Episode 22 - Hacking Wireless Using Grim Wepa

Happy Memorial Day everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the long weekend. I also hope that you all have taken a moment to think about those who have fallen in the defense of this great country of ours! As a Navy veteran I can tell you first hand that it is not easy being in the military and being far away from home while defending the freedoms of the people you left behind. I couldn't imagine what it is like for those left behind who have had their loved one die in combat. Today is about remembering the ones who have died, and their families left to carry on.

With that said, today is a great memorial Day because Episode 22 released today! In this episode I show you how to hack WEP encrypted wireless access points using a GUI program in Linux called Grim Wepa. For this demo I setup an access point using WEP, and a password that I have actually seen being used in the work place. Now you must be asking why I am showing this? Everyone has seen WEP being cracked. Well, you don't often see it cracked using a GUI in Linux. Not to mention this tool will let you crack WPA as well, although it is a little more difficult. Grim Wepa is pretty easy to install yourself, however it is already included in Bauer-Puntu Linux 10.04! Without further ado, here is Episode 22!





Thanks for watching! I want to apologize about the audio in the beginning. I thought my mic was turned on, but it wasn't so I had to use the camera mic. The last part everything was fine though. I would have gone back and re-filmed, but I didn't have the time. Either way, I hope you learned something from it, and if you haven't yet, perhaps you will try out Bauer-Puntu!

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: hacking, wep, wireless, gui, linux, windows, easy, how to, wpa, ubuntu, bauer-puntu, grim wepa

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How To Hack Your MagicJack Part 4 – Using MagicJack as a SIP Trunk

Okay, this is going to be my last post on hacking your Magicjack, as all my messing around is seriously pissing my wife and colleagues at work off. It takes a little finagling to get this working. If you have a heavy duty firewall like a Cisco ASA, then you will have to modify this setup a bit which I will cover later. The reason is that enterprise Firewalls may consider my setup as a possible LAND Attack and will drop packets. However, if you can afford a Cisco ASA, then you probably can afford a real telephone solution anyway. No, this post is more geared for the SOHO network using a simple Linksys or D-Link type router. This is more of an ideal solution, as that is how Magicjack is designed. I will still give you a tip on how to get it working behind a Cisco ASA ;-P

Once again, as previously stated, this violates Magicjack’s TOS. Perform this setup at your own risk. I accept no responsibility!

So here is what you will need for this project:

• Windows Server
• Magicjack Password/Proxy Info
• 3CX PBX
• MJMD5
• 3CX Softphone (Or any SIP phone that 3CX supports)

Now I will not get into the install portion of 3CX, as it is pretty easy, but if you must see how it is done, here is a clip from Hak5 Episode 503 where Matt Lestock shows us how to install 3CX and have it basically up in running in about 10 minutes.

 

 

After you have 3CX setup, we need to get our proxy going. In a SOHO environment, we can set it up on the same server as 3CX. To do that download MJMD5, and extract it to C:\MJMD5. Run it once to configure your settings and select the option to save the settings (See part one for more info). MJMD5 will save your settings in an INI file that it will now use as it’s defaults. Once you have that configure a scheduled task to run as SYSTEM to kick off MJMD5.exe at start up. You will now have MJMD5 basically running as a service!

Now that we have that running as a service, you will need to open the following ports on your firewall to point to your 3CX/MJMD5 Proxy server:

• 5060 UDP
• 5070 UDP
• 3478 UDP
• 9000-9003 UDP (Higher for more phone connections)

With those ports open we need to configure our SIP trunk to point back at our 3CX server using our Public IP address. You should have the following settings under VOIP Providers (Click for larger images):

            

 

Note that the IP address in the first picture needs to be your public IP address. Your Authentication ID and Password will be your Magicjack username and password.

Once that is working correctly, you should see that your SIP trunk is now active:

before you can make outbound calls, you will need to create an Outbound dialing rule. The simplest method is shown below which makes it so people need to dial a 9 before dialing an outside line.

You probably want people to call you too right? For that we need an inbound rule. For that, all you need is to set it up similar to mine with your Magicjack number minus area code and an asterisk next to it. For example 1234567*. After that you have to specify a destination extension. I created a ring group so both my wife’s phone and my phone ring at the same time. You can set yours up however you want.

That is about it. Now you have a working PBX at your home office or small office using a $20 per year SIP trunk as the connection!

I mentioned setting this up using a higher grade Firewall like a Cisco ASA. For that to work you will have to have a second server on the same subnet to act as the proxy server. The reason being is that really good firewalls will drop packets if the source packet comes from an IP address on the internal network. They think it is what is known as a LAND attack.

