I thought I’d compile a quick FAQ surrounding the events:

So you’ve thought of some interesting new things to post?

Well, no, not particularly – but some things are happening which I might deem postworthy at sometime.

Are you going to post more frequently?

With the best will in the world I hope I will; but probably not.

So why bring the blog back now?

I like having somewhere to occasionally write things down and I’m trying to get myself known in the world of IT security. I’ve also just finished Uni for christmas so have had some spare time to set up now that I’m not stressed with work anymore.

Why did the blog go down for a month?

Long story….short version = old server supplier went out of business so I had to get a new server.

Are you okay Craig? How’s life?

Thanks for asking – I’m good – as I say I’ve been a bit stressed with lots and lots of Uni work but I’m managing fine with it in general.

Any other questions?

For those of you who dont know what opendns is: Google is your friend but basically it’s an alternative dns service from resolving addresses with some nifty extra features.

Now, lets get started, Tiscali are mean for the more savvy network dude and have locked the firmware on the SE587 to only include features that most users would want to use – unfortunately this does not include setting custom dns servers – meaning they are set automatically when the router is powered on and negiotiates an internet connection.

So using the web interface is out Lets fire up telnet

For telnet I used putty but you can use any telnet client (I’m not going into depth about how to connect to things using telnet – if you dont know how to do that, stop reading now).

Anyway; telnet into the router and you should see a nice connexant splash with some neat ASCII art, login with your normal username and password that you use for the web interface. There is a lot you can do with telnet here and I’ve spent hours going through different commands trying to get this to work properly – but in the end I discovered it can be done using the command:

dnsrelay

not dnsclient as I first thought – maybe it does work but it’s a lot of hassle and I couldnt get it to.

So type:

dnsrelay list servers

And you should see a few IP Addresses for DNS described as configured by PPP (Thats Tiscali)

Delete those by typing

dnsrelay clear servers

And add the new OpenDNS ones with

dnsrelay add server 208.67.220.220

dnsrelay add server 208.67.222.222

Now you need to save this so it’s not lost on reboot:

system config save

And finally:

system restart

Will reboot the router – wait a few minutes for it to come back up and telnet back in.

Re-issue the command:

dnsrelay list servers

Now you should see the 2 opendns manually configured IP’s as well as the ones PPP sent us. (You can change some config to stop PPP Sending it’s DNS but there was no need for me plus if left like this and for some reason opendns fails then the router should fallback – if you want to know how to stop auto discovery over PPP leave a comment)

Now to check that you are actually using opendns all you need to do is goto a random web address that you *mistyped* I like http://randomurl.cop – if you see the opendns search page then you’re all done and your router is now using opendns for its queries. If something went wrong just do:

dnsrelay clear servers

system config save

system restart

And the router will reboot and get new DNS from PPP again.

Oh…one more thing I did just for fun really I dont think its needed.

dnsrelay set landomain opendns.com

I think you can set this to any domain – the only reason I changed it was because I felt like it really.

Comments Appreciated Thanks for Reading

I was sitting watching TV in a thunder storm when it suddenly goes off and starts flicking between off and standby constantly – so obviously thinking it was a power surge i go and turn it off at the wall. I then wait ten minutes; thunder stops and try (not too eagerly) to turn the thing back on.

Guess what?…Its still flicking between off and standby and refuses to go on properly so my plan of attack is to leave it powered off for a few hours to drain any residual static and then try again.

On the upside atleast if it’s broken it’ll be an excuse to buy an LCD :P

Thats all for now – I’ll re blog and let you know how I get on.

Craig

P.S. I’m slowly starting to learn python

Today I had what I guess you could call an inspiration to restart the old web development business to give myself something to do over my summer break, as you may know the last name of the business was CPB-Network and previous to that was known as WhirlWindWebSolutions (WWWS) but was closed shortly after Stu’s death as I had no motivation to continue at the time.

Now though I feel it may be time to dust off the old coding fingers and start again. I’m not sure whether or not to restart under the name WWWS or whether I should leave this to one side (as it was Stu’s domain) and start afresh. I have made contact with some old friends and got a little bit of work lined up. As of yet I’m still going at it from a freelance perspective as this offers minimal risk but should enough work come up I will seriously consider starting the firm.

If any of you are good and web design or development please get in contact by commenting on this post as you may be able to help me out in someway and if this is the case you will be paid.

Craig

I guess what I’m asking is that if anyone has any jobs that need doing that you think I may be able to help with (no matter how small) please don’t hesitate to get in touch via email: Craig <> youreadmyblog <> info.

Cheers,
Craig

To help with this, lets use the almighty BULLET POINT

• Firstly, you’ll notice I’m using a “cleaner” more professional looking and easier to use theme.
• I updated the photo’s section, for some reason it had lost the link with facebook and wasnt sync-ing properly
• Drag Racer – Basically, Groomi told me that if I mention it over here he would mention ScreenStamp! on his blog and because I’m too lazy to give it a post of it’s own I’ll integrate it into this one -  The game consists of buying and tuning cars and racing them against your friends, its a good little app and is available on Facebook @ http://apps.facebook.com/drag_racer
• openSUSE – After trial of many many different operating systems, my Netbook now has openSUSE on it and is working great, it wasnt the easiest OS to install due to the Aspire not having a CD Drive but if anyone wants a step by step guide to getting it working drop me a line – I’m also thinking of putting an extra 1GB RAM into it.

