Wednesday, July 25, 2007

KGSR Online: Required Listening for Austin Refugees


Of course there is nothing like KGSR in Chicagoland. Hell, there is probably nothing that plays the eclectic mix of Texas and Foreign music anywhere else. One more reason to work from home more often.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Sunbrid Recant (or searching for a browser-based iCal Replacement)

So once again I'll recant on on a previous blog.

Sunbird is crap. Events mysteriously get created and can't be deleted. Or get deleted, period. Or something weird happens with the interface. It never crashed, though. But it was annoying enough to stick with iCal.

So what I really want is a entirely browser-based iCal/Google Calendar-like tool (that means Javascript, and I'm not a Javascript programmer) tool that allows me to:

  • Drag (and eventually drop) activity across a daily schedule for stuff I work on.
  • Remember/autosuggest project names
  • Export events to some standard format, iCal or XML, YAML, or whatever
  • Summarize project activity by week/month/totoal

    Yeah this probably could be done in Rails/Django but I don't want that. No databases. No webservers, but still browser based. Am I crazy? Creating a Dojo Calendar has promise, but it requires server side code. What I want is something self contained like TiddlyWiki. Where the data is all stored in the .js and can be moved around and modified.

    Since I'm obviously in over my head (what else is new) this is obviously something I wouldn't want to start from scratch, but what next? Should I look at GWT or better yet pyjamas to avoid Java development? Obviously this would be (relatively) trivial to do as a traditional desktop GUI app but that is no fun.
    The key is needs to be portable, lightweight, usable off line. Somebody else had to have run across this sort of problem (and solved it) before. We'll see what happens.
  • Wednesday, July 18, 2007

    Sunbird as an iCal Replacement




    Although orage is more useful than it appears at first, I discovered Mozilla Sunbird today when looking for a decent standalone calendaring program for Linux.

    Now my primary use for calendaring is tracking my hours on projects, and iCal ended up to be the easiest way to do this on the Mac although I did try out some time tracking software. Now folks can pry my 12" Powerbook out of my cold dead hands, but I'm trying to ensure I'm using cross platform tools in case my Powerbook dies, I have to send it in for service, etc.

    BTW, Sunbird easily handled 18 months of timesheets I exported from iCal so it looks like a keeper.

    Sunday, July 15, 2007

    Using i4965AGN (iwlwifi + not ndiswrapper) and wpa_supplicant

    For some reason I've always had a mental block about wpa_supplicant. I thought it was hard to setup.Well for WPA Personal it is not.

    So after getting discouraged about not seeing anyone getting wpa_supplicant working with the iwlifi/mac80211 drivers, I was suprised to actually get WPA working with my Linksys AP (one of the crappy new VXWorks based ones I think). See my previous blog for the list of components necessary.

    Using a simple config file (/etc/wpasupplicant.conf)

    network={
    ssid="kartoffel"
    psk="m00nfac3"
    }

    The stock Debian 4.0 network-manager packages and wpasupplicant 5.5 ( which is a dependency of network-manager) were required. So starting from scratch:


    franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# ./unload
    Unloaded: iwl4965 iwl3945 mac80211 cfg80211
    franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# ./load
    No modules unloaded.
    Loaded: iwl3945 iwl4965
    franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# startwpa
    ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
    WEXT auth param 4 value 0x0 - ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
    WEXT auth param 5 value 0x1 - franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# cat /usr/local/bin/startwpa
    wpa_supplicant -B -c /etc/wpasupplicant.conf -i wlan0 -D wext
    franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# iwconfig wlan0
    wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"kartoffel" Nickname:""
    Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457 GHz Access Point: 00:18:F8:52:B5:E1
    Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
    Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
    Encryption key: wo-ul-dn-ty-li-ke-to-kn-ow
    Power Management:off
    Link Quality=65/100 Signal level=-68 dBm Noise level=-127 dBm
    Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
    Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

    franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# dhclient wlan0
    There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5114
    killed old client process, removed PID file
    Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
    Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
    All rights reserved.
    For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

    wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
    wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
    Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:08:8d:f5
    Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:08:8d:f5
    Sending on Socket/fallback
    DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
    DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
    DHCPACK from 192.168.170.1
    bound to 192.168.170.100 -- renewal in 35748 seconds.

