Category: Uncategorized

76456156

i met holden caufield

Originally written 05.11.2002.

or at least i spent part of last night hanging out w/ this kid who, though perhaps not as endearing as the salinger protagonist, he has all the other traits. he lives in manhattan and got kicked out of his boarding school last year for drinking, and he’s now in edinburgh because his parents wanted to send him off to college somewhere where he wasn’t likely to face similar expulsion. this kid is ultra wealthy, or at least his parents are, to the point that he has more dollars than sense. at least he’s generous with his money as he was buying champagne and wine for everyone, handing out cigars, and smoking people up. oddly enough, he didn’t even have a pound to play poker; apparently he lives completely off his credit card. the thing about this kid is that he comes off as totally crazy – you never know if he’s telling the truth or totally lying. like the story he told about getting loked out on coke and ritalin and envisioning taliban fighters outside his window. when i went out this morning, he was passed out in the stairwell outside his flat*.

* apparently agatha also saw the kid in the stairwell and almost mistook him for dead. she was about to move him to the recovery position and start cpr when he awoke and assured her that he wasn’t dead, though he wished that he was.

teatotally

Originally written 05.11.2002.

reason one million, one thousand and three i don’t drink: the morning after. rob came down to the common room and told me that i should go upstairs and have a look at pete. i went upstairs and saw the tragic comedy of pete passed out next to his door, naked from the waist down, with his trousers around his ankles. rob, who had the unfortunate experience of having to step over pete on his way downstairs reported that pete was also clutching his exposed knob in his sleep. we hypothesized about how pete got into his present state. the prevailing theory is that pete went to the bathroom and couldn’t be bothered to pull his trousers up or make it the 6 feet to his bed. so what did rob and i do? we did what anyone would have done. we woke iain and got it all on videotape.

76406335

project – 05.10.2002

Originally written .

  • modified the config file parser in the setup program to handle comments at the end of lines
  • modified the post-startup.sh script so it creates the firewall rules, loads snort, and starts swatch.
  • modified the cleanup.sh script so it clears the firewall rules, stops snort and swatch, and takes down all the interfaces.
  • modified setup script to setup in a specified directory as opposed to the current directory
  • wrote a README file for my setup script
  • put comments in the config files for the setup script
  • wrote a helper perl script to spit out the syslog data from the firewall into a format that meets the honeynet research alliance specs, modified swatchrc and setup script to use this convention

a simple pleasure

Originally written .

epitonic radio set to play 20 songs of pop.

recover tour dates

Originally written 05.10.2002.

austin’s finest, recover is playing some east coast dates. check them out because i can’t.

w/ thrice (i also really like this band) and brand new:

06.05 St. Petersburg FL – state theater

06.06 Ft. Lauderdale FL – freeze

06.07 Orlando FL – the social (formerly the saphire)

06.08 Carrboro NC – go lounge

06.09 off

06.10 Richmond VA – alley katz

06.11 Philidelphia PA – temple university, owl cove

06.12 NYC, NY – CBGB

06.13 New London CT – el n gee

06.14 Buffalo NY – backstage pub

06.15 Clevland OH – grog shop

06.16 Detroit MI – shelter at st. andrews hall

06.17 Indianapolis IN – emerson theatre

06.18 Chicago IL – fireside bowl

06.19 Lawerence KS – bottleneck

76390189

quote of the day – “technology is not an end in itself …”

Originally written .


Technology is not an end in itself, it is only a tool to assist our humanity, and should be used for good. That is technologists must take responsibility for the social results of our work. Techno-colonialism is as dangerous as political imperialism, at least to us nerds and those we enable. Life is not just about money and capital success; education and privilege come with responsibility to our societies and to humankind which follows us all our lives. And each of us, as individuals, through our daily acts, can and must do what we can to effect positive social evolution and change.

– randy bush from a 04.05.2002 talk at rhodes university.

i had never heard of this guy before i saw some links to his talks on patrick’s blog. cheers.

and again

Originally written .

“networking is like love, you receive in proportion to what you give”

– randy bush from the aforementioned talk

damn this guy is cool.

project – 05.09.2002

Originally written .

  • wrote a outline for my paper
  • found an interesting post on UML, ethertap, and host bridging at http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/597/0/6441084
  • so it seems that the later releases of uml_utilities has TUN/TAP support for the uml_switch. this might fix my problem with snort.
  • to use those new versions, I think I have to upgrade the general distro as well. So, I installed user_mode_linux-2.4.18.15um-0.i386.rpm
  • well, the new version of uml fixes a ton of problems, like with the console, and the tun/tap interface to the uml switch means that i don’t have to muck around with the virtual gateway in my honeynet
  • actually, for now, I think I’ll keep the virtual gateway scheme, and instead, create another tap interface on the host which I’ll listen on with snort.

making etexts from paper originals

http://promo.net/pg/vol/a_v_anders.html

76313735

quote of the day

Originally written 05.08.2002.


