Leave of Absence
Posted by comhack | Filed under Linux
I just wanted to let everyone know that I will not be available from the 22nd of April till the middle of May or so.
I was originally going to travel south to give my sister away at her wedding but I decided that I wanted to move back home permanently as all of my family lives there. I think this move will be good for me and it will nice to be closer to my family especially since I have not lived back home for the last 12 years or so. I have a huge family, with 24 aunts/uncles and 30+ first cousins so it will be nice to be around family again.
That said, I will be online but not as much as I normally am, at least until after the wedding (May 8th). So I have about 13 days until the big move. I have already been packing some but still have a lot of packing left do. Moving can be a pain with all the packing and such especially when you have to drive 800 miles to get to your destination. Although, I have to say that it will be nice to get back South where we have normal weather. This northern snow is for the birds.
The move will give me a chance to use my Android tablet in a real world test, well that is if I have cell signal to tether with. 
UPDATED–Building a new Quad Core computer
Posted by comhack | Filed under Archlinux, Linux, Uncategorized
Well I have been wanting to upgrade my machine for a long time and I finally decided that it was time to upgrade my Core2Duo with 8gb ddr2 800 ram. I decided to go with the new Intel i5-series of processors. The i5 processors use the Intel 1156 chipset, so I had to upgrade my my motherboard as well. And since I am upgrading my motherboard and processor, I have to upgrade my ram to ddr3 as well. Now you know why I have waited to upgrade. To begin with, here are the specs on my old machine:
–XFX nForce 750i SLI Extreme Motherboard FSB @ 1333mh/z
–Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7300 @ 2.66GHz overclocked to 3.0ghz
–NVIDIA GeForce 7050i GPU, on board graphics memory shared Up to 768MB
–2 x SLI EVGA GeForce 9800 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0
–3 x WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA HD 7200/32MB/SATA-3G
–Fantom G-Force 2TB USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive GF2000EUC
–A-DATA 4 x 2GB SDRAM DDR2 800-PC2 6400 @ 1066 OCd
–Acer H203H 20″ LCD Monitor @ 1600×900–16:9
–AOC 2236vw 22″ LCD Monitor @ 1920×1080–16:9
–Acer X203H 20″ LCD Monitor @ 1600×900–16:9
–Logitech EX 100 Cordless Desktop Keyboard and Mouse
–Cyber Acoustics CA-3602 Platinum Series 30W 2.1 Speaker System
–Ultra LSP1000 1000w Power Supply
–Samsung SH-S223L/BEBS DVDRW Internal Drive – DVD+R 22X, DVD+RW 8X, DVD-RW 6X, DVD-RAM 12X, CD-R 48X, SATA, LightScribe
–ArchLinux 64 Core– XMonad WM /Win 7 Ultimate 64—Games only
I have already received the cpu, cooler, and the ram:
Intel DP55SB Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB DDR3 1333
Intel BX80605I5760 Core i5 760 Processor – 2.8GH
Cooler Master RR-B10-212P-GP Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
I ended up having to return the motherboard because it was DOA but I ended up ordering a better motherboard anyway so it worked out. It cost $80 more but is features:
-7 sata 3Gb/s and 2 sata 6Gb/s
-USB 3.0
-2 PCI Express 2.0 x16
-Gigabyte ethernet
-Built in OverClock utility with stability testing
and a whole bunch of other features. The first motherboard was an openbox purchase and I guarentee you I will not be doing that for a motherboard again. The new one is $80 more but it is worth it. I am actually glad that this happened even though I had to wait two more weeks for my build.
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX MB
Also, the processor runs at 2.8ghz but while researching the processor, it seems that Asus provides a bios utility that can easily OC the processor to 3.8ghz. So in about a week a couple of days, I will have a smoking fast machine to play with. I will write a followup after I set up the new machine.
C.A.IN.E (Computer Aided Investigative Environment) Linux Distro
Posted by comhack | Filed under Linux, Security
I was looking at various LInux security websites yesterday and ran across this nice Linux security livedcd called C.A.IN.E. This distro includes a great list of Linux ‘security’ tools and they also offer a .deb file to install the included packages in Debian, Ubuntu, and other Debian derivatives.
CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is an Italian GNU/Linux live distribution created as a project of Digital Forensics
Currently the project manager is Nanni Bassetti.
CAINE offers a complete forensic environment that is organized to integrate existing software tools as software modules and to provide a friendly graphical interface.
The main design objectives that CAINE aims to guarantee are the following:–an interoperable environment that supports the digital investigator during the four phases of the digital investigation
–a user friendly graphical interface
–a semi-automated compilation of the final report
–We recommend you to read the page on the CAINE policies carefully.
–CAINE represents fully the spirit of the Open Source philosophy, because the project is completely open, everyone could take the legacy of the previous developer or project manager. The distro is open source, the Windows side (Wintaylor) is open source and, the last but not the least, the distro is installable, so giving the opportunity to rebuild it in a new brand version, so giving a long life to this project .CAINE includes scripts activated within the Nautilus web browser designed to make examination of allocated files simple. Currently, the scripts can render many databases, internet histories, Windows registries, deleted files, and extract EXIF data to text files for easy examination. The Quick View tool automates this process by determining the file type and rendering with the appropriate tool.
The live preview Nautilus scripts also provide easy access to administrative functions, such as making an attached device writeable, dropping to the shell, or opening a Nautilus window with administrator privileges. The “Save as Evidence” script will write the selected file(s) to an “Evidence” folder on the desktop and create a text report about the file containing file metadata and an investigator comment, if desired.
A unique script, “Identify iPod Owner”, is included in the toolset. This script will detect an attached and mounted iPod Device, display metadata about the device (current username, device serial number, etc.). The investigator has the option to search allocated media files and unallocated space for iTunes user information present in media purchased through the Apple iTunes store, i.e., Real Name and email address.
The live preview scripts are a work in progress. Many more scripts are possible as are improvements to the existing scripts. The CAINE developers welcome feature requests, bug reports, and critiques.
The preview scripts were born of a desire to make evidence extraction simple for any investigator with basic computer skills. They allow the investigator to get basic evidence to support the investigation without the need of advanced computer forensics training or waiting upon a computer forensics lab. Computer forensics labs can used the scripts for device triage and the remainder of the CAINE toolset for a full forensic examination
I had problems running the distro on Virtual box but while searching I found that there is also a VirtualBox image for the distro available http://virtualboximages.com/Caine-0.5