When I did my testing I first used my D-Link wireless N router at home, so the SOHO scenerio worked fine. For my lab at work I setup mjproxy on a Linux server. I mentioned how to do that in Part 3. The only difference was I created a shell script and added it to rc.d to run as a daemon at startup. If you aren’t Linux savvy, you can do the Scheduled task trick on another Windows server on the same subnet. Either way, 3CX needs to point to the proxy server’s internal IP address for SIP authentication. In both cases, ports 5070 need to point to the proxy server no matter if it is hosted on the same server as in the SOHO example, or on a different server in the Cisco ASA example.

Now that our server is setup, we are ready to attach a phone. I used the 3CX softphone for my testing. I like how it looks like an iPhone! Also, it is designed to work natively with 3CX. Here is a screen shot of my config Make sure you point your phone to your 3CX server, not Magicjack!:

Here is a look at the softphone itself:

 

I am still playing with my setup at home. If you try this out, and something isn’t working, hit me up in the comments!

<<Part 3

Part 1>>

 

Technorati Tags: how to,hack,magicjack,mjmd5,mjproxy,run as service,3cx,pbx,sip,trunk

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How To Hack Your MagicJack To Make Calls From Any SIP Enabled Softphone in Windows and Linux Part 3 – Using Your MagicJack info in Linux

Okay, if you have been following along all week I have showed you how to obtain your Magicjack username and password by doing a memory dump, and I showed you how to use that information to connect a softphone in Windows. What about you Linux users? Well, I am a Linux user myself, so I will show you guys how to do it too.
Like I said before, using other methods to connect to you Magicjack service other than the way magicjack wants you to (USB dongle in Windows) violates their TOS. I accept no responsibility if you lose your account because you want to hack your Magicjack. The following is for educational purposes only, and if you do this, you do so at your own risk.
Ok, lets get what we need:

• Magicjack username and password
• Twinkle softphone
• mjproxy source code

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the way I believe Magicjack authenticates with their proxies is they combine your password with their proxy info to create an MD5 hash. With that hash your can authenticate with their proxies to make and receive calls. Without it, you will not be able to connect. In Windows I mentioned a tool called MJMD5 that creates this hash authentication for you. In Linux, it is a little bit different. In Linux, you have to compile the tool yourself. I am using Ubuntu 10.04 for this.

1. Install gcc so you can compile the source code
   
   >sudo apt-get install gcc
   
2. Create a directory called mjproxy
   
   >mkdir mjproxy
   
3. Change into the newly extracted directory
   
   >cd mjproxy/
   
4. Download the mjproxy source
   
   >wget http://ftp.bauer-power.net/misc/magicjack/mjproxy.c.tgz
   
5. Extract it
   
   >tar -xzvf mjproxy.c.tgz
6. Compile the source code into a program
   
   >sudo gcc -o mjproxy md5.c mjproxy.c
   
7. Give everyone full permissions
   
   >sudo chmod 777 mjproxy
   
8. Make the program file executable
   
   >sudo chmod +x mjproxy
   
9. Run the following to start the proxy authentication process and leave it running
   
   >./mjproxy 0.0.0.0 5070 proxy01.<yourcity>.talk4free.com 5070 <MagicjackPassword>

Now that we have our MD5 proxy running, we are ready to setup our SIP softphone! For this I used Twinkle which is available in the repositories. To get it working, do the following:

1. Install Twinkle
   
   >sudo apt-get install twinkle
   
2. After installation open Twinkle from Menu > Internet > Twinkle
3. Setup your account information with the following:
   
   • Your name: Whatever you want
   • Username: Your Magicjack Username (E<YourPhoneNumber>01)
   • Domain: 127.0.0.1:5070
   • Realm: Blank
   • Authentication Name: Your Magicjack Username (E<YourPhoneNumber>01)
   • Password: Your Magicjack Password
   • AKA OP: Leave Deafault
   • AKA AMF: Leave Default
4. Click OK and you are ready to go!

Now you can make Magicjack calls from your Linux machine! Make sure you have a good USB microphone headset though. When I tried it on my laptop with the internal mic there were a lot of echoes.
The cool part of this setup is that you could configure mjproxy to run as a service by adding it to init.d… Hmmmm, with that you could configure say…. Asterisk or 3CX to authenticate with Magicjack, and share out that number with a bunch of users using extensions.

