I have 2 dedicated power circuits just for this lab and some rack space in a cold mechanical area of my house next to my office and an air purifier in this area to cut down on dust.

I have placed a Linux based firewall on my ISP connection built with Damn Small Linux (DSL) and a modified rc.firewall script (use apt-get not the freshmeat distro). This is built on an old HP600 laptop (256 megs of ram) with a dock that allows me to place 3 nic cards in the system to separate ISP, DMZ, and 2 internal Networks: White-Net for family use and Black-Net for my lab.

I adjusted the rc.firewall script a little. The $STOP string is set to DENY so I changed it to DROP to make the firewall stealth to network scanning. When I checked this with ShieldUP (my nessus server is down) I noticed that some ports were open and all ports over 1024 were open. So that type of item needed to be adjusted in the script to stop all responses. This was relatively easy, just had to dig around a little, but the script is commented relatively well.

Behind the firewall I have 2 WRT54Gs running DD-WRT modified firmware to separate my Black and while nets from the DMZ area.

Currently I have 2 DNS servers running on older RAQ4 equipment in my lab that will be moving into the DMZ so that all networks will be able to benefit from an internally maintained DNS system.

I have a lot more gear stacked (PC, Cisco, Sun) up that will eventually start taking places to provide other services and as test gear. I also hope to start building more nessus plug-ins than the one I have in the distribution now.

More later.

Full article: Virus Found On Computer In Space Station

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
August 27, 2008 04:45 PM

NASA confirmed on Wednesday that a computer virus was identified on a laptop computer aboard the International Space Station, which carries about 50 computers.

The virus was stopped with virus protection software and posed no threat to ISS systems or operations, said NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries.

Seriously?

Actually I am not completely surprised. After doing Security, Testing, and Evaluation work (ST&E) in the government for a couple of years I am not completely surprised. This is a good demonstration of what the poor grades in security the government gets every year.

I can tell you that while conducting audits, I heard some of the most amazing answers to questions that gave me serious concerns about the safety of data.

Consistent lack of controls or just plain ignoring what your told is eventually going to cause a major issue that will bring things to the forefront of the public.

Lately I have been caught up in the “ultra/sub” portable craze. I have been looking at the Acer Aspire One and the EEEPC groups.

I travel on and off and also like to work in different areas of the house so I thought that this would be a good way to go at about a $400 to about $700 premium. So I started to look at what I was going to get for that price and how it performed.

Then I notice some general performance oddities with the atom chips – they are not that fast. Reviews seem to peg the 1.6 atom at about the same as a 900mhz celeron. So the new 1000 EEPC does not seem like such a deal. I wanted to look around at some older sub laptops to compare. I appeared not to be alone in this fact.

• http://www.popsci.com/gear-gadgets/article/2008-02/battle-ultra-mobile-linux-laptops-cloudbook-vs-eeepc-vs-my-old-thinkpad

• http://cloudbookumpc.com/review-everex-cloudbook-vs-asus-eeepc-vs-thinkpad-x31

Basically I said, what can I get for less than $400 used. I was thinking originally those older small Sony Vaio systems, but ran across a little IBM X31 with a dock on craigslist.com for about $300 and for about $75 I ordered 2 GB of ram.. Total $375.

My IBM X31:

• Intel Pentium M 1.7 GHz Processor

• 2GB PC2300 DDR 333 Memory

• 40 Gigabyte Hard Drive

• 8x DVD-ROM CDRW Optical Drive (X3 UltraBase)

• 12.1″ XGA TFT Display and ATI Radeon Mobility Graphics with 16MB Memory

• SoundMax Audio

• v.92 56Kbps Modem, 10/100/1000 Ethernet and Intel 802.11a/b/g Wireless

• Two USB 2.0 and One FireWire Ports

• 10.7″ x 8.8″ x 1.2″ @ 3.6 lbs. (without X3 UltraBase) Seems lighter though possibly because of the cells I have.

• Ubuntu 8.0.4

An EEEPC 1000 about
$700:

• Operating System: GNU Linux

• Display: 10″

• Intel CPU & Chipset: Intel® Atom N270

• Wireless Data Network: WLAN: 802.11 n

• Memory: 1GB (DDR2)

• S.S.D. Storage (Solid-State Drive) SSD 40GB

• Camera: 1.3M Pixel

• Audio Hi-definition Audio

• Stereo speaker

• Digital Array Mic

• Battery: 6 Cells, Up to 8 hrs*

• Weight 7.5 x 10.5 x 1.1 inches @1.33 kg (about 3lbs)

So they are about the same size and if I wanted to put in a SSD they would be almost the same cost and I would still have better performance. Ok it has a cam and longer battery life.

So before jumping on some of the hype wagons, you may want to hunt around.

I have been more than happy with this little box and Ubuntu went on without a hitch.

]]> http://bitlocker.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/are-the-new-ultra-portables-like-the-eeepc-1000-worth-it/feed/ 0 rmcclos http://bitlocker.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/in-the-beginning/ http://bitlocker.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/in-the-beginning/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:55:20 +0000 Richard McCloskey http://bitlocker.wordpress.com/?p=17 ]]> For some reason I have the urge to add more bits to the net .. for good or for bad.

While I get started please feel free to take a look at my resume and bio.