How about this:

“Unsupervised Conversations With Complete Strangers: A Dangerous Proposition for Children”


or better yet:

“Tips and Techniques for Responsible Parenting: Supervising Your Child’s On and Off-line Activities To Ensure Appropriate Behavior”


or even better:

“The Off Button: The Ultimate Tool for Parental Control”


and finally:

“Responsible Parenting: Getting To Know Your Children and Their Friends”


All much more appropriate topics of discussion, IMHO.

– thomas leavitt on politech regarding an upcoming federal hearing entitled “Chatting On-Line: A Dangerous Proposition for Children.”

mark

Originally written 05.08.2002.

out of the blue, i got an im from my friend and ex-bandmate mark. seems that he’s looking into grad school and in a new band called lucifer pants. they play what i would label as central pa punk rock and they have mp3s. also mentioned on the website is another lancaster, pa band, >a href=”http://www.movieswithheroes.com/” target=_blank>movies with heroes who i remember seeing with erin in a little fireman’s hall in indiana when they opened up for dashboard confessional. i remember liking them a lot.

tim’s weblog

Originally written 05.08.2002.

tim ahas a blog now. he’s joined the dark side. it’s at http://shivx.tripod.com.

project – 05.08.2002

Originally written 05.08.2002.

  • broke my honeynet hardcore when I tested out the new version of my setup script. spent all morning fixing stuff, but it works now. still having problems with tun/tap working automagically.
  • tested out swatch and it works well. tried to be cheeky and portscan one of the honeypots. got 50+ emails in my box. better do something about that! uh oh. that was really dumb. did i take down the mailserver. actually, it looks like I just sent myself hundreds of emails which killed my mail client. stupid, stupid. swatch has a throttle directive that will help prevent this, but it seems kinda broken.
  • doesn’t look like my firewall rules log the outgoing connections. figured out why, need to set the LAN_IFACE variable to tap1 instead of tap0.
  • re-installed snort on harry. tried to run it. it output “Initializing Network Interface eth0” and then died a horrible death. The message on the screen on the tty said “Kernel panic: No physical or IO memory region for address 0x26400”. So, I need to either a) figure out why snort doesn’t work on the user-mode host, or b) figure out how to get snort to be able to see the local net traffic while running on the physical host (perhaps I can read the socket /tmp/uml.data created by uml_switch, or maybe I can use multicast networking instead of the uml_switch).
  • modified my setup script so it provides a umid on the command line to user mose linux. that way i can do stuff with the hosts from the management console.

76299026

bring the ruckus

Originally written 05.07.2002.

got my invitation to the ruckus society tech toolbox action camp. despite the gi-joe sounding name, the agenda seems pretty cool and features topics related to digital direct action including electronic organizing, independent media, secure collaboration, and tactical communications/electronic intelligence.

interview

Originally written 05.07.2002.

had an interview with george scriban regarding an internship at the eff for the summer. i’d be managing the backend and developing content for their anti-dmca blog. the interview went pretty well, though it was odd doing it over irc, and after talking to george, the position seems really cool. i would get to do some research, run my mouth off, and hack on the back end if i had the time. rad.

panic room

Originally written 05.07.2002.

go see panic room. it’s the best movie i’ve seen in ages. a great genre piece, the perfect thriller. plotwise, there’s not much more than what’s in the trailers, but the execution was perfect. directed by the same guy who did fight club, it uses some of the same visual effects with great success. furthermore, the acting, particularly that of jodie foster and forest whitaker was spot-on. as a whole, after watching the film, i was totally satisfied. nothing was superfluous, nothing fealt unfinished. the film created mood and context in moments where lesser pieces of the thriller genre would have plodded along clumsily. finally, the thing that makes the film really great is that it gains additional potency by playing on societal fears. in a world where we are reassesing our collective security, a movie about the erosion of security hits hard.

factoid – unionized screenprinting shop

http://www.tshirtshoppe.com

kakistocracy

Originally written .

wrote a big, long e-mail out to osu’s student body president last week in response to his broadcast e-mail condeming the “off-campus-disturbances” (drunken rioting and destruction of fellow students’ and community members’ property) where i cited some of the factors in sperber’s beer and circus. in the e-mail he explicitly elicited comments, so i thought i’d indulge him. got an e-mail back yesterday with the response “I agree with your comments, it is a huge problem.” glad to see that the student governement puts so much thought into adressing the concerns of the student body. bastards.

project – 05.07.2002

Originally written 05.07.2002.

