Ubuntu Tutorials

I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the hacked website in all its total lack of glory. They basically removed all files for the domain & replaced it with a new index.html. Not a big problem as I have nightly backups of all htdocs/, and it was a domain I purchased but have yet to do anything with.

Thought some of you would be interested. The .html looks like its got a bunch of javascript. Anybody able to tell me what its supposed to do?

…also, anyone able to read/translate Turkish is welcome to tell me what these retards big scary message is.

I logged into my local webserver admin panel & found that I had, yet again, been hacked. It looks like the damage was very minimal & I’m back to 100% (as far as I can tell), but this hack came from Turkey again.

For those of you that remember my previous experience with crackers you’ll remember those came from Turkey. I thought I had blacklisted Turkey via iptables using the 85.96.0.0/12 subnet. This recent attack came from 85.98.46.46. I’ve added 85.98.0.0/12 to my firewall.. any other tips on subnets originating from that country?

I’ve decided that two things need to happen.

1) VHCS needs to release a security patch. It’s been months with this hole sitting wide open. I feel like I’m running windows here!

2) I’m going to stop doing anything but personal site hosting & manually do everything by hand. A little more work but more secure.

I’d appreciate any more tips on locking out Turkey via firewall.

UPDATE: I came across http://blacklist.linuxadmin.org after I originally posted this. There is a simple generator there that’ll block a long list of countries by port. Could be a very helpful tool!

Out of curiosity I googled myself tonight to see what wonders I might find. I was surprised at how many mentions of myself come up. I am directly connected with almost every result for three pages. One that surprised me however was for the AllTray July 6, 2006 changelog:

Jul 6, 2006: Jochen Baier <email@jochen-baier.de>
- added "Stop" to the xmms menu. requested by me
- get the gnome theme file by reading "XDG_DATA_DIRS". usefull if gnome is not installed in "/usr..." bug reported by Laurent Hilsz
- fixed shortcut bug. report and patch from Travis Hartwell
- fixed segfault which occur if apps where closed with "FILE->QUIT"
- fixed tooltip location with 2 panels on top. reported by Christer Edwards
- set version 0.69

You see everyone. There really is glory in submitting bugs back to developers!

From the Pete Ashdown for Senate mailing list:
—–
Saturday July 29, marks 100 days until Election Day. Pete needs our support!
Utah Voters will gather at Washington Park in Parley’s Canyon to show their support. Mix, mingle and join the effort to win this November!

What: Democratic Family Reunion – Support for Pete Ashdown!

When: Saturday, July 29th at 12:00PM (noon)

Where: Washington Park / Mt. Dell Terrace (Salt Lake City, Utah)

Register to attend here.

Bring your family, friends and neighbors for food, fun & more.
_______________________

Google’s latest project is an open source repository similar to SourceForge. Apparently it is not meant to compete with the SourceForge project, but work in a similar fashion. …however that works.

Google’s goal is to see what they can do to provide an alternative for open source projects. This project is supposed to be specifically aimed at the open source developer, whereas other projects support larger scale projects, corporations and development teams.

It includes project labels ranging from Python to CSharp, from Student to Stable. Might be worth checking out for anyone working on any open source project.

The site motto are four words made famous by Linus himself. “Release early, release often”

What goes around comes around!

I recently contacted my senators & congressmen concerning the EFF, net neutrality & related. I got, as expected, a few canned email responses from some and today recieved a physical letter from the offices of Orrin Hatch. I wanted to share this and get some reaction. Remember, this is the same Orrin Hatch who believes any copyright infringer should have their computer remotely destroyed.

Dear Mr. Edwards

Thank you for contacting me to express your concern about the broadcast flag proposals contained in S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.

As you are aware, S. 2686 was introduced by Senator Ted Stevens on May 1, 2006 and referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, where the bill is currently being debated. The bill would authorize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promulgate regulations governing the indiscriminate redistribution of audio content with respect to digital and satellite radio broadcasts.

I believe that individual consumers should have the ability to record content that is transmitted over broadcast radio for personal, non-commercial use. In my view, recent technological advances such as broadcast flag technology must be administered in a limited, non-intrusive way in order to ensure consumers are not hurt by the content provider's need to protect their content from violations of current law.

I have played an active role in the important debate between copyright protection and consumer freedom. I have long sought a reasonable balance between the rights of creators and innovators and the needs of consumers. After all, without creators there is nothing to convey, and without consumers, there is no one to whom it can be conveyed. While striking a balance between copyright protection and consumer freedom is never an easy task, I believe we are growing closer to an effective solution to the problem. Rest assured that in examining these copyright issues, I will be mindful of your views.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please feel free to continue to contact me with your views regarding issues before the Senate. Your comments are very helpful to me as I evaluate legislation of interest of Utahns.

Sincerely,

Orrin G. Hatch

United States Senator

I know this post is way off normal topic but I’m hunting for some feedback. I hate new-car shopping whether it be thru a dealer or private party, but I find myself in the market again. If anyone has good experiences, feedback, tips, tricks, etc I would appreciate some advice.

Currently we’re considering a Volkswagen Jetta. Now, yes, I have owned a Volkswagen before. Two actually. Yes, they did tend to require regular maintenance. Both of these were older model cars though. The first a ’79 diesel rabbit (you can imagine my high school popularity) and the second, a ’92 Fox with front-end damage I got for $200.

Does anyone own a later model Volkswagen? 2000+? Are these any better? I’d love to get some real-world feedback on a later model VW, Jettas in particular. Let the flood of comments begin..

Yet another story of Windows Genuine Disadvantage screwing the honest customer:

While Microsoft insists that problems with the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program are much overblown -- claiming last weekthat "only a fraction of a percent" of the systems that fail the WGAverification are actually legal -- Microsoft's customers keep sayingotherwise. What's worse, the WGA false negatives are leading toincreasing number of situations where customers run afoul of XP'sproduct activation, leaving them to beg Microsoft and/or their PCvendor to help.

Read more in detail at InfoWorld.

“The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would make it a federal felony for Webmasters to use innocent words like “Barbie” or “Furby” but actually feature sexual content on their sites. Anyone who includes misleading “words” or “images” intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined, the bill says.”

I wonder when our congressmen & senators will start producing anything useful with our tax dollars. I have little to no faith in anyone in office right now and honestly feel a good portion of my taxes are being completely wasted!

Reasons why this is absolutely a waste of time:

1. Most search engines almost completely ignore META tags at this point.
2. Anyone actually using this method for a pron site can simply host outside the US.
3. 20 years for “misuse of META tags”?! I think I’ll stick to less-punishable crimes like murder and rape!

Congress, combining this stupidity with your assinine handling of Net Neutrality, you’re fired. I will be, again, writing my representatives to let them know they will NOT get my vote next election. Pete Ashdown, can you save us?

You can find your representative contacts at congress.org.