Hacking

Hacking

Practical guide to TCP Syn Port scanner from SecPoint

Do you know if your server or your home computer has unnecessary ports open to the internet? These days most of the people have multiple devices which are constantly connected to the internet; each and every device comes with many services with open ports running quietly in the background. The user might not even have an idea of those services running, but the open ports often open new possibilities of threats from the outside world.

The tool portscanner comes to the rescue: see how.

Python Scripting in Blender: A Piece of Pie - Part 1

Since script extensions are going to be a part of our toolchain on creating Lunatics, I thought it would be a good idea to familiarize myself with how scripts are created and run in Blender. As a learning project, I decided to create a script for creating 3D pie charts from CSV data files. My first task is to write this for Blender 2.49 using the API for Python 2.6. This is the version documented in the Python Scripting book from Packt that I recently reviewed, so it's a good place for me to start.

Archiving emails as text files, with command line help

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to store emails in text files, one per correspondent. For example, 'Bloggs_Fred.txt' contains all my emails to and from Fred Bloggs, in chronological order with the newest message last. Other people might have the need to periodically store parts of emails in predefined files (for example, when collecting information).

I wrote a very simple script to make this kind of archiving easier. Before I explain the script, I'll show you how it works.

What to do if your mail server is blacklisted

This article is not strictly about free software. In fact, it's not about free software at all: it's about what to do to find out if your server's IP is blacklisted for sending mail. I just discovered Valli.org as one of the things I had to do to sort the Free Software Magazine mailing list, and wanted to check why some of our emails were rejected. (Note: We are not affiliated in any way with Valli.org.) If you manage a Postfix mail server, this is a resource you cannot miss.

Mounting Google Documents in GNU/Linux is just not a (real) option

If you use Google Documents, you might want to be able to access your files without using a browser. So, I was all set, happy to write a good blog entry about how to mount your Google Documents folder on your Ubuntu. (This is not a very free-software thing to do, granted. But then again, if you are an Ubuntu One user, well, Ubuntu One server isn't free software either. But, it's a service, and interfacing to things is crucial.)

So, is it actually possible?

Encouraging the next generation of hackers part 2 - Software implementation

In the first part of this series I looked at the Raspberry Pi -- a $25 computer which is being developed to remove one barrier to encouraging the next generation of programmers. It's ambitious and commendable but on its own it may not be enough. The choice of software for such a project is important and as important is the implementation of that software.

Creating a Project Website for "Lunatics" with Apache, Zope, Plone, MediaWiki, Trac, Subversion, and the Cloud Too

Film is a very comprehensive art form, probably the most that we have available to us at the moment, so it should be no surprise that a free film project severely tests the limits of available free software, not only for authoring the film, but also for collaborating on its creation. In the case of "Lunatics", we need to combine some of the community development software that is frequently used for free software development with tools allowing a lighter-weight interaction more comfortable for creative contributors, and finally, a fan-friendly public face. It's tricky, and I don't think we're really all the way there yet, but over this Summer, I've managed to find and assemble the necessary parts for our online presence. My solution combines several different platforms, and uses a few remote or "cloud" services as well.

Encouraging the next generation of hackers part 1 - Raspberry Pi the $25 computer

If you keep your eyes and ears on tech news, chances are you've heard of Raspberry Pi -- an ambitious project to create a small form-factor usable computer for the education market which will be available for £15/$25. The price is not the ambitious part though, it's the aims of the project behind it which I think are ambitious and worthy of some attention. Of course with that price it can only be based on free software.

Firewall consistency with Firewall Builder

(This article was edited by Mike Horn)

In the past I've already published articles and interviews on FSM about Firewall Builder (or FWB in short). The reason is simple: the tool kept evolving during the years, improving the features it already had and adding interesting new ones.

During these years I've not being using the tool regularly since I am not a Network Administrator. But I can say that every time I had a firewalling problem at hand, where I needed to prototype and test iptables configurations quickly, this tool never betrayed me!

This time we'll talk about how FWB helps you to configure multiple firewalls in a consistent way. We won't be talking about firewalling per se, so you can still benefit from reading this article even if you don't have deep firewalling, networking or security knowledge.

The examples in this article are based on Firewall Builder v4.2. NetCitadel recently announced the release of Firewall Builder 5 which includes some minor changes in the GUI, so some screenshots in this article may look slightly different from what you would see in v5.

The falcon virtual machine: an organic virtual machine shown with practical examples

At the beginning of 2011, the Falcon Committee decided to release version 1.0 of the Falcon Programming Language during the year. After a bit of discussion and planning, we begun working on a new version of the engine to support some constructs we wanted to add to the language: mostly rules and structured prototypes. Also, we spotted the possibility to add fuzzy logic and evolutionary programming (A-Life) constructs directly into the language. We now have a working prototype of what we’re calling the "Organic Virtual Machine".

Emulating disk menus with HTML5 and Chromium for Lib-Ray

The final step (and probably most interesting) step in creating my Lib-Ray prototype (for releasing high-definition video without DRM or other anti-features) is to make a disk menu system to access the video data that I've already prepared. This column will actually document my second prototype design, as opposed to the first prototype which I presented at Texas Linux Fest in April 2011. This second is a big improvement and conforms much better to the draft HTML5 standard from the WHAT Working Group, and is much more functional in the existing Chromium browser, although improvements are still needed.

Migrating Multiple MediaWikis with Practically Perfect People Policies

I am setting up five MediaWiki instances in three domains on one server with three different security configurations. Each has its own MySQL database backend and its own separate home on the filesystem. All share the same MediaWiki code (from the standard Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 "Squeeze" package installation). All share the same extensions, including the Debian packaged extensions, and some others installed from source. And of course, I'm migrating content from my home LAN server to the web server. In this column, I'll explain how I'm doing this in 10 "easy" (okay, actually quite hard) steps.

Understanding Surround and Binaural Sound

Film soundtracks are usually made available in either "Stereo" or "5.1 Surround" sound, although other possibilities exist. Quite a few of the source sound recordings I've been using are "binaural" recordings, which sound eerily realistic over earphones, but often less impressive when played back on speakers. What does this stuff mean, and how can I use free software tools to make the most of it? This will be an ongoing learning experience, but I want to start with a brief description of these most common technologies, and how they are supported by the file formats we have available to us: Vorbis, FLAC, and WAV.

A Simple NFS File Server

It has been said that "'best' is the enemy of 'good enough'". The Network File System (NFS) may be a good example. It's often overlooked in favor of more capable (but more complex!) resource sharing software like Samba, which can network easily with Windows computers. But if you have a home LAN with a lot of GNU/Linux machines on it, you don't need Samba. NFS will do just fine, and it's very simple to set up. I've been using this configuration for about 10 years now (essentially since I started using GNU/Linux in the first place).

Installing a Debian GNU/Linux test server with VirtualBox

There are a number of good reasons for installing a virtual machine on your computer -- as a way to run software that isn't compatible with your primary operating system, as a sandbox for development, or as a place to test package installations, new distributions, or new server configurations. Setting one up with VirtualBox OSE is quite easy.

Private Collaboration and Digital Asset Management with MediaWiki

My partner (and wife) Rosalyn and I have needed a way to collect our work on Lunatics in a way that is easily maintained and allows for collaborative editing and for collecting all of the media and notes that we have created for the project. It may seem a little like overkill for just two people, but there are a number of advantages to installing a wiki for this purpose, and the MediaWiki software is the best I know for this purpose, since its development has been so motivated by the needs of Wikipedia.

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Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

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Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

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