Remember this page? It brings back so many memories.

I had a lot of fun writing up articles, tweaking the indecipherable php and shooting videos with my brother. I’m still looking around for the energy drink video which is definitely on one of my hard drives. It wasn’t a very good video, but this pancake one that you see on the homepage here was pretty damn funny.

Currently, I only have a few posts from the old blog transferred over to the new one but the goal is to get it all over here. I had XAMPP running on my desktop under Windows 7 RC and was in the process of transferring content (and designing a site for my aunt) when my Gigabyte EP45UD3R mobo went out on me. It would get to the memory initialization, then reboot and continue that loop. It’s been three weeks and I haven’t heard anything from Gigabyte yet, so expect an article on that soon.

So in the meantime, I’ve been using my HP NX6125 (Turion64 ML-37 / RadeonXPress 200M / Broadcom WLAN, GBit Lan) for pretty much everything. I have another desktop, but I don’t really feel like screwing around with it since it’s so dated (2002). As you can tell by the screenshot, I’m running Ubuntu, Jaunty to be specific. I tried importing the database and setting up the site on the latest xampp package, but MemHT is just too crappily written and relies on so many deprecated PHP functions that it didn’t even work right. I had to install xampp version 1.6.5a from a couple years ago to get it working right. I also had to modify my /etc/hosts file to serve freshme.at and www.freshme.at so I could use the site since the author thought it would be wise to use url’s when he could have used relative links. What a genius.

Well, I’ll have more content ported over soon plus a plethora of new posts that I’ve been waiting to write. There’s just so many ideas and so little time. I don’t even know which one to start with, but I do know I have a math test to study for so I think I’m going to get back to that!

In this tutorial we are going to connect to an smtp server inside of a telnet window and send an email to ourselves from ANY email address we choose.  This should work on most email servers, provided that you are on the same domain they are e.g. you are 1-2-3-4.dial.cool-isp.net and the mail server is smtp.cool-isp.net.

To find your mail server follow these steps.  Start>Run>CMD.  Type in ‘ipconfig /all’ in the command window.  Take note of the DNS servers.  Now type in nslookup and hit enter.  If you have a default server listed you are good to go, if not type in ’server [dns server ip]‘ and hit enter.  Type ‘q=mx’ and hit enter.  If you know your domain name suffix, type it in and hit enter.  The two servers listed are your mail servers.  There may be anywhere from one to several on the list.  You need an outgoing (smtp) server that is on your domain.

Connecting to the server

Open a new command window and type in ‘telnet smtp.your-isp.com 25′.  Port 25 is the standard smtp port, but some isp’s use different ports so double check on this first if it doesn’t work.  If all is well you should see a window like the one below.

Don't use Windows though, use Ubuntu.

Next type in ‘helo your-isp.com’ and hit enter.  It should give you some kind of lame greeting.

Type in ‘mail from:anyone@anydomain.com’ and hit enter.

Type in ‘rcpt to:you@yourdomain.com’ and hit enter.

This next part is important, if you don’t follow it correctly your mail will end up in the spam folder of the recipient who is in this case you.

type in ‘data’ and hit enter.  This next part will be the header and body of the email message.  On the VERY NEXT LINE type in ‘from:anyone@anydomain.com’ and hit enter once.  On this next line, type ‘to:you@yourdomain.com’ and hit enter.  on the next line you should put the subject like so ’subject:Spoof Emails’ and hit enter twice.

You can put the body of your message here, i highly encourage you to type it in notepad and paste it in by right clicking.  Any interrupt from the keyboard generates a new character including backspace and delete, which makes for a lame looking spoof email if you ask me.

When you have finished your message, enter a period on a blank line and hit enter.  It should indicate that the message has been sent.

Other things that can be defined in the header are content-type, reply to addresses, carbon copies, etc.  We’ll get into this more in another article.  Your spoof email should be in your inbox now.

Happy spoofing!

The solution is to run a Microsoft OS inside a virtual machine with a TAP network adapter / host adapter.  This way, the virtual machine will be just like a real computer as far as the network is concerned.  It will have a unique IP address.

I picked Windows 98 because its not such a fat waste-of-a-system OS as XP or Vista, and of course MyEnTunnel only works on Windows.

VirtualBox? Hell no.

I initially tried running Windows 98 on XVM VirtualBox, but it was a nightmare.  Network was OK, but the CPU load was very high so you have to use Dosidle or RAIN.  Even with a CPU idling program, the performance was crap and it seemed to be using a lot of system resources.  There are supposedly video solutions out there including DisplayDoctor 7’s built in driver, and some homebrew vesa driver.  I didn’t ever get either of those to work, and frankly, I wasn’t willing to put the time in.

Ok, so what IS the solution then?

Well, it’s no surprise that Sun doesn’t support Windows 98, a legacy Microsoft project mind you… Obviously for all of your Microsoft needs, VirtualPC 2007 is the way to go.  VirtualPC is Microsoft’s very own VM and it of course requires a Microsoft host (XP or Vista, either 32 or 64 bit).