<< Part 2

Part 4 >>

Technorati Tags: how to,hack,magicjack,linux,ubuntu,twinkle,mjproxy

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How To Hack Your MagicJack To Make Calls From Any SIP Enabled Softphone in Windows and Linux Part 2 – Using Your MagicJack info in Windows

Yesterday I wrote about how to obtain your Magicjack password by doing a memory dump in Windows. Well what good is that information if you don’t know how to use it? I’ll tell you, it isn’t any good at all! So in the post, I will tell you how to setup a softphone in Windows so you can make inbound and outbound calls using your Magicjack number without having to use the USB dongle! Not to mention, you can set this up on multiple computers!
Once again I want to re-iterate that this violates Magicjack’s TOS. This article is purely for informational purposes, and I accept no liability if you get your Magicjack account pulled because you want to screw the man!
With that little bit of legal mumbo jumbo out of the way, lets get together the stuff you will need:

• Magicjack username and password
• XLite softphone
• MJMD5

No, I didn’t mention this in the last post, but you can’t simply use your Magicjack username and password by itself to make inbound and outbound calls. The reason being is the way Magicjack does authentication. Now correct me if I am wrong, but what I gather is Magicjack takes your password and combines it with the proxy for your city and creates an MD5 hash. It then uses that hash to authenticate with the proxy. If you don’t have that hash, you cannot authenticate, and thus cannot make calls. That is where MJMD5 comes in.

1. Go ahead and download MJMD5 and run it.
2. Enter 5070 for both the listening and the forwarding port.
3. Enter your local proxy (proxy01.<yourcity>.talk4free.com)
4. Enter your Majicjack password
5. Save your settings
6. Click Start

With that running, download and install Xlite’s free softphone on the same computer and enter the following:

1. Display Name: Whatever you want
2. Username: Magicjack Username (E<yourphonenumber>01)
3. Password: Your Magicjack password
4. Authorization user name: Magicjack Username (E<yourphonenumber>01)
5. Domain: 127.0.0.1:5070
6. Check Register with domain to receive incoming calls
7. Select the domain radio button
8. Click Apply then OK

That is it! Now you can make inbound and outbound calls without your Magicjack USB dongle in Windows. You can also set this up on as many computers as you want!
Check back tomorrow where I show you how to do the same thing in Linux!

<<Part 1

Part 3>>

Technorati Tags: how to,use magicjack,sip,login,password,xlite,windows,hack

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How To Hack Your MagicJack To Make Calls From Any SIP Enabled Softphone in Windows and Linux Part 1 – Getting Your Magicjack Password

Over the last few days I decided I was going to figure out how to hack my Magicjack so I could make calls using the SIP information no matter where I was without having to carry around my Magicjack USB dongle. Also, I wanted to be able to make calls in Linux and Windows. Before I could do any of that though I needed the SIP information for my Magicjack!
You see, Magicjack is really a simple device that uses the standard SIP protocol to make inbound and outbound calls. If you are not familiar with SIP, here is an explanation from Wikipedia:

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an IETF-defined signaling protocol, widely used for controlling multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol (IP). The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party (unicast) or multiparty (multicast) sessions consisting of one or several media streams. The modification can involve changing addresses or ports, inviting more participants, adding or deleting media streams, etc... Other feasible application examples include video conferencing, streaming multimedia distribution, instant messaging, presence information, file transfer and online games.

Since SIP is the standard, in theory you can take the SIP information from Magicjack and use it on any SIP enabled phone. All you need is the correct Proxy info, username and password! That is where things get tricky. Magicjack doesn’t want you having this information, and using it for any other way other than its intended use is a violation of TOS. I accept no liability if you get your account pulled for violating TOS. This post is purely for informational purposes only.
In theory, one could pay $20 per year for their Magicjack service, then use the SIP information to share out their number using a SIP PBX like Asterisk to say… Oh… 30 users or so. Imagine a small business doing this? The savings could be huge! Once again though, it violates TOS so I wouldn’t recommend it.
In order to get your username and password you will need the following:

• Windows workstation
• Magicjack Utilities
• A Magicjack

You will also have to disable autorun on your Windows workstation. I will let you Google that for yourself. The reason you have to do that is because when you plug in your Magicjack dongle, Windows maps it as a USB drive, launches Magicjack, and then unmounts the USB drive. We don’t want it to do that, as timing is everything. After you have autorun disabled do the following:

1. Unplug your Magicjack
2. Kill any Magicjack processes
3. Unzip MagicJack_Utilitieswsip.zip
4. Navigate to where you unzipped it, and run SIPDump.exe and enter 4 or 5
   
5. Now plugin your Magicjack and manually run MagicJackLoader.exe
6. When you see the below screen, press OK to start the memory dump process from SIPDump.exe (Note, you have to be fast!)
   
