Random Musings - Day #365

Well final day of the year. Made about 900 quid, backing winner after winner. But my camera may have broke! Nevermind!
Roll on 2010! Gonna to change my random musings a bit... i.e. title. But going to be out and about in 2010. We shall see what happens this year.

Looking for the chart of the year 2009. The bigtop40

Random Musings - Day #364

Money talks are contrasting fortunes for the premiership leaders and bottom team.
Chelsea claim they are debt-free whereas Portsmouth have alledgedly been given a winding up order.

Statistics is only what you make of it. Chelsea are leading the premiership. But an interesting statistic states only 4 times in the last 15 years have the team leading at the new year gone on to win the premiership. But Chelsea have led twice at new years and gone on to win.

Is it me but the price of bananas has suddenly gone. You could get a bunch of 6 bananas for 60p. Now it is over a pound.

Law of Vulnerabilities as discussed by Qualys.
This RFC rfc2827 discusses ingress filtering for ISP's and companies for protection against DOS attacks, and would seem to be getting some attention again of late.

Splunk is software that indexes data from any application, server or network device enabling you to search and analyze billions of events across your IT infrastructure from one location in real time

ldd (ldd - list dynamic decrepency)

http://www.catonmat.net/blog/ldd-arbitrary-code-execution

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html

http://reverse.lostrealm.com/protect/ldd.html

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=514408

Random Musings - Day #363

Tools

• Metasploit 3.3.3 guide guide and download


• OWASP Live CD Vulnerabilities


• Nessus Home or Professional Feed?


• Kismet


• New oWASP Top 10

Know your (web) tools

BeEF - Browser Exploitation Framework

Pretty Bad Proxies

Unbreakble THC

Rainbow tables

Metadata security

WPA cracked in 1 minute

iphone vulnerability

IMs dangerous

Blackberry testing

SSL Flaw

Countering Kernel Root kits with lightweight hook protection

'Gumblar' Attack Redirects Users' Web Searches

twitter-like app

Tigris issue

Fixing Sophos and heavyweight solutions to simple problems

McAfee EPolicy Orchestrator and ProtectionPilot HTTP Server Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

viewstate mangling

Salty md5s

AES and encryption described

Guidelines for the Issuance and Management of Extended Validation Certificates

Server-Gated Cryptography (IIS 6.0)

Random Musings - Day #362

Don't know why Molly Sims suddenly popped up in my facebook. Meanwhile cityofeternals is beginning to take off.

Some VMWare and Virtualisation links:

• Tripwire Config Check


• How virtualisation affects PCI DSS


• Free VM WARE Tools


• Hacking Tool Lets A VM Break Out And Attack Its Host

VNC issues:

• VNC Flaw Test


• RealVNC_4.1 Bypass (msf)


• Multiple VNC Client Vulnerabilities

Portable anti-virus on a stick solutions:

• ClamWin


• Naevius Antivirus


• TrustPoint AntiVirus


• Mx One Antivirus


• Portable AntiVirus

Random Musings - Day #361

Irony
Looks like Joe McElderry was merely delayed the inevitable as takes "the climb" up to #1. Certain amount of irony is that despite Rage against the machine denying him the topspot for the Christmas #1.
Also ironic is they have been showing clips of Michael Jackson announcing his "this is it" tour as his "final curtain call..." I'm afraid that was it!

Also never ask someone, "where you can find mr happy, in a store". Don't be surprised if someone removes their pants as a consequence!

Random Musings - Day #360

I went to see Charlton play and that was perhaps the craziest game of football I've ever seen. 2 players sent off for Charlton before half time. But it was still interesting as Charlton were 1-0 at half time, which meant they had something to play for. But 9 versus 11 was too much and were then 2-1 down. But right at the death, somehow managed to get an equaliser.

Here's some useful documents:

• Code of Connections (CoCo) Configuration Document


• VOIP Security Guidance from NSA


• ICSA Labs Product Assurance Report

Here's some news articles demonstrating all is not quite well with data leaking, etc.

