Random Musings - Day #212

Videos
Hmmm I was having problems with keepvid and had to look at another video stream capture site in savevideodownload. Although the latter works if not better than keepvid. It's full of adverts, so be warned.
I like this video of how to glide, float and slide. Also check out who the gingerbread man really is.

Football
Sir Bobby Robson died today. Darren Bent looks like he's made a right twitter of himself on his page and has been left to apologise for his actions. His twitter has mysteriously disappeared as well.

Hacked and gone
It looks like Gary McKinnon is in for some hard times after being extradited to the States.

Random Musings - Day #211

Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be... is a catchphrase from Stars in your eyes. And these days, Matthew Kelly like Rachel Weisz can be found in the theatre in London. He is appearing in the not-so well known Shakespearean tragedy, Troilus and Cressida.

There is a good guide to the players in patch management. The jury is out on softwarepatch.

Random Musings - Day #210

Michael Schumacher is going toreturn to the F1 circuit. A very interesting move indeed. He's going to temporarily stand-in for Felipe Massa and put his young peers in place.

I remember doing Streetcar named desire in school and stellar reviews look good for Rachel Weisz return to the West End.

David Cameron, the shadow leader turned airwaves blue and a big deal was made over it.

I have been looking at lower back injuries and more importantly exercises.

Random Musings - Day #209

SNMP
There are quite a number of tools to look at SNMP. Here is
snmp get. And there are others like snmpnetstat, snmptable and snmpwalk.
As a consequence it may be possible to grab config file by setting a parameter in SNMP to upload the config to a tftp server. From there can crack some useful information in those exported
config. Another elaborate attack is
Cisco SNMP configuration attack with a GRE tunnel.

A-Ha
Apparently, A-ha were performing at Westfield for free.

Music
Not sure about these sites. You can apparently download/listen to songs at spotify. Whilst you can allegedly gather all information in one place for an artist at kicknote and filtersage looks like community of some kind.

Massage
Messed up my back a little from playing tennis. I should really get a massage. Presumably a sports massage. However, a full body massage or even an aromatherapy one is great. Only problem, it looks like it is really expensive over here. The established spas in the far east for instance charge around 20-30 quid for 90 minutes plus. Whereas you are looking at 50-60 quid for a similar service. But be warned, I have seen some rather dubious massage places listed particularly in yell, gumtree, etc where they may sell *cough* additional services. If it doesn't have a website, then be slightly worried. Although, you could lie on a website. It seems more reliable than just having a memo listed on an advertising site. Anyways, ones seen are soul sanctuary, rdr massage and tranquility. An example of not so reputable place (that actually has a website) is wanstead massage. Oh yeah, if the website isn't up front with prices, again I would be worried.

Random Musings - Day #208

Not much to say today. I had to seriously check out the NHS site for swine flu. The symptoms are kind of similar to regular flu except maybe more extreme. I was suffering with body aches, head aches and feeling warm (no coughing/cold). There is also a dedicated site for it as well

Random Musings - Day #207

JLS remain at #1 holding off Mr Hudson and Kanye West's "Supernova". Black eyed peas stay at #3 with "I've gotta feeling"

Random Musings - Day #206

Cats are clever, they know when they've been in situation. I took my cat to the vet for an injection and started meowing (in discontent) on his way there in his carrier. I've got vary it a bit and start taking him out in the carrier.

Random Musings - Day #205

A great idea... combined some local Indian cuisine and some singing, you get curryoake! Lovely

Random Musings - Day #204

I think London is made up of a bunch of part-timers. When I got on the tube to get back home from work, it wasn't even 4:30 and the tube was packed. A lot of people got on from Old Street.

"The Lord giveth, the lord taketh" is a slight misinterpretation. It is in fact supposed to be "the Lord gave and the Lord take hath taken away" (Job)

Random Musings - Day #203

The art of complaining was taken to a new level by Canadian country singer/songwriter, Dave Carroll. Whilst on a flight, he saw baggage handlers manhandling his guitar and that broke. He complained to stewards and the operator and got nothing. So what did he do? He penned a song and as part of duo Sons of Maxwell, "United break guitars" was released and the video became a big youtube hit. As a consequence, the share price of United airlines took a nosedive. Dave got his compensation!

I think London is made up of a bunch of part-timers. When I got on the tube to get back home from work, it wasn't even 4:30 and the tube was packed. A lot of people got on from Old Street.

"The Lord giveth, the lord taketh" is a slight misinterpretation. It is in fact supposed to be "the Lord gave and the Lord take hath taken away" (Job)

Random Musings - Day #202

Microsoft Patching is indeed a nightmare. After observing some patches missing on a customer system. The customer said the patch was installed. On closer inspection, the relevant driver appeared to be not be updated. Case in point is ms09-012 (959454) actually has 2 patches, 952004 (msdtc) and 956572 (windows isolation).

Furthermore, there are instances where you patch and patch again. The superseded patch reverts a driver back to previous vulnerable version, particularly if patched in the wrong order.

