Recently I have decided that Microsoft may not be the be-all-end all to technology and have begun exploring the "darker" side of the world. (That would be the Linux side.) Ok, so darker may not be the right idea to convey but anyway, its the side that the average PC user does not get to work with often.
I am building up my second install of Ubuntu 6.06 (Hard drive crash on the old one kind of blew things away for me. Arrg) and I realized it would be really cool to have a streaming server running on my computer, so I decided to do some looking to find out if anyone had gotten Darwin to run with Ubuntu. I found one post that described some problems that one user had.
The trick to getting it to install and run correctly is to understand that the commands in the Install shell script do not actually create the qtss user and associated group account properly. The parameter "-M" that is in that file is invalid for Ubuntu's version of "adduser" and so that fails. What you can do is before you run the Install script, you can create the user yourself using either the commandline tools or the visual tools from the System -> Administration -> Users and Groups menu in Ubuntu.
Also, make sure that your user (qtss) has appropriate security configured so that it can read the files that you are going to stream.
And finally, what I did to get the streamingadminserver.pl running correctly is to use "sudo su - qtss" to get a shell running as the "qtss" user and then run the script, which ensured that it was started under that users privilege.
Unfortunately no one has stepped up to the plate to create an Ubuntu installer package for this application and hence there is no /etc/init.d/darwin script to control the server. Mabye I will make that if I get to feeling adventurous with bash.
Ok, so this was a little long but hopefully it will help you get Darwin Streaming Server installed on your Ubuntu Server today.
Darwin Streaming Server - Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake)
Social Engineering - Extremely Low Risk Infiltration Scheme
This is a great article describing how easy it is to utilize human nature to overcome security policy to gain covert access to remote systems with a VERY low detection probability.
The gist of this story is that USB thumb drives were loaded with trojans and left in the parking lot and break area around the target and curious employees then loaded them into their computers which then sent compromise details to an unauthorized hacker.
Be safe out there and beware the gift of the Trojans in USB drive form.
Norman
Full Article URL: http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95556&WT.svl=column1_1
Security News: Reduce Brute-Force Attack Success
The following is an article with good information on how to reduce the effectiveness of brute-force attacks against web applications. The technology relies on mathematical algorithms on the client that require more time to compute than to verify to incur a transaction cost for authentication against a web application to make it computationally infeasible to implement a large-scale attack.
http://www.infosecwriters.com/text_resources/pdf/AntiBruteForceResourceMetering.pdf
Web-based AJAX messaging client
A friend of mine just showed me this URL for a web-based messaging client. I have not tried it out yet, but it looks interesting! It probably spells trouble for network administrators who can't firewall web traffic. I do suppose they could block the website, but that does not mean other people will not take up the technology and implement it elsewhere.
http://www13.meebo.com/
Norman
Social Engineering
This is a great introduction to the art of social engineering that is one of the biggest security threats that many organizations do not consider when reviewing security policies and procedures. This article is good information if you have friends that have not heard of the topic that work in IT.
Norman
Finally, industry heads are getting things right!
Hello,
I saw this article in the November 15 2005 issue of CIO magazine (an extremely valuable issue I might add!) and realized that I needed to share the information in this issue. The article linked below is on requirements analysis. There are other articles in that issue on testing and quality assurance as well which are very good articles which address those areas from the CIO point of view (which in my opinion is good for anyone to at least be aware of).
For anyone who has ever been involved in a software project, this is the kind of information that CIO's need to help software development move out of the quagmire of failure that the industry has seen.
------- Article Text -------
CIO Magazine
NOV 15, 2005
How to Fix the Requirements Mess
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Some CIOs are rewriting the rules for deciding what should be included in software.Some CIOs are rewriting the rules for deciding what should be included in software.
Complete article online:
http://www.cio.com/archive/111505/require.html?CID=14295
