BsidesDE, Project.Phree, and Amateur Radio

Security BSides Delaware 2013

Videos 

Thanks Josh and Janice for hosting BsidesDE. (Janice does all the work)

Friday: Project.Phree talk. Another great job by BTS. Video.

Saturday: Wireless Essentials Pentest Class 

This year also included a FREE wireless essentials training class. The class was taught by a team of world-class instructors including Mike Kershaw (drag0rn), author of the immensely popular Kismet wireless tool, Russell Handorf from the FBI Cyber Squad, and Rick Farina, lead developer for Pentoo. The class covered everything from wireless basics to software-defined radio hacking. An absolutely amazing class. (excerpted from: http://blog.godshell.com/blog/archives/320-BSides-Delaware-2013.html)

WOW.

First slide I remember from presentation: "BECOME A HAM"  You want to learn about wireless, become a ham.

Sunday morning, ordered this: BaoFeng UV-5R  and began to study for my Technician License.

Best advice ever. Hams are/were hackers. I guess ham clubs were the first hackerspaces. Natural fit for me.

Project.Phree

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Phree Wi-Fi

Thanks to the fine folks at Nonprofit Technology Resources Project.Phree now has a physical location, named Phree.Labs at 1522 Brandywine St. Phila, PA 19130.

We are currently working to get it ready for use. Painting etc. Stop by irc and check if we are there:

We've registered #project.phree on Freenode.
If you're new to IRC or wish to not install an IRC client, Freenode has a webchat client.

Amateur License - KC3BRA - Fisher, James G
New Search    Refine Search    Return to Results     Printable Page     Reference Copy

Call Sign KC3BRA   Radio Service HA - Amateur Status Active  Auth Type Regular  Dates Grant 11/27/2013  Expiration 11/27/2023  Effective 11/27/2013

Let the games begin.

Fosscon 2013

Another great Fosscon is now done. Thanks Jonathan and Crissi for all the hard work you do all year to make this event happen. I'd also like to thank all of the staff that assists with this event. Finally, I'd like to thank all that support and attend this local event.

The Ubuntu Local Community Team always sponsors an Installfest at Fosscon. This year, we had an open Installfest. Any distro that wanted, could represent themselves and be part of the Installfest.
Fedora stepped up to that challenge. Ben and his wife drove all the way from North Carolina to represent Fedora. They are wonderful people and wonderful advocates. It was a pleasure working with them.

The Installfest yielded 2 new installs and 1 issue resolution (performed by the Fedora Team). The 2 new installs came via NTR.

Many Ubuntu-Us-PA members, alumni and friends were among the attendees at Fosscon. Some were speakers.

Alumna Elizabeth Joseph was a speaker.

Member Brent Saner was a speaker.

Friend/Member by default, Walt Mankowski was a speaker.

Exhibitors and Sponsors entertained and informed all.

Even Sunday, the day after Fosscon, some met at Hive76 for an impromptu Hackfest.

Project.Phree, point.io, and Ecere were represented at the Hackfest on Sunday.

Each year gets bigger and better. Help us keep this going.

Happy New Year

Xmas for me was an Eggbot. Cool gift. Fun build. Now to play with Inkscape more and print cool stuff.

Also have been wanting to build a multi-channel controller for Cindy's Xmas light display. Easy build, just never got around to it. Decided to just order some Power Tails and do it.

Unfortunately they didn't get here while her whole display was up. The nativity was down already, and of course, the infant Jesus was going to be the star.

The video was the 4 channel test. I then ordered a Teensy 2.0 for the

real build.

Here is the simple test build:

Good start to the New Year. 

Hope everyone has a healthy 2013 and we do some cool stuff.

Hiveberry Pi!

Sunday, we had a little Linux meetup at Hive76. This is how it went:

Ben, and everyone, awesome *first* meeting. Welcome all newcomers to

Hive76, I really hope you come around to open houses and let the rest

of the members meet you!

While playing with the Rasberry Pi we did some stuff that was very

Linux'y, but did it rather quickly to get the Pi running.

I will recap some of the things we did, and break down how they apply

to using Linux in an everyday situation:

1) dd - we used to make a bit for bit copy of an iso to a card to boot the R pi.

