Forensic Lab Game Zero – Level 1 Results

The goal of the post is to provide solutions for the first level of the game for "hackers" created by forensic lab of CESNET association. With this game CESNET introduces a work of forensic analysts and test your knowledge of Linux OS. They are several assignments and practical tasks included inside Debian image which is available for download here.  The question / answer sheet is located inside the home directory of user kassad.

flab-virtual-pc

Picture 1 - Answer Sheet

1. In the Linux image, which username is logged in automatically on boot?

Check the desktop environment.

kassad@debian1989:~$ echo $DESKOP_SESSION
gnome-fallback

Check if automated login is enabled for Gnome desktop.

kassad@debian1989:~$ grep 'AutomaticLogin' /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf
AutomaticLoginEnable = true
AutomaticLogin = kassad

The automated login is enabled for the user kassad.  Now we need to compute the sha1 hash for the result.

kassad@debian1989:~$ echo -n 'kassad' | sha1sum
fb1216c760d6c0996991108886d1797d8bd4ca27

2. On the provided Linux image, what is the “ls” command aliased to for user from question 1 ?

kassad@debian1989:~$ type ls
ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'

We can get the result also by checking the content of the file /home/kassad/.bashrc.

kassad@debian1989:~$ grep 'alias ls' /home/kassad/.bashrc
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

kassad@debian1989:~$ echo -n 'ls --color=auto' Continue reading

Salesforce targets ‘citizen developers’ with new tools and training

If there's an overriding trend in the world of enterprise software lately, it's democratization, as tools previously reserved for experts are put in the hands of average users. On Tuesday, Salesforce.com climbed on board with new software, training and support services that aim to help more users -- not just professional developers -- build applications for the Salesforce platform.There aren't enough trained developers to create apps for the business world, the company says, so it wants to help users in all parts of the organization make their own. More than 2.8 million developers have already built some 5.5 million apps based on the company's customer relationship management software, it says, and at its TrailheaDX developer event in San Francisco, it made several announcements to expand that further.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

South African Lengau System Leaps Towards Petaflops

There are plenty of people in industry, academia, and government that believe there is a direct correlation between the investment in supercomputing technologies and the healthy and vibrancy of the regional or national economy. So getting a big bump up in performance, as South Africa’s Center for High Performance Computing has just done this week, is a big deal.

Up until now, CHPC has had fairly modest sized systems, but thanks to Moore’s Law advancements that have radically brought down the cost of compute and a more aggressive plan to invest in HPC within South Africa, CHPC is breaking into

South African Lengau System Leaps Towards Petaflops was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Docker and HPE: Accelerating modern app architectures in enterprise datacenters

Docker has evolved tremendously over the last 3 years to empower developers and IT operations teams to maintain greater control over their own environments without sacrificing agility. From an ops tool used by the original dotCloud team, to Docker’s commercially supported Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform, Docker Datacenter (DDC), Docker has been at the forefront of this evolution.

Today we are excited to announce the next evolution in the Docker story providing enterprises with infrastructure optimized for the Docker platform with the leading provider of cloud infrastructure – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Together, Docker and HPE will deliver integrated and fully supported Docker ready HPE x86 servers, bundled with Docker’s commercially supported Engine (CS Engine) right out of the box.

Continue reading

Hewlett Packard bundles hardware/software to create an all-in-one cloud package

It’s been a tumultuous past year for Hewlett Packard Enterprise but this week the company is unveiling a series of new offerings intended to solidify its standing in the private and hybrid cloud computing market.Key themes for HPE’s new cloud products are bundling software to make it more easily consumable, packaging that software with optional hardware to create an all-in-one cloud and being able to manage not only new, cloud-native workloads and technologies – such as application containers – but legacy and traditional workloads too. Bill Hilf, SVP and GM of Helion Cloud at HPETo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

20% off Oral-B Pro 7000 Electronic Bluetooth Connected Toothbrush – Deal Alert

If you'd like to step up your brushing game, this 20% off deal might be for you. The Oral-B Pro 7000 is a Bluetooth connected electric rechargeable toothbrush. Its best-in-class 3D cleaning technology oscillates, rotates and pulsates to remove up to 100% more plaque than a regular toothbrush, and has 6 different modes (ranging from "daily clean" to "tongue cleaning"). But it doesn't stop there. Bluetooth communication allows the brush to connect with your smartphone to give you real-time feedback on your brushing habits. It communicates as it cleans, so you know you're doing it right every time. An on-board sensor notifies you if you are brushing too hard to prevent harmful over-brushing, and a timer helps you hit the doctor-recommended goal of 2 minutes. The Pro 7000 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,500 customers on Amazon (70% rate it a full 5 -- read reviews). The regular list price is $149.99, but is currently discounted to just $119.97.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What’s Fueling the Move to a Converged Data Platform?

