Cool stuff...

OK its been a while since I last posted on my blog so here goes. I haven't a ton of time so this will be short and sweet.

Do you need cloud storage well check out Drop Box. You get 2 GB of free storage similar to Google docs but you have a folder in you documents folder and in the task bar that you can gain access to any of you items stored there. What is great is they have a client for both Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile devices. Since I have moved to a broader base of devices I like this service as I have all four of the listed devices. The nice thing is I do not have to worry about my flash drive as all data is synced to my devices. Once I am connected to an internet connection the changes go into affect. No loss of data if my drive gets corrupted either. Check them out as I have found similar but they fall a little short in my mind of this service.

They have upgrades so you can get as much as 100 GB of storage. I do not know who would want to sync a 100 GB of storage all the time but you never know now a days. The price is a little high for my likes but I am one who votes for free not a fee.

Check them out its a great service for 2GB and its free so you might as well take the free stuff while you can.

dropbox.com

Sir Jon's Blog

So I just got an email from a friend who is starting his own blog! That is awesome for him I am glad he is doing so because he has a lot of information to share with all of us.

Here is he blog check him out

http://www.sirjon357.blogspot.com/

He is currently working on his PhD at Capella University when he is finished he will be a Doctor of Information Security. So please drop by and look at what he is researching for his PhD.

On another note I just enrolled at Devry University so I will be transferring from University of Phoenix online. I look forward to this transition in July as I feel like I am missing out on the fellow classmates comradely. Plus I want a little more hands on experience with experienced instructors to bounce ideas off of.

I know I have enough equipment at home to do all this stuff I will be doing at Devry but it really is just an experience that I must not miss in my life. I have spoken to my wife about this and she is all for the transfer she thinks it will be good for me to get some social interaction with my fellow classmates.

It was comical though today as we were taking a tour of the school I was speak to the student adviser about fraternities. As I was speak she popped into and asked if I was going to attend a state college? Then she added like frat parties and drinking kind of stuff! I almost died laughing as we sat in the hall laughing about what she said I was like no not that kind of frat. I was thinking more like IEEE organization for students in the Information Technology field.

It was rather funny the way she looked and my wife and I.

Anyways after 2 hours at Devry University I am well on my way to attending school there and look forward to my start day in July...

How to delete Linux files via command line

Well if your like me you want to tweak your Linux operating system to your needs. Using the following commands will let you delete files and directories.

"rm file-name" this will delete the file named file-name

Now try if you try to use this on a folder you will get an error.

To delete a directory there is a switch that is need to remove it.

rm -R folder-name
You can now do ls to see the directory gone.

that all it takes
happy tweaking

Hackfester!

So I attended the HackFester seminar last night for the Phoenix Plug group (Phoenix Linux Users Group).

I was a tad bit disappointed on the lack of preparation they had done. It is is understandable that the speaker that was suppose to be there fell ill so I will give it another shot.

I did get some nice information limited but very nice as to what some of the government officials are looking at to do any kind of networking or system administration.

The majority of government agencies are requiring their IT security personal to be certified in CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional).

He also spoke of how they making a transition into having their contractors and employees needing further certifications similar to CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor).

I have not done to much research on these subjects but I find that if we as contractors and employers have to fork out all this money who ultimately will have to pay for it. As our government is severely tight on money and our contractors are having to cut prices just to get work. With some of these certifications running in the thousands of dollars for initial certification (testing fees, book fees, and instructor lead courses). Then on top of that some of these certs require you to renew every year at an additional cost. Then you as a hacking professional must maintain continued education hours and meet a goal of around 120 hours of additional training in the area your certificate is in. Lucky this is only required for every 3 years so you have time to spread out the 120 hours.

So if you wish to get into some security work and want to cover yourself well these are a few of the certifications that you will need to achieve prior to looking for government contract work.

There was talk of even requiring contractors who either doing this kind of work and / or are certified to be required to care a 1 million dollar bond plus some E & O (Accidental Errors & Omissions) insurances. This kind of information make me want to not do this on my own anymore!

I am hoping that next months meeting will be turned around and better prepared. There was talk of alternate Hacker seminars that have weekly meetings. I am doing some research to try and locate them so that I am attend and see how they are. Who knows maybe they will be what I am looking for.

