/dev/random

pcapr.net is a cloud (again!) service available for a while. Basically, it’s a repository of pcap (“packet capture”) traces uploaded by members. The packets are dissected and presented in a human readable form. Once inspected and indexed, a search engine helps you to find interesting traces using a simple syntax like “http admin” or “sip [...]

Recently, I read a RFP issued by a customer. The main topic focused on a perimeter security but a paragraph mentioned the protection of SCADA environments. I’ve no practical experience with SCADA and I tried to find relevant information about the deployment of security solutions in such environments. Here follows a compilation of information about [...]

A few weeks ago, I received a copy of Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring from Packt Publishing. Here is my review. The book has been written by Dinangkur Kundu and S.M. Ibrahim Lavlu, who have both strong open-source softwares knowledge. Their book covers Cacti, a well-known framework (running on top of a LAMP server) to collect [...]

Question: Do you remember the Amiga computer? I was an early fan is this wonderful machine and operating system. Starting with AmigaOS 2.0, a macro language called ARexx (with a letter “A” like “Amiga) was added. This language, derived from REXX (“REstructured eXtended eXecutor“) developed initialy by IBM. The power of ARexx was the communication [...]

If you’re working in the small world of Internet Providers or perform any other business related to Internet, you are for sure aware of the major outage affecting Colt since yesterday in Europe (or you’re living on the moon!) Checkout the article on theregister.co.uk. I received feedback from several customers whose business relies on the [...]

In the long list of new features brought by the new iPhone firmware 3.0 comes “tethering” in my personal top-ten! What’s this? Tethering means a way to connect to the Internet from a device (usually a laptop computer using a mobile device as modem/router. More info are available on Wikipedia. Another Belgian blogger already posted [...]

The Internet is a wonderful media, based on strong routing protocols like BGP. Originally, the Internet was designed to be “unbreakable” (of course, it is not): If a path to a network is unavailable, an alternative (or backup) path will be used. BGP is designed in this way: based on strongs rules, it decides which [...]

“Know your Network!” All network administrators have to know what append on their networks: what are the flows of information between hosts, to Internet, between VLANs. This is a requirement for security or provisioning purposes but also for business when the amount of IP traffic has to be billed to a customer. For years, Cisco [...]

SIP (or Session Initiation Protocol is a protocol commonly used in VoIP applications. Here is a good introduction of SIP (within a funny context): VoIP Demystified: SIP.

NMon provides a new appliance ‘nBox Recorder‘ or ‘The Packet-to-Disk Recorder‘. The goal is simple: lot of security analyzis are based on packet captures. This box just performs a simple but critical tasks: It captures the traffic and stores it under the pcap format. Then? Just take your time to analyze the data with your [...]