I have decided that a lot of what I worked on for my undergrad University days is of no use to anyone unless it is released. While I don’t provide gurantees of how good some of the essays, powerpoint presentations and other documents will be — one thing will be sure: It’s out there! I hope people find them useful, and if they are citation worthy, to give me credit. Nevertheless, overall goal is to release this information to the general public.
Today’s release is a Power Point I had written for one of my undergrad security classes at Ryerson on the Melissa virus. Be sure to read the notes section for additional details notes.
ITM420 – Anatomy of a Virus (Melissa)
A very simple bash script to use in Debian/Ubuntu to convert AAC (M4A) files to MP3. This will work only with unprotected DRM-less AACs. Great for use with your shiny GPS device that can play MP3s.
#!/bin/bash
#aac2mp3.sh
for i in *.m4a; do
ffmpeg -i "$i" -acodec libmp3lame -ac 2 -ab 256k "${i%m4a}mp3";
done
Note that you’ll need ffmpeg and libmp3lame installed, e.g.
apt-get install libmp3lame0
apt-get install ffmpeg
One of good friends has been running his own mail, file, blog, and other services by hosting it on his servers at home. I always wanted to do the same, but it took a few years to learn enough to be able to do it myself. So far, it’s great to be able feel free from all the commercial hosting companies especially when my demands aren’t very “commercial” or high volume.
I should write a short primer on how to do this? Maybe.
I have successfully moved my blog to a non-commercial host. Let’s see how well it works.
For the new version of Fonera+ that includes firmware v1.1.0+, attached below is a very simple Python script to enter into RedBoot so you can flash it to the firmware of your choice. The script basically attempts to telnet to 192.168.1.1 which is the IP address during the first few seconds of boot up. During this time, the router is accessible via telnet port 9000. I was having a heck of a time trying to manually telnet and press Ctrl-C, but I thought there might be an easier way. There was, and is.
import socket
import getpass
import sys
import telnetlib
HOST = "192.168.1.1"
while 1:
try:
print "Attempting to connect to", HOST
tn = telnetlib.Telnet(HOST, 9000)
break
except:
print "Host could not be found... Yet."
print "Seem to be connected."
tn.write(chr(3))
tn.interact()
Note, I suck at Python. If you can create a proper version of above. I’d like to know. Thanks!
Randomish shot of an old couple sitting at a blood testing facility.
If you run a mail server for your organization or for fun, you should ensure that spammers don’t use your server to propagate their trash. Here’s a link that will check for you and give you the results in minutes:
http://www.abuse.net/relay.html
From the days gone by, here’s a screen shot of BBSes that used to exist in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (circa 1995). At that time, I was one of the few folks at my school who had a FAX modem. It was a blazing fast one at that, a whopping 14.4kbps! Sadly, since I lived at a private company compound, the PBX line quality was less than stellar sometimes. Yet, it was a fun and innocent time when logging onto BBSes meant that a whole new world of communication was now open to you. Internet e-mail was also available which was very exciting. I think my e-mail address used to be something like FirstName.LastName@MidEastBBS.com.
My favourite BBS at that time was run by a fellow named Mamdoh Al-Oqiel. It was called MidEast Connection BBS. It was invite only, so the quality level of people who frequented there was fairly good. From there, I made a few friends that I still keep in touch till this day. One of whom I have only spoken to over the phone, and e-mail only.
Here’s a snap shot of the DOS application I used to use way back then:
This is a picure below.
I just built a new PC server from an old AMD XP+ 1800 (running at 1.5GHz). It has an old Seagate Barracuda 80GB hard drive. Apart from this server, I have a custom built workhorse with tons of memory, Linux software RAID and other stuff. If you’re wondering how this compares in terms of raw performance here it is:
Server 1 - CRUISE
aaron@cruise:~$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
Timing cached reads: 1672 MB in 2.00 seconds = 836.31 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 338 MB in 3.01 seconds = 112.34 MB/sec
Server 2 - BLASPHEMY
[root@blasphemy ~]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1028 MB in 2.01 seconds = 512.45 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 120 MB in 3.04 seconds = 39.48 MB/sec
Server 1 specs:
AMD 2.1GHz
2GB DDR 800 RAM
Ubuntu 7.10
Linux software RAID – 2×500GB Seagate SATA drives
Server 2 specs:
AMD 1.5GHz
512MB RAM
ClarkConnect 4.1 SP1
Seagate Barracuda 80GB HD
As you can see from the numbers. There is quite a performance difference. Power management is active on Server 1, so the numbers can potentially be higher. It most runs in 1GHz which is fine, to lower electricity costs.
