Good News

Well...Just received a good news. The news is not final pending several process that needs my urgent attention. However it was a news i was waiting for a very long time. I'm the happiest person in the whole wide world at the moment and i thank dear God for this wonderful gift and blessing. If everything goes well, i'll be able to provide a comfortable life for my beloved. I wish that everyone else shares the same happiness as me at this moment. Thank you Jesus for the wonderful Christmas gift.

Lesson on Linux

To become a successful security personnel one needs to have a couple of very important skills. One of it is to have excellent command on several operating systems. Among them has to be from Windows and *nix. There are many variants of Unix and among the famous is Red Hat Linux. I've figured out away to learn Linux. Every time i learn a new command, i'll post it in this section of my blog. Here goes:

1. tar -zxvf file_tar.gz - for folder with .tar.gz

2. tar -xvf file_tar.gz - for folder with .tar only (remove the z option)

3. rpm -ivh file-1.0-2.i386.rpm - install a RPM package

4. rpm -e file - uninstall RPM package (use the package name only...without -1.0-2.i386.rpm)

5. rpm -Uvh file-1.0-2.i386.rpm - upgrade a rpm package (usually use this one for normal install as it replaces any previously installed package)

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

Forgot your computer's admin password?

Disclaimer - Accessing/reseting a computers password without the owner's permission is completely wrong/illegal. Use this software at your own risk and for educational purpose only!! I can't be held responsible for any damage caused!

My sister recently (last week) forgot her computer's password! OH NO! There was only 2 users in the machine both with admin capabilities. She can't remember the username and password for the machine. This is due to the fact that she has not used the computer for some time. She didn't know what to do and as usual turned to me for help. I told her:

Not to worry...computerman is here!

Haha. Just kidding. I actually came across this tool; Offline NT Password & Registry Editor and wanted to put it to test. This tool comes handy in a situation like the one my sister is in. This tool does not reveal existing password but allow among other to clear the login password that is stored in the registry of the computer. The tool uses Linux bootsystem as the basis. The concept is a computer with windows stores it's login password inside NT/System32/sam. 'Sam' is the file that contains the password info.

All you need to do is burn the iso image (floopy boot disk is available but advisable to use cd), set your computer to boot from cd, and just press enter most of the time. I was able to clear the password within 10 minutes in my sister's pc (win2k). This software works with win NT, 2k, XP and even Vista. wowvy! Towards the end of the boot process, the tool reveals the username/s in the computer and gives you option to either clear, change or promote a user from regular group to admin group. Ain't that great. I eventually cleared the password for one of the user and when i reboot the system (normal boot), i entered the username and abracadabra....the os requested the password to be changed due to expiry. I entered a new password and was able to login as usual. Basicly, this is what you need to do:

1. Get the machine to boot from CD (or floppy)
2. Floppy version need to swap floppy to load drivers.
3. Load drivers (usually automatic, but possible to run manual select)
4. Disk select, tell which disk contains the Windows system. Optionally you will have to load drivers.
5. PATH select, where on the disk is the system?
6. File select, which parts of registry to load, based on what you want to do.
7. Password reset or other registry edit.
8. Write back to disk (you will be asked)

Thank you to Mr Petter Nordahl-Hagen for this wonderful tool. I will be testing it on win xp soon. For those interested, click here

Tcpdump/Windump

Tcpdump is a very useful tool for those who are in the network security. tcpdump or its windows version 'windump' basicly puts the network card in promiscuous mode (all traffic are directed to cpu) and captures all traffic. There are many things that can be obtained from a tcpdump output which is exactly what i'm trying to learn at the moment. There are some basic options that need to be studied in order to get a better understanding of the output. The below explains:

1. The first of these is -n, which requests that names are not resolved--resulting in the IPs themselves always being displayed.
2. The second is -X, which displays both hex and ascii content within the packet.
3. The final one is -S, which changes the display of sequence numbers to absolute rather than relative.

ManUtd Back in Business

Being an ardent fan of ManUtd, I came across a recent article in the papers after their CL win. Heaven help their rivals...thats nice to hear eh.....Heaven help Arsenal!