Heartland Data Breach

Data Loss DB - Open Security Foundation

t-mobile sources and data leak

Bank gets trojaned

webhost attacks makes vmware virtually gone, which followed by an apparent suicide (Zero-Day really does kill!

Other Funny stories during the year:

• Eula are evil
  


• Active listening (listening for meaning)


• Hand the cash...
  


• Milf, a Bad acronym
  


• Butthole road


• Horse bites off one of man's testicles


• Dangerous Teaspoons

PCI Assessment (Poem)

And a poem, inspired by an PCI assessment...

Addicted to FTP, Don’t ask why
Your passwords are being sniffed
And your data is captured on the fly
So send your PAN’s in e-mails
Without any audit trails
Do not worry about PCI?
But do you care?
As you can lie
On your self assessment questionnaire

Random Musings - Day #359

Merry Christmas...
Just post some thoughts from a friend...

Top 10 reasons why you might be burnt out

1. "They told me at the blood bank this might happen."


2. "This is just a 15 minute power nap like they raved about in that time management course you sent me to."


3. "Whew! Guess I left the top off the white out. You probably got here just in time."


4. "I wasn't sleeping, I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm."


5. "I was testing my keyboard for drool resistance."


6. "I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work-related stress. Do you discriminate against people who practice Yoga?"


7. "Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem."


8. "The coffee machine is broken."


9. "Someone must have put decaf in the wrong pot."


10. " ... in God's name, Amen."

Work Ethics

• Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them.


• If you can stay calm, while all around you is chaos...then you probably haven't completely understood the seriousness of the situation.


• Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done. Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security.


• A person who smiles in the face of adversity...probably has a scapegoat.


• Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.


• TEAMWORK...means never having to take all the blame yourself.


• The beatings will continue until morale improves.


• Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.


• We waste time, so you don't have to.


• Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away!


• Go the extra mile. It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker.


• A snooze button is a poor substitute for no alarm clock at all.


• When the going gets tough, the tough take a coffee break.


• INDECISION is the key to FLEXIBILITY.


• Aim Low, Reach Your Goals, Avoid Disappointment.

Random Musings - Day #358

Christmas Eve! It really annoyed me that the trains on Christmas finish early. Which cause a problem getting home for Christmas.

Anyhow many many links. Here's a few...

• IIS 6 Attack Could Let Hackers Snoop on Servers


• IIS 6.0 Webdav Unicode Vulnerability


• MSIE 0-day Spreading Via SQL Injection


• SQL Truncation Exploits


• Encrypting Connections to SQL Server


• secret questions analysis


• Attacks prompt Microsoft to fix Excel flaw


• pcAnywhere Allows Local Users to Become SYSTEM


• CVE-2005-1970 (Symantec pcAnywhere 10.5x and 11.x before 11.5 Caller Properties vulnerability)


• Cisco benchmark


• Catalyst Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) Configuration Example


• Multiple Vulnerabilities in Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers


• Cisco Event Response: Semiannual Cisco IOS Software Advisory Bundled Publication

Random Musings - Day #357

I was wondering today if it was faster to get to Canary Wharf via DLR at Woolwich Arsenal or Greenwich from Woolwich Arsenal. The answer is slightly surprisingly via Greenwich. But it is only by a few minutes. In fact, you should change at Canning Town and get the jubilee line instead.

Also found this annoying... people who use two cards in the same cashpoint machine when there is a queue. It's just inconsiderate!

Random Musings - Day #356

Well couple days off and should do some shopping but that's hardly happening.
For now some computer links that may have put on in the past year...

LSA is the Local Security Authority. According to Microsoft, "LSA Authentication describes the parts of the Local Security Authority (LSA) that applications can use to authenticate and log users on to the local system. It also describes how to create and call authentication packages and security packages."

