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Article posted on Jul 30

Defcon Updatelet

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 30, 2004, 3:13 pm

We're watching a girl do a talk on censorship, and did a drinking game where you drink whenever she said "like", "you know" or "umm".

I just chugged a corona in under 90 seconds.

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Article posted on Jul 27

I love #g7

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 27, 2004, 1:25 am

01:17 -!- Clippy [~user@cloak-946AB03.ph.ph.cox.net] has joined #g7
01:21 <@bot> Welcome Clippy's new player clippy, the MS Office Helper! Next level in 0 days, 00:10:00.
01:25 <@bot> clippy has changed alignment to: evil.
01:26 <@Afbc0m> clippy you are my new friend

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Article posted on Jul 27

How to make unprovoked retaliation more creative, by Martha Stewart

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 27, 2004, 12:45 am

Dear ckn,

Awhile ago, you banned me from GIMPnet entirely. As far as I can tell, I didn't provoke you at all; in fact, I hadn't really talked to you in the last few months, something I had intended to rectify. But that was never to be. Recently, I sent you an email, asking you to clarify WHY you did this, as well as a few comments you mentioned to others behind my back (IE, after I was banned).

You responded by denying my mail server the ability to talk to your mail server. Once again, seems like an odd thing to do, but I'm more interested in something else at the moment: the way you filtered my host.

Upon trying to connect manually, I came up with this:

$ telnet mail.neitzert.com 25
Trying 24.205.192.162...
Connected to mail.neitzert.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

The TCP connection went through, but it just hung there. No SMTP greeting. Port 80 was similar; I would manually issue a GET command, and it would just hang. I deduced that you were using a firewall rule similar to this:

iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -p tcp -m tcp --syn -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -j DROP

What this does is allow the initial TCP connection to go through (the SYN/SYN,ACK/ACK handshake), but denies all other traffic from my host. I'm impressed, quite ingenious. However, I thought to myself "how can I improve upon this", and came up with this:

iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -p tcp -m tcp --syn -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags PSH,ACK ACK -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -j DROP

Same general effect, but the middle line adds a bit of flavor. You see, the TCP connection is established, and in addition, you allow me to ACK any data sent by you during the TCP session. However, when I try to send anything to you (which is in a PSH,ACK packet), that is dropped. (The middle line is a bit misleading... What it means is that you inspect any packets from me that contain PSH and ACK, but only allow through packets that contain ACK, but not PSH.)

The net effect is that data you send me will be visible by me. IE, if I were to connect to your mail server under this new set of rules, I would see:

$ telnet mail.neitzert.com 25
Trying 24.205.192.162...
Connected to mail.neitzert.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 The black helicopters are coming. ESMTP

However, any text I type to you would be dropped. This sort of blocking would be much harder to diagnose and identify. Quite evil, if I do say so myself.

I hope you will consider the new rules I suggested, and I wish you the best of luck in your efforts to prevent me from communicating with you.

Sincerely,
fo0bar

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• Current mood: impressed

Article posted on Jul 26

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 26, 2004, 8:45 pm

Dear Reno,

Please stop partying in Wingfield Park. It disrupts my commute.

kthx,
fo0bar

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Article posted on Jul 25

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 25, 2004, 9:58 pm

Oy, full schedule for the next few months.

Thu: Drive down to Vegas with pplz (yes, we're *driving* to vegas... oy).
Fri-Sun: Defcon!
Mon: Drive to SF
Tue-Thu: LinuxWorld Expo!
Thu or Fri: Drive back to Reno

August 14 (Sat): Drive to Walnut Creek (SF bay area) for Burning Man work party for our camp
August 15 (Sun): Drive back to Reno

Aug 27 (Fri): Drive to Walnut Creek, help out with misc stuff
Aug 28 (Sat): Help pack up truck, drive to Burning Man
Aug 29 (Sun) - Sep 5 (Sun): Burning Man!
Sep 6 (Mon): Pack up camp, drive back to Walnut Creek, unpack truck
Sep 7 (Tue): Drive back to Reno

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Article posted on Jul 22

Yes, ghz, I'm looking at you.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 22, 2004, 1:08 pm

* pdx6 plays with vlans
<@fo0bar> pdx6: but, you should never use vlans! just use a separate switch for everything!
<@fo0bar> and snmp is evil! and so is the ability to log into your switch!
<@yosemite> yah
<@yosemite> !
<@pdx6> lol
<@pdx6> fo0bar: then buy me a switch
<@fo0bar> switches are evil
<@fo0bar> you want hubs everywhere
<@fo0bar> all in one collision domain
<@pdx6> hubs are cheaper too. I'll pass that on to my boss
<@fo0bar> and 100mbps is for losers
<@fo0bar> you know what? fuck cat5, go for thicknet!
<@pdx6> I hear thicknet is /really/ cheap

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Article posted on Jul 22

Goodbye, poor t-shirt

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 22, 2004, 1:41 am

Alas, my "#!/usr/bin/perl" t-shirt is on its last leg. Holes are starting to pop up in places, and it's almost to the point where I can't wear it to work anymore. It has served me well for many years, but I must move on, and plan for the inevitable.

(LiveJournal Poll #324511)

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Article posted on Jul 18

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 18, 2004, 3:05 am

I drive down to SF in 6 hours.

I should sleep.

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Article posted on Jul 14

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 14, 2004, 8:22 pm

Both my 802.11g MiniPCI card and SNES-to-USB Adapter arrived today. Both work fine with my new laptop under Linux. Although since it's a broadcom 802.11g card, I had to use ndiswrapper, but oh well.

There's a pretty nasty blaze going on outside Carson City. I didn't go down there tonight (partly because I'd just be adding to the traffic problems, and partly because 395 has been closed off and on today), but the evidence of the size of the fire is visible in Reno. Red sun, overcast/foggy look everywhere, and it was actually raining ash at work today! (For those not familiar with the area, CC is about 30 miles away from Reno.)

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Article posted on Jul 12

${new_employer}

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on July 12, 2004, 10:24 pm

BTW: Yes, I'm employed full-time now. Started last week. Yes, it's the place that everybody thought I'd be working at after the Redundant layoffs. :)

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