Small Town Geeks » Skrieder

Metasploit The Penetration Tester’s Guide

Skrieder — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:00:35 +0000

Metasploit is an open source framework for penetration testing. The Metasploit 4.0 framework is currently available for free download for Windows, Linux and Unix.

“Metasploit The Penetration Tester’s Guide” is authored by Kennedy, O’Gorman, Kearns and Aharoni and is published by No Starch Press just this year 2011.The book opens with a short and sweet introduction to penetration testing and security. But worry not, this introduction won’t keep the anxious beginner waiting too long, and won’t bore the experienced. In the next few chapters the authors provide a copious amount of screenshots, ensuring that the reader can always follow along.

The authors then run us through some Metasploit basics and it’s not long before we’re already looking the source for a basic port scanner program.

The chapters are sized perfectly, giving the reader just enough time to become proficient in many of the different aspects of Metasploit. Some might believe that the cost of shorter chapters means less depth with each topic. The authors have this book balanced perfectly so the reader gets their moneys worth.

This book is a great way to get started with penetration testing and security. The authors make it clear that this book won’t make you an expert, years of testing will do that. But what this book can do is get you started, walking you through everything you need to know to ditch your script kiddie shoes and sit at the big kids table. Order yours today!

printf(“Happy Coding!”);

Scott J. Krieder
Small Town Geeks
scott@smalltowngeeks.net
http://smalltowngeeks.net

The IDA Pro Book

Skrieder — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 18:47:49 +0000

IDA Pro is the worlds leading disassembler. This means that given a binary file without any source code IDA Pro will reverse engineer that file and attempt to give you something quite close to the original source.

“The IDA Pro Book” by Chris Eagle, published by No Starch Press, is the book for anyone working with IDA. Chris Eagle is certainly an expert with both Disassembly and IDA Pro.

The first chapters of the book will catch any novice up to speed. However, Intermediate and Advanced users may also benefit from Eagles’ refresher on the world of disassembly and reverse engineering tools.

The book provides many great examples that are easy to follow along and complete yourself. Any of the code examples used in the book are available online.

Eagle is extremely confident in his writing which comforts the reader as he walks you through steps to become an IDA Pro wizard. The author uses technical terms proficiently throughout the book, but he takes good care to explain any new or unfamiliar terms to reader.

The more advanced sections of the book cover everything from Scripting in IDA with Python to Virtual Machine based obfuscation. Even IDA Pro experts must have a copy on their shelf.

In the first appendix Eagle reminds us that Hex-Rays,the company managing the IDA project, has released an older less sophisticated version of IDA as freeware(V5.0). With many versions of the software out there some users may be skeptical about whether or not this book will fulfill their needs, and how long will it be relevant? This is the book you are looking for, and even with the ever changing software releases Eagle has written in such a way that the book will be extremely relevant for a good time to come.

printf(“Happy Coding!”);

Scott J. Krieder
Small Town Geeks
scott@smalltowngeeks.net

http://smalltowngeeks.net/

iPhone 4s

Skrieder — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:02:22 +0000

iPhone 4s

We all knew it was coming. We didn’t know the name eg. (iPhone 4s or iPhone 5) but we knew that it would be here soon.

Let’s take a quick look at the major enhancements of the iPhone 4s over the iPhone 4.

Siri personal assistant (watch the demo)
8mp still camera with additional lens and expanded aperture
Shoots 1080p video
Ships with iOS 5
Pricing: 16GB @ $199.99, 32GB @ 299.99 and 64GB @ $399.99

Apple starts the online pre-order process this Friday October 7th and will ship them to you October 14th. Otherwise you can stand in line on the 14th at any Apple, AT&T or Verizon store.

Oppose Congress’ Criminal Streaming Bill

Skrieder — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:00:45 +0000

SmallTownGeeks can not give this enough press. Please take a few minutes to do your part.

EFF Opposition to Congress’ Criminal Streaming Bill

If you have a couple extra bucks, also consider donating to the EFF. They do a wonderful job protecting your electronic rights.

Starting MySQL using the Mac terminal

Skrieder — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:56:10 +0000

So you have setup MySQL on your Mac and you need to start MySQL. You fire up the control panel and select MySQL from the “Other” category.