2) Getting sound to work, we covered many things quickly:

     a) alsamixer - a sound control app for alsa   (it wasn't

installed in the distro), so you would    think: sudo apt-get install

alsamixer (for Debian based distros)

      BUT that returns E: Couldn't find package alsamixer

      WHY? because alsamixer is an app, part of a larger *package* of apps

      HOW TO FIND? (**Debian based distos**)

               i) apt-cache search alsamixer

              ii) apt-file   (has to be installed and updated;

contains all files available in repos for local

                                 searching)

             iii) web based search of distro's packages

   b) Still no worky  *wonk wonk*  But why Mommy? So we tried aplay -l

 (which lists sound

       devices on system)

        1) returned nada zippo zero. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? It means

there is no module

            installed for the device

            HOW DO WE FIND module info? device info? *HELP* I'm drowning........

            i) module commands  - lsmod (list modules in use) modinfo

(list specific info for mod

                parameters, etc.) modprobe (install module) rmmod

(remove module)

            ii) device info - lshw (list hardware all) lsusb (list usb

devices) lspci (list pci devices) ETC

                *add* -v or more v's for more info (verbosity)

                Google - DDG - internet search  device and module info

can usually be found too.

   c) modprobe snd-bcm2835 (installs proper module)

   d) aplay -l again to see if it worked - SUCCESS

   e) alsamixer again to make sure nothing is muted - PCM must not be

muted and must be up

       (others too on different systems, but PCM is a big fail point)

   f) OMG SOUND

   g) next boot, have to modprobe again or no sound or add module to

/etc/modules to have it

       install automagically at every boot.

WOW - we did all that - YEP, and most of it can be applied to any

device that isn't recognized automagically for your Debian based

system - wireless stuff - anything.

Happy Hacking!

Philly Tech Week Gala - Passion FTW

Friday night, Hive76 had a table in the Vendor area of the Philly Tech Week Gala at Moore College of Art and Design.

Big kudos to all involved in making Philly Tech Week happen, and making it great.

I am an event whore. I love getting out into the wild and promoting "Geek" to the masses; Linux, Electronics and all that falls in between.

Our table generated a ton of interest. I think that we stood out because most of the other vendors had standard, corporate style show booths, and booth people, that had to be at the booth. It was work; a job.

We, on the other hand, were at our vibrant, self-created table, showing things that we, or our friends, designed and brought to life. We wanted to be there. We want you to be there with us next year.

I think people could 'feel' the difference. Attendees could feel the passion that we had as we engaged them, and ignited their passions.

Hope to see some new visitors at Open Houses on Wednesday, stalking us on the mailings list, and grabbing the RSS of our site.

OpenVPN

I finally setup an OpenVPN server. I use ssh and all it's glory but have known that a VPN would be good to have and a good experience also.

I used this Guide.

Note that bridging must be set up FIRST.

**Remember to which brctl and change the up and down scripts to reflect your location.

Remember to use tap and TCP.

In the client.conf I used the full paths to the certs:

ca /etc/openvpn/ca.crt

cert /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/1104.crt

key /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/1104.key

Also install network-manager-openvpn to connect via network-manager

Import your client.conf file.

It should work.

If you have any problems increase verbosity on both sides and start to track the issues.

Global Jam!

First I would like to than Hive76 for hosting our event. The best hackerspace in Philadelphia.

A young man showed up first. He just came to see what he could do to help. Brought in a System76 laptop that he runs Mint on.

System Testing and Friendly Reports, as suggested by cprofitt, would be the route for newcomers that wanted to know how they could help.

I had burned cd's and made some Beta 1 usb sticks so we were ready.

Right about the time the System Testing was completed, attendee #2 came in.

After brief introductions, it became apparent that he wanted to work on the biggest bug of all, and we were more than glad to assist. The third attendee arrived just to watch. The fourth attendee, Peejay from Hive76, did some System Testing with his laptop.

After we completed the new install, a little training session ensued. I was more than willing to help, especially after he said, "I really want to learn the command line stuff."

The final 3 hours were Linux Bootcamp. I had a blast (always do). Met new people. Linux people.

