I have a Dell Inspiron 700m. I have Kubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 on this box.
This is how I got the WiFi going on this beauty.
1. Boot up into windows and get the Intel Driver from Intels 1st site OR Intels 2nd site

2. Save the files into a location on the drive which is accessible through linux.

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root@trance:/home/trance# ls -al /media/hda1/intel/wireless_9.0.4_generic_109116/Drivers/
total 8680
dr-x—— 1 root root 4096 2006-05-14 05:42 .
dr-x—— 1 root root 4096 2006-05-14 05:42 ..
-r——– 1 root root 188416 2005-12-27 23:53 SetupWLD.EXE
-r——– 1 root root 4849 2005-01-25 15:17 SetupWLD.ini
-r——– 1 root root 13 2006-02-02 12:38 verfile.tic
-r——– 1 root root 1671168 2006-01-27 08:50 W29MLRES.DLL
-r——– 1 root root 2956544 2006-01-17 21:34 w29n50.sys
-r——– 1 root root 14821 2006-02-02 00:47 w29n51.cat
-r——– 1 root root 119785 2006-01-18 15:47 w29n51.INF
-r——– 1 root root 3325312 2006-01-17 21:32 w29n51.sys
-r——– 1 root root 466944 2006-01-27 08:49 W29NCPA.DLL
-r——– 1 root root 122880 2005-12-27 23:53 WLDMLRES.DLL
root@trance:/home/trance#

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3. Go back into Kubuntu and get the ndiwrapper-utils, ndisgtk, ndiswrapper-source using

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root@trance:/home/trance# sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper ndisgtk ndiswrapper-source

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4. As root ndiswrapper -i will use the windows inf file to install the wireless driver. ndiswrapper -l lists the driver installed.
example:

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root@trance:/home/trance# ndiswrapper -i /media/hda1/intel/wireless_9.0.4_generic_109116/Drivers/w29n51.INF
root@trance:/home/trance# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
w29n51 driver present, hardware present
root@trance:/home/trance#

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5. modprobe ndiswrapper checks if the ndiswrapper kernel module is installed. An installed module will result in no error. Then write the config file such that you do not need to go through the earlier steps every time you restart the system.

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root@trance:/home/trance# modprobe ndiswrapper
root@trance:/home/trance# ndiswrapper -m
Adding “alias wlan0 ndiswrapper” to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

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6. If some error occurs check the output of lsmod

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root@trance:/home/trance# lsmod | grep ndiswrapper

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7. Now that your ndiswrapper is installed and configured. We now need to start up the wireless interface. On my box the wireless interface used to show up as eth0, however, it was not configured to use the ndiswrapper so I would get ‘segmentation fault’ on doing ifup eth0.
However, with the drivers set, I checked if all was well.

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root@trance:/home/trance# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

eth0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:”MySSID”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:13:46:46:78:28
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=97/100 Signal level=-27 dBm Noise level=-89 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.
root@trance:/home/trance# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:CE:D9:0D:74
inet6 addr: fe80::213:ceff:fed9:d74/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:48 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:236683 (231.1 KiB) TX bytes:1104 (1.0 KiB)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x8000 Memory:e0206000-e0206fff

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:3F:6B:36:2F
inet addr:192.168.0.109 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::212:3fff:fe6b:362f/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:3050 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1534 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3117901 (2.9 MiB) TX bytes:159050 (155.3 KiB)
Interrupt:10

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2058 (2.0 KiB) TX bytes:2058 (2.0 KiB)

root@trance:/home/trance# ifup eth0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.eth0.pid with pid 0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:13:ce:d9:0d:74
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:13:ce:d9:0d:74
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
ip length 328 disagrees with bytes received 332.
accepting packet with data after udp payload.
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.0.1
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
ip length 328 disagrees with bytes received 332.
accepting packet with data after udp payload.
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.101 — renewal in 241302 seconds.
root@trance:/home/trance# ifdown eth1
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.eth1.pid with pid 6390
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth1/00:12:3f:6b:36:2f
Sending on LPF/eth1/00:12:3f:6b:36:2f
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPRELEASE on eth1 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
root@trance:/home/trance# ping www.google.com
PING www.l.google.com (64.233.161.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 64.233.161.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=233 time=73.5 ms
64 bytes from 64.233.161.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=233 time=51.6 ms