The MySQL preferences pane clearly shows you that the MySQL server is stopped.

You start the server.

You are prompted for your password and nothing happens. So you start the server again….nothing

Still nothing…Not to worry. Fire up the terminal and enter the command:

Press control + z and you are set to go.

Happy Coding,
Scott Krieder

http://smalltowngeeks.net

http://scottkrieder.com

Amazon/Audible Offering Two Free Audiobooks

Skrieder — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:08:30 +0000

Grab an e-mail account and sign up for 2 free audible books!

http://www.audible.com/t1/amazon?source_code=AMZGC903CWS040111

What’s next for mobile computing?

Skrieder — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:09:51 +0000

With the recent release of the iPad 2 Apple delivered a tablet device with video chat capabilities. A forward and rear facing camera enable the device to do much more than the previous model. But the forward facing camera is a feature that a lot of people have been looking forward to for years. The feature’s integration into the iPhone, iTouch and iPad came too late for many.

So now that Apple has delivered on the camera what improvements can they make in a future version? They can improve the existing hardware but without any groundbreaking features current users will not run out to purchase the latest version.

I believe that in the next couple of weeks the general public will have purchased their new iPads and found all of the bugs and only then will we be able to see what features the new iPad will need. But will that allow enough time for Apple to integrate such features? They have to already be actively working on the iPad 3 and beyond. Only time will tell.

iPad 2 Announced

Skrieder — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:10:09 +0000

Today Apple announced the second generation of their newest device the iPad 2.

Major technical specs include a:
1GHz A5 cpu
Forward facing camera for Facetime.
Backward facing camera capable of recording HD(720p) content at 30 frames/second.

Unlike the original iPad launch, the iPad 2 will be available on both Apple iPhone carriers AT&T and Verizon. Apple brought the iPad to Verizon last year after it’s debut with AT&T.

The iPad 2 ships March 11.

Add an icon in Android App Inventor

Skrieder — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:46:41 +0000

A quick guide outlining how to create an icon for your App Inventor App.

Head over to “http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/”
Log-in if you haven’t already done so.
You may have to select my projects from the top left menu.
Now you should see a list of your projects. For this example select the “Hello Purr” app.
Look to the right hand of the screen and you will see a “Properties” panel.
Click inside the “Icon” box and you will be able to select from pre-loaded images or add a new image.

Good luck!

-Scott Krieder

Configuring Bit-Bucket with Eclipse.

Skrieder — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:32:29 +0000

This guide will assume that you are fairly comfortable with the Eclipse IDE and that you have zero experience with subversion, bit-bucket or mercurial. Enjoy.

1. Head on over to http://bit-bucket.org and click on the giant yellow “Sign up free” button.

2. Fill out the sign up form.

3. At the top of the Bit Bucket page find the Repositories tab and mouse over it.

4. Select “Create new repository.”

5. Create your repository. (Note: Don’t forget to select “private” if you need a private repository.)

6. Select “Repositories” again from the top menu and click on the name of your newly created repository.

7. This will load a details page and you will see the url that you need to copy for interaction with this repository.

In my example it appears as “hg clone http://…

You will only need the http://…

8. Fire up eclipse.

9. Find the “Help” menu on the far right of.

10. If you have never installed an Eclipse plugin this part may seem a little ugly, but after you do it once you get the hang of it.

Select “Install New Software…”

11. The following software install menu should pop up.

Select “Add” on the far right.

12. On the next screen you need to enter a URL for where the plugin can be found.

The mercurial plugin for eclipse is located here:

http://cbes.javaforge.com/update

After that select the plugin and accept the terms.

13. Now I’m going to go ahead and assume that someone has already created a repository and you are importing a project. If not than you can skip a few steps and just commit and push your repository.

In Eclipse select “File” > “Import”

14. Select the “Mercurial” folder and then “Clone Existing Mercurial Repository”

15. Enter the repository url, your username and password.

16. Go ahead and code away. Make sure to (right click and) commit any new files and folders that you create. And if you’re attempting to be professional make sure to include decent comments on all changes.

17. Once you’re ready to push your committed changes go ahead and (right click) and push. Then simply follow the directions. If you have any trouble you may need to “Force Push” your changes.

Happy coding!

Scott Krieder