Yech!

Waiting for a delayed flight home from JFK to SLC I noticed a lady with REALLY LONG FINGERNAILS waiting by me... So I took a couple of pictures.



It seems like she is the World Record Holder for the longest fingernails.

How does she do anything at all? Someone has to help her eat, get dressed, wipe, everything - 27 years just to get in the record books... Sheez! Get a life!

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/woman-has-longest-fingernails-in-world/20060928142809990002

I routinely see different celebrities on my travels - even had Steve Young sit next to me on a flight to NYC... but I try to follow the First Class Etiquette rule and don't talk... but I did listen in on this lady telling another passenger how many many Men have 'come on' to her thinking these fingernails were VERY SEXY... yech!

Apple Store...

I decided to do something fun after class today - straight from class I took a subway up to Central Park and walked around a bit, then headed over to the Apple store on 5th Avenue. The store is actually all underground, with a central atrium made of glass. The glass cube above ground is all you see. The glass cube on top has a spiral staircase going down to the store, and in the center is an amazing glass elevator... all the walls, ceiling, doors, of the elevator are made of glass. Way cool...


The store was amazingly crowded with hundreds of people milling around, working on computers, buying stuff, or asking the Mac gurus questions at the 'Genius Bar' - They didn't have the little cables that I was looking for... so I took another subway down to J&R Computer World down by the 'Twin Towers' area.

It was a nice extra diversion before getting some dinner and heading back to the hotel room.

Jill's gone... boo hoo...

Well, today Jill and I ate breakfast in the Hotel buffet thing... then took a subway over to the NYC Manhattan 1st Ward for their sacrament meeting. We got there with plenty of time to spare... about 5 minutes. We stood on the wrong platform, the one with the route 1 sign, but on this particular Sunday, the 1 line was on the express platform... after a bit of confusion we got 'er figured out and on our way.

After church we took another subway to Times Square then the Shuttle over to Grand Central Station, then a train ride North to Tuckahoe. Jill's fee were 'killing her' since she has these 'church shoes' that for Orem work fine. Jump in a car, drive to church, walk in church, then drive home. But here in Manhattan, it was walking to the Subway, up/down stairs, back to the Subway, between trains, and then finally the walk from the Tuckahoe Train Station to Laura's house... a bit too much on 'Church Shoes'

We had a nice visit with Laura, Alan and the kids. Of course I liked playing with the kids - isn't that what Uncles are for? Though I miss getting in on the adult discussions. Laura had a nice lunch prepared for us (thanks Laura!) then Alan was nice enough to drive us back to the Train Station. Alan had just come home and we got to talk a bit about his trip to Madrid. And see the great gift he brought back for Connor, not only was it a full Real Madrid soccer outfit, but was signed by David Beckham himself!

I thought it'd be easier for Jill's feet to catch a cab from Grand Central back to the hotel, even though it was only two stops or so on the subway - but the Taxi was stuck in traffic, something about a couple of street fairs going on today. But we made it back, and got Jill and her stuff packed and on her way to the Airport in time. (I heard from her via cell phone from the Gate)

I then got to spend an enjoyable (not) two hours in a very hot muggy laundrymat to get my clothes ready for next week. (I just can't seem to allow myself to pay a hotel some $100 or so to wash a week's worth of clothes!)

Next week... another week of teaching AirMagnet here in NYC.

Manhattan - AirMagnet & Jill

Well, I arrived ok at LGA and took a taxi in to the LaQuinta hotel on West 32nd - right by Greeley Square.

Woke up early and took a cab down to the venue - the Mason's Grand Lodge of Manhattan - 131 West 23rd - but the building is being rented by the New York Convention Center. We had 8 student packed into a room made for barely 7 - but the Advanced Site Survey and WLAN Design class went very well indeed. I walked back to the hotel and waited for Jill to arrive on her flight to JFK - she got in about 1 am.

I taught the second day while Jill was working on a final assignment of writing a variety of papers for one of her nursing classes all day. We walk around the area and ate at a grill in the first floor of the Empire State Building - our table was right next to one of the brick posts that hold up that awesome building. On the way back to the Hotel Jill found an H&M store and we HAD TO stop and do some shopping... Then some Korean Yogurt (it was way to tart and yogurty for me)

Today we went for MORE shopping - but this time I brought along an Anne Perry mystery and sat by a table in Greeley Square and waited while Jill shopped.

