Jimiz.net – Jim Becher on the web

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I’ve mentioned before that I recently got another Thinkpad (t410). After receiving the laptop I’ve had wireless issues / performance problems with it. At first I just thought it was due to my wireless network. I use a combination of DDWRT and Airport Extreme to provide wireless to my house. The airport provides the wireless as a dedicated AP and I use ddwrt as a bridge at the far end of my house to provide some LAN connections.

My new ThinkPad was utilizing the ‘N’ wireless network and I figured that maybe the T410 and it’s Intel Centrino 6200 Advanced wireless card were incompatible with the ‘N’ version on the airport extreme. I spent some time adjusting the wireless settings on both the router and the laptop and still got an inconstant performance or just poor performance overall. In order to troubleshoot some more I disabled the wireless N on both the router and T410 and reverted to just “G”. After that change, there was no performance improvement. Basically the connections from the net Thinkpad were running at about 200k – 100k and dropping pings. I did a quick comparison to my old thinkpad (side by side) and it was getting around 7 Mbits per second.

After a few days of troubleshooting I figured I could just live with the performance, because I basically use the laptop for browsing and coding. This proved to be untrue, It was horrible when trying to move files and update sites.

So today I called Lenovo support and discussed my issue. The Customer Agent was friendly and very helpful. She walked me through 2 similar tests that I had done: Validate the settings and remove / reinstall the driver. After those tests, she asked if I would like to Send my laptop in for support to replace the wireless card. I referenced the lenovo thinkpad support forums I had been checking to see if others had the same issue.

I have been working in IT for many years and consider myself very familiar with ThinkPads, and do not like sending anything out for repair. I asked if they could just send the card and I would install it. She was very helpful and said they would do that right away. They are sending a card that will arrive in 1 day.

I hope someone at Lenovo reads this quick post and thanks their team for being friendly and helpful while providing customer support. I’ve been on the other end of tech support and appreciate it when someone is helpful, friendly and supportive.

Overall the call took 11 min, and that is a win in my book. Again, Plus 1 for Thinkpad.

Number of View: 862

I love the press and the new release that Apple is getting with the iPad2. I recently read an article regarding the Xoom vs the iPad http://blogs.computerworld.com/17907/motorola_xoom_versus_the_ipad_2_the_xoom_is_a_clear_winner

The base argument is around the horsepower and processor in the device, the multi tasking features, flash support (soon), gyroscope, and tabs on the browser. As I look at how the iPad is used at our house and how I use it. I don’t think I need any of those things. They are nice, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not what I use.

An interesting counter argument is brought up by Robert Scoble (http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/02/no-apps-no-sale-ipad-2-vs-motorola-xoom-vs-rim-playbook-vs-hp-touchpad/) I agree with his view.

1. Apple iPad 2. Has apps. 65,000 of them.
2. Motorola Xoom. Has no apps. Oh, sorry. 16. At least no apps designed for the large format. Designing an app that works on a smart phone isn’t the same as designing one that works on a large screen. Most of the apps I’ve “stretched” really suck compared to their iPad equivalents.
3. HP TouchPad. Has no apps. Heck, it isn’t even shipping yet.
4. RIM PlayBook. Has no apps. Heck, it isn’t even shipping yet.

Overall the new tablets that are coming out may have better hardware than the Original iPad but are very close with the iPad. If you are a hardware junkie then you may care. If you surf the web, remote into computers, use an ssh terminal, play games, watch movies, or check email. You probably don’t care. You just want an easy to use robust device, like the iPad. The item I am amazed that people forget it the battery life… I think Apple wins on that item.

You also want apps. What a simple word “app”. Apple has them, the others don’t. Yes, the apple store may be the only place, and it’s not open to everything, but it is solid. I’m a linux user at home and a passionate opensource advocate, but the iPad is such a solid device.

What are your thoughts?

Number of View: 1105

If you are like I am and continue to use your iPhone / iPad for more then they are used for. Jailbreaking or just tinkering, you will love this great little app called iphone explorer

It is installed on either a PC or Mac and allows you to browse files on the ios device.
http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ I recently used it to update my customized iphone lock screen.