Virtual PC is awesome for Microsoft OS’s.  All of the drivers work out of the box provided you choose the right OS when setting up the VM.

—

Microsoft’s equivalent to the VirtualBox TAP adapter is the MAC Bridge Miniport.

Install MyEntunnel the way you normally would, but forward the ports to your other computer.

Great video and CPU performance, plus mouse integration and other cool things with the guest additions installed.

Outlook Sidebar with Gmail

This should be very similar in Outlook 2007.  All of the settings are the same, but often found in different locations.

Setting up Gmail in Outlook

Open Outlook.  Go to Tools > Email Accounts.  Select add a new e-mail account and click next.  Select IMAP from the server types and click next again.  On the next screen enter all of your user info, email address, etc.  Enter in Gmail’s servers: imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com.

Once you have filled out all the settings you’re going to want to click the ‘more settings’ button.  Click the outgoing server tab and check the ‘My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication’ checkbox.  Click the advanced tab and check off that the server requires SSL for BOTH servers.  Change the SMTP port to 465.  Click OK.  You can test your account settings via the button now, if you followed directions it should work fine.

You should see your Inbox in the left pane, if you don’t you’re going to want to go back into the email accounts options > view accounts and change the settings for your IMAP so it has a data file of its own.

Copying your mail

To copy your mail, you would just drag everything over to the folder in your Gmail inbox that you wish to have the mail in.  Plan this part out carefully because doing it wrong can result in duplicates which is annoying.

Other Ideas:

• Add webmail accounts to Gmail via their built in settings.
• Use Evolution Mail (Linux) to copy mail from an exchange web account to your Gmail, and then set up a rule to forward your new messages to Gmail as well.  This is only necessary if you don’t have access to the exchange server externally and don’t want to add your Gmail account at work for security reasons.
• …be creative.  Gmail is the $h1zniT

Open up a terminal on your client machine and type “ssh-keygen -t rsa” for an RSA encrypted key.  Either RSA or DSA should usually work.  Don’t enter a passphrase and just hit enter until you get back to the shell.  SSh-Keygen should tell you where the keys are.  If you can’t find them, just add “-f ~/.ssh” at the end of the command and it will put them in the ~/.ssh directory.

Send the public key to the server

Switch to the directory where the keys are in: “cd ~/.ssh”  and set the permissions for the private key to 600 while you’re at it: “chmod 600 id_rsa” or whatever your ID file is named, just leave the .pub alone for now.

“scp id_rsa.pub user@ssh-server.com:~/.ssh”  You will have to enter your password, and the file will send.

Login to the server and add the key to authorized_keys

“ssh user@ssh-server.com”
Then change directories to ~/.ssh
“cd ~/.ssh”
Add the key:
“cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized keys”
Change permissions:
“chmod 640 authorized_keys”
Remove the key file:
“rm id_rsa.pub”

You may want to view your sshd_config to double check the name of the authorized_keys file if it doesn’t work, or ensure which encryption algorithms are enabled by viewing sshd_config.  You might do it like this “sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config”

Test it out

At this point you can log out of the server by typing exit.

You should now be able to log into the server without a password by using the private key.  You can specify the key by passing the –i parameter to ssh.  It might look something like this:

“ssh –i /home/dan/id_rsa dan@ssh-server.com”

You want to start by adding a user to Active Directory (i assume you are a domain admin, so this should be no problem…).  Name the user after the conference room.

Add the users to your Outlook Profiles

You’re going to need to log in as the new user in Outlook.  First, add the profiles so that you can choose between them when Outlook starts.  You do this through Control Panel > User Accounts > Mail > Click ‘Show Profiles’ > Click ‘Add’.  Done.

Alternatively, you can just log on to the AD account, and set up Outlook for this user.

Log in as the user & set things up

Now you’re going to open Outlook and choose the conference room profile when prompted.  Go to Tools > Options.  In the Calendar options uncheck ‘Default Reminder’ and set the hours that the conference room is normally available.  Click on ‘Resource Scheduling’ and check all three checkboxes (or just the first two, depending on the situation).  You may also want to click on ‘Set Permissions’ and define who can do what with this conference room.  Click ‘OK’ and then click ‘OK’ again on the next checkbox.

Book the meeting

Booking the meeting is easy, just make a new meeting, add users, and add the conference room into ‘resources’.

Disclaimer: Check with your local government about the legality of encryption in your country.  Exporting encryption algorithms from the United States to a foreign country is illegal, and using encryption at all is illegal in some countries.

What you need

• An always on high speed connection at home
• OpenSSh (linux or windows version will work)
• Putty (check the downloads section)
• A port scanner program (google ‘free port scanner’)

Step 1

First off, find out what ports are open on your company’s firewall… port 21, 80 and 443 are all most likely open, unless your company uses a proxy server.  I won’t show you how to find the firewalls IP address, but it is in many cases the gateway address of your machine.  In a command prompt type ‘ipconfig /all’  take note of the gateway address.  Run the port scanner on your company’s firewall and write down any open ports.  A port number can be anywhere from 1-65535.

