Dustin Larmeir's tech blog.
Archive for January, 2010
Use strong passwords! If not you are asking for it.
Jan 22nd
Password strength is incredibly important! Having worked in the Tech industry for years I have seen so many servers get rooted, hacked and owned simply by a bruteforce attack or password guess. Realistically this should not be a problem but many people feel that passwords such as “password” “hellokitty” or whatever is strong enough. Generally as a guideline you will want a mixed lower case, upper case, alpha numeric passwords with special characters. An example of such a password is below:
U$34r341P4$$W0rdN00b13t!!
The key characteristics of a strong password are in this password above and this can be used as a guideline. Yes they are harder to remember but almost impossible to guess through a brute force. An example of what ignorance about password strength can do is in this article below:
http://news.techworld.com/security/3210769/users-on-hacked-site-used-trivial-passwords/?olo=rss
290,000 accounts were hijacked on this website. If that doesn’t hit home I don’t know what will. Keeping a strong password not only keeps you safe but also keeps others safe from you. In case you want a autgenerated password, you can use something like this: http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/ – this will do it for you 
Heavy Metal rooster
Jan 22nd
This video cracks me up! I don’t know why but it got everyone at work laughing…
Changing the Linux MOTD
Jan 22nd
Want a cool login screen when you login to the linux shell at the console of via ssh? All you need to do is modify the /etc/motd file:
]# cat /etc/motd
. . . |
| | |,---.| ,---.,---.,-.-.,---.
| | ||---'| | | || | ||---'
`-'-'`---'`---'`---'`---'` ' '`---'
__,-----._ ,-.
,' ,-. \`---. ,-----<._/
(,.-. o:.` )),"\\-._ ,' `.
('"-` .\ \`:_ )\ `-;'-._ \
,,-. \` ; : \( `-' ) -._ : `:
( \ `._\\ ` ; ; ` : )
\`. `-. __ , / \ ;, (
`.`-.___--' `- / ; | : |
`-' `-.`--._ ' ; |
(`--._`. ; /\ |
\ ' \ , ) :
| `--::---- \' ; ;|
\ .__,- ( ) : 
\ : `------; \ | | ;
\ : / , ) | | (
\ \ `-^-| | / , ,\
) ) | -^- ; `-^-^'
_,' _ ; | |
/ , , ,' /---. :
`-^-^' ( : :,'
`-^--'
Just place in your preferred art/text with your preferred editor and your good to go!
Verizon FIOS – My review of the service after 1 year of use
Jan 22nd
I purchased Verizon FIOS a little over a year ago and have been using it daily since that time. I have to admit that FIOS is the best internet I have ever used in a residential capacity. There are some pros and cons though I will list below:
Pros:
Lightning fast – I can generally meet or even exceed my plan. Most ISP’s cut you under your max throughput. – I am using the 25/25 as of this time.
Good uptime – I have only had one 5 minute outage since I started using the service. Other than that it has been up all of the time.
Sales/Support – Anytime we call they are polite and get things taken care of quickly.
Cons:
Price - price tends to be a bit high but you do get what you pay for
Filtered ports – The filtering of port 80 is annoying, but made up for by allowing 443. I understand the reasoning for this though as people may try to host malicous sites and this could present abuse issues. Other ports like 25 are filtered but this doesn’t bother me.
Crapware – When the verizon techs install the service they install crapware on yoru computer. ( this is perhaps the most annoying thing)
MOCA – Media over Coax is a pain in the neck and now Verizon’s default install. You can get cat 5 activated from the ONT upon request though.
For a tech like me FIOS is awesome! it is fast enough for me to host offsite backups and make the Internet an enjoyable experience. If you are shopping for Internet I would recommend seeing if it is available in your area.
