Runtime on notebooks

Got an Apple MacBook Pro towards the start of the year. Issue was that closing the lid only puts the machine in stand by mode which still consumes power, so I wasn't getting as long a runtime as I would on my old HP nx6120 with a travel battery.

A Google search led me to Todd Huss's[2] page below. This identified the pmset[1] command as being quite useful. I followed the instructions and now have the MacBook hibernating when I close the lid. Since then I have been asked by a number of colleagues about this, so thought I better document it here.

I rebuilt the old HP nx6120 to run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Again noticed that I wasn't getting reasonable runtime, instead of the usual 8-10 hrs, I only got around 3-4hrs. A discussion with a colleague led me to Linux Laptop Tools. Again some "Googling" led to the Ubuntu power management[3] which seemed to increase the runtime.

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pmset
2. http://gabrito.com/post/hibernate-with-the-macbook-pro
3. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerManagement

iCTF - UCSB International Capture The Flag

I was fortunate enough to be invited to join the QUT iCTF team. The objective of the contest is to ensure that a set of required services remain available and un-compromised. In preparation for this task, I decided to setup a dedicated laptop for the contest. I would have been far easier to install a distribution such as BackTrack, but I decided to take the painful path.

First, a friend sold me his old laptop, which was far better than my current notebook. It was a Sony VAIO SZ34GP. I installed CentOS 5.5 on this notebook, just a base install with development libraries and tools. The instructions below provide a brief list of tools and their associated configurations. 

Repositories
There's a need to set-up some additional repositories for CentOS to enable the installation of additional thir party applications. For more information refer to References 3Section.

1. sudo bash
2. cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
3. wget -q -O - http://www.atomicorp.com/installers/atomic |sh
4. wget http://dries.eu/pub/dries-el.repo
5. wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
6. rpm -ivh rpmforge-release-0.5.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
7. yum update

Installation

Install tools to be used for the competition. Most of the tools are penetration testing tools I have used in the past. I made a point of installing the development libraries and tools during the CentOS installation. This would be useful for developing and testing possible exploits.

1. sudo yum -y install nmap
2. sudo yum -y install amap
3. sudo yum -y install hydra
4. sudo yum -y install aide
5. sudo yum -y install snort
6. sudo yum -y install nikto
7. sudo yum -y install ntop
8. sudo yum -y install fail2ban
9. sudo yum -y install tcptrack
10. sudo yum -y install dsniff
11. sudo yum -y install ngrep
12. sudo yum -y install fragroute
13. sudo yum -y install hping
14. sudo yum -y install scapy
15. sudo yum -y install tcptraceroute
16. sudo yum -y install firewalk
17. sudo yum -y install iptraf
18. sudo yum -y install kismet
19. sudo yum -y install ettercap

ChaosReader

1. Download latest version from source forge (http://chaosreader.sourceforge.net)
2. sudo mkdir -p /opt/chaosreader
3. sudo cp chaoreader0.94 /opt/chaosreader/
4. sudo chmod 755 /opt/chaosreader/chaoreader0.94
5. sudo ln -s /opt/chaosreader/chaoreader0.94 /usr/local/bin/

John the Ripper

1. wget http://www.openwall.com/john/g/john-1.7.6.tar.gz
2. tar zxvf john-1.7.6.tar.gz
3. cd john-1.7.6
4. cd src
5. make
6.  clean linux-x86-any
7. sudo mv ../run /opt/john-1.7.6
8. sudo chown -R root:root opt/john-1.7.6
9. mv /opt/john-1.7.6/john.conf /opt/john-1.7.6/john.ini
10. sudo ln -s /opt/john-1.7.6/john /usr/local/sbin/
11. sudo ln -s /opt/john-1.7.6/john.ini /usr/local/sbin/

OpenVAS

1. sudo yum -y install openvas-server openvas-client openvas-scanner
2. sudo openvas-mkcert
3. sudo /usr/sbin/openvas-nvt-syn # Add as a cron job - refer to OpenVAS documentation
4. sudo /etc/rc.d/init.d/openvas-scanner restart
5. sudo /usr/sbin/openvas-adduser # Add rules "default accept" if unsure

Skipfish

1. wget http://skipfish.googlecode.com/files/skipfish-1.81b.tgz
2. tar zxvf skipfish-1.81b.tgz
3. sudo mv skipfish-1.81b /opt/
4. sudo ln -s /opt/skipfish-1.81b/skipfish /usr/local/sbin/
5. sudo ln -s /opt/skipfish-1.81b/sfscandiff /usr/local/sbin/
6. sudo chown -R root:root /opt/skipfish-1.81b

VMWare Server

1. Download the latest VMWare Server, at the time of this blog it was version 2.0.2
2. tar zxvf VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz
3. cd vmware-server-distrib
4. sudo ./vmware-install.pl

References:

1. http://ictf.cs.ucsb.edu/
2. http://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge
3. http://www.backtrack-linux.org/
4. http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories
5. http://www.openvas.org/
6. http://www.alienvault.com/free_nessus_feed.php
7. http://www.hacktoolrepository.com/

Toshiba Recovery Wizard

In case you ever need to perform a recovery on a Toshiba, (obviously after the necessary backups, ensure running on mains power, etc)

1. Turn off laptop.
2. Press and hold "0" (zero) key.
3. Power on laptop.
4. Once the Toshiba splash screen appears, release the "0" (zero) key.
5. Follow the Toshiba Recovery Wizard prompts.