7. Let the dump run until you see the following screen:
   
8. Go ahead and close out of SIPDump, and you will have several text documents called SIPDump1, SIPDump2 etc. Open Each one that has a file size of 19,000KB or over and do a search for the string SIP.Connection.Refresh with the whole word only option selected.
9. Hit the search button, and then once more. If there are two selections found, then your password should be within 5-10 lines up or down from the string. The password will be a 20 character password all uppercase usually beginning with the letter B. For example: B6QK1RE4HU7QK8P3ABZB (Made up one)

That is the tricky part. Once you have that, the rest is easy. For example, your username will be the Letter E<YourPhoneNumber>01. The proxy will be proxy01.<yourcity>.talk4free.com. For example:

• E619123456701
• proxy01.sandiego.talk4free.com

Tomorrow I will show you how to use this information to use a SIP enabled softphone to make calls in windows without your Magicjack dongle. Then the next day after that, I will show you how to do it in Linux! Stay tuned!

[Via MagicJackHacks]

Part 2 >>

Technorati Tags: how to,hack,magicjack,get,sip,password

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Changing The Login For Ubuntu Is Even Easier!

Back in Ubuntu 9.10, the good ol' folks over at Canonical decided to use a different style of login than in previous versions. Before karmic Koala, you could download really cool themes to skin out your GDM login page, and make it look really cool. You could find skins and themes that matched your personality, and make a custom look that was an expression of you! When 9.10 came out, things changed a bit.

I wrote about one way to change the look of your login page back when 9.10 came out. It basically consisted of a command to run as root so you could change your wallpaper, icons, and theme. What was the big change? Well, they did away with the GDM login and went with a faster loading X11 login. Their goal was to decrease boot times at the expense of being pretty.

The way I did it before was okay, but it is sometimes hard to remember funky terminal commands that you don't use very often. I mean, I only used the command I mentioned when I first setup Bauer-Puntu, then after that I just used Bauer-Puntu for new installs. Well, now I don't have to remember that command. I can simply install the new GDM2Setup tool! To install it, run the following commands:

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gdm2setup/gdm2setup
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get install python-gdm2setup

After installing the program, you will find it under the Administration menu. This will give you a GUI program that easily lets you:

• Set login screen wallpaper, theme & icon set
• Blur wallpaper
• Set autologin/delayed login
• Choose to display userlist
• Enable/disable login sounds
• Set login banner message

Here is a screen shot of what the program looks like after it is installed:

Pretty cool right? The best part about this program for me was it lets me get rid of the Ubuntu logo from the login screen. I suppose I could have done that before using the old terminal command, but I didn't realize it until this program. To do that you just have to change the icon theme from the decoration tab:

I think I will be using this tool when Bauer-Puntu 10.10 comes out! What tools do you use to customize your Ubuntu experience? Let us know in the comments!

[Via OMG! Ubuntu!]

Technorati Tags: how to, customize, login, ubuntu, 10.04, gdm2login, apt-get, gui, program

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Goodbye Google Apps Start Page! You Will Be Missed!

I have been an avid Google Apps user for a while now, and have even blogged about it in the past. I use Google Apps for hosting my personal Bauer-Power email even. Though they have made it harder to find on their page, Google is still making a free version of Google Apps called Google Apps Standard Edition so you can take advantage of that too. Overall, I have been very happy with the service… Until now!

You see, on May 13th I received an email stating that they are doing away with the Google Start page service do to requests to make it more like iGoogle. Their response? Do away with it altogether, and replace it with iGoogle. What does that mean for people like me who use it? All my customizations go away! Nice! For you Bauer-Puntu users you will notice that the default home page in Firefox was my Google Apps Start page, not anymore. My custom start page is now history!

Here is the email from the Google Apps team:

Dear Google Apps admin,

We’re sharing some news about changes coming in response to many customers who would like the Start Page to work more like the full iGoogle.com experience.

On July 1, 2010, the Start Page will automatically be converted to iGoogle.  The Start Page gadgets your users have configured will be migrated to iGoogle pages, after which users can modify their iGoogle gadgets, tabs and themes.  Your Start Page web address will automatically redirect your users to iGoogle.

No further action is required on your part, but you can convert your Google Apps Start Page to the full iGoogle experience before the automatic migration takes place by opting in from the control panel.  Alternatively, if you would like to retain more control over the user experience, you can consider creating a new User Start Page in Google Sites (http://goo.gl/R4uH), which allows for locked content and control over available gadgets.

We hope this upgrade to iGoogle will give your users a better way to personalize, customize and centralize the information that’s most important to them.  If you think they would benefit from advance notice about this change, please communicate to them as desired.

