Digital Choke Daynotes

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What I Did On My Summer Vacation (July 2003)

The phone guy came this morning to install the DSL line. Since this is a new house, the wiring was all in place, and the previous owner had DSL, so the line filter was in place in the main phone box. That means that I didn't need to put filters on all of the phone jacks. The whole process, including setting up the DSL modem box, only took about an hour.

When he left, I started in on the D-Link Wireless Router/firewall (model 614+). I got it from CompUSA; it's list price is $79, but there was $50 in rebates and discounts, so the net cost was just $29. Like most things, it has a 'wizard' that you use to set it up. After getting past a minor problem with a 'next' button that wasn't visible (I used the tab key to find it), I got it set up so that it would talk to the laptop network connection (non-wireless). The interface to configure the router is through a web browser interface. I set it up to provide private IP addresses, NAT (network address translation) to keep the home network private, and enabled WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol, I think) along with changing the SSID to keep the wireless network private. Some minor changes to Internet Explorer so that it defaulted to the network connection, and I was surfing at DSL speeds.

I had some errands to run, so wandered around to do them. First stop was Staples to pick up a graphing calculator for Stacy. The one that she bought died, and the Staples back there didn't want to exchange it, they wanted to send it back to the manufacturer for repair. That wouldn't work, as she needed to use it. So I bought another one, and she'll send the dead one back here for exchanging. Then off to the smog-certificate place (every two years we get to pay about $45 to check the smog equipment on our cars before we get to pay the yearly registration fee), but they were too busy, so I'll take care of that on Saturday. Next stop was the UPS store to ship the calculator back to Stacy. Then Radio Shack for some batteries for the mini voltmeter. Then to the auto parts store for a new light bulb for the car brake light, and another bulb for a flashlight. Then to Lowe's for a few drip irrigation parts, and finally home.

Then I started on the wireless network for the laptop. I have an Orinco Gold card, so I plugged that into the laptop, and started it up. I entered the secret WEP code, and was connected to my network. A few other minor tweaks, and I was on the net.

The next step was to set up the desktop in the office to use the network. I thought it had a network card in it, but it didn't, so a short trip over to CompUSA for a cheapo NIC was in order. I met Pam at the store and we went to Quizno's for dinner, then to home. I put the NIC in the computer, configured the software just a bit, and it was connected through the network.

I haven't gotten the printer shared yet. It's connected to the Win2K desktop, so I'll have to do a few more tweaks. But it is nice to sit in the family room with the wireless connection to the Internet. These pages upload much faster.

I get the SANS "Newsbytes" mailing each week. It's a collection of news stories related to information security, along with other interesting articles/white papers, etc. They write a short paragraph summarizing the information, and sometimes have editorial comments from their staff editors. I find this newsletter quite interesting, and usually find several items in each week's issue that contain useful information. (Subscription information here; highly recommended. Note that most links in these Daynotes open up new windows ... when I remember to add that command.)

One of the items in today's mailing was about the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Computer Security Resource Center (CSRC) releasing a draft "Computer Security Incident Handling Guide". I took a browse through their draft, and found it to be a pretty complete starting point for a good incident response plan; a good start on the draft copy. Since that is a topic that has gotten higher on my priority list (by special request from the bosses due to our recent experiences with Blaster/Nachi worm), I saved a copy of it, and then printed it out. The result was about one inch of paper that I took over to the boss. As I showed it to her, I covered up the NIST logo on the cover sheet, and told the boss I had put it together in my spare time yesterday.

It's been a while since I have looked at the information there, but a quick look tonight shows that there is some good information there for anyone interested in computer security. I just stuck their home page on my "Links" so I can remember to go there more often.

On another subject, I noticed today an article on MSNBC.com about another spam blocking list going off-line due to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. The theory is that some spammers seem to be mounting an "all-out war" on spam-blocking lists through "Zombies", or computers that are infected by Trojan virus programs. One the spam-blocking lists owners ("Monkeys.com", whose owner happens to live in this area) says that the attacks seemed to start at the same time as the SoBig virus started spreading. Here's the scenario: the zombie computer gets directed by the 'owner' (the person that wrote/distributed the Trojan virus) to start sending out DoS attacks to a particular site, in this case one of the spam-blocking lists sites. Since a virus such as SoBig has infected probably hundreds of thousands of computers, that's quite a lot of traffic that can bring a web site to it's knees. The owner of Monkeys.com says that he was getting data packets from more than 10,000 machines.

There are a lot of interesting implications of this kind of attack (some of them discussed in my "Digital Choke" short story </end shameless plug>). Could this kind of Zombie network cause some significant problems with the Internet (as it did in my story)?

I also see that our California "Goobner" Grey Davis ("Don't recall me, I'll be good!") has signed a new anti-spam law. This one has a bit of teeth to it, and requires an "opt-in" process. Although I am not sure that this will make a difference, since most spammers don't care about the rules, and most spam comes from outside the US. Email systems, as I mention in my spam report "Email: not absolutely positively delivered" need a major overhaul, and I am not sure that there is a solution to all the email spam. Although Jerry Pournelle's "Spam Report" recommends turning over the problem to the Mafia for the ultimate solution.

That's enough links for one day. (Too many links and not enough commentary is one of my complaints about some "Bloggers".)

No post yesterday because of technical problems. I was messing around with the router after work, and got the settings messed up. So I had to spend some time getting things fixed back to normal. And along the way I got some practical knowledge about routers and DHCP servers and DNS.

But I think that I've got the home wireless network pretty well secured. The router is doing NAT (Network Address Translation) to keep the computers' IP address hidden from the 'net. The router's firewall is set up so that the ShieldsUp program from Gibson Research (www.grc.com) shows the ports on the computer as 'closed'. Each of the computers have ZoneAlarm on them for further protection. I have the wireless network secured with 64-bit encryption (which I will probably change to 128-bit tomorrow). Both computers here are fully patched with Windows patches, and the anti-virus files are current. The desktop computer needs the Office Updates, which will be done tomorrow.

Have a full list of things to do tomorrow. The smog test for the truck in the morning, a trip to Staples to return a dead calculator. Then Pam and I will go to her aunt's friend's house to look at some of his furniture. He is in his 70's (I think), and his health is failing, so he's moving to an assisted living home. He reportedly has some nice furniture that we should be able to get at a nice price. Then we plan to go to the local Home Show at the county fairgrounds to wander around there a bit. There are a couple of additions to the drip system out in the back yard that need to be done.

I also need to spend some time on this laptop computer. I need to change the current Windows partition to make it smaller, so I can make room for a Windows 2000 Server installation, and perhaps a Linux partition also. So I need to backup the data to CD's, so that I won't lose any data during all of that.

My oldest daughter and all her family showed up on the front porch about 10:00pm. They had spent some time at her husband's brother's house this evening, and it was getting late enough that they didn't want to drive all the way home. And tomorrow they have to go to another brother's house in the morning, so it was much easier for them to stay here. We certainly have the extra room, so there is no problem with the space. And it's always fun to visit with the grandchildren.

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