You come dump lsa secrets (which doesn't allow access from the administrator) using oxid.it's abel or nirsoft's lsasecretsdump.

The security identifier (sid) is Microsoft's way of uniquely defining things. Here's some well known SIDs.

LMHash is an old school Microsoft format that should be stopped and later editions of Windows do not have by default.

Random Musings - Day #355

Someone said they liked the Ski Sunday, which reminds to look a r&b song which I swear sampled not the actual ski sunday theme tune but the incidental music used to show the downhill course, etc.
Having a look at television tunes proved a bit fruitless. But I happened to stumbled an amazon remark made on the Richard X and Kelis mash-up song, "Finest Dreams".

The song is an interpolation of "The Finest" by The SOS Band c 1986 and "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" by The Human League, from the Dare album. (which incidentally was also used as the music for Ski Sunday some years ago.)

So it was an obscure Human League album track, The things that dreams are made of. A remix is seen here. I've found no reference to more recent sample of the riff in that song so maybe it was Kelis I was thinking of.

Random Musings - Day #354

So Rage against the Machine upset the odds and denied Joe McElderry the Christmas #1. The ironic thing is, Joe McElderry may still get to #1 next week.

More impressed with the final of "Move like Michael Jackson".

Also been having a look at beatboxing and scatting and variations like crimping.

Look at none of other than Justin Timberlake for not too shabby beatboxing. The guy's multi-talented. Also Ella Fitzgerald for scatting and Mighty Boosh for crimping.

Check out this scat battle

Random Musings - Day #353

Amazed that a team as sacked their manager despite losing only 2 league games and making it into a semi-final of the league cup. Whereas another team that has lost 7 times in the league and out of most cup competitions is still in charge. That's the craziness of the premiership!

Random Musings - Day #352

Looking for laptop hard drives and bits and pieces. I had a look at laptopbits and generally wasn't impressed how expensive is to get a replacement battery or power adaptor.
cough cpr heart attack

The race between Rage against the machine and Joe McElderry has well now gotten boring particularly as both acts are under the same label and hence will line Simon Cowells pockets even further. Shameful.

Random Musings - Day #351

Here's the windows password assessment (word doc)

Here's another way to crack the administrator password.

The Toshiba Portege uses the Escape key to boot into BIOS. Not impressed with that Toshiba as it appears you cannot disable devices used in boot up. More details can be found here

Random Musings - Day #350

Whilst watching the tv saw Teddy Sheringham playing poker finishing runner up in the partypoker world open heat.

Random Musings - Day #349

Here's the full list of week-by-week votes for x-factor. The funny thing is that Olly never top a single week whereas the one week Rachel survived the bottom two, she won that week.

The only pub in Pratt's Bottom is the Bulls Head. I went there around this time last year.

Random Musings - Day #348

Essential Hacking Tools, SQL Server Browser and Full list of SIP parameters

Random Musings - Day #347

It's been emotional. Joe McElderry won X-Factor. Cheryl Cole was always in tears.
Ryan Giggs caused a bit of a surprise by winning the Sports personalty of the year. But that might well have been eclipsed by Seve Ballestros who picked up the Lifetime achievement award despite being back in Spain. Remember he's come back from brain tumour. Also don't forget Major Phil Packer's run in the marathon for charity.
Ding Junhui captured the UK championship. Maybe this is the start of getting the sport of snooker all over the world, especially the far east!

Random Musings - Day #346

The duets for x-factor were slightly disappointing simply because they cut the songs in half, particularly the duets for Olly/Robbie and Joe/George. The final final will be between Olly and Joe. I still don't think it is clear cut as people think.

This would have been interesting fact to bat about in the FA Cup but Luton were unbeaten in 9 cup games until yesterday when they were defeated in the FA Trophy by Cambridge United.

Random Musings - Day #345

Funny, it's not the first time that Olly Murs has been on the tv!