I realized that we need to go back to basics to keep attracting people to try Ubuntu. The attendee came in with 2 Ubuntu distros that he runs off of live usb stick. He had been doing so for a while. He was a little unsure of how to install on his hard drive; so he didn't. He took the opportunity of this event to have it done with others around.

We have come so far, especially with the ease of installation that we have disregarded the totally new. Well, at least around here. Heck, it's been 4 or 5 years since we've had a proper installfest.

Thank you all for reminding me of stuff I take for granted.

Even better; later that night they were in IRC.

Next up: Release Party, followed by an LTS Installfest.

Geek of the Week

Great geek week. Busy.

Monday: Hive76 MMMM  The results.

Thursday: Ubuntu 11.10 Release Party at National Mechanics.

Back story: The Ubuntu PA Local Community Team has suffered a little due to its success. Many of the original core members have moved out of state, and on to bigger and better things. Life has gotten in the way, with work and families. All good things, in their own rights, but has also created a decline in activity.

More backstory: At FOSSCON 2011, the keynote address, given by Elizabeth Krumbach, made me realize that if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Thanks Lyz! So after being inspired at FOSSCON, I decided to take on the role of 'Team Contact' for the Ubuntu US PA Local Community Team (LoCo). In the Ubuntu Community, it is suggested that the Team Contact be an Ubuntu Member. So I applied, and was awarded Ubuntu Membership.

Back to the party, now that you're all caught up in the journey to get here. Organizing the Philly Area release parties, and the venues in the past, was a little easier with a strong core to ensure success. All we really had to do was agree on a location area, verify that we could all get there, and book a venue. I would just find what area everyone agreed would be ok, and then booked at one of my clients diners or bars.

This time would be different. No real core. Lyz was going to be in town for the release day, and would be staying in Center City, Philadelphia. She suggested in irc that we have a release party since she would be in town.

Brilliant.

I asked my friends over at Hive76 where would be a good place in the Northern Liberty/Old City area to have a Release Party. (I really wanted to have it at Barcade, but their opening in time to adequately promote the event was questionable.) One of the suggestions was National Mechanics. I emailed them about our plans, and they were more than accommodating. I emailed the event info to GEEKADELPHIA, and they tweeted and blogged it. Awesome, thank you so much.

The morning of the party the RSVP list was looking like 20 people. Not bad. An email in the morning from the 732 area code (Central Jersey) asking if it was too late to come to the party. Never too late!

National Mechanics had 2 tables reserved for us. I put out some leftover 11.04 cds from Software Freedom Day to mark our tables. The people started to come. The givens, me, Randy, Lyz and MJ.
Then the magic started. The 2 brothers from PACS, waltman, Scott from PACS.  Then the real magic started. The 'new' people. Sorry I couldn't get to everyone, but the 2 tables were so packed, and so much was going on.....it was.....pretty great!

Things I noticed: an upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10 on an eeepc by a Pumpcon organizer. (How cool is that?) A fresh install with an awesome looking cd. Cisco employee, Java developer, the NJ folk, and more. Everyone having a blast, checking out 11.10, and feeling all the geek empathy.

Forums, irc, and mailing lists are ok, but when we get together, irl, it's really magical. We owe it to ourselves to do it more often.

Thanks to all who came out, already looking forward to the next event.

Saturday: PACS

Great Geek Week.

Gtablet Modding - The Journey, so far.

Hurricane Irene Saturday, around 7pm, with Irene to arrive in full force at around 2am.

The word on the net was that the stock UI was a lttile lame. I began to explore the device with the stock UI. Not too bad. Then tried to install some apps that I was using on my phone. Too much drama. I got the device to play with it anyway.

First mod: Cyanogen 6. Follow the guide, try to boot. No go. Soft Brick. 


Thankfully, I found this link to reflash back to original. It flashes back to pre-3588. Attempts to update via the original update app were failing. Possibly storm related.

I moved forward anyway.

This time, Cyanogen 7   First attempt was thru ROM Manager. Fail. Have to pay to be able to download mods. Soft Brick.

Reflash back to original; see above.