Thanks,
The Google Apps Team

As the email above states, the change will go into effect on July 1st, however you can make the change right away if you wish. I decided not to prolong the inevitable, so I made the change, then also changed DNS for start.bauer-power.net to point to my FTP server where I configured a new Apache site for it. It is a lot simpler than the old Bauer-Power Start page, but it’s better than a non-custom iGoogle page!

What ticks me off the most is that their reasoning is utter bull crap. Google Apps Start was exactly like iGoogle already, and all the iGoogle widgets worked on it. The only thing was you could customize it. No, this is a marketing/branding move on Google’s part. Plain and simple! Well I say, damn the man!

What is your take on it? Are you happy about the move? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: google apps,igoogle,start

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How-to really get your Wii to play Backed up games.

So you may or may not have heard of WiiBrew but if you have a Wii you should have. For me it’s been the best app ever for the Wii. It will let you run free Homebrew games and run apps like an FTP server, website manager, emulators for SNES, NES, Sega, PSX, even run Linux on your Wii.

I think I wrote an article similar to this before but no doubt the downloads don’t work. Since there is new apps and info about WiiBrew I figure it’d need a new post. So below are a list of links for how to get it all setup. I’ve done this with all the links provided and it all worked good. The only application you really need at first from WiiBrew.org is the Homebrew Browser. It’ll allow you to navigate through a huge list of Homebrew apps and games right on your Wii.

What is WiiBrew: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page

How to setup WiiBrew: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_setup

Recommended application: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Browser

Other PC Tools you will need: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Browser

Setup Wii to Run Backup games: http://gwht.wikidot.com/usb-loader

By FreedomChicken

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How To Sync Exchange Calendar With Thunderbird and Lightning

Yesterday I posted about setting up a PGP key server in Ubuntu for use at work. That is one piece of the puzzle. The second piece of the PGP puzzle is integrating PGP with your email client so that you can easily send and receive encrypted messages.

I always recommend gpg4win for Windows users looking for a free OpenPGP solution in Windows. In Linux, GPG is built in, but in Windows you have to find 3rd party software to get the job done. In Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007, the Outlook plug-in that comes with gpg4win works great. The problem? We are now using Outlook 2010 in the office. Sometimes it sucks to be bleeding edge because old software isn’t always compatible.

You know what works well for PGP/GPG though? Mozilla Thunderbird with the Enigmail extension. The problem with Thunderbird is that it doesn’t natively support Microsoft Exchange. Sure there are tricks to get it to work, but in reality the best way is to enable secure IMAP and SMTP to your Exchange server. You can easily do that on ports 993 and 587 the way Google does with Gmail. If you don’t know how to do that, look it up because it is beyond the scope of this post!

Anyhoo, back on track. So I configured Secure IMAP/SMTP on my Exchange server, and got Thunderbird working fine… Well, except Calendar and Contacts. The contact issue wasn’t a big deal because I just imported them in from Outlook. My Calendar however is dynamic, and I like it to have a two-way sync with Exchange. Also, there isn’t a built-in calendar for Thunderbird. That is where Lightning comes in. Lightning is a calendar extension for Thunderbird and Seamonkey.

Okay, so I installed Lightning, but it doesn’t automagically start working with Exchange. For that I needed yet one more extension. It comes as a private 3rd party extension called The Microsoft Data Provider for Thunderbird Lightning. Here are some of the features it provides:

• Creating, modifying, deleting calendar items.
• Inviting attendees to meetings and sending meeting requests.
• Free/Busy information when inviting other Exchange users to meetings.
• Notifications for meeting requests
• Configuration autodiscovery

Now, with the exception of accepting/declining inbound meeting requests (Still have to use OWA for that) I can fully manage my calendar through Thunderbird and have it sync with Exchange!

Are you using Thunderbird  with Exchange? Know of any other cool plug-ins and extensions to make it work better? Do you use PGP with Outlook 2010? What plug-in do you use for that? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: thunderbird,lighting,calendar,sync,exchange,how to

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How To Setup A Free PGP Key Server in Ubuntu

Happy Tuesday everybody! Thought I would sit down and jot a little something about one of my little pet projects I decided to do at work. Every once in a while I get a wild hair to try something out for experience and it turns out to be useful for work too. I did it at my last company with Openfire, which according to friends that still work there, they still use!

This time I got the idea that we as an IT department should have the option to send each other encrypted email because due to the nature of our business, we often deal with sensitive data. Sometimes we deal with data that if it were to fall into the wrong hands could cost our company millions of dollars. Data like that needs to be protected.

One of the first blog articles I wrote here at Bauer-Power was about GPG email encryption. GPG uses the OpenPGP standard to encrypt, and sign email for privacy, security and verification. Not to mention it is really easy to implement!