Random Musings - Day #344

How to create Windows Service by using sc.exe

You had me at "Hello World"

Converting Java app into a windows service

Creating a simple win32 service in C++

tlist

Random Musings - Day #343

Been trying to find some useful documents for work. A good best practice site maybe at sans. Here's a comparison between OpenVPN and IPSec.

Random Musings - Day #342

Popeye's creator, E.C. Segar was celebrated by google as he was born today 115 years ago.

The X-Factor duets for this year's competition has been revealed. I was thinking if Joe got paired with George Michael, he would be nailed on to win it as they would probably sing "Don't let the sun go down on me"

Sure enough it is Joe and George. Meanwhile Olly teams up with Robbie Williams and Stacey teams up with Michael Buble.

Random Musings - Day #341

Looks like Barry Hearn is the new man in charge of World Snooker. This should in theory breathe new life into the game of snooker. Currently, there are only 6 ranking tournament and little to no coverage. The game can be variated along the same lines as cricket. Have a short game. Frames with 6 red balls. Best of 3 frame matches. A one-day knockout tournament with draw after every round. Bring back doubles tournament. Have a turbo/shot-clock tournament or even time limit match. Don't forget that Snooker is quite popular in the far east and I am sure there is still interest in Canada and perhaps USA.

I really enjoyed Ronnie O'Sullivan's remark about Barry Hearn's appointment.

He is the Ronaldinho of promoting

Interestingly enough, Steve Davis has a twitter.
Just got over the flu after a day. I am just run down with work atm but I think my RQ might be decent.

Oh yes, boobs are the way forward. Typically efficent, only the Germans would come up with a study that proves that staring at boobs is good for you.
Why are psychologists so pretty? I was watching the BBC the other day, their resident psychologist was pretty cute. But the best known psychologist is Dr Linda Papadopoulos.

OpenVPN uses SSL/TLS for encryption as part of its VPN. It uses
UDP 1194 as its negotiation service.

Random Musings - Day #340

Peter Kay's Animated All Star Band The Official BBC Children In Need Medley is still at #1. While Rihanna moves up to #2 with Russian Roulette and Lady Gaga has bad romance at #3

Random Musings - Day #339

The M25 can be a pain particularly if you miss a turning into it or not. But when one part of the junction is closed off and then there's nowhere else to go but the wrong way down the M25 for a few miles and head back from the next junction. That's just wrong!

I was commenting you have all sorts of experiences. Good ones, bad ones and ugly ones. But it's all good. A bit like the film, "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" was such a good movie.

Wonder who you need to inform if you change your name. Obviously if your passport and drivers licence and the inland revenue.

Random Musings - Day #338

Always thought it would be a good idea if you can check a system with a magic bullet that is with a usb stick with some anti-virus checking. Antivirus on USB goes back to 2005
Backup encryption can be done feasibly these days.

Random Musings - Day #337

Yeovil is completely dead at night. We went to a cark park in town where you would have to pay during the daytime but overnight it's free, there were only 4 cars in it!
Ironically enough went to Barcelona again. Only it was the resaurant in Woking!

Random Musings - Day #336

Here's a guide to Internet Routing and RIP. Off to Yeovil...

Songs to potentially do a duet/dance to are:
Itsy bitsy yellow polka dot bikini, Let's all chant, Word up and Bette Davis Eyes

Random Musings - Day #335

http://www.break.com/game-trailers/game/new-super-mario-bros/automatic-mario-queens-dont-stop-me-now.html

http://www.cesg.gov.uk/publications/media/directory.pdf
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn270.pdf

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/Computer-Security-UK-VPN.html
http://www.cesg.gov.uk/products_services/iacs/osv.shtml

csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-123/SP800-123.pdf
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966456.aspx
http://www.byressecurity.com/assets/pdf/Version%20Network%20Segmentation%20WP.pdf

Random Musings - Day #334

I didn't know that Nicolas Cage has set up residency in Bath as he switched on the Christmas Lights there.