It allows you to both see files in the root directory and also the applications you have installed.

What a great simple tool to copy files to and from your iPhone and iPad.

Number of View: 2487

I recently setup my new laptop and wanted to test the network connection. I have had some issues with the speed and performance on wireless with the new T410. My home network has both a G wireless and N wireless network available. I have been seeing poor performance on the new thinkpad, while the old T61 would get almost twice the performance. I wanted to test this, and found a great tool iperf to allow me to validate my concern (I have since learned that the wireless cart in the t410 is a bit suspect)

iperf is a little gem to have for testing. It is a network packet generation tool that will allow you to measure bandwidth. It has a server and a client portion.

You can read about iperf here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iperf
I used a quick tutorial from Linhost.info http://linhost.info/2010/02/iperf-on-windows/ to get the install going. I had 2 cases I wanted to test. My new laptop to another box on the wireless network and my laptop to a pc on the wired network. (both G and N).

First Step was to download the application. I got it from here. UCF.edu: (https://nocweboldcst.ucf.edu/files/iperf.exe)

To run you only need to open a command prompt (start | run | cmd) and change directory to where you saved the file.

I needed to run iperf on both a windows and a linux box. The install for windows is simply download and run the iperf.exe. On linux I needed to grab the latest release. I am running ubuntu so it can simply be done by running sudo apt-get install iperf

To configure the the server side of iperf you only need to run the command iperf -s (both on linux and windows). To allow this to work on linux I needed to open port 5100. To do this on ubuntu I ran the following command to open ufw.
sudo ufw allow 5100

To test I ran iperf -s on both the ubuntu and my windows pc on the network.
On the client machine, the T410 laptop in my case I ran

iperf -c 192.168.2.22 (this calls iperf with the client switch and the name of the server to communicate with-192.168.2.22).
Here are the results of the Ubuntu box on the wireless network
Client

The results were: (6.67 Mbits/sec)
Interval Transfer Bandwidth
0.0-10.0 sec 7.96 MBytes 6.67 Mbits/sec
Server

I then ran the same test to the PC on the LAN directly to the wireless AP. This resulted in 14.8 Mbits/sec

From my test results I can see that using the G network is only getting me about 2Mbits per second. However connecting to a wired pc through the G network results in about 14Mbits per seconds.

To be a bit more robust in testing I had the Linux box run the test to the windows PC as well.

this shows that 2 wireless clients do not get that great of throughput between them.

To round out this post there is also a graphical element to iperf (jperf) it is written java and can be downloaded at Google Code http://code.google.com/p/xjperf/downloads/detail?name=jperf-2.0.2.zip&can=2&q=

Once you download and extract the files you can run jperf.bat to launch the application.
Here is a screen capture of jperf running on the Laptop connecting to the Windows PC on the LAN

Overall iperf has been a great tool to help diagnose issues with network latency and bandwidth.

Number of View: 1728

Prior to having an iPhone I had a windows mobile device. That was a long time ago, and I don’t miss it at all. There is one aspect that I do miss. That is the ability to customize the home page / lock page.

Over the weekend I set out to customize my iPhone / iPad lock screen. If you have a jailbroke device you have the ability to do this. Here is my first run at customization.

There are many options if your device is jailbroken.

APPS:
Multibarlockscreen: http://www.hackthatphone.com/2x/themes_with_winterboard_section26.html
Homescreen 2.0: http://www.jailbreakitouch.com/index.php/articles/23-articles/144-homescreen-20-weather-widget-for-iphoneipod-touch.html
Intelliscreen: ($9.99)http://intelliborn.com/intelliscreen.html
LockInfo: http://lockinfo.ashman.com/

Each item has it’s advantage. Intelliscreen is the leader of the pack. I ended up going with Winterboard and a customized theme. I followed this tutorial.
http://lifehacker.com/#!5763876/how-to-customize-your-jailbroken-ios-lockscreen

Number of View: 674

I have been creating more and more sites with WordPress. I have found it is a great tool and easy to configure. Since I enjoy working with PHP, WordPress makes customization easy. One of the many features that allow WordPress to be a very robust tool is the ability to use plug-ins.