— www.l.google.com ping statistics —
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 51.688/62.634/73.580/10.946 ms

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8. To make sure that you don’t have to type iwconfig essid key every time you log on. Change you /etc/network/interfaces file to have these few lines at the end of the file. wireless essid is your wireless network name (SSID) and the key is the WEP key.

iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid XXXXXXX
wireless-key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

My /etc/network/interfaces of Ubuntu (in FC/RHL this is the counterpart of the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX)
looks like:

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# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
script grep
map eth1

# The primary network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid USC-Trojans
wireless-key # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
script grep
map eth1

# The primary network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid USC-Trojans
wireless-key 11111111111111111111111111

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The problem: Using Digital Certificates issued by a Certification Authority (CA) with curl.

The situation: I have a .cer (Digital Certificate) file, .pfx (Personal Information Exchange file i.e., the private key for the certificate). I cannot use either of these to authenticate to the web service as curl would not accept these formats.

The solution:
1) Convert it into PEM format (X.509 certificate) using openssl.
openssl pkcs12 -in abcd.pfx -out abcd.pem
Enter a passphrase and a password.
2) Still you cannot use this with curl because you’d get a few errors.
3) Convert this PEM certificate into three different certificates for the client, the private key and the certification authority certificate.
openssl pkcs12 -in abcd.pfx -out ca.pem -cacerts -nokeys
openssl pkcs12 -in abcd.pfx -out client.pem -clcerts -nokeys
openssl pkcs12 -in abcd.pfx -out key.pem -nocerts
4) Use the following command:
curl -k https://www.thesitetoauthenticate.com/test -v –key key.pem –cacert ca.pem –cert client.pem:

This stuff is also mentioned on curl forum at http://curl.haxx.se/mail/archive-2005-09/0138.html

Another trip to the national parks of US. This time in Arizona State! The Grand Canyon in AZ, USA lying on the Colorado Plateau in Northwestern Arizona is a blistering (not because of heat, though) example of soil erosion caused over more than 4000 years by Colorado river.
We organized a trip of 8 people in a Toyota Sienna. It turned out to be a fantastic van and it could easily carry the load of all the eight people and still not run out of steam like we did on the trail.
We reached the Canyon at around 7:50 am on the Saturday morning after an 8 hr drive. But getting apermit at such a short notice in summer is really difficult. So we ended up with no campgrounds in the Mather campground as well as the Backcountry CBG campground (Bright angel creek, just 0.5 miles from the Colorado river). So we first went to 10-X Campground just near the Grand Canyon Airport. This campground is on first come first served basis and takes only 10 bucks for a day. Anyway, we did not have too many choices with the campground so we had to take whatever spot we got.
Then at around 11:30 am we started on the Bright Angel Trail. According to the canyon officials the worst times to take the trails is between 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. But the brave souls that we were, our enthusiasm and inexperience with Canyon led us to believe our valor more than we had! So we began the trail with a backpack carrying water and food for each person. Every man for himself!
But we met a volunteer on the way who advised us that unless we were Marathon runners (which we are not by any stretch of imagination) going to the Plateau Point and coming back on the same day is not advisable. The thoughts that he put into our minds germinated into a tree of doubt which we could not climb.
We could reach only the 3-mile point and climbed back up. But as it turns out we had made almost 70% of the elevation and most of the inclining hike. Had we continued the further trail was not at all steep. But this is hindsight or may be a case of sour grapes or maybe a case of inflated self-esteem !?!!
Then after coming back exhausted from the trail we set up our tent and after some food went off for a well-deserved siesta. The next day after lot of deliberation from Gandhe and Sardar we made it again to the Canyon to look at the points on the South Rim itself. After going afound in the bus we saw most of the points and then headed back to LA with the same reverse route (64 S – 40 W – 15 S – 10 W)!
-Rajat.
My homepage.

