Archive for the 'technology' Category


You Had a Bad Day 6

So I just discovered that my dedicated machine, which is generally doing absolutely nothing, was running at a load average of about 1. The top CPU abuser? Some command I didn’t recognize (barbut). I was immediately suspicious. I killed the process, then noticed that it had been running as the cvs user, so I ran a ps to find all commands running as cvs.

webkill?

Yes, that’s right, my dedicated box was an involuntary participant in a distributed denial of service attack, orchestrated by an IRC bot, also known as barbut (which I found, source and all, in /home/cvs/).

Time for damage control. First, I obliterated the user cvs. Then I installed and ran rkhunter; the “good” news is that no root kits were found. Then I went to change the SSH port — oh, wait, I’d already done that, but never restarted with the new config: shame on me!

One of the unfortunate side effects of using CVS over SSH is that you need accounts with shell access. Apparently I’d created a user with a basic password to allow friends to check code out of my local CVS server; I’m guessing that password just got brute-forced. There doesn’t look to be anything else amiss, so I guess I was somewhat lucky.

Anyone want the source code to an IRC bot?

Design Renaissance 2

I think my kids broke my laptop. I guess that’s one of the risks associated with having children. I mean, I never really expected my possessions to remain unscathed. But this one hurt.

Anyways, in the absence of my “real” laptop, I’m currently writing this on an old Thinkpad 240 that I scrounged off eBay a while ago. It packs a whopping 300MHz Celeron, maxes out at 192MB of RAM, and has a not so bright 10″, 800×600 screen.

Last night I happened to browse over to my (unfinished) website, and, for the first time — probably ever — I was slightly glad that I’d designed it to work with a horizontal resolution of 800 pixels. (I think I was being slightly stubborn at the time.)

And that got me thinking.

As I ponder the purchase of an Asus EEE, the Everex Cloudbook (comes out on Friday!), a Nokia N810 — or just sticking with my N770 — and as a bunch of people have already jumped onto the retro-resolution bandwagon, will there be a renaissance towards designs that fit on small screens?

$vonage != $service 5

I’ve had Vonage for just about three years now. Over the past year or so, our phone line has probably been down more than its been up (the miracle of technology). I’m not ready to blame that on Vonage, however, since the adapter itself appears to be on its last leg. While trying to reconfigure it a few weeks ago, I realized that the integrated switch (it’s a combined router/switch/VTA device) was no longer working. I also noticed that the device was inordinately hot, so I’ve chalked it all up to hardware problems initiated by overheating.

In the hopes of salvaging our home phone, I ordered a used VTA device from eBay. I didn’t think twice about it; it’s definitely not the first piece of technology that I’ve acquired second hand, let alone from eBay, and I’ve had very few problems with any of it.

Of course, I made the assumption that Vonage would allow me to activate a used device. That was apparently not only a naive assumption, but also a fatal one.

As chronicled in various parts and pieces here, here, here, and probably many other places, Vonage apparently refuses to reassociate the MAC addresses of their VTAs (unless, of course, it’s been “reconditioned” by them).

Did I just buy a paper-weight? I’d be more than aggravated.

Obviously, as most of us know, this is purely an artificial limitation imposed by Vonage. Why? Are they worried about people recording the MAC address, selling the device, and then cloning it to steal calls? Do they get a little bonus for selling new devices? I have no idea.

The worst part, however, might not be their refusal to reuse a device. I could live with that, had only I know before I spent money on something that’s (currently) useless. But even with a bit of searching, I can’t find a single warning from Vonage on the dangers of buying used. I can describe this as nothing short of irresponsible, almost criminal.

So the moral of the story is, and I’d say this in big bold, emblazoned letters if I thought that it would somehow get it more exposure across the interwebs: whatever you do, don’t use Vonage. Erm, I mean, don’t buy a used Vonage device.

Like the good deviant I one day hope to be, I’m currently in the process of attempting to clone the MAC address of my previous adapter on the new one. The device supports twiddling with the MAC address, but, once I changed it, has been unaccessible (at least from work via the various SSH tunnels I have going). Yet if I delete it’s DHCP lease from the router it immediately reacquires one, so I’m thinking it’s caught up in some endless reboot cycle after attempting contacting Vonage. I’m going to keep digging.

h4x0ring 2

This post tells the humorous story of how a regular consumer hacked his neighbor’s wireless AP, then proceeded to lock his neighbor out of it with a new password, MAC filter, & c. Only to discover that his neighbor had, in fact, retaliated by hacking his wireless AP. Or something like that.

Wireless Cards 2

The days of inserting a memory card into a memory card reader might be over. Instead, allow the Eye-Fi SD combined-memory and Wifi card do the legwork for you. When your computer is on, the Eye-Fi can automatically upload your pictures not only to your PC, but to the web.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a camera that takes an SD card. What do you think the chances are that this will work in an SD to CF converter?

Becoming a cable provider 2

I just got off the phone with my brother, who’s now at school out in Colorado, where he doesn’t have cable in his room. Which is funny, since I just got done installing and configuring Orb, a free Windows application that will stream live TV off a tuner card. I gave him my login, so I may actually become my brother’s cable provider.

I’m kind of jealous, actually. I’m also wondering if this somehow violates my agreement with Cox. Should it?

By the way, if you haven’t tried Orb, it’s really cool. It lets you access all the pictures, music, video, and even files (slightly disconcerting) on your machine from anywhere. I can even stream live TV to my phone (and it doesn’t work on the iPhone! TAKE THAT!).

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