76256551

project – 05.06.2002

Originally written .

  • Recompiled kernel modules on achriesgill so NAT would work.
  • Over the weekend I had edited the honeynet project’s default firewalling script with the ips for my network. Not sure if the rate limiting will be appropriate or not. Also might want to edit it further to restrict access to certain hosts. I’ll mess with that later once I get the IDS installed.
  • Fired up the firewall script on achriesgill and it worked like a charm. NAT works, so I can get to my honeypots from the outside, and logging works as well. Here are some example logs:


    May 6 11:53:22 achriesgill kernel: INBOUND: IN=eth0 OUT=tap1 SRC=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=28418 SEQ=0

    May 6 11:53:23 achriesgill kernel: INBOUND: IN=eth0 OUT=tap1 SRC=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=28418 SEQ=256

    May 6 11:53:40 achriesgill kernel: INBOUND: IN=eth0 OUT=tap1 SRC=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=44894 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=1377 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

    May 6 11:53:42 achriesgill kernel: INBOUND: IN=eth0 OUT=tap1 SRC=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=32784 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=1378 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

    May 6 11:56:00 achriesgill kernel: INBOUND: IN=eth0 OUT=tap1 SRC=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=1976 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=1379 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

    May 6 11:56:27 achriesgill kernel: INBOUND: IN=eth0 OUT=tap1 SRC=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=26913 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=1380 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

  • need to find a good log analyzer for pulling the firewall info out of the syslog logs.
  • downloaded the honeynet project’s sample snort.conf file from http://project.honeynet.org/papers/honeynet/snort.conf to peruse and modify.
  • the config file was pretty simple given that we want to log everything. just disabled all logging and alert mechanisms except for the tcpdump-style binary file.
  • modified my scripts to use the TextReplacer class rather than have the config file generation hard-coded in.

ring

Originally written 05.06.2002.

watched what was probably one of the scariest horror movies i’ve ever seen. it was this subtitled japanese film titled “ring” and it was awesome. no gore, just an eerie, unsettling quality throughout the whole film, and some good twists and shocks to drive the suspense home. the basic premise of the movie is that some teenagers find a video that, when viewed, causes the viewer to die within 7 days. a journalist investigating the deaths watches the video, and must track down the dark secret of the video before it’s too late.

the thing that really makes a good horror movie is that it plays on cultural themes, perhaps stirring up some of our latent fears. the movie has the typical mysticism that one can expect from many japanese offerings, but the idea that technology is the medium though which evil is propagated seems to, at least in a small way, reflect some underlying uneasiness of the teched-out nature of modern japanese culture.

76215768

ljungberg

Originally written 05.06.2002.

swede freddie ljungberg is quickly becoming my favorite footballer. it could be the rad pink mohawk (this guy looks like he has style of his own, rather than beckham who always looks like someone else dressed him), or it could be that he allegedly doesn’t touch alcohol, but the real reason is that he’s just an amazing player. this weekend, he put the finishing touch on arsenal’s 2-0 fa cup victory of chelsea with a goal so awesome it put the beautiful in the phrase “the beautiful game”. not only did he deftly beat two defenders and somehow break through a hard tackle, but he finished with a curving shot that landed precisely in the side netting. awesome.

a diagram of ljungberg’s goal from bbc sports:

ljungberg celebrating a goal (but not the one above):

britney

Originally written 05.06.2002.

britney spears is the worst role model for young girls ever. ever. look beyond her constant claims of virginity (which are all a farce according to the british tabloiss) and one will realize that she’s sending her masses of preteen followers all the wrong messages. i was watching her new video, “slave 4 you”, and it was horrible. britney has always liked to play up the dichotomoy between innocence and sexuality. first it was the schoolgirl uniform and now it’s taking a provocative song title and peppering it with the sort of alphanumeric abbreviation that seems distinctly preteen girl. however, while the schoolgirl antics were fun and saucy, brit’s latest offerings just seem, well, dirty. in her latest video she starts by whining about being treated like a little girl. however, in experessing her autonomy as a women she doesn’t make any kind of meaningul assertion of her personality. instead, she prefers to throw logic and reason to the wind and be a “slave” to her pent up sexual passion. she might equate everything to dancing in the song, but we all know what she’s really talking about. fucking. and that’s the problem. it’s not her sexuality, per se. in many ways female sexuality, particularly in the 60s and 70s, was really empowering and liberating for women. the problem with britney’s sexuality is that it’s not her own. rather than being a sexual entity in her own right, she has to define her sexuality in terms of being someone else’s “slave”. even her claims of virginity reflect this. virginity seems less and less like a personal choice and more like an obligation, a burden, a set of shacles. it seems that women’s sexuality has come full circle since the sexual revolution. sexualality is no longer their’s. it belongs to the lifeless, meaningless void of mtv culture.