If you are writing some Ring0 (or privileged mode code), say something like device drivers in Windows you’d probably be better served with a separate development machine and a deployment machine. This helps you to write poor code and still not lose hair because your development machine blue screens! 🙂

My setup was using a Windows 8.1 development machine and a Hyper-V based Windows 7 machine for debugging. You will need to execute different tasks on the “guest” (Hyper-V based Windows 7 virtual machine) and some other tasks on the development machine.  I followed many of the things from the MSDN blog post here

On your guest machine you would want to setup a named pipe and setup debug settings. To do that this is what you need to do:

Setup a virtual com port in the Hyper-V Settings (File -> Settings) , this port will be used to communicate from the host machine to the guest to communicate the Kernel debugging commands.

 

Now make sure that your target guest machine is configured to “listen” those commands.  Inside the guest VM, start a command shell (cmd.exe -> Run as Administrator).

 

Configure the bcdedit commands so that the machine can now be debugged.  Right after the 2nd command, reboot your Virtual Machine.

 

With the VM now configured to listen the debug commands via the COM1 port, and the debug mode on in the bootup settings, now start the WinDbg x64 on the host (using “Run as administrator”; you need administrative privileges for communication via Serial port).  In your kernel debugger on the host or the development machine (I’m assuming that these are both on the same physical hardware here).  Click on File -> Kernel Debug and you should see the following screen in the WinDbg window:

Hit Ctrl+Break or Debug -> Break and you will see something like this:

Just remember that when you break in the debugger, your guest in Hyper-V should become “unresponsive”.  The only thing is that it is not really unresponsive, its just being debugged.  Just to make sure, that you have the symbols package that is quite useful for debugging run the following command:

!process 0 0

If you see something like the following screen show up:

The following error means that the symbols are not defined.  Symbols help the debugger give more information about the commands that you are going to execute in the debugger.

**** NT ACTIVE PROCESS DUMP ****
NT symbols are incorrect, please fix symbols

To fix this, use the following commands:

kd> .sympath SRV*c:\symcache*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
kd> .symfix
kd> .symfix c:\symcache
kd> !sym noisy
kd> .reload /o

Then again try the command: !process 0 0 and see if you get a good response.  A good response looks like the following:

With this you should be good to go! Happy debugging and writing cool Ring0 code.

 

 

I was getting CUPSD errors when trying to use my Laser Brother HL 2040 printer. But, you can install Brother HL-2040 by going to the brother website and downloading the linux drivers located here:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_prn.html#HL-2040
I just installed the lpd driver using the command as follows:
$ sudo dpkg -i brhl2070nlpr-2.0.1-1.i386.deb
When printing now, just select local lpd and then select brother-HL2070 printer from the list (the drivers for both versions are same).

This time the DefCon CTF challenges were really tough. After about 40 hours of straight effort in those 2 days my head was spinning. There were some nice write-ups that people have posted:
Vedagodz’s site is up at : http://shallweplayaga.me/
Pursuits Trivial 400 writeup : http://pastie.org/510841
Binary l33tness 300 writeup : http://hackerschool.org/DefconCTF/17/B300.html (based on k0rupt’s original work)
Crypto badness 400 : http://beist.org/defcon2009/defcon2009_crypto400_solution.txt

Back again in the lab to get the module completed as this part needs a lot of effort.
The RabinHash available at Jaspell was very helpful in getting me started with the actual coding of the whole thing. Now since the Rabin Hash values are really varied I need to first figure out ways to search the packet hash presence effectively. Today I’ll try an idea where I’ll mod out the hashes to 3 distinct prime numbers and see the values they hash to. These indices from the table of pointers would point to respective hash values.

           mod p1                          mod p3
      |_______________|                |_______________|
      |_______________|--->[val1]<--+  |_______________|
      |_______________|--->[val2]   |__|_______________|
      |_______________|--->[val3]<--+
              :          :   :      |         :
              :          :   :      |___      :

First I needed to read through how kernel memory allocation works.
Kernel Korner – Allocating Memory in the Kernel | Linux Journal was a fantastic link that got me right into the mem allocation principles!.
Let’s see how the day goes!