Another Tom unlike his namesake, Watson won a world title at very young age.

Random Musings - Day #201

200th day and spent in darkness as my house has been plunged to an eerie still of the night as my area suffered a major power cut due some vandlaism against a local substation. Information has been slow. It wasn't even mentioned on the BBC (local) news, which is absolutely shameful really. Heart FM did mention it though.

Altiris, which has been a symantec company the last couple of year specialise in deployment software but didn't know they included a patch management solution.

Random Musings - Day #200

I was quite enthralled by the Open tournament in which Tom Watson rolled back the years to be 10 inches from winning in 9th major golf title. He's nearly 60, so there is hope for us all. In the end, Stewart Cink outlasted him to win.

Next time someone tells you that they are London boy. Ask them what they were dancing in 1989? If they don't know they aren't really a London boy

JLS, runners up on the last x-factor debut at #1 with the run of the mill r&b track, "Beat again". Cascada drops to #2 and Black eye peas are back at #3 with "I gotta a feeling"

Random Musings - Day #199

Hey went to the Babble bar yesterday. That was in nice posh area of green park. It's not too bad of a place.

Random Musings - Day #198

A couple of interesting albums that I have somewhere around are Hits 7 and the Smash Hits Party 1989. Some nice songs in there!

Random Musings - Day #197

Sometimes sed can be useful. Too tired to explain... But substitution and replacement to get a file and some readable format. Also ^M is actual control-V and then control-M.

sed -e 's/^M//g'
sed -e 's/.$//g' 1 > 2
sed -e 's/=3D/=/g' 2 > 3
grep . 3 | tr '\012' '~' > 4
sed -e 's/=~/ /g' 4 > 5
sed -e 's/=20~\s*/ /g' 5 > 6
sed -e 's/~/\n/g' 6 > 7

Some guides to Penetration testing are Squidoo and Watson Hall.

Lightning tonight as after days of good weather, the rain and thunder has come down. Lightning protection guide from astroturf and there's a guide and forum at thinkbroadband

Random Musings - Day #196

Impressed with Mark Cavendish and his 4th stage win on the Tour de France. That's 8 in total. Cyclingnews is a good resource for cycling news.

So here's an overview on Penetration Testing

Random Musings - Day #195

There is more to meets the eye with SQL security. Not only is there is SQL injection a possibility on websites. This is only half the story. You really have to be familiar with innards of the database in question. Going to put together a SQL hitlist. What queries to try together. It's been done before but it's really good to know.

Scratching my head around popping remote desktop through Zonealarm Free. I don't believe you can configure ports in the free version. A lot of suggestions point to Zonealarm Pro. (my mistake, rdp doesn't work on xp home.)

Why is it when you buy something for a reason, you end up not using/needing it. For example, I bought some deep freeze for my back but my back is now fine. The remedy is not the contents of the medicine but the medicine in the box itself.

Congrats to my housemates, they gave birth to a new baby girl!

Random Musings - Day #194

Remote Exploits may the way forward after seeing milw0rm wind-up and then come back to life. It is also the home of backtrack.
Talking of exploits, cats having been exploiting humans all this time with their constant purring.

I've decided to name kaspersky, kaplinsky as it's easier to remember and named after Natasha Kaplinsky. But that's where the similar ends as Kaspersky seems very hard to work with.

And oh the song with the yodelling start is TI and Rihanna's "Live your life".

Random Musings - Day #193

Feeling a bit boring, went through my entire song collection today. Cascada holds on to #1 with "evacuate the dancefloor" whilst La Roux bounces up to #2 and Man in the mirror drops back to #3.

Random Musings - Day #192

Wow nothing much happened today...

Random Musings - Day #191

Well caught up a bit and more... Been listening to some music lately. Still trying to figure out the song that starts off with a woman yodeling. Anyways, I've seen the dance music taking a distinctly shift to electronica.. well more 80s synthpop. And really it's Lady Gaga and in particular La Roux that have caught the eye in that new renaissance. La Roux recently score a #1 with "Bulletproof" but there's a few more songs like that including Sophie Ellis Bextor teaming up with Freemasons on "Heartbreak" and Royksopp teaming up with Robyn on "Girl and the robot".
Another former #1 is David Guetta teaming up with Kelly Rowland with "When love takes over". Last I checked, Kelly was around in London.

Random Musings - Day #190

Well after the Newcastle back to the office to do late-night web security testing. Kind of reminded me of the good old days at university really. Then you realise you're too old for tht kind of thing.
Anyways, there is a nice little SQL injection cheat sheet and one thing I was looking to do is spew back source code files using load_file. Here's another advanced SQL injection item in a nice slide show.
Also it's always useful to do your research on any framework used and sometimes they may not show on your security guide of choice (CVE|Security Focus) as seen highlights in the xss issues in qcodo.