76215762

i’m still standing, back to the basics

Originally written 05.05.2002.

erin will be glad to know that despite the bump on my head, i did not slip into a coma in my sleep.

these past months have really been about getting back to the basics – love of hacking, love of sport, and love of music. today had a little of all three. spent the morning watching the hollyoaks omnibus and touching up some perl code that was part of my honeynet setup script. wrote a class that takes a filename and a bunch of regexes mapped to replacement strings. the class goes through the file and replaces all strings that match the regex and replaces them with the specified string. i’m using it to modify generic config files. went for a little walk around the meadows with rob and we kicked the football around a bit. the weather was beautiful and there were tons of people out enjoying the weather. the walk was short lived as rob had to go meet his mom. so i went back to the flat where marco and i sat around and wrote stupid mtv songs. playing with other people makes me realize how little natural musical ability i have. i forget what i’m playing, lose the beat, mess up the lyrics, but i still have a good time, and have some sense of the elements of songwriting. marco and i wrote a radio-friendly pop song in the vein of imbruglia’s “torn” called “got it so bad” about unrequited love, and a drop-d nu-metal masterpiece with a drowning pool-style chorus called “feeling like a whore”. we also started working on a cover version of kylie minogue’s* “in your eyes”. awesome. later, rob, marco and i ventured out to the meadows and found some kids and played a bit of pickup soccer. we pretty much trounced them, though i didn’t play great. had some trouble trying to remember how to make runs to the right places.

* noticed that her latest video, much like the video for “in your eyes” reminds me a lot of old daft punk videos and other artsy stuff. hell, it even has guys in work suits like in the beastie’s “intergalactic” video. it’s cool to see a pop video that is visually interesting since so many seem to be so formulaic. i think that this willingness to experiment like this (and by doing things like doing vocals on nick cave’s “murder ballads” album) is what seperates kylie from the average pop star. she has the same iconic statis that madonna does. i would argue that both define themselves as icons rather than just being a reinterpretation of an existing icon.

76215721

surreal

Originally written 05.04.2002.

a few hours ago, i had what was easily one of the most surreal experiences i have had in recent years. it started out normally enough as, my football mates nowhere to be found, i headed to bristo square to skate for the first time in weeks. i was rusty, but skating ok. that is, until i noticed the table-like structure that had been put down the large set of stairs on the other side of the square. this created a handrail-like structure that was pretty low at the top, but was a little more than 3 feet off the ground at the bottom end. this local who is sponsored was trying to b/s tailslide it for a video part. after a few tries, i could ollie and ride down the the table. so i tried some 50-50s. they were going pretty well – the first few tries i locked into the grind but kicked the board away. i even landed one, but didn’t roll away. i went at the table again and landed on it all wrong. instead of a 50-50 grind, my board landed as if i was doing a b/s boardslide. i stumbled, hit the ground, and slammed my head onto the hard brick of the square. it fucking hurt. i was really worried that i had a concussion, and it took me a few seconds before i was able to respond to the skater who was giving me a hand up. i managed to stagger to the stairs where i sat, trying to clear my head when a street war broke out.

there were about a half dozen drunken football hooligans, most likely celtic supporters from their demeanor*, coming towards this skater, also noticeably drunk. he was swinging his board around wildly to keep them at bay, so they responded by removing their belts and swinging them at the skater. the skater turned to retreat, but just then, the cavalry arrived as another skater, in a blaze of no-fear skate kamikaze glory came flying towards the hooligans and bashed one of them in the head with his board. he managed to escape, but now everyone was hurrying away from the square. i was still holding my head thinking that i was in no shape to get caught in the middle of a skirmish. at that point one of the hooligans threw a bike at someone. the square was virtually empty and a few of the younger skaters who were scurrying away just had a dazed look on their face. as i was leaving, the hooligans set their sights on some random guy. he started running, and luckily they let him go. i walked fast across the parking lot and escaped unnoticed.

luckily i made it away from the scene with only my original fall-related injuries – a stiff neck, a bump on my head, and a throbbing headache.

note: celtic had just lost the scottish cup final to arch-rivals rangers