Security Stories and Help with Network Documentation

Just sitting there enjoying the atmosphere made midfr0st question his life in solitude. The wine was probably the best he had ever tasted, the starter had been excellent and now he was waiting for the main course.

My office back home seems like a prison in comparison. He missed being out meeting people. midfr0st’s gaze swept through the restaurant, he couldn’t see any other table hosting a single guest; all of the other tables had at least two people around them. He tried to think of a single person he could have dined with. Aside from the girl next door he came up blank. The realization made him order another bottle.

As he was sitting in all the chatter from the surrounding guests, he heard it clearly, just as if someone had shouted his name.

“vpn”

He almost dropped his glass, the online world came rushing back.

“nat traversal”

Who is speaking?, quickly he tried to focus on the conversation and shut off the other noise.

“Install a Blue Coat. Before we came along they didn’t even have a security policy.”

It’s the two guys just next to me!

midfr0st tried to concentrate on the conversation, he realized he was a bit drunk.
“Here’s to DiMavia” one of the guys raised his glass, “I mean, they paid for this.” They both laughed.
midfr0st’s food had started to get cold, he was entirely captivated by the conversation. Time after time the one named Thomas did his impression of what midfr0st assumed was their client.
“Money is not a problem”. They would always share a toast after this comment.

“Would you like some dessert,” the waitress asked. Midfr0st looked up at her, stunned.
“No, thank you but I’m not done with my meat,” he grabbed the fork again, “it tastes great.” He put down the fork again when she walked away. He wished he had something to take notes on.

“But the best part was that girl in finance,” the guy named Hans said.
“She was quite a looker, wasn’t she!” Thomas made a gesture indicating large breasts.
“Yeah, that too, but do you know what she used for password for their economy system?”
“Some cat?” Thomas guessed.
“The subject name of her certificate!”
“Well, you know how it is with the bean counters.” They both laughed.

midfr0st just smiled, drank some more wine and tried to remember as much as possible of the conversation he had overheard.

If you read any of my stories, sorry for not being so active on that front, you might remember A Stock Bubble of His Own which I wrote last year.

You want a real world example? Head over to TechCrunch and read about a fake email to Engadget which made Apple’s stock drop. Engadget quickly posted an update saying it was a false alarm.

This might have been just a prank or someone going after some quick cash, I would guess that a lot of people lost money too. With systems selling stock automatically if it drops below a certain point this can get nasty.

Interesting reflection from TechCrunch; “I do not believe Engadget will have any liability here. Apple may, if the email did originate from its servers)”

“Sorry for the delay” the girl smiled at him, “It’s been busy around here lately.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” midfr0st hoped he didn’t sound too annoyed. Feels like I’ve been waiting since bloody Christmas, I hope it’s worth it.

“Do you have a reservation?” The girl asked.
“Yes it’s that one,” midfr0st said and pointed at a line in her notebook. He felt uneasy with his name printed in plain view like that. Stop being so freaking paranoid, he thought, hoping his chills were from the weather outside instead of a product from his demons.
“Will you be dining alone?” midfr0st removed his finger from her reservations list.
“Just me, but you’re welcome to join me.”
Her smile grew a bit, “your table will be ready shortly.”
“The bar it is then.”
“That way sir,” she said pointing in the direction of the bar.
“Thanks!”

The place was fairly crowded so there was a buzz of chatter blended in with some classical music.
“What can I get for you sir?” the man behind the bar asked.
“Red wine, I’ll have that bottle,” midfr0st said pointing to a brand he knew of.
“Excellent choice,” the bartender poured him a drink.
You would have said that regardless of what I drank, midfr0st thought.
After his second glass his table was ready.
“I´ll just bring the bottle if that’s alright?” midfr0st asked not really waiting for the answer. They seated him in the corner of the room where he had a full view of the restaurant. He smiled; it was the table he would have chosen for himself. No one would be able to sneak up on him from behind. If I don’t get too drunk that is.
midfr0st was flipping through the menu trying to figure out what language the meals were written in. At the table next to his a waiter was explaining to two men what they had ordered and how the meals had been prepared. I wonder if that was the French word for road kill?