    And of course there are NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant daemons. I think I've actually got 5-6 wpa_supplicants running, hehe.

    Saturday, July 14, 2007

    i4965 Finally Working (Albeit Insecurely)

    Well I can finally toss my PCMCIA Aironet 352, and a good thing since the button was starting to stick. Even the thick single button design on the T-61 seems a bit flawed.

    Components that worked for me
    • Linux 2.6.21.5
    • Linux wireless tools v 29 (compiled from source, obviously you need to wipe the one in your distro)
    • iwlwifi-4965-ucode-4.44.15.tgz
    • iwlwifi-0.0.38.tgz
    • mac80211-9.0.2.tgz
    Here is an excerpt of my kernel config. The key breakthrough (I think) was that I read somewhere (probably on ThinkWiki) not to enable the wireless netlinks (CONFIG_NL80211 below) Otherwise the README's are pretty much on target. You do have to up the wlan0 interface before trying to assign the essid.

    CONFIG_CFG80211=m
    # CONFIG_NL80211 is not set
    CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT=y
    CONFIG_MAC80211=m
    # CONFIG_MAC80211_DEBUGFS is not set
    CONFIG_MAC80211_DEBUG=y
    CONFIG_MAC80211_VERBOSE_DEBUG=y
    CONFIG_MAC80211_LOWTX_FRAME_DUMP=y
    CONFIG_TKIP_DEBUG=y
    CONFIG_MAC80211_DEBUG_COUNTERS=y
    CONFIG_HOSTAPD_WPA_TESTING=y
    CONFIG_MAC80211_IBSS_DEBUG=y
    CONFIG_MAC80211_VERBOSE_PS_DEBUG=y
    CONFIG_IEEE80211=m
    # CONFIG_IEEE80211_DEBUG is not set
    CONFIG_IEEE80211_CRYPT_WEP=m
    CONFIG_IEEE80211_CRYPT_CCMP=m
    CONFIG_IEEE80211_CRYPT_TKIP=m
    CONFIG_IEEE80211_SOFTMAC=m
    # CONFIG_IEEE80211_SOFTMAC_DEBUG is not set

    Kernel modules and stuff

    franz-t61:/var/log# lsmod
    Module Size Used by
    iwl4965 181796 0
    iwl3945 159460 0
    mac80211 161548 2 iwl4965,iwl3945
    cfg80211 8264 1 mac80211
    ecb 3840 2
    arc4 2432 2
    ipv6 236640 22
    button 8400 0
    dm_snapshot 16868 0
    dm_mirror 20756 0
    sbp2 21700 0
    eth1394 18884 0
    tsdev 8000 0
    pcmcia 35220 0
    firmware_class 9920 3 iwl4965,iwl3945,pcmcia
    i2c_i801 8912 0
    ohci1394 32944 0
    i2c_core 21056 1 i2c_i801
    ieee1394 90040 3 sbp2,eth1394,ohci1394
    yenta_socket 25292 1
    rsrc_nonstatic 11008 1 yenta_socket
    pcmcia_core 37524 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
    psmouse 35528 0
    serio_raw 7044 0
    pcspkr 3584 0
    intel_agp 23452 1
    agpgart 32712 1 intel_agp
    evdev 9664 3


    franz-t61:~# iwconfig -v
    iwconfig Wireless-Tools version 29
    Compatible with Wireless Extension v11 to v22.

    Kernel Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v22.

    wlan0 Recommend Wireless Extension v21 or later,
    Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v22.