Try to update via  stock firmware again. Fail. Blame it on the storm. Time to sleep, watch storm coverage and see what tomorrow brings.

Awake, it's now Sunday. No storm drama here. Great. Continue with the Cyanogen 7 install, this time through the ClockworkMod Recovery option. Success!


It boots (all the first boots take 5-10 minutes) after rebuilding the dalvik cache. App it up, with all my favorite Android apps. Pretty good. Not great.

Then, through Google, I find out that Honeycomb has been ported to the Gtablet. Maybe I should try Honeycomb, this is for educational purposes, right?

First 2 Honeycomb attempts fail. 


Have to flash back to original firmware before flashing to Honeycomb. RTFM.

Honeycomb boots, albeit slow; see above for why and don't panic. App it up, with all my favorite Android apps. Pretty good. Then I look for the camera app. No camera with Honeycomb on Gtablet. Why have it then?

What to do? I have seen good things about Vegan-tab, and you've got to love the name.

Re-flash back to original, install Vegan-tab, wait for boot. Awesome. It figures. The last mod I try, is the one I like the best.

Still not crazy about the form factor. I need a harness or something.

Hive76, Irene and My Gtablet

dtoliaferro couldn't host the Saturday Open House for Hive76. I like the idea of weekend open hours at the space, so I volunteered to host, even though as a 'dismember' I would need a member to let me in. Brendan stepped up to let me in.

Aaron from PACS stopped by to check out the space. I let him play with my Teensy. Then 5 people from space1026 stopped by!

I am amazed how many artists are interested in technology. Unfortunately, they were interested in Artemis, and I am not familiar enough with Artemis or the Hive76 computers to get a game going. Hopefully, they will watch for the next official Artemis action and come back.

On the ride home, while browsing the web, I saw that HP was discontinuing the Touchpad and support for WebOS. Blowing out all tablets for $99/149 respectively. I tried to buy a $99 Touchpad, but they were already sold out.

That was ok. I really don't like the form factor anyway.

Then Woot.com had the Viewsonic Gtablet on Monday. Too much temptation to handle. I Woot'd it.

Amazingly, the Viewsonic Gtablet arrived on Saturday, about 14 hours before we were supposed to be in the midst of Hurricane Irene. Perfect timing. When better to have a new toy, than during a storm? Plug it in and charge it, prepare house(s) for storm, and then......the green light on the tablet. All charged and ready to go.

To be continued, let the hacking begin.

Shmoocon - My first

How excited was I that day in November, when from my van, using a 3g wireless card, I won 2 Shmoocon barcodes. The 500 available sold out in 6 seconds.

Reserved my hotel room at the Hilton in Washington. Waited.

The Wednesday night before the Shmoo weekend we were hit with a snowstorm. I ended up working 36 hours those 2 days (Wed & Thurs).

Friday in the office to pay everyone, down to Delaware to see some clients, and then leave for Shmoo.

5 miles into my ride, after visiting my clients, my transmission starts to slip. Won't stay in drive; keeps dropping to second. WTF!!

As I limp back to Abington, PA, I cancel my hotel reservations and put my barcodes on ebay at face value.

I arrive home, dejected. My wife offers her car, which I decline. I sell one of my barcodes. I decide to try to get my father-in-law's Cadillac de-snowed and charged up. 4 hours later, in the Caddy, around midnight, I leave for Shmoocon.

I tried to re-book rooms at the Hilton, but the conference rooms were sold out and the regular rates were over $100 more per night. I ended up getting a room directly across the street at the Marriott. It's now 4am, Saturday morning, but I am at Shmoo.

9am Saturday morning I head across the street, grab a breakfast sandwich, double shot of espresso, and 'Let the Shmoo begin!'.

Register and get my Shmoo bag and all the assorted goodies. Go to the printer talk, then head to the lockpick village.

Meet Deviant Ollam. I purchase a set of tools. Stay for the beginner class. See some people that I chatted with at the coffee shop before registering. We sit down, and begin picking the ONE pin lock. Hours later, having picked the one, two, and 3 pin locks, I leave to grab something to eat at the McClellan's at the hotel. Sit at the bar, and order the crabcake sandwich. The bartender was very attentive, the food was ok too. Conversation with nearby geek was very good as well.