Step 2

When you go home from work install OpenSSh.  Make sure your computer has a static IP address, if not set one that is in the static range on your home network.

Edit the conf file for OpenSSh and change the port that it runs on to one of the ones that is open at your work.  (21 is good because it’s used for file transfers – easier to cover up your bandwidth usage).  You may be able to change the port by forwarding it to a different external port on your router as well.

Enable remote desktop on your local machine (if you want to be able to connect to it from work).  Right click on ‘my computer’ > Properties > Remote Tab.  Check the box that says ‘Allow users to connect remotely to this computer’

Install a proxy server to surf the web at work.  I like Squid, but any proxy will work, follow the install instructions given and make sure to test that it’s working.

Forward the OpenSSh port you picked on your router so you can access it externally.  A good way to access it externally is to try to connect to your external internet IP with putty.  (Go to whatsmyip.com and enter it into putty, along with the port you forwarded.)

Setting up dynamic DNS on your home computer will be a huge time saver for you, this way when your IP address changes, it is transparent to you.  You will always be able to access your SSh server through a domain name.  I recommend dyndns.org.  Click ‘ADD’ then go back to ‘Session’ and save your session.

Step 3

At work, install putty or run it from a thumb drive.  Type in your external IP address from home (or your dyndns domain) as well as the port you picked.  Go down to SSh on the bottom and click ‘tunnels’.  In the Destination area, type in the local IP address of your proxy server as if you were at home i.e. 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x, as well as the port.  In the source port, type any four digit port number and write it down – you will be using this port on your local computer to connect to the proxy.

In internet explorer set the proxy server address to localhost or 127.0.0.1 along with the port you mapped in putty.

You can also map the remote desktop port 3389 from your home machine to a local port using the same method described above.

Conclusion
This should work on most firewalls that don’t use protocol blocking (we’re working on that too…).  This method of tunneling is a little hard to understand at first, but just keep at it and you’ll get it – it’s well worth knowing.

***AMENDMENT***
You can just click the ‘proxy’ option in putty and set up the information.  SSh IS a proxy server of sorts.  Use socks 5 for your programs (internet explorer, etc) and the port you chose to run it on!  No need for another proxy like squid!

MyEntunnel is the application of choice for NT platforms.  I haven’t tried it on a 64 bit platform, but it works great on 32 bit versions.  One cool feature is that it can save your password which avoids the need for a private RSA or DSA key.  It wouldn’t be a bad idea to set up a key if you wish to be more secure though.  You can find MyEntunnel at http://nemesis2.qx.net/.

The setup is fairly simple so long as you follow the instructions.  MyEntunnel relies on plink.exe from the Putty package by Simon Tatham.

A Screenshot of MyEntunnel

Linux / BSD

For linux and BSD’s I like to use AutoSSh http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/.  AutoSSh is a command line utility that really only has about two parameters: “autossh -M <port>[:echo_port] [-f] [SSH OPTIONS]”  AutoSSh requires that you use a key, otherwise it will require user input every time you reconnect.  You could easily make a shell script that would run this every time the system starts so that the tunnel is always active (or always trying to reconnect).  Install this on Debian via aptitude: “sudo apt-get install autossh” or whatever package manager you use.  The regular install is just a typical “./configure … make install” routine if you go that route.  I’m currently trying to get this to start up hidden on OSX which leads me to the OSX installation instructions.

Apple OSX

Install the XCode Tools or the Apple Developer Package for your version of OSX.  You can download the XCode tools on the Apple site http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/.  This will provide us with some standard utilities such as GNU Make.  After you have mounted the DMG, and run through the GUI installation of XCode Tools, install MacPorts at http://www.macports.org/.  MacPorts will allow you to install all sorts of BSD command line utilities, like Tree or different text editors.  Just follow their installation which consists of copying the install files to a temp directory, running the configure script “./configure” and running the make install.

Once MacPorts is installed there is a command which you have to run in order to update MacPorts before you can use it.  The command is “sudo port -v selfupdate”  I got an error initially that indicated a curl library was not installed – the MacPorts that I was using was very specific about having Libcurl 3 so I went ahead and installed that as well.  (Curl is a command line file transfer utility which supports http, ftp and other protocols).  http://curl.haxx.se/.

Once all of this is working, the install is very similar to a BSD or Linux installation:  “sudo port install autossh”

Port is merely allowing you to use a BSD binary on OSX (OSX is based on FreeBSD).

Then you’re all done!

The command in my shell script looks something like this:

autossh -M 7694:7695 -i /var/root/.ssh/id_rsa -R 3389:mycomputer.myworkdomain.com:3389 -R 6900:anothercomputer.myworkdomain.com:5900 –L 8932:192.158.0.66:3389  -p 21 dan@my-dyndns-domain.net

Don’t forget to include the path to the autossh bin and your ID file in your shell script!

Setting up passwordless ssh connections

There’s an article dedicated to this, so check it out if you don’t know how to set this up.  A passwordless SSh connection is required for AutoSSh to be effective.