Soon a waiter was ready to take midfr0st’s order.
“I’ll have number fourteen as a starter and number thirty seven as my main course.”
“Ah, the foie gras and the steak, wonderful. Have you decided on a dessert?”
“I’ll see if I want one later.”
“And what would you like to drink to that?” she asked, midfr0st caught her looking at the empty bottle.
“What can you recommend?” midfr0st asked.
“That’s not really my area of expertise, wait a second and I’ll fetch our wine expert.”

The waiter ran off and a few minutes later a short guy came rushing to midfr0st’s table.
“Good evening, sir” he saluted and opened their wine list.
“What price range were you aiming for?” he asked glancing at the bottle on the table.
“Well if the wine is older than me it’s probably too expensive,” midfr0st confessed.
The man launched into a wild discussion, mostly with himself, about the different wines the restaurant had to offer. It sounded like he had an intimate relationship with the lot of them. In the end midfr0st didn’t really know what it was he had ordered, just that he had probably never paid that much for a bottle of wine before.
I should have a sommelier when I live in a mansion, midfr0st mused watching the guy walking away from his table. But mine won’t be gay as a meatball.

During the week I wrote a certification exam for Cisco, before the actual exam I was presented by a survey where they ask questions like background and experience. One of the questions was for which existing certifications I held.

From the Novell camp they had listed CAN, CNE and MCNE. I archived my CNA status in 1998 but haven’t really thought of pursuing the CAN certification. Since it isn’t listed on the Novell page for certifications, I’ll give you a hint on how to reach your goal.

If you already have the CNA status you’re ready to go, otherwise just follow the guidelines provided by Novell  before you start. Then when it’s time to write your CV just open up a word processor which has automatic spell check and write about your trophies hopefully the program will replace CNA with CAN, voila!

I haven’t seen that many CAN’s in the real world although I noticed one of the authors who writes for Syngress has it, good for him!

I would also guess that a lot of happy jobseekers have listed the CAN certification in their resumes.

Tags: certification, spell check

It’s a shame but my brand new Cisco ASA 5505 has just been sitting on my desk untouched for two weeks. The only think I’ve noticed about it is that it still had the old Cisco logo. Basically I’ve watching it from time to time without having time to play with it.

Finally I had some time to spare and I connected it to my cable modem, I have an ADSL connection with a few DHCP addresses so at first I just connected the device with the default configuration. The intelligent network seemed nowhere in sight and nothing worked. [click to continue...]

As I said a while ago I moved SYDI, my network documentation project, to a new domain. Now I’m beginning to add information about SYDI and network documentation in general. The first article is under the best practices section and is titled How to use SYDI Server with Login Scripts.

If you have any requests, please let me know.

Regarding my stories I am going to write more of them and the next installment of The Broken NDA is coming, sorry for the delay!

Tags: sydi, network documentation

You’ve probably heard of LinkedIn, I have been thinking of signing up for some time but always postponed it. Finally I decided to give it a go, like many of these Internet services it’s real easy to register and get started, most people can do it in minutes. Of course the registration process was beyond me.

The idea with LinkedIn is to connect people and make them network, this has been happening in the real world for ages. For example last week I saw that the toilet in my basement was leaking, shortly afterwards the water in the shower next to it started to rise. It got ugly in a hurry, in fact I think I know where they got the inspiration for the movie.

Working with Cisco they keep telling me that it’s like network plumbing, but I assure you there plumbing and there’s plumbing. After doing some basic troubleshooting it was time to call in the cavalry, but alas I had never hired a plumber and didn’t know  how to find a good one (one that I could trust).

To the rescue comes a neighbor, after talking with him he picks up his cell phone and calls a friend of his who works in the field. Now my plumbing problems are gone and this is an offline example of what LinkedIn can do, networking. Better yet when the plumber heard that I work as a network consultant he was interested in my services!