A plugin I recommend to everyone is a caching plugin. Caching is a great feature to speed up your site. For those not failure with caching it allow for files on the web server to be stored statically and delivered faster to the browser. Read more on WikiPedia (caching)

In WordPress there are a lot of options for caching. Here is a great article describing a comparison of some of the top caching plugins. (The best caching plugin)

I tend to agree with the author on the W3 Total cache (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache) as one of the best, but on most of my wordpress installs I stick with WP Super Cache (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache)

Super Cache allows you to have a view of what is in the cache and also tweak some general settings. It is not as robust as W3cache but it allows me to quickly and safely create cache on a site.

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I am frequently creating Visio diagrams to use for software development or web applications.  I typically use the built in elements and icons.  Recently I have found it difficult to find some items that I would like to have in my designs.    The great team and group over at OSA (www.opensecurityarchitecture.org) have many tools to both help with designs but also elements in the designs.

If you are not familiar with OSA I would recommend looking at some of their patterns or their library to understand how this great group can be useful.  They help both visually display IT standards but also security standards.

Recently I have been using their Creative Commons released Icon set to help in my designs.  Simple icons like padlocks, wifi signals, users, and servers.  Not only are they good looking but it is very functional.    It never hurts to have a design that is both elegant and useful.

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I’ve posted before regarding browsing the web on a public wifi network like your local coffee shop or restaurant. I will repeat my message, this type of browsing is not secure, you don’t know who else is on the same network you are using. It is not hard for someone to view your sessions or info. (take for example firesheep) It allows anyone that uses firefox the ability to download a plug-in and see other wifi users facebook sessions.

So what are you suppose to do? To begin with, you should secure your connection to the internet. Securing your connection can be done a few ways. Some of the more practical methods are SSH tunneling or a VPN connection. These allow you to use an unsecured wifi network and send your traffic to a known secure network somewhere else.

If you are unsure what a SSH tunnel or a VPN is, you may have more trouble securing your connection. For the novice I suggest using a Free or Paid VPN service if your work does not offer one.

Here are two free VPN connections that I am aware of:
1. OPENVPN.net – http://www.openvpn.net/ SSL/TLS based VPN that you need to install software to use (windows or linux)
2. MacroVPN – http://www.macrovpn.com/
3. USA IP – http://www.usaip.eu/en/free_vpn.php
4. Projectloki – http://www.projectloki.com/

Paid VPN connections
1. AlwaysVPN – http://alwaysvpn.com/
2. Wifi-vpn – http://www.wifi-vpn.com/
3. AccessVPN – http://www.accessvpn.com/
4. http://worldvpn.net/

I have not used any of these services but have seen them on a few top 5 lists. I use both SSH and VPN connections back to my home or my office to secure my connections.

I recommend using a PPTP client on your home router as a simple method to secure your connections. Read my article on how to setup a VPN on DDWRT.

Number of View: 547

Lifehacker (lifehacker.com) is a productivity site that I frequent. Every year the put out a list of free applications for windows and call it the Lifehacker Pack 2010. The most recent list is out.

Lifehacker Pack 2010

This is a great list of applications that any windows user should use. From burning cd’s / Dvd’s to tools to re-install your computer software. Over the years I have found that I automatically use most of these tools. Happy Installing.

Number of View: 525

I was reading my daily RSS feeds and came across this headline.

“More than 10% of all PCs worldwide now on Windows 7″. (http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2010/04/22/more-than-10-of-all-pcs-worldwide-now-on-windows-7.aspx)

It stood out and made me interested. That is pretty amazing, since Windows 7 has only been out for a few months. Considering the volume of users that have a PC that is huge number and to get to 10% this quick is just outstanding. I have been lucky enough to use 7 for quite a while at home, but still use XP at the office.

