Pathogen was the first vim plugin management system that I’ve known of. The contender is Vundle which seems to be inspired in it’s configuration syntax (and name) by Ruby’s Bundler. So let’s compare those two. Pathogen Pathogen’s workings are quite easy to grasp: each plugin is a directory within “~/.vim/bundle/”; pathogen traverses through the plugin list and includes each one of them. Let’s see a sample directory: [~/.vim]$ ls -l bundle/ drwxr-xr-x 5 andy andy 4096 Sep 8 22:20 ag drwxr-xr-x 5 andy andy 4096 Sep 8 22:20 ctrlp.vim drwxr-xr-x 7 andy andy 4096 Sep 8 22:22 syntastic drwxr-xr-x 13 andy andy 4096 Sep 8 22:23 ultisnips drwxr-xr-x 7 andy andy 4096 Sep 8 22:26 vim-airline ... It gets really powerful when you store you ~/.vim directory within a git repository and share it between multiple computers. If you use git submodules for each plugin you even get versioned plugins for free. ...

After a successful penetration test a re-test is performed. The common approach is that the customer fixes the code and I perform the necessary steps to confirm that that initial security breach was closed. Sometimes it takes the customer a couple of tries to achieve that. Most security problems (XSS, CSRF, SQLi) can easily be automated tested, but I had problems automating server-side authentication and authorization problems. The test would have to emulate multiple parallel user sessions. The tests mostly consists of one session trying to access the resources of another user session. ...

My blog has a history of migrations. It started as wordpress, then was converted Octopress. After Octopress was missing update-love and jekyll started to be actively maintained again it switched over to jekyll. And now, it finally is based upon Middleman. Sorry for any inconvinient bugs or layout errors that will happen during the migration. Why have I switched to middleman? as I’m a RoR devleoper it seems better suited for me. Jekyll always seemed to be the choice for “web designer that need to add some dynamic content” while middleman seems to incorporate the “web developer that needs some blog”-attitude nice integration with bundler existing plugins for deployment. This replaced a lot of custom cruft that I had to initially write for myself when I was using jekyll While in there I’ve switched from bootstrap to bourbon/neat/bitters. Let’s see how this works out. Wouldn’t mind the framework to be called Islay though. ...

Full-disclosure: I was asked by PacktPublishing to provide a review of Penetration Testing with BackBox by Stefan Umit Uygur. They offered me a free copy of the ebook; otherwise I have not been compensated by any means for this review. The book aims to be an introduction to penetration-testing for experienced Unix/Linux users or administrators (seems like there are Linux users that aren’t administrators by now). After reading the book I believe that the assumed use-case is an administrator that wants to gain some insight into the tools that might be used against his server. Other parts of the books (hash cracking, tools) might allure aspirating script kiddies. ...

The basic idea is to move application servers into LXC containers while keeping the HTTP server part (which is also responsible for hosting static files) on the host system. Normally an incoming request would be handled by an HTTP server on the host as well as by an HTTP server on the virtualized client: browser -> http server(host) -> http server (guest) -> app-server (guest) I’m configuring the host HTTP server to directly communicate with the app worker, thus: ...

KVM was an improvement over Xen for me. Still for many use-cases a LXC are a more performance, light-weight alternative – which also seems to be en vougue nowadays. Through switching to LXC I’ve reduced my overall memory usage a bit – the main benefit is, that processes within an LXC container are separated processes within the host system. This should allow the host system to manage memory (think cache, buffers, swap, etc.) more efficiently. ...

I’ve been using KVM and virt-install to manage virtual machines on one of my servers, this post shows how to use virt-install. According to the package management system I’m having the following packages installed: root@edgewalker ~ # dpkg -l | grep virt ii libvirt-bin 1.1.1-0ubuntu8.1 amd64 programs for the libvirt library ii libvirt0 1.1.1-0ubuntu8.1 amd64 library for interfacing with different virtualization systems ii munin-libvirt-plugins 0.0.6-1 all Munin plugins using libvirt ii openvpn 2.3.2-4ubuntu1 amd64 virtual private network daemon ii python-libvirt 1.1.1-0ubuntu8.1 amd64 libvirt Python bindings ii qemu-kvm 1.5.0+dfsg-3ubuntu5 amd64 QEMU Full virtualization on x86 hardware (transitional package) ii virt-top 1.0.7-1 amd64 show stats of virtualized domains ii virtinst 0.600.4-2ubuntu2.1 all Programs to create and clone virtual machines Storage-wise I’m using a LVM volume group called ‘vg0’ (which was imported into the libvirt configuration). ...

After I’ve tried setting up a rogue access point using squid and hostapd I’ve seen that KDE’s network-manager offers host access-point functionality. How easy is it to combine this with BURP for an SSL man-in-the-middle attack? Well some GUI clicking and 3 command line invocations.. The Hardware I bought two USB 802.11n wireless adaptorts on deal extrem, so far both of them work as an access point: a small whitish one for $5.55, perfect for working “undercover”. This was supported by a standard Ubuntu 13.10 installation. a larger one for $8.92, should have a better reception as it has an antenna (you see that I’m a software guy). Be aware that you’ll need a recent Kernel for this version, Kernel 3.13 in the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 supports it. Setting up the Hardware Hostap was rather hard to setup, how is KDE faring? You can add a new “Wireless (shared)” network connection within the network manager (this was done with the network-manger in KDE 4.12, KDE 4.13 looks similar). ...

I’m always reading about dangerous rogue access points but never actually have seen one in action. So what better than create a test setup.. Hardware for this test setup will be my old linux notebook (a macbook pro) as fake access point a small deal extreme network card (Ralink 5070 chipset). I’ve actually bought three differnet wireless cards for under $20 and am trying out the different chipsets. This card is rather small (like an usb stick), so it isn’t to conspicous The basic idea is to use hostap to create a virtual access point. Would I be a hypothetical attacker I’d call it ‘starbucks’, ‘freewave’ or name it like some coffee shop around the corner. I’m using the notebook’s included wireless card to provide an internet uplink. To achieve this I will have to compile a custom version of squid (including ssl support). I’m using Ubuntu 13.10 for this, other linux distributions would work the same. ...

Yesterday was this year’s “Akademikerball” in Vienna. This is a continuation of the former WKR ball – which is used for right-wing networking across Europe and organized by the Austrian Freedom Party. This party in turn is a right-wing party: populist, xenophobic, haven of people with a far-right history. Opposed to this party were protests mostly organized by the left-ish social party and the green-alternative party. Police forces were using this event as a show-of-strength. Traditionally the executive is seen as the long arm of the people’s party (OeVP) – a party with historic roots in the christ-fascist party of the ’30s, the last decades it is more of a liberal-economic party. True to it roots freedom-of-press and the right-to-assemble were severely limited during the event. ...