Thats all for now, I’m going to be helping out with a site recode for a friend over the next few months; so keep an eye out for tutorials and snippets of code I write that I think might be useful to others will be posted here.

Craig

The idea was never really rolled out on a big scale because of the events that were to follow and the subsequent closing of the business. It was nice though to look back and see what could have been and delve into some old code.

From what I remember (and can see from the backup) I was working on a new client backend for the website, whilst at the same time designing a website with Stu for a customer. Stu was fiddling with the idea of building a mafia based RPG and was rebuilding an old version of Asgard to suit. And we were both working on an MSN Bot written in PHP based on the Blobsy Framework (affectionately or arrogantly named: Stueybot).

Looking back: one of the reasons why very few of our projects ever caught on was probably due to us never really investing 100% effort into each one and being of the mindset; if I do 500 things one of them will work.

Anyway, I guess this is a random blog but I hope you enjoyed the nice little history lesson and are a little wiser as to what I was doing more than a year ago. I might at some stage rewirte an MSN Bot depending on the extent of my boredom – perhaps in C this time?

Meanwhile I finally got around to upgrading to WP 2.7.1 and I have to see I quite like the new interface

Craig
x

I’ve also been very busy with bits and bobs in uni – Assignments and the odd drinking binge

I’ll try my best to post more often (I say that a lot) but I’ll just start posting any random random cr*p.

Recently I have installed Fedora Core 10 on my laptop – originally in KDE but now on Gnome and it dual boots with vista, The only thing I am annoyed about is that there isnt a Linux Driver for the DisplyaLink DL-160 Chip inside my docking station so my dual monitors dont work – but I was thinking of scrapping dual monitors anyway to save some desk space.

Elsewhere but sorta related I was thinking about rebuilding my laptop totally to use FC as its’ primary operating system (perhaps running VMWare with XP inside – for those moments when you need windows). My reasons for thinking this are that my course at uni is swaying toward linux and I feel i should “turn to the dark-side”. I’m personally starting to see how stable linux can be and how it can do almost everything windows can and sometimes a lot more.

As I only have the laptop here (at uni) another thought was that I get a netbook – something easy to carry from class to class which gives the oppurtunity to leave my laptop static on the desk, But I dont really know if I can justify it as at home I have more computers than sense.

In other news, I really want an IPhone and cant wait until my current contract ends (in October) to get one – I might have to call 3 and enquire about paying off my contract early – does that make me impatient?

Craig

Let me start by saying Happy New Year and I hope you all had a very productive and enjoyable holiday. Now, on to topic – some of you may know that I watch way to much TV and observe adverts. Lately I’ve noticed the advert for Micro$oft Windows (as if people don’t know that exists already?) – its slogan is “Life without Walls” or words to that effect…does anyone else find that ironic since without walls we’d have no need for windows .

Thats all from me, very random I know

x

BackTrack is the result of merging the two innovative penetration testing live linux distributions Auditor and Whax. Backtrack provides a thorough pentesting environment which is bootable via CD, USB or the network (PXE). The tools are arranged in an intuitive manner, and cover most of the attack vectors. Complex environments are simplified, such as automatic Kismet configuration, one click Snort setup, precompiled Metasploit lorcon modules, etc. BackTrack has been dubbed the #1 Security Live CD by Insecure.org, and #36 overall.

So now that you know what Backtrack is, let me explain the problem I was having:

Well firstly I read the articles on in the Backtrack wiki on how to create a USB and they told me to extract all files from the ISO to the USB and then run a shell script to make it bootable. I was at a bit of a loss as to why it’s packaged as an ISO if all you need to do is extract the files (why couldnt they just pack the files into ZIP?). Nevertheless I followed the instructions, tried to boot and had no success.

So I had a bit of a trawl around the web looking for solutions and I finally found one: UNETBOOTIN or Universal Network Boot Installer – a simple standalone application which takes any given ISO image and writes it to your USB drive in one click.

Its simple and eliviates the need for you to install ISOBuster (or other tools to extract the files) I encourage you all to try it if you want to make bootable USB’s from your ISO’s. And I’m told it will work with any ISO – even Windows installation CDs which would be handy if, like me, you find yourself having to reinstall Windows fairly frequently whenever it decides to die.

/****Edit****\

I have since discovered that UNETBOOTIN Will only work with Linux ISOs despite what I was led to believe by what I read on the Internet – If you are wanting to get a Windows install on a USB Drive might I suggest you read this: http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html

/****####****\

For your conveinience I’ve uploaded the program to here :

http://youreadmyblog.info/files/unetbootin-windows-299.exe

I guess this was sort of a tutorial but maybe not?

Craig

x