Back to the Con to check out the books, the Johnny Long Hack for Charity Table, and all the stuff going on. Ultimately, head back to the Lockpick Village. There is a round of 'Gringo Warrior' being played. Joey is the contestant. WOW...3 minutes and thirty seconds and a score of 430.

Joey then joins us noobs at the table and starts to assist us with our lockpicking. Great community. Others stop by and offer their Zen picking advice as well. End up picking a master lock, and revisiting (for my ego) the one, two and three pins. It's now 5pm, all the talks are over. Most are getting ready for the parties later that night. Starting at 8pm are the firetalks, and the Get Lamp screening.

I then run into, and say hello to Darren from Hak5, as we both head to McClellan's to grab something to eat. Also, have seen Irongeek, Shannon, and Jason running around the con, too.

Again to the bar for something to eat. the bartender recommends the fillet sliders. Pretty good, and great conversation with another barmate. I head across the street to my hotel to regroup.

On my way back across the street, I see the only person I really knew before the con, Jfrost, heading down the street with a group of folks.

I head back, but giving the incidents of work and vehicle leading up to Shmoo, I decided just to go back to the hotel and rest. Lame; I know.

Sunday morning, head back to the con to grab souvenirs, do a final walk-through, and head back. At the Lockpick Village, Hak5 is taping a round of Gringo Warrior for one of their episodes. DrTran (from Philly) is the contestant, so I join the crowd to cheer him on. Grabbed a teeshirt from Johnny Long I Hack Charities, "Gray Hat Python" from No Starch Press, and "Professional Penetration Testing" by Thomas Wilhelm from Syngress.

Before I left, I had the chance to welcome Space Rogue and the Hacker News Network to Philadelphia. He recently moved to Philly. We chatted a bit about the PhillySec group, Hive76, and Philly tech in general. I felt a little fanboy'ish; but whatever.

Not bad. Definitely could have been better, but those elements were outside my control.

Skype

Skype - Ubuntu - Acer Netbook

Everything works, except for builtin microphone.

install pavucontrol (Pulse Audio Control)

Silence right input channel. Test. Internal mic should now work.

Skype your friends.

PACS Hackathon - aka 'Grinching the Box'

It's been in the planning stages for a while now. Actually started as something to do for Hive76's hackathon, but that never materialized. Well, the hackathon materialized, but this part of the hackathon never materialized.

Penetration testing is cool. It just is. It is also a decent back-handed way to introduce people to the Linux command line and not have them come in with the preconceived notion that it is difficult and not for them. Didn't realize that part until right now.

Nothing fancy, nothing too hard. Concepts, tools, and thinking.

The setup was fairly simple. De-ice-1.100 live cd in a vmware machine connected to a wireless router, SSID sploit_me.

Audience participawnage was the key. Seeing is ok; doing is so much better.

The highlight for me, was when PhD Russ squealed aloud when a password was cracked. That's what it's all about! (I recently had the same outburst over a blinking led and a msp-430)

Ken, the security special interest group leader at PACS, wrote up a recap:

Thanks to all who attended the hands on HACKFEST workshop this
month. The turnout and participation was fantastic!

Jim from the Linux SIG led us all through the process of thinking
our way through a simulated penetration test of a hypothetical corporation's
web server. Starting with establishing a connection to the sploit_me
wireless network, we then reconnoitered the factious company's website for
clues that we could use to gain access to privileged information on their
servers. Using Nmap, we scanned their network for possible entry points in
the form of running services with possible well known weaknesses. We also
did a parallel scan using netcat.

After determining that an SSL port was open and secure shell was
running, we proceeded to brute force the user ids and passwords using medusa
and hydra -- two password probing tools. A brief discussion of password
security and research about the potential targets ensued during the
execution of the brute forcing tools.

The brute force attack resulted in compromising one account which go
us on to the system so that we could see what other accounts were present
and with what privileges they ran (/etc/passwd on linux/Unix, SAMS on
windows). Using these other accounts we brute forced another password using
medusa and hydra, at which point we were able to gain administrator (root)
level access to the system so that we could download the encrypted passwords
file.

