Hackmosphere

Okay everybody.  I just received an ultimatum from my webhost, out of the blue, over files not expressly specified (other than a generic list of file types).  Either I delete all my content in three days or they do it for me…

So, all the technical videos, pictures of my cats, public domain (no copyright) audios, Navy study material, and other miscellanea  - as well as my blog content - will be moving to another provider in a couple of days.

The issue I have with my current provider is, why give me 40G of space if you don’t want me to host files on your servers?  Would it not seem logical to just offer 100M and call it a day for all of your customers?  According to their email, the hosting service’s list of verboten file types is quite inclusive…  Aaaaand why raise an issue now - after close to five years of hosting?  I’m not using all of the space and using less than 10% of my monthly bandwidth…

My guess is that they just want to drive customers away…  Well, today, PowWeb drove me away.

If the site appears down try again in a day or so.  I’ll be back!

W00t!  It’s THAT time of the year again… DefCon CTF Qual time!!  I’ll be playing along with the Church of WiFi guys again (thanks for having me again ; ), and look forward to seeing how the new hosts (Diutinus Defense Technologies, Corp.) do.  They’ve got big shoes to fill following behind Kenshoto.

So now what?  After reviewing the notes I took last year (quickie article HERE) it looks like I need to troll and play with a new set of tools.  I’ll post some of the ones I hope that will come in handy in the coming weeks…

I’ll be posting a few more items concerning ShmooCon 2009 in a couple of days.  In the middle of prepping to move to a new state.  Suckin’ up all mah time. : /

The Shmoos had a three official wireless networks running during the con this year.  Two were for normal traffic, open and WPA2, and another (”Mosh Pit”) was for interesting traffic.  I captured probably about an hour or so worth of what was in the mosh pit.  A couple of the cap files (tcpdump files) are available HERE (213K) and HERE (9.7M).  Check em’ out!

ShmooCon attendees got the chance to be the first to snag a copy of Back|Track 4 Beta.  It’s schweet!  I’m still goofing around with a couple of things to see if I can get it working perfectly on my trustly little Asus Eee 901… But, more on that later.  I’m linking to the official blog for the release - there you will find links to the 850M ISO (create a bootable USB image with unetbootin, Windows users) and (1G) VM images.  A local copy of the ISO is HERE.  Enjoy responsibly!!

UPDATE 26 MAY 2009: Since the move from one web host to another, I decided not to mirror the BT4 Beta ISO any more - there’s tons of places you can get it now ; ).

Was checking my Twits and found that a CFP has started for DefCon 17.  If you are interested in presenting this year check this THIS link, and follow _defcon_ on Twitter for the latest.

For those who could not go to ShmooCon 2009, or couldn’t make the OpenVulture talk that Ethan (telemnstr) and Matt (enferex) of 757 Labs gave…  Here it is!  Click HERE for a PSP-friendly version of the vid [148 meg MP4].  Will post some pics and a video or two of the 757 Labs SkeeBot entry for the Hacker Arcade.

Yowie.  The party at the Chole last night was amazing.  Beats were dropping, shots were tossing and hackers / geeks were having a ball.  After a Corona, rum & Coke, half a gin & tonic and four Kamikazi shots I was dooooooone.  My apologies to those who were unlucky enough to witness my gyrations on the “dance floor.”  Kek.  It was nice to be able to hang with so many of you (wut wut to my brothers in 757 Labs and HRGeeks - hope cdated survived).  Will post more about the con when I get back home.  Photos to be included!

I decided to try out Linux Mint 6 on my Asus Eee 901, after hitting some glitches that crept up in 5 - and after experiencing failure getting the LM 5 XFCE version onto a wired network (looked great and ran fast, but gotta have connectivity).