    # ifconfig wlan0
    wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:E8:08:8D:F5
    inet addr:192.168.2.137 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
    inet6 addr: fe80::213:e8ff:fe08:8df5/64 Scope:Link
    UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
    RX packets:1635 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
    TX packets:1269 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
    collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
    RX bytes:1234676 (1.1 MiB) TX bytes:300070 (293.0 KiB)

    franz-t61:~# iwconfig
    eth1 no wireless extensions.

    lo no wireless extensions.

    eth0 no wireless extensions.

    wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

    wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"tsunami" Nickname:""
    Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:90:4B:38:E6:5C
    Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
    Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
    Encryption key:off
    Power Management:off
    Link Quality=81/100 Signal level=-53 dBm Noise level=-127 dBm
    Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
    Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0



    And dmesg from ./loading and ./uloading the interface.


    [ 1296.724000] iwl4965: ipw going down
    [ 1298.780000] wmaster0: Removed STA 00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1298.848000] ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:03:00.0 disabled
    [ 1326.836000] iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 0.0.38d
    [ 1326.836000] iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
    [ 1326.836000] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 0.0.38d
    [ 1326.836000] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
    [ 1326.840000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
    [ 1326.840000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:03:00.0 to 64
    [ 1326.840000] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 12 [2.4GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 13 [2.4GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 14 [2.4GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 183 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 184 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 185 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 187 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 188 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 189 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 192 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 196 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 7 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 8 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 11 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 12 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 16 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 34 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 38 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 42 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 46 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 100 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 104 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 108 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 112 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 116 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 120 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 124 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 128 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 132 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 136 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 140 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Channel 145 [5.2GHz] is Tx only -- skipping.
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels
    [ 1327.076000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-4965-rs'
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Unhandled INTA bits 0x04000000
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: Disabled INTA bits 0x04000000 were pending
    [ 1327.076000] iwl4965: with FH_INT = 0x00010000
    [ 1327.080000] iwl4965: REPLY_CT_KILL_CONFIG_CMD succeeded
    [ 1348.472000] HW CONFIG: channel=1 freq=2412 phymode=3
    [ 1348.480000] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
    [ 1365.048000] HW CONFIG: channel=1 freq=2412 phymode=3
    [ 1365.052000] HW CONFIG: channel=6 freq=2437 phymode=3
    [ 1365.060000] iwl4965: REPLY_ADD_STA failed
    [ 1365.060000] wlan0: Initial auth_alg=0
    [ 1365.060000] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1365.060000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=30) FC=0x00b0 DUR=0x013a A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1365.060000] wlan0: RX authentication from 00:90:4b:38:e6:5c (alg=0 transaction=2 status=0)
    [ 1365.060000] wlan0: authenticated
    [ 1365.060000] wlan0: associate with AP 00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1365.060000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=53) FC=0x0000 DUR=0x013a A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1365.064000] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:90:4b:38:e6:5c (capab=0x401 status=0 aid=1)[ 1365.064000] wlan0: associated
    [ 1365.064000] wmaster0: Added STA 00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1365.064000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=42) FC=0x0040 DUR=0x013a A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c
    [ 1365.064000] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
    [ 1365.072000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=108) FC=0x0108 DUR=0x002c A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=33:33:00:00:00:16
    [ 1365.600000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=96) FC=0x0108 DUR=0x002c A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=33:33:ff:08:8d:f5
    [ 1366.600000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=88) FC=0x0108 DUR=0x002c A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=33:33:00:00:00:02
    [ 1370.600000] wmaster0: TX to low-level driver (len=88) FC=0x0108 DUR=0x002c A1=00:90:4b:38:e6:5c A2=00:13:e8:08:8d:f5 A3=33:33:00:00:00:02

    FastCompany: Bosses and Real Bosses

    Leadership: The Boss and the Real Boss got me thinking about some of the more (or less ) dysfunctional teams I have have been part of in the past and the formal or informal leadership roles that are often at play and impact team effectiveness.
    What is interesting about my family is that we have all been given the same "bossy" gene. It skipped no one and each one of us is just as confident about his or her "rightness" as the next one. This year, nine of us traveled, and as usual, we stopped in Niagara on the Lake for the first night. My 10-year old son and his 17 and 14-year-old cousins, already fed up with the grown-up's bickering over the best route to the cottage, went into town, "to walk down the street of the last civilization they will see for a week." They are very dramatic! When they returned, they brought us a gift. It was two hats - one said THE BOSS and the other said THE REAL BOSS. They explained that every night at dinner we would designate a Boss and a Real Boss for the next day. The Boss would make the plan and if any disagreement or dissent erupted, then the Real Boss would step in to have the final word. Interesting.