Running that password file through the john the ripper password
cracking tool (alternatively Googling the hash value) allowed us to finally
gain full root access where upon we ran out of time.

We received much positive feedback on the event and we plan on doing
another one in the future.

Ken Fox
SEC SIG moderator.

I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

LTSP Server Revisited

Ever since Kevin Valentine demonstrated his 'rolling' LTSP setup at PACS I have been interested in this setup. It amazes me that organizations don't utilize this technology to develop labs and classrooms that are low-cost and energy efficient.

Thanks to eric (d_m) from Hive76, I acquired a Dell PowerEdge 1400sc Server, running dual p3 1000 MHz processors with 512 MB of ram.

Not an ideal box for a rolling LTSP setup as the damn thing weighs a ton, but a nice box. So here's the setup:

Description: Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.7 (lenny)
Linux version 2.6.26-2-686 (Debian 2.6.26-26lenny1)

Then I ordered and add max ram - 4 512 sticks (1 bad), so currently:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1816360 1748252 68108 0 117004 1277088
-/+ buffers/cache: 354160 1462200

Using so much, because LTSP setup and running and writing this blog post.

I could probably run 4 more clients successfully max. More testing/stressing to come.

Debian LTSP installation guide.

That will get you installed.

Package: ltsp-server-standalone
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 5.1.10-2

Some LTSP notes: users and apps installed to server, not to chroot. This seemed counterintuitive to me; more reading required.

Window manager to server, ldm setup in chroot.

eth0: LTSP

I tried to do eth0 for the network, and eth1 for LTSP. Too much drama. Conform.

On the server I installed Mutillidae and WebGoat.

Bonus Find: By doing the Mutillidae/WebGoat install and utilizing the LTSP server I have a contained web application LTSP setup.

To do: Add pentest iso's to vbox on server and have an LTSP hack lab.
Build hydra to work on Debian.
Find 5 laptops to use as thin clients for demos.

UPDATE - Captivate USB tether

Ok, so the whole issue must have been the user and adding that user to the dip and dialout groups.

Once that was done, the network-manager-gnome setup worked flawlessly.

Sweet!

Captivate USB tether

Thank you AT&T. After the 'update' to 2.1-update1 the usb tethering no longer worked automagically. In fact, the whole option disappeared.

I kind of liked the option of tethering, even though I have an Aircard 860 wireless laptop connect card. When FIOS went down after a lightning strike, the tethering really came in handy. Also, my netbook doesn't support pcmcia, so the card is useless for that box.

The odd thing is, when I plug it in, with usb debugging ON, network-manager-gnome starts, and tries to setup up a new wireless broadband connection. The connection finds the phone, sets it up for At&t, but doesn't connect.

So, plan B:

1) Add your user to the dip group (sudo adduser user dip)*user is your user name*

2) Add your user to the dialout group (sudo adduser user dialout) *user is your user name*

3) Make this /etc/wvdial.conf file:

[Dialer Defaults]

Phone = captivate

Init2 = AT S7=45 S0=0 L1 V1 X4 &c1 E1 Q0

Modem Type = USB Modem

Init1 = ATZ

Modem = /dev/ttyACM0

Baud = 460800

Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1, "IP", "WAP.CINGULAR"

ISDN = 0

Stupid Mode = 1

New PPPD = yes

Phone = *99#

Password = test

Username = test

Now all you need to do is:

4) wvdial

5) sudo ifconfig ppp0 up

You are now tethered.

Yoda van

Sierra wireless Aircard860 at&t 3g

Iphone Speed Results

Heck, while I am at it, here's the info for the Iphone 3g:

3G:

Download: 680 kbps
Upload: 355 kbps
Ping: 455 ms

Edge:

Download: 54 kbps
Upload: 51 kbps
Ping: 3123 ms

Home Wifi:

Download: 6306 kbps
Upload: 7405 kbps
Ping: 100 ms

Fios Installed

I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Yourls FIXED

.htaccess file did not scp to server; once that was scp'd any new url's work - so delete any url's made before the .htaccess file was there.  Or better yet, make sure .htaccess file is there before you start.