Dynamo Kyiv 2 Manchester United 4

If this is what Manchester United can achieve with a makeshift side following a glut of injuries, heaven help their Champions League rivals when Sir Alex Ferguson's men are at full strength. Without midfield trio Paul Scholes, Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves, defensive duo Patrice Evra and Gary Neville, plus striker Louis Saha, United dismantled Kiev with ruthless efficiency in the Ukraine to advance to the brink of the last 16. Victory made it three out of three in Europe this season following earlier wins against Sporting Lisbon and Roma. But more importantly, it showed the strength in depth of United's squad. Admittedly, Kiev provided little resistance, but the Reds' attacking play throughout was superb.

Depressed

What the tuttut is going on out there. Just came to know about someone i know acquired a job for an astonishing 5k salary! I mean what happened to those people who write and speak fluent English. How come those who have 1/10 command in English could possibly get hold of a job so easily? Is technical knowledge all that matters? I presumed that everything has to be coupled i.e good English, skill and paper qualification. Sometimes I'm ashamed of the fact that i hold a masters degree from the number 1 university. It's aok. i know everything happens for a reason....

Step by Step Backtrack2 Installation

Backtrack2 is a Linux distribution live cd designed for pen testers. It's based on Slackware and packed with many security tools for those interested with computer security. I installed it today and will be playing with it soon. Hope to learn something from it. For those who want to try it, i append step by step guide to run it in VMWARE workstation and installed in hdd :

For complete tutorial click here

1. Download the Backtrack 2 iso

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html

2. Open VMware Workstation and create a new virtual machine

File > New > Virtual Machine

Click Next

Select Typical, then click Next.

Select Linux, then select Other 2.6.x Kernel from the pull down menu. Click Next.

Name your virtual machine Backtrack 2, or whatever you wish, then click next.

Choose Use bridged networking if you are on a network where you can acquire an IP address separate from your host operating system. If you’re on a home cable or DSL connection, you may only have one IP address, in which case you should choose Use network address translation (NAT).

Leave the default 5.0GB unless you think you may need more. You can select Allocate all disk space now if you’d like, but keep in mind it could take several minutes.

Click Finish

3. Edit virtual machine settings

Adjust the RAM depending on how much you want to allocate to the virtual machine. My Backtrack 2 installation seems to do fine with 384MB, and I have 1GB on the host machine.

Select CD-ROM

Select Use ISO Image, then browse to the Backtrack 2 ISO that you downloaded before. You don’t need to burn this ISO to a CD, one of the great features of VMware is that it can map an ISO file as if it were a physical CD-ROM drive. This works with DVD isos too!

Click OK

4. Start the virtual machine

5. Login with username root, password toor

Don’t worry, you can change this once you install Backtrack to the hard drive.

6. Partition and mount the hard drive

The virtual SCSI hard drive in VMware is usually /dev/sda. We need to partition this drive and create a filesystem on which Backtrack 2 can be installed.

We will use fdisk to create 2 partitions - one for the filesystem and one for swap space.

fdisk /dev/sda

Enter each line below into fdisk’s prompt:

n

p

1

+4168M

n

p

2

w

This will create a 4GB partition for the filesystem and a 1GB swap space. If you want more space on the filesystem (or if you made your virtual disk larger than 8GB), you can change +4168M to another number (in megabytes).

Create an ext3 filesystem on the first partition:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1

Create swap space on the other:

mkswap /dev/sda2

Mount the drive:

mkdir /mnt/backtrack

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/backtrack

7. Run startx to boot up KDE

8. Use the Backtrack installer

Start > System > Backtrack Installer

Leave the source blank

Install backtrack to: /mnt/backtrack

Write MBR to: /dev/sda

Select Real (2700 MB required) for the installation method

Click install. It could take awhile or hang at certain parts (seems to hang for awhile at 81% on my machine).

9. Have fun

Restart the virtual machine, and you’re ready to start using Backtrack 2 in VMWare!