irongeek.com has once again done a fantastic job of putting together an in depth video demo, this time focusing on wireshark. If your new to wireshark, or just need a refresher on how to use and create filters, this video is very helpful.

Check it out at irongeek.com

Robert VandenBrink has publish a paper on SANS detailing how to get a complete port scanner up and running via TCL on cisco IOS.

"This paper describes IOSmap, a port scanning tool implemented on Cisco IOS using the native TCL (Tool
Command Language) scripting language on that platform. The business requirement for this tool,
implementation considerations and challenges, and design choices are discussed."

See more here: www.sans.org

Note: The following article is a repost from the Matasano Blog from google cache (http://tinyurl.com/5qkjco) which was apparently pulled.

While recently remotely troubleshooting an email problem, I found messages being rejected due to a 452 insufficient system storage error. When I examined the email server I found no such storage issue existed, and eventually involved Microsoft (Exchange) to help diagnose the issue. After hours of work MS gave up. Eventually, I found that if telnet’d locally into the mail server I didn’t get the error, but did if I was connecting in from the net. After quizzing the client as to what’s plugged into what, regarding there infrastructure, The client explained that there previous vendor had left a mysterious white box connected between there network and the internet. Ah Ha, a Linux based firewall was setup in line and just happened to be performing transparent spam filtering, when the device ran out of hard drive space the error manifested.

After going though these steps I realize transparent filtering devices are becoming more and more common, and so searched and found a great tool to quickly detect and trace out TCP connections. Welcome to tracetcp

CNET writter Chris Soghoian describes how to automate TV show downloads for linux, Mac OSX, and Windows in this little gem on Cnet.com

For more info see http://www.tvrss.net/

From TheRegister.co.uk:

Hitachi has announced what it claims is the world's first 1TB desktop hard drive, pledging to ship the beast later this quarter, with enterprise- and consumer electronics-oriented versions to follow in Q2.

The 3.5in Desktar 7K1000 will cost $399 at retail, but Hitachi will also offer a cheaper, 750GB model too. The drive spins at 7,200rpm and connects across a 3Gbps SATA bus, though the media data rate peaks at just over 1Gbps. It has 32MB of on-board buffer memory, a 8.7ms average seek time and a 4.17ms average latency.

It's interesting to note that a current search of the cheapest 750gb desktop hard drives reveals a price range of about $339.99 - 449.99. This to me indicates it's very likely that we'll see a very quick drop in desktop hard drive price as Hitachi introduces its new 1tb drive.

Williamc and Twinvega have created a video introduction on how to use the linux tools DD and Autopsy from the Auditor Security Collection knoppix boot cd.

Check it out at:
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/autopsy1

After the story theregister ran regarding statistical attacks against freenet nodes, I decided to give freent a try. To start, freenet is unlike any other p2p file sharing network in current existence (that I know of). The network works by searching for keys. This is basically how the network functions. Once done running though the install process and waiting a good 24 hours (for routes to build and connections to be established), you'll have links to web portals via the web based interface that runs local on your freenet node. This system of portals works much like normal html except clicking on a link merely starts a search for another key to another page or file. As keys are not similar (based on sha-1) doing traditional searches on freenet don't really work. Instead main index sites are built that link to other sites, which link to other sites forming a sort of web. All content is transferred over the network is encrypted and cached. So you never who you’re receiving data from, and even the people sending the data to you don’t know what there sending because there cache is also encrypted. The system while slow is extremely anonymous, so you can imagine some of the content contained on the network.

Installing Freenet was rather simple, I downloaded the installer, made a few edits to freenet.ini so it would work with my NAT network setup and I was good to go. For freenet to work I needed to wait twenty four hours for the program to run and build cache and routes. After that time I began using freenet. The main portal I used was the freedom engine which contained a multitude of links to other sites. Click read more to see an example site

Over the past few few years the bandwidth that I consume seems to grow at an ever multiplying rate. With file sharing, video, multi downloads, oh and lets not forget bit torrent all being used simultaneously the meager 5mb’s down / 384kb/s up that my cable company provides just doesn’t seem to be doing the job. A friend of mine was recently had to tear down his datacenter because the cost of a true T1 just wasn’t affordable for him any more, but he had a backup plan. His plan was simply to aggregate bandwidth from two cable connections each with similar bandwidth to my own, his problem was simply how to accomplish this task.

After some very quick research I found the hawking H2BR4, a very cheap dual wan load balancing router. With this router my friend could now effectively aggregate the bandwidth of both cable modems (10mb down, 768kb up). I found this to be a very effective means to get lots of bandwidth at a very cheap price. But I wonder, is there a way to get more bandwidth for less money or no money at all?

Researchers of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have recently made a fascinating discovery. They’ve found that human cells in the body activate certain genes by means of a communication system similar to Morse code.

See the BBSRC for more info.