The datacenter is going through tremendous change, and many long-held assumptions are now being called into question. Even the basic process of separating data onto a separate storage area network, growing it, and pulling it across the network and processing it, is no longer necessarily the best way to handle data. The separation between production and analytics, which has evolved into an art form, is also breaking down because it takes a day or longer to get operational data into analytic systems.

As a backdrop to all of these technology changes, organizations say they need more agility. The ability to

What’s Fueling the Move to a Converged Data Platform? was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Wix promises AI website design, but fails to deliver true artificial intelligence

The world, or at least the world of technology, is fixated on buzzwords. Call it laziness, or call it simply a great way for companies to build context for their customers and prospects. Either way, buzzwords aren't going anywhere soon. And right now, "artificial intelligence" is the buzzword en vogue. I get dozens of PR pitches a day that promise to apply AI to dog walking, laundry services and enterprise resource planning.Today's example comes courtesy of Wix, a website development platform. Wix's cloud-based web development platform allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites using online drag and drop tools. So, what place does AI have in Wix's industry? According to Wix, AI is going to help its users eliminate the most significant challenges they face when building websites: time, design and content creation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Supporting the transition to IPv6-only networking services for iOS

IPv6 Plate

Early last month Apple announced that all apps submitted to the Apple Store June 1 forward would need to support IPv6-only networking as they transition to IPv6-only network services in iOS 9. Apple reports that “Most apps will not require any changes”, as these existing apps support IPv6 through Apple's NSURLSession and CFNetwork APIs.

Our goal with IPv6, and any other emerging networking technology, is to make it ridiculously easy for our customers to make the transition. Over 2 years ago, we published Eliminating the last reasons to not enable IPv6 in celebration of World IPv6 Day. CloudFlare has been offering full IPv6 support as well as our IPv6-to-IPv4 gateway to all of our customers since 2012.

Why is the transition happening?

IPv4 represents a technical limitation, a hard stop to the number of devices that can access the Internet. When the Internet Protocol (IP) was first introduced by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in the late 1970s, Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) used a 32-bit (four-byte) number, allowing about 4 billion unique addresses. At the time, IPv4 seemed more than sufficient to power the World Wide Web. On January 31, 2011, the top-level pool of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Continue reading

VMware: We love OpenStack!

A few years ago VMware and OpenStack were foes. Oh, how times have changed.This week VMware is out with the 2.5 release of its VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO). The virtualization giant continues to make it easier to run the open source cloud management tools on top of VMware virtualized infrastructure.+MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: OpenStack Foundation Director on why open source clouds should be the basis of your data center | How VMware aims to distinguish itself in the cloud +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building a “Network” Network

Over my years as a network engineer, I’ve notice that the engineering job tends to be somewhat isolated (or isolating). Part of the reason is probably that there tend to be one or two network engineers at a single company, munged in with a lot of other IT folks who share some common ground (but not entirely), so there’s little chance to interact with others who are working on the same sorts of problem sets on a day to day basis. This tends to produce network engineers who are more attached to their vendor than they are to their “day job.” In fact, this tends to make the entire network engineering world, to the average network engineer, appear to be “not much more” than the vendors who show up on our doorsteps, the vendor specific trade shows we can attend, and what we read online. This is—how can I say this gently—??

This is an unhealthy situation for your career as a network engineer—and as a person.

What you need to do is build a network of other network engineers—a network network—so you can broaden your scope, keep your ear to the ground for changes, prepare for changes, have Continue reading

11 theatrical security measures that don’t make your systems safer

Theater of the absurdImage by REUTERS/Mario AnzuoniThe term "security theater" was coined to describe the array of security measures at U.S. airports -- taking off shoes, patting down children and the elderly -- that project an image of toughness without making commercial aviation any safer. But the man who came up with the phrase is famous cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier, and it could just as easily apply to a number of common tech security measures. We talked to an array of tech experts to discover what security technologies are often just for show.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

11 theatrical security measures that don’t make your systems safer

Theater of the absurdImage by REUTERS/Mario AnzuoniThe term "security theater" was coined to describe the array of security measures at U.S. airports -- taking off shoes, patting down children and the elderly -- that project an image of toughness without making commercial aviation any safer. But the man who came up with the phrase is famous cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier, and it could just as easily apply to a number of common tech security measures. We talked to an array of tech experts to discover what security technologies are often just for show.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here