Yearly Archives: 2009

Oct 02

What Firewalls Won’t Do

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I had a customer ask me in a ticket today, “why isn’t my hardware firewall protecting my server against this brute-force [login] attack?”

My answer was “a hardware firewall will not protect your server against a brute-force attack.”

Why? because its not designed to do that. A hardware firewall is simply a traffic filter. It allows, disallows, or in some cases, routes traffic based on rules you set. It doesn’t know that Joe User’s account shouldn’t be logged into repeatedly from a Ukranian IP unless you tell it to only allow certain IPs through for that protocol.

That’s why we have scripts like BFD (http://www.rfxn.com/projects/brute-force-detection/).

Its also a good idea to move services like SSH to a random non-default port, disable direct root logins, and of course, only allow certain IPs to access services like SSH.

Sep 02

Sleep Stupidness

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Every once in awhile my sleep pattern gets all goofed up. Lately though, the cat has been the biggest reason why I can’t get a full night’s rest. For example:

Last night I got home at around 1:45am, went to bed, and then the cat started his whiny bullcrap. So I probably didn’t actually get to sleep until 3am. Barton woke me up when he got up to go to work around 6. The cat started whining again shortly after he left, so I ended up getting up at 6:30, and staying up until 9am watching TV. Then I tried to nap until noon, but kept getting woken up by things like the cat (!!!), traffic noise, and lawn mowers. Barton called at about noon, so I gave in and actually got up and started my day.

This is a pretty typical day. Some days my sleep really gets messed around if, when I come home, I wake Barton up and he stays up until he has to go to work. If that happens we usually try to go to breakfast, then I come home and sleep.

Aug 24

Just Bought A Sewing Machine.

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Inspired by Erin D from work and her new quilting hobby, I’ve decided it looks like much fun and decided to take the first step myself by buying a sewing machine.

I already have a crap ton of ideas of stuff I want to make/do (even besides quilts). First I’m going to have to relearn the basics of sewing on the machine. I took a semester of sewing in 8th grade, some 17 years ago. I have a couple of comforters that have lost their seams along one side or on the corner(s) that I can fix up as a first project.

Next, I think I would like to make a sewing machine cover, a tutorial for which I found on Sew, Mama, Sew!’s blog. Then, a slipcover for my Crackberry. Then, some LONG neckties for Barton (cause even the “Xtra Long” ones are too short). And OMG QUILTS.

Jul 31

Twitter

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I finally got tired of bots and junk accts constantly adding and re-tweeting me on twitter based on my tweets. So my twitter account is now protected. Apologies to anyone who was ‘twitter stalking’ me, if you wanna follow me just ask.