Then off to the Gershwin Theater for 'Wicked' !! The show was great - everything I'd heard and more. Very enjoyable - we had pretty decent seats in the middle section about 18 rows up.

Then a early dinner at Applebees... yes I know we could get Applebees in Utah... but it was raining at the time we got out of the Matinee and it was the closest place.

Then back to the hotel for Jill to change her shoes, then two more hours of shopping at H&M - I finished an entire novel in the time Jill spent shopping! But it is a joy for her to get stuff for her kids.

Tomorrow we'll go to Church at the Manhattan Ward (where the Temple is) and then catch the train up to Tuckahoe to spend a couple of hours with Laura, Alan, and the kids before taking Jill back to JFK for her flight home.

Florida State University - Tallahassee

Three days of Wireless Consulting for Florida State University in Tallahassee. Worked with their IT department on doing Site Surveys and analysis of their Wireless LAN infrastructure. The campus has over 45,000 students and 12,000 employees all in a city of only 120,000 - pretty much a college town. Well that, and it is the State Capitol.

These folks are mighty proud of their Football and Basketball teams - Go Noles!

The buildings are all made of brick - lots and lots of brick - The place is huge!

Off to NYC on a delayed flight - Tallahassee --> Tampa --> NYC - arriving at LGA at 1:30am and have to teach at 8:00am... whew!

Review of Nokia N800 for Wireless LANs

Bruce asked if I'd write up a review of my experiences with the Nokia N800 - here you go...

Earlier this year Nokia released an updated version of their popular Nokia N770 Internet Tablet. The N800 excels at being a small, light-weight, device capable of WiFi as well as Bluetooth access to the Internet.

I could go on an on about how this little device has changed how we access the Internet in our home. Instead of lugging around laptops, we have a couple of N800s that the kids access for Internet queries, (just what High School did ‘King James’ go to – while watching the playoffs), to googling, to streaming music, conducting mulit-user IM sessions, to just about anything you’d want to use the Internet for – but in a very small package.

The screen resolution is amazing! If the iPhone has this screen, I’ll be in line to buy one. Even though I’m so old now I have to use bi-focals to read the small stuff – I’m comfortable with the N800’s little screen – the resolution makes it possible to fit so much in a little package.

But for the interest of this Blog I’ll move on to the use of the N800 in a wireless analysis mode.

I saw an announcement for a new piece of wireless security gear – called a Silica. This software/hardware bundle puts the intelligent penetration attacks and exploits of Immunity’s Canvas software in a small Nokia. It looked WAY COOL and I *wanted* to have one. But the $3,600 cost felt a bit prohibitive.

I’ve since had a chance to play with a Silica – and was suitably impressed – I still haven’t parted with the $3,600 but here’s a bit of a review of the tool.

This is a customized version of the Canvas tool – shoehorned into this small form-factor Linux device (Nokia N800) It is VERY easy to use. Just turn it on and click the start scan…

It will run through a series of scans of the local wireless networks, then attempt to penetrate using a variety of currently known exploits to find and exploit holes in your wireless LAN. It’s like having a little team of hackers sitting in you hand.

I’ve found it to be easy to run with the Nokia in your pocket. Very unobtrusive! – but in reality it takes up to 20-25 minutes to do a full attack against a single AP. Not like while doing a real penetration test you’ll have an excuse to ‘hang around’ a specific area waiting for the attack to finish. (Though you could easily hide the device and come back to pick it up later – but that $3,600 cost will probably make you think twice about leaving it outside of your view)

The reports it gives are in HTML format – you can just e-mail them to yourself, or copy them off onto the SD cards used by the N800

It does a pretty cool thing when attacking a MAC-Filtered AP – it automatically finds an associated STA and spoofs it MAC address to get associated.

It doesn’t do ANY WEP Cracking or WPA cracking, or anything but the exploits that are in Canvas.

Ok, now for the less expensive, yet still fun stuff using a Nokia N800. As part of our Wireless LAN Security Assessment Toolkit course development. We came across the N800s, fell in love with them, then re-arranged and re-wrote many of our course lab exercises to specifically use the N800s. We added wVoIP, video over IP, as well as catching IM traffic, web browsing, and other conversations sent over wireless to use the N800 as our client of choice when ‘watching’ the open Wireless LANs and re-constructing conversations via packet capture.