Random Musings - Day #189

Trying to catch up on my blog here. I was floating around Newcastle for work. But that was near the airport, which 7 miles out of the city centre. Their bus station is located near enough to Eldon Square Centre.
Took me a little while to get myself reacquainted since I've not been up here in a while.
I ended up on South Shields before getting myself home (had to find change and take the metro) and didn't get back until late.

Funniest remark, someone mentioned where they are going... Stadium of Shite? I thought what the hell is that... then I twigged, Sunderland!

Random Musings - Day #188

Michael Jackson now has 13 songs in the UK Top 40. But only "Man in the mirror" is in the top 10 at #2. Cascada is back and at #1 with "Evacuate the dancefloor".

Mark Cavendish won his second stage of the Tour de France. Don't know what was with the victory celebration as he crossed the line. He made an expressionless phone gesture. Wonder if he was calling home. Amazingly despite 2 wins out of the first 3 stages, he is only 142nd in the general standings.

Carphone Warehouse. I am trying to do the math here but there is a deal where you can get an 18 month contract for 15 pounds per month (15Gb monthly limit) which includes a free 499 pounds. So the total cost of the contract is 270 pounds, which makes me wonder how the hell they are making money!
There must be a catch!

Random Musings - Day #187

187 is numeric code for murder. as opposed to Dial M for murder. Like Dial M for Murder, it is a movie too. And 187 Lockdown were a garage act from the 90s.

Serena Williams won the Wimbledon title and I like the t-shirt, she was wearing at
the press conference. It said, "Stop staring at my titles"!
Roger Federer won his 15th grand slam and his 6th Wimbledon title. He has seen by his peers as the greatest now as he surpassed Pete Sampras' record of 14. Federer's stamina won in the end. The final game was the only game that Federer won on Roddick's serve.

Random Musings - Day #186

The MI6 boss has a facebook entry? Does he?

Random Musings - Day #185

Not much to report really been in the garden clearing up. It was July 4th today which America's Independence Day. It's a bit surprising that apparently the states had a holiday on the Friday and not the following Monday. The USA Holidays 2009 list shows this. Also heard the distance noise of fireworks from my house. Slightly surprising since I am in the UK and wouldn't have thought we celebrated that.

Random Musings - Day #184

SSL VPN
Just for my sanity but here's a list of the big players in the SSL VPN market...
- AEP
- Array Networks
- Barracuda
- Cisco
- Citrix
- Juniper
- Positive Networks
- OpenVPN
- Sonicwall
- StoneGate
- Firepass
- Sonicwall
- Zyxel

Web Proxy/Filtering
I have seen a few Blue Coat boxes on my travels. You could also farm out the proxy but that's a bit dangerous. Do you really trust them. If so, an example is megaproxy
Meanwhile a techno news i bumped into is Light Reading

System Tools
Lots of useful system tools for Windows as sysinternals. Can create a service from an app with srvany. And here's a guide and tips to up privs from power user to administrator.

Random Musings - Day #183

Tear down these walls
Poor Cliff Richard! Not only is not able to sing at Wimbledon as it's not raining, he's being forced to tear down his conservatory because it was built before planning permissions was granted.
To me the whole planning permission to put something up on YOUR land is a joke. That's the biggest red tape, you can wait a long while before gets sorted and it is expensive. A council's way to get free money for something that doesn't belong to them.

West Auckland vs Juventus
It's 100 years since the mighty West Auckland won what was then known as the World Cup when they beat of all teams, Juventus. And now the team go back to play the same team in a friendly.

Running
Two useful sites for mapping and measuring your runs are runningahead.com and mapmyrun.

Random Musings - Day #182

Canada Day
Today is Canada's Independence day or Dominion Day. Canada is 142 years old. Meanwhile it's arguable Hong Kong Day too as the handover to China took place on this day in 1997.

Essential items over inflation rate
There are so many ways to interpret economy indicators. To me, food and energy costs have been going up. These factors may or may not be included in these indicators as a consequence, you get a slight misdemeanor where general inflation is low compared to the inflation of essential items (e.g. food has gone up 9%). Those that require essential items are the not well-off and they are struggling.

Veggies beat cancer
The claim that vegetables avoid more cancers may be taken with a pinch of salt. But you can decide for yourself.

Gagging and unmasking
People in the know being gagged is not a new thing and case in point as a researcher is barred from presenting a
ATM Security Vulnerability.
According to some security experts shoulder surfing is not a problem as they state masked passwords should just disappear.

Nothing beats a swine flu party
People are actually trying to catch the killer flu deliberately, thinking the effect is not as bad in the summer as it would be in the winter. So why not have a party

Celebrity Deaths
Ever since Michael Jackson died, aside from the numerous jokes. A number of fake deaths have occurred. Jeff Goldblum, Natalie Portman, George Clooney, Britney Spears, Harrison Ford and even Rick Astley have suffered from the hoax. The hoaxes are apparently originating from twitter and used for link baiting, which forces users interested celeb deaths to visit advertisers site to increase traffic and per click revenue.
Talking of death matches how about the iphone -vs- pre death match.


How to Hack
Here's how to become a hacker