What’s that on my shoe? oh, its my jejunum.
Link dump time.
A cool little post on using Ferret and ruby to do search magics
A post about putting NetBSD on an NSLU2 (ARM)
BlackBerry Curve General Discussion forums over at Blackberry Forums
There, just a few links that I have in my Bookmarks. Figured someone could use them.
(Jejunum is here.)
My Daily “I just found this program and it owns so you should use it too” post.
The app of the day is... Max. What does Max do exactly? well it rips CDs into various audio formats on Mac (OSX). "But why don't you use iTunes? Its superior!", said the monkey. "Because iTunes is the devil, and it will eat your soul", I replied. And then the monkey ripped his Birthday Massacre CD using Max, and was astonished that he could specify simple things, like output directories and formats, and also, he could rip into FLAC. And the Monkey smiled, and there was great joy across the land. For the land was prosperous in its ripped music, because never again would it lose a CD to scratching, maiming, or iTunes DB corruption.
The End.
Wait, I think I lost the focus of what I was doing. Oh. Use Max. Doitnow.
Lynis security scanner = Neat.
Just checked out lynis from rootkit.nl. Lynis is:
Lynis is an auditing tool for Unix (specialists). It scans the system and available software, to detect security issues. Beside security related information it will also scan for general system information, installed packages and configuration mistakes.
This software aims in assisting automated auditing, software patch management, vulnerability and malware scanning of Unix based systems. It can be run without prior installation, so inclusion on read only storage is no problem (USB stick, cd/dvd).
Lynis assists auditors in performing Basel II, GLBA, HIPAA, PCI DSS and SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) compliance audits.
It's pretty cool, actually. I wont include all of the scanning output here, but I will show the results of a scan from a (somewhat) default CentOS 5 install. Take a look if all of this magic security stuff interests you.
================================================================================
-[ Lynis 1.2.6 Results ]-
Tests performed: 134
Warnings:
----------------------------
- [20:46:34] Warning: No password set on GRUB bootloader [test:BOOT-5121] [impact:M]
- [20:46:50] Warning: Couldn't find 2 responsive nameservers [test:NETW-2705] [impact:L]
- [20:46:55] Warning: No MySQL root password set [test:DBS-1816] [impact:H]
- [20:46:55] Warning: PHP option expose_php is possibly turned on, which can reveal useful information for attackers. [test:PHP-2372] [impact:M]
- [20:47:00] Warning: No running NTP daemon or available client found [test:TIME-3104] [impact:M]
Suggestions:
----------------------------
- [20:46:34] Suggestion: Run grub-md5-crypt and create a hashed password. After that, add a line below the line saying timeout=
- [20:46:49] Suggestion: Install package 'yum-utils' for better consistency checking of the package database [test:PKGS-7384]
- [20:46:50] Suggestion: Check your resolv.conf file and connectivity to your nameservers [test:NETW-2705]
- [20:46:55] Suggestion: Use mysqladmin to set a MySQL root password (mysqladmin -u root -p password MYPASSWORD) [test:DBS-1816]
- [20:46:55] Suggestion: Change the expose_php line to: expose_php = Off [test:PHP-2372]
- [20:46:55] Suggestion: Change the enable_dl line to: enable_dl = Off, to disable downloads via PHP [test:PHP-2374]
- [20:46:55] Suggestion: Change the allow_url_fopen line to: allow_url_fopen = no, to disable downloads via PHP [test:PHP-2376]
- [20:46:57] Suggestion: Enable logging to an external logging host for archiving purposes and additional protection [test:LOGG-2154]
- [20:47:00] Suggestion: Check if any NTP daemon is running or a NTP client gets executed daily, to prevent big time differences and avoid problems with services like kerberos, authentication or logging differences. [test:TIME-3104]
- [20:47:02] Suggestion: Confirm that freshclam is properly configured and keeps updating the ClamAV database [test:MALW-3286]
- [20:47:02] Suggestion: Harden the system by installing one or malware scanners to perform periodic file system scans [test:HRDN-7230]
================================================================================
Files:
- Test and debug information : /var/log/lynis.log
- Report data : /var/log/lynis-report.dat
================================================================================
Hardening index : [49] [######### ]
================================================================================
Lynis 1.2.6
Copyright 2007-2009 - Michael Boelen, http://www.rootkit.nl/
================================================================================
The 4400: Revisited
Well, I started rewatching the entire series of The 4400 the other day. It's a decent scifi show that USA Networks made a couple of years back. Plot summary (thanks to imdb.com) is:
"As the reappearance of 4,400 missing persons on a single day confounds the global community, federal agents on the case slowly discover the ways in which the victims have been changed."
Meh. Not the best plot summary ever. But you can't really say much more than that without giving alot of plot away. The plot of this show and how it interleaves is pretty well put together. In most scifi, you can definitely feel a sense of continuity as the seasons go on, and "The 4400" isn't any exception.
I was planning on going on a rant about how the real world needs an event like this just to give ourselves a wake up call, but I'd rather wait until I have some coherence.
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