I am continually amazed at how people upgrade and update their home PC’s. Not many of the people I know who are not technical would even be able to tell you how to upgrade their OS. In fact, most of the people I end up helping with their tech problems just purchase a new PC rather than upgrade the OS.

I wonder how many of the sales are tied to a new PC? I would even love to know what the numbers were of people upgrading from XP or Vista?

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Continuing my security theme, I decided to see what the iPad looks like on a network. Can you ping it, what does nmap say about it, does OS detection work, are there any open ports?

To test this I used both my iPhone (jimiz-phone) and iPad (jimizIP) connected to my wireless network.

The first thing I did was lookup the MAC address. There are many ways to do this but I like to use (www.coffer.com/mac_find/) It answers with Apple Inc
7C-6D-62 (hex) Apple, Inc
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014
UNITED STATES

I then ran 3 different OS detection tools: Nmap, zenmap, and xprobe2. NOTE: Zenmap is really just a GUI for nmap but it does clean up the OS detection. All three tools did a good job on calling out the OS as MAC

Nmap: iPad (It detected the iPad as OS X 10.5.6)
Interesting ports on JimizIP.jimizhome.com:
PORT STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open iphone-sync
MAC Address: 7C:6D:62:C7:FA:17
Running: Apple Mac OS X 10.5.X
OS details: Apple Mac OS X 10.5 - 10.5.6 (Leopard) (Darwin 9.0.0b5 - 9.6.0)

Nmap: iPhone (it detected the iPhone OS)
Interesting ports on Jimiz-Phone.jimizhome.com:
PORT STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open iphone-sync
MAC Address: 00:26:B0:67:18:B3 (Unknown)
Running: Apple iPhone OS 2.X
OS details: Apple iPod touch audio player (iPhone OS 2.2)

Zenmap: (both iPad and iPhone) detected both devices as an iPod Touch iPhone OS 2.2 – Screen Capture

Xprobe2: iPad (OS x 10.4.1)
[+] Primary guess:
[+] Host JimizIP Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Other guesses:
[+] Host JimizIP Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.0" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Host JimizIP Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9" (Guess probability: 100%)

Xprobe2 iPhone (OS x 10.4.1)
[+] Primary guess:
[+] Host Jimiz-Phone Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Other guesses:
[+] Host Jimiz-Phone Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.0" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Host Jimiz-Phone Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9" (Guess probability: 100%)

Each OS detection package did a pretty good job in showing it is an apple product. Nmap was able to identify the iPhone. I am guessing as the nmap OS database get’s updated it will also detect the iPad.

One interesting item that did show up is that port scan showed that port 62708 was open on both the iPhone and iPad. I did a little looking and it is the iphone-sync port.

Overall it looks like both devices are fairly secure over the wifi connection. It is always amazing to see what information your devices leak out (MAC address, open ports, OS detection, and user info)

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I mainly develop inside of a virtual server / application. In the last year I have been using Virtualbox instead of Virtual PC. I have a base image that I use as a testing machine. It is a base Windows XP image. I recently discovered that I could save some disk space by using a few commands to shrink / compact the vdi file.

To do this you will need to install a small application Nullfile (http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/nullfile-1.02.exe) This allows the empty disk space / unused data bytes to be filled with zero-bytes. You can read more about this at (feyrer.de/g4u/)

Once you have the file copy it to your Virtual Image. Run a disk defrag on your Virtual box system. After running a few defrags, you now need to just run the nullfile.exe. You only need to doubleclick the .exe.

Once the file is done, shut down your virtual image.
Open a command prompt and navigate to the directory where your vdi file is located. Mine is c:\vpc

Once in that directory we will be running the vboxmanage utility. On my Windows 7 pc it is located at C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe

Here is the command we will be using modifyhd -compact

“C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe” modifyhd -compact “c:\vpc\BaseXP.vdi”

Once this was completed my virtual image went from 4.3Gig to 2.7Gig.

Have fun with this utility. I was able to shrink my typical Windows 2008 server image to a much smaller size.