One thing I had never done before though was setup my own key server. I felt that If I was going to set this up for the company, I should make an easy way for internal users, and perhaps certain external contractors to store their public keys for easy retrieval. There are a number of public PGP key servers out there, but if we wanted to make sure we had some level of trust, we wanted to maintain and control our own key server. Well it turns out that in Ubuntu, setting up a PGP/GPG key server is just as easy as setting up PGP/GPG in general.

Just do the following:

1. Install the sks package
   
   >sudo apt-get install sks
   
2. Build the key database
   
   >sudo sks build
3. Set database permissions
   
   >sudo chown -Rc debian-sks:debian-sks /var/lib/sks/DB
   
   
4. Set the server to start automatically at boot
   
   set initstart=yes in /etc/default/sks
5. Start the service
   
   >sudo /etc/init.d/sks start

That is it! Now your server is listening on port 11371 for key requests. You can now send and retrieve keys to and from the server using your favorite key manager!

If that is not good enough for you, then you can also add a web interface to handle your key searches and requests. To do that you will need to install Apache:

>sudo apt-get install apache2

Once installed create a directory called www in /var/lib/sks/. Download the index.html and keys.jpg file you will need here: (OpenSKS Web Interface)

Extract the contents to /var/lib/sks/www/. Edit index.html and change the three references to your.site.name (currently at lines 20, 36 & 62) to the url of your keyserver, for example keys.bauer-power.net. Now set the correct permissions on that directory:

>sudo chown -R debian-sks:debian-sks /var/lib/sks/www

Now if you browse to http://your.server.name:11371 you will see a nice, user-friendly web interface for doing public key exchanges!

Does your company use email encryption? Do you use PGP/GPG? Do you use S/MIME? What do you think is easier to implement? What do you prefer and why? Let us know in the comments!

[Via RainyDayz]

Technorati Tags: pgp, gpg, how to, ubuntu, key, server, setup, configure, openpgp, sks

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Download Portal Free

That’s right Till May 24th it’s totally free.  Now you have no reason not to try Portal. Some of you are probably yelling, “WTF I own a Mac!!" For you folk, it’s now available for the MAC.

"Capital news! But the excellent puzzle adventure Portal won over 40 Game of the Year awards; Surely it must cost at least five or six hundred dollars."

You'd think that, especially since it actually won over 70 Game of the Year Awards. But, like we keep saying, Portal is free. Free on the Mac. Free on the PC. But only until May 24th. So you only have a few days to decide if you want your free copy of Portal.

 

All you have to do is Click on the red “Get Portal Now” button on the site.

http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/

by FreedomChicken

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Alternative To gtk-RecordMyDesktop in Ubuntu

I felt that I had to write this up being as how I spent the last few days racking my brain trying to find a way to record my Linux environment in Bauer-Puntu 10.04 using gtk-RecordMyDesktop. You see, that is my software of choice in Linux to record my desktop, but the problem is that on my Dell Latitude D420, the hardware can’t handle it and I end up getting a crap load of frames dropped. When you have a lot of dropped frames, it makes it look like the video is going really friggin’ fast!

I tried some other programs like Istanbul and XVidCap, but Istanbul hung up after I pressed record and wouldn’t stop, and XVidCap gave me the same results as gtk-RecordMyDesktop which was crazy fast video. The only thing I could do to make these programs not drop frames was to record only one window at a time, which wouldn’t do for what I needed in my Bauer-Power videos.

I did find an alternative to the above programs, and it was my old friend FFMPEG. FFMPEG is one of the most versatile video converters of all time! Well, it turns out it can record your mutha flippin’ desktop too!

There is a feature in FFMPEG called x11grab. I found on my Dell D420, the best settings were as follows:

ffmpeg -f x11grab -b 8000k -r 30 -s 1280x800 -i :0.0 -vcodec wmv2 -acodec wmav2 output.wmv

This creates a .wmv file which is nice if you want to do your video editing in Windows like I like to do. If you want to try it out on your system, make sure to change the 1280x800 part to match your screen’s resolution. If you find that these settings don’t work for you, play around with them until you get the recording you are looking for. Here is a sample of my desktop recorded with FFMPEG:

Also, if you don’t want to have to remember the command, save it to a .sh file, and make it executable. That is what I did, and I created a custom launcher on my desktop to launch it in the terminal.

