidate all of my contacts into one database. I used to keep all of my contacts on my Samsung Blackjack cellphone. This worked well, since I could easily sync it with a computer. This caused a problem, however: I could only sync it with one system. If I was at work or on another system, I had no way to get to my friend’s email addresses.

Last month, Google Contacts started to support Exchange Syncing, which happens to work flawlessly with my Windows Mobile 6.1 install.

My life will never be the same. Thank you, Google. I am eternally grateful.

More details soon!

via kennethreitz.com

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56K Modem Emulator

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:35:59 -0400

56K Modem Emulator

(A.K.A. Sounds Broadband Users Never Hear)

connect

[home|huh?]

via lazylaces.com

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802.11a/b/g/n Secrets!

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:27:35 -0400

For $40, anyone can purchase a cheap wireless AP and plug it into the company network. Often, employees do this simply for the sake of convenience, not realizing that it opens the company to attack. Criminals also deliberately plant wireless access points, which allow them to bypass the pesky firewall and remotely access the network later on. These days, disgruntled employees can easily hide an AP behind the file cabinet before cleaning out their desks, and then access the company network months later from the parking lot.

Many companies conduct regular “war-walking” scans to detect rogue access points (ie. using Kismet or Netstumbler), or invest in commercial Wireless Intrusion Detection Systems (WIDS). However, there are sneaky ways to bypass traditional war-walking and WIDS systems. Recently, I took Josh Wright’s excellent “Wireless Ethical Hacking” SANS class, and he touched on a number of tricks that attackers can use to foil your company’s rogue WAP detection efforts. Here are a few:

1) Channel 14

In the United States, the FCC has licensed 11 channels for 802.11b/g, which have center frequencies between 2.412 GHz to 2.462 GHz. However, most of Europe allows 13 channels (up to 2.472 GHz), and Japan allows 802.11b all the way up to channel 14, or 2.484 GHz.

Cards manufactured for the United States often don’t support channel 14, since it’s illegal to transmit on that frequency. There’s overlap between the channels, but at 2.484 GHz, channel 14 is far enough away from channel 11 that network cards are unlikely to pick up much signal on channel 11. If an attacker were to configure an AP to illegally transmit on Channel 14 and export data at 2.484 GHz, security teams monitoring US channels would probably never detect it.

2) 802.11n Green Field mode

The IEEE has been hard at work on the 802.11n (“MIMO”-based) specification, which allows much greater throughput than 802.11a/b/g (100Mbps or more). The draft 802.11n standard specifies two modes:

“Mixed-mode,” which allows it to work with legacy 802.11a/b/g networks;

“Green Field” or “high-throughput only” mode, which takes full advantage of the enhanced throughput but is not visible to 802.11a/b/g devices. Older devices will see GF-mode traffic only as noise.

Not visible to 802.11a/b/g devices? That means if you’re war-walking with an 802.11a/b/g card, you can’t see 802.11n devices operating in Green Field (GF) mode. The specification hasn’t even been finalized, but 802.11n devices are already available for as little as $50– easy to buy, easy to plug into your company’s network. However, most companies have not yet purchased 802.11n-compatible equipment and hence can’t detect GF-mode 802.11n rogue APs.

Josh published a vulnerability report explaining this, in which he wrote: “With the inability to decode GF mode traffic, an attacker can position a malicious rogue AP on a victim network using the GF mode preamble. This would allow an attacker to evade wireless intrusion detection systems (WIDS) based on non-HT devices. This includes all WIDS devices based on 802.11a/b/g wireless cards.”

3) Bluetooth Access Point

If you’re like me, when you think about Bluetooth you envision your tiny little headset which crackles and hisses every time you walk too far away from your phone. That’s because your Bluetooth headset is designed for a Class 2 Bluetooth network, which is fairly low-power and has a maximum range of ~10M.

However, there’s more to Bluetooth than your rinky-dink headset. Bluetooth Class 1 devices are much more powerful, with ranges similar to 802.11b wireless APs. A Bluetooth Class 1 device can transmit up to 100mW, with a typical range of ~100M (or miles, if the receiver has a directional antenna).You can buy a Class 1 Bluetooth AP for $100-200.

Can you discover Bluetooth APs while war-walking? Not if you’re just using an 802.11 card. Even if you’re using a spectrum analyzer like WiSpy, you may not notice it. Bluetooth uses Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum, and hops 1600 times a second throughout the 2.402-2.480GHz band. Because it’s spread out across the spectrum, it can be hard to notice and easily mistaken for noise by the untrained eye. Most Wireless IDS systems and security teams simply don’t look for it (yet).

4) Wireless Knocking

This is my favorite. Remember port knocking? Instead of installing a backdoor to listen on a particular port (where it might be noticed), l33t h4×0rs installed rootkits that would wait for a particular sequence of ports to be scanned, at which point the knocker’s IP address would be granted access. “A three-knock simple TCP sequence (e.g. port 1000, 2000, 3000) would require an attacker without prior knowledge of the sequence to test every combination of three ports in the range 1-65535, and then to scan each port in between to see if anything had opened… That equates to approximately 65535⁴ packets in order to obtain and detect a single successful opening. That’s approximately 18,445,618,199,572,250,625 or 18 quintillion packets.” (Wikipedia)

With wireless knocking, a rogue AP sits on the network in monitor mode, listening for probe requests. When the rogue AP receives a packet (or sequence of packets) with the preconfigured SSID, it awakens and switches to master mode. The program “WKnock” is designed for this purpose, and it can be installed on any AP supported by the OpenWRT framework. During times when the rogue AP isn’t active, it is silent and can’t be detected using common wireless scanning tools.

Sneaky!

via philosecurity.org

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Interactive map of Linux kernel

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:24:05 -0400

via makelinux.net

WOW!

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