For more information on Security Certifications look at

http://certification.about.com/cs/securitycerts/a/compforensics.htm

To see the top threats on he web look at

http://owasp.org

To see current internet storm threats

http://isc.sans.org/

Thanks for reading

SHODAN Search Engine

So I was looking on the web and found this killer site for geeks like me...

http://shodanhq.com

This is basically a service or computer search engine. Here is how it works.

Click on the search bar and type in a service you want to query so "IIS 6.0" then you hit search. This search engine will provide you with a list of servers that are running IIS 6.0 on them. This not only includes servers in the US but across the world. You can then modify your search by being specific.

You can query the search engine this way

apache port: 80,443,22,21

This will bring back all servers running apache web server (any version) utilizing ports 80 (www) 443 (https) 22 (ssh) 21 (ftp)

This could be very useful for people out there I know I will find it all very useful

Original found this information on

http://marcoramilli.blogspot.com/2009/11/shodan-best-computer-search-engine-ever.html

Thanks Marco for the great blog and thanks http://Shodanhq.com for coming up with such a cool search engine...

Installing FTP on Ubuntu Linux

So you have your new Ubuntu Desktop or Laptop and your looking for a quick easy way to transfer files to it. Well without a USB key or shared files here is a quick way to do it.

Install vsftpd

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

Once this is installed you will need to edit the configuration file here

/etc/vsftpd.conf

sudo gedit /etc/vsftpd.conf

"you can use nano, vi, or any other editor you may have as well"

For security you will need to change these settings

anonymous_enable=YES

"This allows Anonymous login's change this to No to force a sign in"

anonymous_enable=NO

Uncomment the following line to allow local users to sign in to your ftp

#local_enable=YES (Delete # in front of the line to uncomment)

"local_enable lets local users account to log in so if you have a username john the you would use john with his password to log into your ftp server"

Then you will have to uncomment the following lines to allow uploading

#write_enable=YES

By default a user is allowed to download files but they are not allowed to upload them.

To enable anonymous uploads then you need to uncomment this line as well.

#anon_upload_enable=YES

Once you have finished with your config file you should save the settings

Nano will be ctrl + x

y

enter

gedit will be

save and exit.

To make your configuration go into effect you need to restart the vsftpd server service by running this

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart (you can also use stop, and start to get the same effect)

Unable to delete emails from Outlook Express

Click Start

go to Search

In the All files and folders type in ".dbx"

hit enter,

Rename the file Deleted Items.dbx to Deleted Items.dbx.old

Restart

Outlook Express

This should create a new Undamaged folder.

**Edited**

Just as a side note if you need to locate these files without searching you can always find them here

C:\Windows\Application Data\Outlook Express\{GUID}

or
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

**end Edit**

Installing Office 2007 On Ubuntu Linux

So you wanna get way from Microsoft but you need to use the most popular and best office suite around... Well look no further as you can now run Office 2007 on the latest version of Ubuntu Linux.
Does it run perfectly? No there are a few minor issues.
Will all feature work from the suite of programs? No
The only ones that work will be Word, Excel, Power Point, Publisher. Do you need more well give WineHQ more time and I am sure others applications will be available.

So lets get to the fun easy task of installing office 2007

First and form most you need to have Ubuntu installed on your desktop / laptop.

Step one
Open up a terminal window

Run these commands.
wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/...t.d/hardy.list -O/etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo aptitude install wine

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

chmod x+ winetricks

sudo aptitude install cabextract

sh winetricks gdiplus riched20 riched30 msxml3 msxml4 msxml6 corefonts tahoma vb6run vcrun6 msi2

Install office like you would on a Windows XP machine

Install office 2007 off of CD... (this is a must will not work any other way)

how to reset Windows XP WinSock

Yes there are some cool little batch files or exe file to run to fix this problem but in case you don't have an Internet connection you can always manually reset winsock by doing this.

Windows XP Service pack 2

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt.

Reset Winsock entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog

Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults: netsh int ip reset reset.log

Reboot your computer!

Hope this becomes useful to anyone and all.