Know of some better, more versatile desktop session recorders for Linux other than the ones I mentioned above? What do you like to use? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: ffmpeg,x11grab,desktop record,linux,ubuntu,alternative to,gtk-recordmydesktop

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Removing a column from a Document Library in SharePoint 2007

Now I may not have done this the right way or what not, but I could not find the “proper” way to remove a column. I’m a bit of a noob to SP 2007 but apparently I’m the new SharePoint “go-to” guy. I was then tasked to find a way to remove a column from one of our document libraries. So I went into SP, loaded the document library found the list of columns there and clicked on the one I wanted to edit. Then what’s this there is no delete or remove button. So I canceled out, tried to google how to remove it. Still no help. This really can’t be as hard as it seems. So after a while of trying things that made since I figured I’d just start trying random stuff.

After hours of trying random stuff it all worked out. So I figure if anyone else has this issue I’ll post it here to hopefully help any other poor lost souls like me. Without further random words coming out of my mouth, here’s what I did.

1. Load your Document Library

2. Under Settings click on “Document Library Settings”

3. Click Advanced Settings

4. Set the Content Types to YES

5. Click OK to save it

6. Under Content Types click on probably your only Content Type to edit it.

7. Click on the column you want to remove, and set it to Hidden.

Then you’re all done. It should be removed and no one will know it was there. Where the delete button was supposed to be or where it had gone? No idea, but that’s how I removed it.

By FreedomChicken

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Need an SSL Certificate? Can You Afford FREE?

So I get an email from Disqus the other day like I always do when someone comments on a blog post. Often times if someone posts a link in the comment I get an approval email from Disqus. Most of the time if there is a link it is spam and I mark it as spam via email and I’m on my way, but occasionally someone will post a comment to something very useful, and that is how this article begins!

I received a comment from a reader by the name of Tony Jobson on my article on how to setup SSTP VPN in Windows server 2008. In that article I mentioned how you can get an SSL certificate from GoDaddy for $12.99. I thought that was the best deal in town, but I was wrong!

You can get a FREE, fully functional SSL certificate from StartSSL! Yes, I said free, and it works with most browsers and services! I signed up for a free account, and tested it on my home SSTP VPN, and it worked without issue! I even setup a StartSSL cert on my personal start page for the hell of it! It's free, why not?

From their page:

What?

Security and encryption is getting ever more important in today's computer networks, being it SSL secured web sites, encryption of data or mail, secure logon to mention just a few. But security is expensive, right? Not anymore....

StartCom, the vendor and distributor of StartCom Linux Operating Systems, also operates MediaHost™, a hosting company, which offered its clients, SSL secured web sites with certificates signed by StartCom for many years. That's where the idea originated: Free SSL certificates!

How?

Most web servers, such as Apache and IIS are capable of running the 128/256-bit secured and encrypted SSL protocol. Most mail clients can encrypt and sign your electronic mail messages. All you need, in most cases, is a SSL or S/MIME certificate to make it work. StartCom provides certificates through an easy web based interface wizard and sign up process - free of charge. With our installation instructions, you'll have your secured web site running or your email exchange secured within minutes.

Why?

Because we believe in the right to protect and secure information between two entities without discrimination of race, origin and financial capabilities. By applying a completely different and new business model compared to traditional certification authorities, we are able to prove here, that digital certificates can cost much less or may be even free of charge! Instantly! Furthermore, every certificate from StartCom is insured up to US$ 10,000 if your customers were to suffer financial loss as a direct result of relying on a certificate that was issued through our negligence! This and other measures permits the visitors and customers of your site to fully rely and trust in StartCom.

Where, when?

The StartCom Certification Authority is today supported by most important platforms like Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh OS X and many Linux operating systems and browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Google's Chrome provide built-in support. Should you be using an older or unsupported browser you may import our CA certificate.

The next time you or your company are looking to secure a website, create an SSL VPN, setup a simple secure mail server, etc. You don’t have to waste gobs of money when you can get it for free!

Do you or your company use StartSSL? How do you like it so far? Any reason why you wouldn’t want to use them? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: free,ssl,certificate,authority,review,startssl

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Music From Windows XP and 98

I saw this in my Internet travels the other night, and thought I would repost it here. I mean it had to go up on Bauer-Power for the pure geekiness of it! In the video below a guy takes only sound files from Windows XP and Windows 98 and turns them from their annoying sounds to sweet ass geeky music!

Seriously, iIthink I have found my new ring tone! I am not sure what software the guy used to make this masterpiece. If you know, please let me know what it is in the comments.

EDIT: Not sure how I missed it, but at the end they say what software it is. The software is called MODPlug Tracker, and it is free! Thanks for the comments!