Number of View: 354

I am working with a client that deals in Film and has a business model around film community. I just read a great blog post on how theaters make their money. It was very interesting to me and I thought I would share with the rest of you. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060105-5905.html

Number of View: 452

My last blog post last week on Network Intrusion has generated a lot of traffic and emails. It was interesting to know that people actually read what I post. A lot of people responded in emails asking to know some more information on wireless security. I think this is due to the popularity of wi-fi, both in our municipalities and in hotspots such as coffee shops. I is amazing to see where wi-fi is available. You can catch a hotspot anywhere in our little town of Grand Rapids. If you are interested in finding a HotSpot near you head on over to grwifi.net, James has a great site that allows users to rate and discuss wi-fi hot spots.

Since my last post I have been thinking of ways to respond to the emails and feedback I have received. I think it may be best to do a 2 part series on wireless security. The first part will be to show what kind of information your laptop our application is sharing on the wireless network. I will just briefly walk through some typical situations where you may be sharing more information then you know about. In part one; I will discuss the common applications that may share information. I will also discuss the tools used to gather that information, to show how easy it is for someone to steal.

The second part of the series, I plan on discussing and showing methods to help prevent unknowingly sharing information to others. This will include software applications and techniques for securing your applications and systems.

It is amazing to me how many people are unaware of what their computer or applications do on the network. In reality your computer is very chatty, it likes to send information and it is up to the user to help secure and limit the amount of information that is sent. In the next few blog posts, I hope to show people what they can do to secure, encrypt, and defend when using their computers.

To keep everyone up to date from my last post. I did go back to the wi-fi hotspot and did not see the kid their sniffing the wireless network. But, if I do see him I plan on confronting him head on. I have not seen a clear argument that Sniffing a network is illegal yet, and plan on doing more research. It feels like it is illegal, but in a sense it is not much different than listening to people talk in a room.

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((REVISED – TOO MANY SPELLING ERRORS))) – it may have been too late to post

Ok I have switched jobs and currently I am using a Dell Latitude D800. People who know me, know that I do not have much respect for the Dell laptops. There are a few reasons for this. 1. They don’t make them. 2. Why call them laptops when they are the size of my Commodore 64. 3. If you can’t make a mobile computer mobile, then don’t (just don’t)

Number 3 is where the Computer Input discussion comes in. If you have read my earlier post (Track Back) You know my feelings on people who have a mobile computer and carry a mouse to use with it. Why can’t they just use the input devices on the computer to work. Well this logic I have carried for years, is now making sense to me. The reason people carry a mouse to use with their Notebooks is because notebook vendors make a crappy (that is a nice word for what I would call the pointing device’s on this Dell) touchpad or trackpoint.

The Dell I have is equipped with both the pointing stick (track point) and a touch pad. They both suck. Lets start with the pointing stick. First of all, it does not move very fluid at all. You have to push very hard to move the pointer (And yes I have adjusted every setting for the thing) Second, the location of the buttons when you use the trackpoint are horrible. They are not only in a bad spot (too close to the space key) but they are crappy to push. You see they are flush with the keys so if you happen to choose the touchpad they would not get in your way. From years of working on a ThinkPad I can see why people use a mouse when using this dell. The track point is not even worth trying to use. My hands are already telling me that Carpal tunnel is on the way. Not to mention that the button normally takes 2 tries to single click (it feels like you have to press with all your might to make it click)

Now let’s move to the touch pad. So with the pointing stick sucking as much as it does on the Dell (I still have an IBM thinkpad and it is heaven to the fingers and clicking thumb), I decided to give that a try. And the results are still the same. Why bother. You have to move your fingers from the keys, you have to move both hands to either click or drag something.

Why does this have to be so hard. Are laptop vendors in bed with the mouse vendors? Why do we settle for this? I am finally that guy. I go to work and connect a mouse to my laptop. Shame on Dell for doing this to me. Shame on me for putting up with a computer that claims to be a portable and yet ties me to a desk and a cord……