It all sounds great however, there’s no username that matches with that password.

Hm, that’s strange I just created the account. I figured something went wrong so I reset my password, still no dice. Mind you I don’t panic at this stage; I’m used to having problems registering different accounts. First I remove the funky characters from my password and try again.

The site is still unaware of my username and password. My next bet is the length of the password since I can’t very well view the internal code of the site I have to settle for the html code I can see;

input id=”session_password#login” type=”password” size=”24″ name=”session_password”

My password was 22 characters, I shouldn’t be having a problem but the search continues. On the password reset page I see this code instead:

input type=”password” name=”new_password” value=”" id=”new_password#newPassword#passwordReset” size=”16″ maxlength=”16″

Aha, maximum password length = 16. I don’t think too many people have this problem, however if my password is too long please tell me!

Anyway, now I’m LinkedIn, and here is my public profile.

Tags: password policy, maximum password length, linkedin, bad programming

So the SYDI project is coming of age and will be moving to its own domain. I haven’t launched the site yet but it should be out soon.

My plan is to use Drupal 5 when it is released, which I hope is very soon.

If there is anything you would like to see on the new website please let me know.

The new link to SYDI will be http://SYDIproject.com. Initially the content of the site will match the current one but I have plans to publish more information so hopefully you’ll find the new site more useful.

A few days ago the download counters for SYDI went passed 50 000! Although it’s great to see that so many are using the scripts what I like best about the project is when I receive feedback from you. If you have anything to say about SYDI good or bad just tell me.

Tags: sydi, network documentation, move, drupal

It was getting cold on his balcony. The leaves were falling from the trees and his neighbors had stopped having barbeques down below him. But midfr0st endured and defied the cold; he enjoyed his cigarettes too much and didn’t want to smoke them indoors. That environment was bad enough for his computers as it was, he didn’t want to make it worse.

The last few months had been fiercely busy for midfr0st, he hadn’t had any time to relax or really think about his situation. His current projects were done and he was left with a feeling of boredom. He wanted to be productive but his brain couldn’t handle anything besides smoke and music.

Eleanor Rigby was playing in the background; midfr0st thought Pain’s version was much more powerful than the original. He watched a couple walking, hand in hand away from his apartment complex. It’s better to eat porridge together than to eat pork alone. He didn’t remember where the saying came from but it had stuck to his mind.

When his cigarette was all but gone he left the balcony. His apartment was quiet as the grave. All the computers were off and midfr0st realized he wasn’t used to the utter silence. I bet the neighbors’ dog starts off soon though, he thought. Walking by his array of computers he wondered where the itch to turn them on had gone, usually he had millions of things to check. Instead he walked over to check his cupboard for a bottle of wine. Empty? midfr0st didn’t remember taking the last bottle; realizing he didn’t have any wine made him want it even more.

Sure he had plenty of beer and whiskey but what he wanted was a little something called Syrah, someone needs to take care of the logistics here.

Cooking up a meal just didn’t appeal to him without a bottle of red. Briefly he thought of pizza but that would only take care of his hunger, which was a secondary problem.

His plan had been to live as a hermit to avoid being seen by the outside world. He didn’t want to draw any kind of attention to his person and had sworn to follow that plan. midfr0st hadn’t eaten out in well over two years; he had hardly met “real” people during that time. Screw the plan, he thought, or that part of the plan anyway. His cravings overcame his earlier planning.

But where should I go? He asked himself, being out of the grid for so long meant he had no idea where any decent restaurants were located. Google Local didn’t work since that service wasn’t activated in his region. After booting up a computer and doing some searching he found a local search engine for restaurants.

After making the reservation he chose a blue suit from his wardrobe and phoned a taxi. He thought about the pretty girl he had been eyeing and exchanging hi’s with, it would have been nice to buy her dinner and actually talk to someone for a change. I think her name is Jenny… But midfr0st didn’t want to stray that far from the plan.

Tags: security, stories, fiction