Felicia (based on the Ubuntu Intrepid kernel) looks like a good fit, but it still needs a couple of tweaks to get everything running properly on the 901.  I tried installing, from a USB stick (see directions below), Linux Mint 6 Universal Edition [1.2G] and had some problems when trying to install it on the 4G  [Master Asus Phison SSD / SCSI2 000, sda] drive, and my goal was not to load it all on the 16G [Slave Asus Phison SSD / SCSI2 010, sdb] space.  So I waited a couple more weeks until Linux Mint 6 Main [680M] hit and tried that one.  The initial install worked out well and included all the necessary drivers to get the 901 on a wired network, display well and to play music (did not try the webcam).  Turns out you still need to download Array’s custom kernel to get the wireless card recognized - unless you are one of those who have replaced the Ralink 2860 miniPCI card with something a little more popular…

How to create a USB or SDHC-based LM 6 Main Edition:
- Prep your USB stick or SDHC card by COMPLETELY formatting it.  I use the HP USB Storage Format Tool v2.1.8.
- Download Linux Mint 6 Main Edition ISO, and put it somewhere you will remember - but NOT on your USB/SDHC!
- Download UNetbootin (v3.04 or newer), and run it.
- In UNetbootin, under the “Disk Image” select where you saved the LM6 ISO.
- Make sure to select the correct USB / SDHC drive and away you go.

How to install Linux Mint 6 Main on your Asus Eee 901:
- Plug your USB / SDHC into your Eee and turn it on.
- Press the [ESC] key when you see the BIOS logo and post screen pop up.
- You should see a blue ASCII menu pop up offering boot device options.  You will see two Asus Phison SSD drives and whatever other media you have plugged in.  Choose your USB / SDHC drive.
- Select “Default” when the grey Linux Mint boot selector screen pops up.
- Once Linux Mint 6 Main completely loads, double-click on the Install icon shown on the desktop.  From here on it’s a normal installation.
- NOTE: Don’t run a system update until AFTER you have run the following tweaks. I found that I had kernel install quirks if I updated (wired connection) from Linux Mint before I added Array.org’s custom Asus kernel.

How to tweak Linux Mint 6 Main for the Asus Eee 901:

Custom kernel:
- After a reboot open up a terminal window and type the following:

wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-intrepid.list
sudo mv -v array-intrepid.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-apt-key.asc
sudo apt-key add array-apt-key.asc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc-lean

- Once this is done, you’ve fixed 99% of the quirks and issues. Array.org’s Intrepid Setup was used as the source for the above.
- Next, you want to move /home and the Swap Space from the tiny 4G SSD you have to the larger 16G SSD.  This will keep the OS from choking itself to death as you continue to use it in the coming weeks and months.

Moving Swap and /home:
- asd

I have a few videos that I will be posting through the day (or two, as my upstream bandwidth is sloooowww).  Please hit the files area at this LINK to see if they are ready for download (should be done uploading around 2359CST / 01 JAN 2009).  Note that I will be posting a couple of videos that have not appeared on the various Bit Torrent search sites - I grabbed them from other sources.  It seems that when everyone split after the Congress they decided to take a bit of a (much needed) rest.  Hope more people are able to hit the raw video dump servers and help the community by doing a little editing and posting.  Links to those dump sites are provided at the bottom.  Sadly, even on the dump servers, there are about 10, or so, presentation videos that have not made it up yet.  I hope those presentations didn’t get pulled or lost.  One of them is to the audio stream I ripped in the previous blog entry - “Security Nightmares 2009.”

Videos I will mirror:
25C3 - 2799 - Console Hacking 2008: Wii Fail [MP4] - INFO
25C3 - 2806 - Building an International Movement - Hackerspaces.org [MP4] - INFO
25C3 - 2815 - Beyond Asimov - Laws For Robots [MP4] - INFO
25C3 - 2874 - Ultimate C=64 Talk [OGM] - INFO
25C3 - 2904 - Solar Powering Your Geek Gear [WMV] - INFO
25C3 - 2934 - Blinkenlights Stereoscope [WMV] - INFO
25C3 - 2976 - Hacking the iPhone [MP4] - INFO
25C3 - 3015 - Rapid Prototype Your Life [WMV] - INFO

Will mirror later (after editing and encoding):
25C3 - 2916 - Wikileaks
25C3 - 3000 - Hacking Into Botnets
25C3 - 3020 - Banking Malware 101
25C3 - 3023 - Making the Theoretical Possible

25C3 Raw Video Dump Servers:
(If you download from these sites, PLEASE edit and share the finalized videos)
25c3.sys-panel.de
mirror.informatik.uni-mannheim.de
c3.thematrix-reloaded.de
25c3videos.lug-in.de