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Simple tips for better web password security from Sophos Labs on Vimeo.

The "Aurora" IE Exploit in Action from The Crew of Praetorian Prefect on Vimeo.

Hey, Dad. It's been a while, I know, but something happened last night that you're not going to believe. The Saints won the NFC championship and we're going to the Superbowl!

It was unreal, Dad. You've been gone for almost ten years now, and you wouldn't recognize this team. I remember, when I was young, you'd take me to the games. I remember walking into the dome, holding your hand so as not to get lost among the throngs, and marveling at the immensity of it all. The booming voice on the loudspeaker. The deafening roar of the crowds. Just you and me, rejoicing in the wins (few and far between), and suffering the losses. The Saints were a motley crew of cast-offs and has-beens and never will be's. Nobody ever gave us much of a chance. But you'd always make the best of it.

"There's always next year, son." you'd always say. "You gotta believe".

I started playing park ball shortly afterward. You came to every game. I remember, we were playing for the championship one year, and I was pretty worried. The other team was bigger, faster, and hell, their uniforms even looked better. Nobody really gave us much of a chance.

You told me, "On any given day, son, anyone can be beaten." you said. "But you gotta believe."

And you were right, because we won.

This whole season has been amazing, Dad. we'd have had a lot of fun talking about it. I can remember, a few years after those early Saints games, when I had outgrown park ball and discovered beer and cigarettes, when I became a teenager with a bad attitude, we talked less and less. But when we did talk, we always had the Saints. What the chances were. How they were going to do it this year. Always hopeful, but always ending in a disappointment. Nobody ever gave us much of a chance.

And you told me, "Son, you gotta believe."

Well last night it happened. I tell you it was magical. It was close all the way. Tie score for most of the game. I'm not going to lie, it was looking pretty grim there at the end. Favre had it and was driving, getting close to field goal range. The announcers were already talking about how great it would be to see Favre in the Super Bowl. Nobody really gave us much of a chance.

But then I heard your voice say, "You gotta believe."

Then the interception. Oh, my, how the Dome exploded! Then overtime, the drive and the breathless anticipation of the kick. Just for a moment there, time seemed to stretch out in all directions, to infinity and back again, and you were there with me, just for the moment, and the ball went through the uprights and thousands, no - millions of people, black and white, young and old, mothers, daughters, and yes, fathers and sons screamed with one voice. Then it was over except for the crying, the confetti, the exuberent celebration where an entire city that should have been wiped off the map screamed with one voice - "We believe".

I feel weird telling you about all this, because it seems like maybe you were there, somehow? It sure felt like it to me.

Anyway, you've missed a lot since you've been gone. The twin towers fell. LSU won a couple of national titles. Your grand-kids are growing from the toddlers you knew into fine young adults. Hurricane Katrina came and tried to wipe us off the map. A senator even remarked that maybe it would be best not rebuild New Orleans. How we were too uneducated, too poor, too damn stupid to know we were living in a place that was below sea level and we should just abandon the area. Nobody really gave us much of a chance.

But we believed, Dad.

Well, I guess that's about it. Oh, and Dad. One more thing. I read the paper today and they're talking about how great the Colts are. How Peyton Manning is the best QB ever. How the Colts defense is too powerful. How their offense is unstoppable. Nobody's giving us much of a chance.

But you know what?

I believe.

Who Dat Nation THIRTEEN N 1.mp3

If you manage a snort box, you know how much time you spend tuning the thresholds and tweaking the rules. Here's a quick way to search your rules files for sid to suppress in your threshold.conf. This works on BSD, but Linux should be fairly close.

1. Search the all the rules files for a pattern:

for i in `ls /path/to/rules` ; do grep -i "Pattern to search" "$i" ; done

This should return the line in the rules file with the sid you need to suppress

 

2. Issue this command to add the suppression to your threshold.conf:

echo suppress gen_id 1, sid_id <SID> >> path/to/threshold.conf

 

Step 1 will grep through all the rules files in the folder for a match on the pattern. Step 2 will add the "suppress" line at the end of your threshold.conf. Remember to cycle snort initialize the changes.

Just read a well written, thoughtful essay on the right to privacy, specifically countering the argument that if you truly have nothing to hide then government intrusion shouldn't bother you.

Check it out

I finally found a resource that concisely showed me how to update my FreeBSD ports tree, so I'm adding it here so I won't forget.


cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile /root

Next, edit the ports-supfile with the host of a responsive update server. Ping cvsupX.us.freebsd.org until you get a good response. Then add that server to the file under "default host"

csup -g -L 2 /root/ports-supfile

http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/minutes/full/

So, November is over, and so is National Novel Writing Month! It was a crazy, insanely busy month but I crossed the 50,000 word finish line. Now I have an (almost) complete first draft! Now I'll try to finish their advice on the winners page, "I just wrote a novel, now what?"