    Fortunately, I've forgotten most of painful details of bad experiences to blog about them, except to say that overhead groups that have no revenue requirements or operational responsibilities can be really fun (for a while) -- but can implode quickly and become sheer hell to work work in when these leadership get out of whack.

    Tuesday, July 10, 2007

    Early Returns: Franz: 1 VMWare+CARP+FreeBSD: 0

    So running FreeBSD 6.2 CARP on VMWare Server is the subject of some confusion and struggling for me today. This closed CARP bug turned out to be a red herring and this VMTN thread made it seem that it was only possible to use CARP on ESX (if you enable promiscous mode on the virtual switch) and/or possibly with VMWare workstation with teaming. But I don't have admin privs on the ESX cluster. And I want to be able to do development and testing on my laptop and our VMWware Server.

    On the drive home I remembered similar battle battle I faced a year ago working with the SCADA Honeynet where broadcast traffic (ARP Requests) were being forwarded to a virtual interface but the unicast was failing. Today pings to the CARP interface were failing even though I had an ARP entry on the host I was pinging from and of course the ICMP Echos were going out--but not making it to the virtual interface.

    So it looks like once again loosening permissions on /dev/vmnet[0-9] is the solution to the problem.

    Sunday, July 08, 2007

    i4965: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back


    iwl4965: with FH_INT = 0x00010000
    iwl4965: REPLY_CT_KILL_CONFIG_CMD succeeded
    iwl4965: REPLY_ADD_STA failed
    iwl4965: no version for "release_firmware" found: kernel tainted.
    iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driv er for Linux, 0.0.35d
    iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
    iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AG N
    iwl4965: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch

    So with 2.6.21.5 + iwlwifi-0.0.35 and mac80211-9.0.0 and Linux Wireless Tools v 29 (you'll need the firmware from the Intel site as well) I was able to get to able to get the hardware detected, see a few access points, associate a couple of times, and oh yeah get kernel stack traces every time I tried to get a lease. I was surprised to see the kernel honored the "kill switch" on the front of the laptop.

    Oh well, I'll try again next weekend. It's back to a wide open Aironet card when running Linux (God knows why WEP isn't working with the Aironet 352 and the Truemobile running OpenWRT). If you are in the neighborhood, you can have free wifi if you spoof the 3 MACs I have in the filter list (until I get WPA working I'll adopt the bonehead OpenBSD view (I need to find a better link, but that will do) that Wireless security protocols encourage a false sense of security) but I'm sure its much easier to hop on my neighbor's Linksys. Assuming they didn't close it down. But I've got fprobe running the OpenWRT box (as simple as ipkg install fprobe, very cool!) so I'm watching you :)

    # --- ---- ---- Report Information --- --- ---
    #
    # Fields: Total
    # Symbols: Disabled
    # Sorting: Descending Field 1
    # Name: UDP/TCP destination port
    #
    # Args: flow-stat -f 5 -S1
    #
    #
    # port flows octets packets
    #
    80 223 1012583 4549
    123 182 21280 280
    3000 132 56380 271
    443 20 77666 331
    2050 16 42523 239
    53 16 15287 239
    60321 7 20647 69
    22 7 24766 307

    Friday, July 06, 2007

    Minor Rant on Fuzzing


    Bejtlich's Pre Review triggered some painful memories. Back when I was a teacher, I ran across two types of really bad papers: those that were so bad they were funny and those are those that are so bad they made you angry, really angry -- because they were wasting your time.

