Set-up a Ubuntu webcam security system

Have you ever wanted to spy see on what is going on in your home while you are away? Motion is a piece of open source software that acts as a motion detector. It enables you to set-up a webcam server that you can have all your cameras connected too, so you can view them remotely and also upload them to a remote server. Motion should run on most linux distributions but for this exercise I’m using the desktop version of Ubuntu linux.

(more...)

New Gnash release includes support for YouTube videos

Support for YouTube and Lulu.tv streaming video is a key feature of Gnash 0.8.0, the third alpha release of the open source Flash movie player. Gnash is available as a standalone application, or as a plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and Opera.

(more...)

Retrieving Emails From Remote Servers With getmail (Debian Etch)

Getmail is a program for retrieving emails from remote servers; it is very similar to fetchmail, but more flexible. For example, it can be configured to deliver mails directly to a Maildir or mbox mailbox without the need for an MTA such as Postfix, but of course it can also pipe the mails through an MTA if you want. Getmail can use so called filters such as SpamAssassin and ClamAV to scan the mails, and you can even tell getmail to delete mails on the original server only after a certain number of days.

(more...)

How To Compile A Kernel - Debian Etch

Each distribution has some specific tools to build a custom kernel from the sources. This article is about compiling a kernel on a Debian Etch system. It describes how to build a custom kernel using the latest unmodified kernel sources from www.kernel.org (vanilla kernel) so that you are independent from the kernels supplied by your distribution. It also shows how to patch the kernel sources if you need features that are not in there.

How to secure an SSL VPN with one-time passcodes and mutual authentication

SSL-based VPNs were designed to eliminate the need for complex configurations on the user's PC. Unfortunately, that was before the dangers of public WiFi networks and tougher regulatory requirements came into being. Thanks to WiFi, many attacks that were difficult are now quite simple. In particular, a man-in-the-middle attack can intercept SSL-encrypted traffic, rendering SSL-based VPNs useless - even if it's protected by a typical one-time password system. The man-in-the-middle can easily feed the one-time password into the SSL-based VPN within the alloted time.

In order to thwart this attack, mutual authentication is required. Mutual authentication means that the user is validated to the site and the site is validated to the user. In this document, we will show how to configure the WiKID Strong Authentication System to provide strong, mutual authentication for SSL-Explorer. To make life easy, we will be using the VMware versions of both SSL-Explorer and WiKID. We'll show you what to expect when it works and what to expect when it doesn't.

(more...)

Mozilla Sunbird 0.5 Released

Mozilla Sunbird 0.5 is the latest release of our standalone calendar application. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version.

Theo de Raadt Details Intel Core 2 Bugs

Recently, Intel patched bugs in its Core 2 processors. Details were scarce; soothing words were spoken to the effect that a BIOS update is all that is required. OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt has now provided more details and analysis on outstanding, fixed, and non-fixable Core 2 bugs.

(more...)

NAT en FreeBSD con IPF

El título lo dice todo. Es un HowTo bastante reciente por lo demás.

Segunda edición de la revista Qespisqa Kawsay

Esta revista en una creación de la comunidad aqpglug de Perú. Tratan temas bastante interesantes y sus contenidos son dinámicos. Por lo demás los colores usados en la revista no desentonan y es diga de leer. Hoy día se publicó la edición número dos y no queda más que descargarla.

Nmap a fondo: Escaneo de redes y hosts

Nmap es una aplicación multiplataforma usada para explorar redes y obtener información acerca de los servicios, sistemas operativos y vulnerabilidades derivadas de la conjunción de éstos.

Es muy usado por todo aquél que se interesa por las tareas de seguridad y hacking en general, desde Administradores de Sistemas a interesados con fines menos respetables. Las técnicas de escaneo que usa Nmap han sido ya implementadas en sistemas de detección de intrusos y firewalls, ya que los desarrolladores de sistemas de seguridad también usan Nmap en su trabajo y toman medidas. No obstante, pese a estar ampliamente documentado su funcionamiento, hay formas de escaneo que lo hacen difícil de detectar cuando se trata de obtener información.

(más...)

Ramble around the UNIX file system

Many directories in the UNIX® file system serve a special purpose, and certain directories are named per long-standing convention. In this installment of the "Speaking UNIX" series, discover where UNIX stores important files.

(more...)

OpenBSD 4.1 review

OpenBSD 4.1 was released on May 1 with its usual mix of new hardware support and enhanced operating system features. OpenBSD releases generally represent a large collection of small changes plus a few new administration and networking tools. Beyond the standard "many little changes," the big news with 4.1 is a working native port of OpenOffice.org, the elimination of the Simtech StrongARM "cats" architecture from active development, and improved greylisting capabilities in the spamd spam filter.

(more...)

The Solaris Installation Experience

There's a problem with Solaris and Sun knows it. The installation experience of Solaris (along with other areas) could be greatly improved. The installer doesn't "suck" as it's easy and known to Solaris administrators, but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. In the Linux world it's no longer a challenge to install a Linux distribution on your hard drive, especially with the excellent work that the Ubuntu team has done in improving the user experience for a desktop installation. However, in this time while Linux has become just as easy to install as Microsoft Windows (if not easier), Solaris has not really evolved to make the experience easier and attractive to potential customers. After Ian Murdock had joined Sun earlier this year he had begun to expose these weak points about Solaris and how he wants to make sure that Solaris is the "better Linux than Linux" through Project Indiana. Ian views these existing problems of the installation and packaging experience as a "usability gap", which he hopes to address. Over time we have found out that Ian's Project Indiana will be an OpenSolaris distribution that combines the best out of the Solaris and Linux worlds. This distribution will be licensed under the GPLv3, of course. For those of you that have never tried out Solaris, what we've decided to do is to show you this "usability gap" with the installation process in Solaris compared to Linux. Is the experience really that bad?

Open Sound System source code released

The source code for Open Sound System is now available under the GPLv2 or the CDDL 1.0 licenses (depending on the operating system).
The source code includes drivers for most consumer PCI and USB audio devices and operating system support, including binary package generation and sample test programs. Complete documentation and API specification is also being made available to the open source community.

(more...)

Record screencasts with recordMyDesktop

Open-source app recordMyDesktop records screencasts graphically or from the terminal.

RecordMyDesktop solves the screencasting problem Linux users have faced for a long time. RecordMyDesktop creates high quality recordings of your screen with or without sound. While it is a terminal application, when paired with gtk-recordMyDesktop, a graphical frontend for recordMyDesktop, recordMyDesktop becomes a robust tool for easily creating screencasts.

(more...)

Linux web servers "faster"

Linux-based websites perform better than those hosted on Windows servers, according to new research.