Then we thought, “is there anything more we can use the N800s for”?

Since the N800 is just a little Linux computer… we added SSH, Terminal Shell, VNC, FTP, etc. to the system. Then once we got that running, it was a quick couple of steps to get Kismet and Metasploit running!

So just using Open Source software we were able to take the little $400 Nokia N800 and make it ‘like’ a Silica!

Just slip this little ‘bad boy’ in your pocket running kismet and go WarWalking to get all the APs in your area, including finding ‘hidden’ SSIDs. Or, start Metasploit and let ‘r rip – attempting whatever known exploits are available for Metasploit.

(By the way – this is NOT a fast device for Metasploit – but Way Cool to have running)

On the other hand – it makes a great Kismet platform!

We’ve got ours running the classroom with GoogleTalk and Gizmo Project for wVoIP and IM – but you have to have a Wifi access to use it, so this wont’ take the place of your cell phone. (It is possible to pair this device via Bluetooth to a cell phone running G3 speeds – but the easy way is with Wifi)

One more thing that is just *fun* to use the Nokia N800 and Wireless LANs – and I found this out by accident. I was testing in our offices a new access point – so I had the N800 associate to this new AP and started a ‘Hitcast’ session listening to some Internet Radio station. I kind of liked the station and so put the ‘radio’ in my pocket so I could have some tunes with me as I finished up writing up the analysis of this new AP. I checked my watch and realized the mail would have arrived, so I went out to the mailbox – down a long flight of stairs, outside the steel-sided building my office is in, and across the parking lot to the community mailbox to check the mail.

It wasn’t until I was heading back up the stairs and a co-worker commented on my choice of music that I noticed this little wonder continued to stream music the entire way. Thus was born the Audio Site Survey! Just associate, then walk till the music drops… Simple easy and leaves your hands free to work on other things while doing a fairly decent site survey. Cool!

There you go – a quick review of the Nokia N800 and how one might use it with Wireless LANs – if you want to see more about our Wireless LAN Security Assessment Toolkit class, check it out over at www.hotlabs.org/wlsat - as part of Bruce’s Blog you can use the discount code ‘Bruce1071’ to get $1,500 off the class.

Enjoy!

Keith Parsons - Managing Director

Institute for Network Professionals

Editing & Penetration Testing Certification

So right after Sunday School, back to the airport for a series of planes and rental cars getting me to the hotel in Myrtle Beach SC around 3:30am on Monday.

The conference was held at the Myrtle Beach Marriott... nice hotel...

But I got to stay instead at the Fairfield Inn...

The TechnoSecurity conference started on Monday morning - I sat in only one session on Monday, and one session on Tuesday - the rest of the time I was in the hotel room doing testing and editing on the WLSAT course student materials - to make sure the instructions worked on the hardware. Also doing some extra additional labs and adding screen-shots where necessary.

Then on Wed/Thur spent my time 13 hours on Wed sitting in on an ECSA/LPT course - this is high level security assessments and vulnerablity scans... (Ethical Hacking) then another 8 hours on Thur - followed by a 2-hour certification exam. I passed! Yea! So with that one exam (and an FBI character check, passing three other exams, and studying over 1200 pages of text...) I received the Licensed Penetration Tester certification.

I never thought of the title, in the IT industry you hire people to do Penetration Tests all the time, it's the standard way of 'proving' you have strong security and that hackers can't break through your perimeter... but when I mentioned it to Jill on the phone... she started to giggle. I guess it has other conotations...

Karrissa put up a 'joke' sign for me when I came in late Thursday night - the whole family is so proud of my License to do Penetration Testing...

Brent's Graduation - Honeywell

After a quick flight back from Baltimore after the Lacrosse Finals - What a finish!

A day at work, then we had a great day watching Brent's High School Graduation. Karrissa's got the pictures from the Graduation. Then right back on a flight later that afternoon to head back east once again. This time to Ft. Washington PA - about an hour north of Philadelphia.

This was a custom wireless training for the Honeywell folks who install a variety of meters and sensors for the oil refinery and tank farm business. It was great to work with some folks who've been out in the field installing real stuff in hard-core locations. I learned a lot about the hazardous materials handling needs and outdoor wireless equipment.

A quick three-day (Th-Sa) class then back to Orem Saturday night so I could come back and teach Sunday School...