What did you think of it? Pretty cool right? the extended MP3 version can be downloaded from here: (Windows Music Mix)

Technorati Tags: windows,xp,98,music,mix

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Clean Disk Space In Ubuntu With FSLint

I suppose I will start off by telling a story. About a week ago, give or take a few days, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS released. As usual I started working on creating my personal Ubuntu based distro called Bauer-Puntu. For those of you following the blog, you may know that I use Remastersys to create my live cd. The only problem with Remastersys is that if you leave all of the default applications that comes with Ubuntu, your live cd will be well over 1GB!

Well, the trick is removing packages and other junk you never use, and you know you will never need! Sure you can go through Synaptic and pick and choose applications to remove, but what about temp files? What about bad symlinks? What about packages you didn’t know you had?!

Well I found a tool that can help you clean up your junk! It is called FSLint!

Install is as easy as running sudo apt-get install fslint from the terminal too! After installing, just run sudo fslint-gui to open up the gui and start cleaning.

For instance, I never thought about the Ubuntu-Documentation package being installed, but that son of a bitch is almost 300MB! I have never once used it! Bam! Gone!

What other tools do you like to use to free disk space in Linux? Let us know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: flslint,how to,clean,disk,space,linux,ubuntu

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Bauer-Puntu 10.04 Released!

Just last week, Ubuntu released their latest Long Term Support (LTS) release version 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Well, you of course know what that means right? Yup, I had to quickly put together Bauer-Puntu 10.04! Due to the extreme popularity of Bauer-Puntu 9.10R2, I decided to not make too many drastic changes. This way you can keep using Bauer-Puntu as your daily IT toolkit without interruption.

That being said, I did make some changes. Some of it was for ease of making the distro, and also because this version of Ubuntu is pretty friggin' awesome on it's own, and doesn't need a lot of customization. I mean seriously, they finally got rid of the shit brown! That was one of the main reasons I started Bauer-Puntu! They did however move to a Gentoo like purple though, so that of course had to be changed. Also, I decided not to go with Flock again, and just kept Firefox, but changed the theme (Bikinis anyone?) and added Scribefire and Stumbleupon.

Here is a list of additional packages I added in this version:

• GParted - Disk Partitioner
• PartImage - Disk Cloning
• CHNTPW - Windows Password Cracker
• Wipe - Secure File Deletion
• TestDisk - File Recovery
• ClamTK - Antivirus
• Twhirl - Twitter, Indeti.ca and Ping.fm client
• GrimWepa - GUI WEP/WPA Cracker using Aircrack-ng backend (Booya!)
• Cairo Dock - Mac OSX like dock
• VirtualBox - Free Virtualization Software
  
• Adobe Flash
• Java
• Adobe Air

I also changed the boot up Plymouth splash to a Bauer-Power variation of the Solar theme. Oh yeah, as I showed in the list above, I added Cairo dock for a little Mac OSX like eye candy. It works on the Live CD too.

NOTE: You will get prompted when you first boot up to the Live CD/Live USB to configure Cairo dock, but trust me it is already configured... Just click Close!

Anyway, I am sure you want some screen shots. Here you go!

Live CD Boot Menu

Bauer-Power Solar Plymouth Splash

Login Screen

Installer

Cairo Dock

Firefox With Krystal Sexy Babe Skin

GrimWepa GUI WEP/WPA Cracker

You can download either the ISO, or the USB image from here:

Bauer-Puntu ISO

Bauer-Puntu USB IMG
Bauer-Puntu ISO Torrent

As always, I recommend using Roadkil’s disk image to write the IMG file to USB in Windows, and the USB ImageWriter in Linux. If you don’t know how to do it, watch episode 21 of Bauer-Power here:

Anything else you guys want to see in Bauer-Puntu? Anything you don’t like? Let me know in the comments!

NOTE: Bauer-Puntu 10.10 is out! Click Here --> (Bauer-Puntu 10.10)

Technorati Tags: bauer-puntu,10.04,download,lucid lynx

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Episode 21 – How To Write IMG Files to USB

Another month, another episode of Bauer-Power! In this episode I decided it was time to address some emails I had been receiving ever since episode 19 where I showed you all how to use Bauer-Puntu to hack Windows passwords. It turns out there were a lot of n00bs out there who didn’t know how to put my Linux awesomeness onto a USB stick. Here I was thinking everyone knew of how to do it, but I guess I was wrong.

I decided to do this video for the n00bs! In this video not only will I show you how to write my USB image to your USB drive in Windows, I will show you a way of doing it in Linux too. So grab some popcorn, and crack open a beer, because here is episode 21!

 

 

Once again, the tools I used were:

Roadkil’s Disk Image -  Windows

Ubuntu ImageWriter – Linux

Any other Linux n00b questions you have? Don’t be shy! Hit us up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: bauer-power,how to,img to usb,roadkil,disk image,Ubuntu,imagewriter,netbook remix

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