If you’re going to be compiling source code on a Ubuntu Linux box, there are certain programs you need that *aren’t* installed by default. The most important part is the compiler. You need at least a C compiler. You can install the C compiler using apt-get. Apt-get is a program built into Ubuntu for fetching and compiling and installing source code from the web. Your Ubuntu machine needs to be online to use it. (try this at a shell prompt: man apt-get )
To install the compiler toolchain, issue this command.

sudo apt-get install build-essential

When you find that you cannot use the program (say, rdesktop-1.5.0) that came with your linux distribution, you should try to build it yourself from source. This seems a pretty easy task for some, but remember the first time you encountered a filename.tar.gz file? Did you gunzip it first, wondering what you should do to extract your prize from this filename.tar file? Anyway, here’s a brief rundown of what you would need to do to build rdesktop-1.6.0 from source on a freshly installed Ubuntu Linux box. After downloading your source file (rdesktop-1.6.0.tar.gz), it should be in your home directory. We’ll assume that your name is Bob, OK?

cd /home/bob (changes to your home directory. You’re Bob, remember?)
tar -zxvf rdesktop-1.6.0.tar.gz (this will decompress and un-tar the source files)
cd rdesktop-1.6.0  (this changes your current directory into the extracted source directory)
./configure (this builds the Makefile)
make (make turns the source into a compiled binary)
sudo make install (this places the program onto your userland filesystem, using root privileges.)

There’s a new way to search Google’s massive indexes. It’s called the Google Shell. You can find it at http://goosh.org Try it right now..  It’s basically a very UNIX-like way to search Google. You can use UNIX-ish commands to search. Try it!

Just in case anyone cares, here’s the list of servers I refuse to accept mail from. This is a very large list, (over 22,500 hosts and networks) and is fairly restrictive. It covers all IP address space in China, Korea, most of Holland, and many others that have spammed my servers.

If you find yourself listed here, don’t email me. I don’t care. It’s my mailserver, and I’ll accept mail from whomever I please.  :P  

P.S. If you are listed here by individual IP address, you suck. Stop spamming people. Loser.

Anyway, here’s the list:

https://cryptednets.org/bannedmailservers.csv

If you use OpenBSD’s PF, and want to use it in a table, copy the list to “/etc/bannedmail” and then you can add the list like so:

# pfctl -t <bannedmail> -T add `cat /etc/bannedmail`

then, just disallow these IP’s from connecting to your mail server:

First, add the table to the pf.conf:

table <bannedmail> persist file "/etc/bannedmail"

and

block drop in quick on $ext_if from <bannedmail> to any

or

rdr on $ext_if proto tcp from !<bannedmail> to $ext_if port 25 -> $mailserver port 25

The 10 Immutable Laws of Computer Security

1. If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it’s not your computer any more.
2. If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it’s not your computer any more.
3. If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it’s not your computer any more.
4. A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy.
5. Weak passwords trump strong security.
6. Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key.
7. An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all.
8. If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it’s not your website any more.
9. Absolute anonymity isn’t practical, in real life or on the Web.
10. Technology is not a panacea.

Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for
survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:

1.) Have an emergency?

The Emergency Number worldwide for **Mobile** is 112 . If you find
yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an
emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to
establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112
can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. **Try it out.**

2.) Have you locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keys? This may come in handy someday.
Good reason to own a cell phone:
If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call
someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone.
Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person
at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on
their end. Your car will unlock.

Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object.
You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has
the other “remote” for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

3.) Hidden Battery power

Imagine your cell battery is very low , you are expecting an important call
and you don’t have a charger. Nokia phones come with a reserve battery.
To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve
and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will
get charged when you charge your cell next time.

4.) How do I disable a STOLEN mobile phone?

To check your Mobile phone’s serial number, key in the following digits on
your phone:

* # 0 6 #

A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your

handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. when your phone get
stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They
will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM
card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won’t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever
stole it can’t use/sell it either.

If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile
phones.

Recently, Cryptednets.org lost the AC in the server room. I assumed the evaporator coil was filthy, and had frozen. I began to dis-assemble the plenum of the furnace, to remove the A-coil asembly for cleaning, and saw that it was spotless.
(We must do a pretty good job of replacing the filters ;) ) This realisation, however, did not make it any cooler in here.
Anyway, long story short, here’s what happened. The coil *had* frozen, after a 95-degree day, and the high-pressure limiter switch on the compressor had tripped. I went outside to the condenser unit, took off the access panel, and pushed the reset button on the compressor inside the unit. (after turning off the breaker, of course.)** Replaced cover, closed up the furnace, reset the breaker, and viola! Arctic-ness.

All without the $250 service call.

**IMPORTANT NOTE: 240v AC at ~60 amps can kill you rather quickly. Consider yourself warned.)

Are you L337? Need to find the latest 0-day 3xpl0it?
Try google L337.
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

I got a new toy for Christmas. It’s a Samsung SC-D353 Digital Video camera. It has a 1gb 40x memory stick, takes Mini-DV tapes, and has S-video, DV, and USB outs. So, I shot a few seconds of video, plugged the USB cable into the trusty powerbook, and… nothing.
Not even an error sound.
Odd… The powerbook can do *anything*. (can’t it?) hmm….
Ok, the first thing that I noticed was the camera was set to use USB 2. I changed the USB setting to use 1.1 with the camera’s setup menu, and now I can mount the memory stick as USB storage. COOL!!!! (told ya they can do anything…) There’s my .avi files, ready to view. Copied them down to the desktop, and double clicked on one. OK, now we have sound, but no video. Just white screen.
After some research, I found that Samsung wrote their own AVI codecs. (SMP4) You can download it here:
http://www.samsung.com/download/
Ok, but if we want to send this video to someone, (grandma), she’s not going to be able to grep google for the proper codecs, now will she?
So, we need to convert this video to something other than Samsung’s best guess at encoding. How about WMV? Most newbie users can see those without too much trouble, right?
Back to grepping google, I found a freeware video conversion utility for windows called VideoPak.
You can dowload a copy here:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/340342
This utility will allow the conversion of Samsung’s AVI format to everyday, normal WMV.
You can also specify the intended target for distribution, (broadband web video, email, streaming, etc)
I ran VideoPak on a 6mb AVI, and compressed it to 768k video for broadband, and it came out as a 1.9mb WMV.

It’s my new favorite search engine..

I’d like to see a set of frames with the ability to choose which engines are searched.
(Tho I suppose I could just quit being so lazy and write it for myself.)

Nice work, and very useful…