Merry Christmas !

I’ve been running a honey pot for a while, and found this in my inbox this morning…

Nick –
Regardless of how the rest of your day goes, here’s something to be happy
about — today a honey pot you installed successfully identified a
previously unknown email harvester (IP: 217.126.9.173).

This is a nice thing to find, I’m looking forward to catching some more inter-twats over the Christmas period

Mind-Mapping Cisco Security!

One of the things MARS 6.x boasts is the ability to share custom parsers, the thing is finding the sharing page on the pro-net forum is a bit of a nightmare, well this thread found the answer …

Link to Cisco Mars Custom Parser Packages

The Bad Behaviour plug-in for WordPress comes with a weekly counter in the admin dashboard, but do you want a wicked footer like mine?

106,386 dodgy geezas have been blocked by Bad Behaviour and 36,926 spams were eaten by Akismet.

Akismet comes with a counter you can use in themes/plugins…


$akcount = get_option('akismet_spam_count');
$akcount = number_format($akcount);
echo $akcount;


But with Bad Behaviour you have to do a little more work. To start with you need to get BB to record in the database each time it blocks someone, this is done by adding a function to ~/wp-content/plugins/bad-behavior/bad-behavior-wordpress.php , add the following code…..

• LINICKX'S MAPS – XMind – Social Brainstorming and Mind Mapping
  My Uploaded mind-maps, YMMV!
  (tags: xmind mind map brainstorming)
• StreetskaterFU's Blog: HOME public release special: HOME vulnarabilities disclosure *UPDATE2*
  HOME public beta just started a few minutes ago, and as a little bonus I write this little vulnarabilitie disclosure of HOME beta 1.3. Don't be THAT surprised,
  (tags: security playstation ps3)
• PlayStation Home already hacked? – Engadget
  Well, that was fast. A poster by the name of StreetskaterFU has outlined what he claims is a method of hacking into PlayStation Home's servers for download, uploading and deleting files
  (tags: security playstation ps3)

Testing WP 2.7

According to Cisco’s documentation on configuring syslog on a CAM, you can only forward the NAC logs to a single external log server. If you’re willing to get down and dirty with the Linux operating system underneath, then this document will show you that this is simply not the case.

To get started, tweak the default logging settings within the NAC web interface, this screen-shot shows I’m sending the syslog to the local host as local6 messages, this change will send a copy of the “normal” NAC event logs to the localhost syslog server.

• Growl

  Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen.

  Libnotify for Mac

  (tags: mac tools software utility)
• Snarl :: Homepage
  Snarl is a notification system for Windows. It displays notifications on-screen for applications which support it.
  Libnotify for Windows
  (tags: windows software utility)

I’m testing wp-super-cache, please comment if my website goes down!

I use twitter tools to post my twitter tweets to my blog; the thing is that twitter can sometimes slow down or break completely, this in turn kills wordpress.

To improve things I’ve changed how often I check twitter, you can do the same by editing the plugin file (wordpress/wp-content/plugins/twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php), see below for a code snippet…


function tweet_download_interval() {
#return 1800;
return 14400;
}

Enjoy!

I’ve been having problems getting my Cisco MARS Local and Global controllers to synchronise their topologies. This error message vexed me for a few days, but thankfully Cisco’s TAC solved it for me.

If you read Ciscos troubleshooting guides they will tell you to check that the MARS Local & Global controllers are running the same version, and to check that the SSL certificates are copied/pasted correctly.

If after checking the above Cisco recommendations and the additional basics ( network connectivity / ntp / timezones etc) check that both MARS boxes are running and have downloaded the same version of IPS signatures; under Admin -> IPS Signature Dynamic Update Settings -> Update Now.

This is a small update, it incorporates the patch submitted by toni to fix the widget, thanks toni

The old information still applies…

Admin GUI

If you’re happy with v0.4 and have it running fine then don’t bother, in fact edit phpbb_recent_topics.php so that WordPress stops complaining about finding a newer version.

Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.4.1 from wordpress.org

What’s New?

• The widget patch mentioned above!

What’s Old?

• Most importantly I have tested this plugin with phpBB3 and WP2.5 so I’ve updated the readme.txt to reflect this.