    Last year, I had the misfortune of serving as a technical reviewer for the new Addison Wesley Fuzzing book. The manuscripts I read clearly fell into the into the second category. It just wasn't worth the $750 (or whatever it was they were going to pay me) to provide feedback and fill out the little forms, so I eventually quit responding to emails from the editors and a deleted all the copies of manuscripts I had in my possession. Now, to be honest, it wasn't just that the manuscripts were a lost cause that I gave up the endeavor. I did have a lot on my plate: trying to get my house on the market in Austin, finish up some projects for my last job, and figure out where the hell I was going to live in Chicago--and move two kids and two dogs cross country, without losing any of them in Oklahoma. Which almost happened.

    But if I thought the book had any hope of being useful I probably would have found the time. Unfortunately, from the table of contents, it doesn't look like they fixed the book's structural flaws. Not only the did conceptual sequence not make much sense to me, the audience and purpose were always a mystery. But maye that was maybe because I didn't ever see the first section. I was never sure if it existed? Was it be written last? There was no clear driving purpose linking the content. Was the book targetting professional application security teams (Software Security is an example of one of these, a very useful book) or just a quick way for 3rd rate independent researchers to find a bug or two. It appeared to be the latter, which to me was a pointless exercise. Why invest time in writing (let along reading) a book on the topic of vulnerability testing that does not go beyond what you could find by downloading tools from Packet Storm.

    Lastly, I wonder if they cleaned up annoying colloquial writing style that sounded like a transcript of a bad Black Hat talk (except what I assume were Pedram's Amini's chapters, the were fairly well written and had some original content as well) but I guess I'll never know. I'd love to hear these problems were fixed, but I'm certainly not going to spend good money on finding out myself.

    Wednesday, July 04, 2007

    rtnetlink kernel link errors with Intel 4965 Drivers

    In my last blog I mentioned some instructions I'd run across for building the Open Source Intel drivers for the i4965 that ships with Lenovo T-61s. I more or less followed the instructions but am still getting the follwing error:


    net/wireless/wext.c: In function ‘rtnetlink_fill_iwinfo’:
    net/wireless/wext.c:1136: warning: initialization discards qualifiers from pointer target type
    CC net/wireless/core.o
    CC net/wireless/sysfs.o
    LD net/wireless/cfg80211.o
    LD net/wireless/built-in.o
    LD net/built-in.o
    GEN .version
    CHK include/linux/compile.h
    UPD include/linux/compile.h
    CC init/version.o
    LD init/built-in.o
    LD .tmp_vmlinux1
    net/built-in.o: In function `rtnl_getlink':
    rtnetlink.c:(.text+0x10c69): undefined reference to `wireless_rtnetlink_get'
    net/built-in.o: In function `rtnl_setlink':
    rtnetlink.c:(.text+0x11372): undefined reference to `wireless_rtnetlink_set'
    make: *** [.tmp_vmlinux1] Error 1

    Monday, July 02, 2007

    Linux i4965 Wireless Preview on T-61

    Last few days I confess I've mostly been using XP on my T-61 (hell I've mostly been working on a blasted Compaq DL-145 and FreeBSD through the lights out management software, which oddly enough Opera seems to work best with since it uses Java Applet for some VNC-ish looking thing for the remote KVM) but I ran across a Fedoraforum thread on getting the 4965 drivers working. It appears you will need iwlwifi and mac80211 and some microcode but it looks like it is now possible. Maybe I'll give it a shot.

    Sunday, July 01, 2007

    SCADA, SIGINT, IW, and the PRC


    It might be vain, but I look at my webserver logs occasionally. You never know who stumbles across your site with an interesting set of google search words. Like when 58.31.65.233 searches for pages with SCADA and SIGINT in them. Which reminds me of the amusing dailydave thread on IW (the one on responsibility and power). Of course any conversation that starts with the question about who has the best hackers is bound to go nowhere, fast. It doesn't matter whether the context is the information warfare capabilities of nation states, the real or perceived regional concentration of security expertise within a large networking, security consulting companies trying to win assessments, or DoE (or Batelle, it is a business, despite the national security angle) labs hyping their "cyber" credentials to secure mo money, mo money, and get those earmarks while they still can. It's all the same. It all ends badly with someone talking out of their ass.