Making the Mac Network Engineer Friendly

With the popularity of the iPhones and iPads, the Mac has become practically viral among technology professionals. Even without official company support many of these users have banded together to create user-support communities within their companies.  I was recently at a large network hardware company and they threw out some statistics about Mac adoption.  Only 4 years ago they began to allow staff to purchase Apple devices, and since then almost 45% of their employees run a Mac. This is with no official technical support.  So how do they make the Mac Network engineer friendly?

There are several things a Network engineer needs.

1. Serial Terminal App - The Mac has several options including the built in terminal app.  But many of us like to have something more.  Secure CRT $99.00 - Great app kinda expensive though. There is also CoolTerm, it's free and so far so good, really clean interface and easy to use.
2. SSH Client - Once again the built in Mac SSH app is great and some cleaver developer out there created an app to manage multiple telnet and SSH connections.  JellyfiSSH $3.99, in the Apple app store, is a really easy and intuitive way of bookmarking all those connections.
3. TFTP Server - I haven't really explored TFTP on the mac, but I found TFTP Client $1.99, in the Apple app store.  I haven't had a chance to use it and I have to admit I love tftp32 for windows, but let me know what you find.
4. Serial Port - Steve Job's obsession with sleek industrial design killed off the com port a long time ago. Without a com port a network engineer is practically dead in the water.  There have been some really good USB serial adapters like the Keyspan by Tripp Light USA-19H, but recently I have been on the hunt for a Bluetooth serial adapter.  After looking online, Bluetooth serial adapters range from $40 to $250 dollars.  I am not looking to spend a ton of money so, luckily, I found a great post by Chris Marget on fragmentationneeded.net. In his post he highlights the UConnect BT232B from US Converters.  He says it's a slam dunk for Mac or PC and it seems very reasonably priced at $45.00.  I cant wait to give it a try and update once I get a look at it.

Lastly, I welcome your ideas so feel free to list any apps hardware tor tricks you have found to make the Mac the network engineers friend.

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It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Supermoon!

A "supermoon"or perigee-syzygy is a full moon that during its elliptical orbit passes closest to the Earth. For more cool info visit this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon  We had to use the manual setting on our point and shoot camera, ISO 100  F/8 and 1/80 shutter speed.

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Driftnet & Ettercap How to make it work!

EtherPEG/Drifntet works by capturing unencrypted TCP packets off your local network, collecting packets into groups based on TCP connection (determined from source IP address, destination IP address, source TCP port and destination TCP port), reassembling those packets into order based on TCP sequence number, and then scanning the resulting data for byte sequences that suggest the presence of JPEG or GIF data. EtherPEG/Driftnet works with any TCP/IP network, including Ethernet networks and wireless networks like AirPort, as long as the data is not encrypted. If the data is encrypted using IPSEC, or Virtual Private Network (VPN) products like PGPNet, or Web Browser SSL encryption, then third-parties cannot view your data.

The Driftnet oftware is very strait forward and easy to install, it does get a little tricky to capture traffic if you are on a switched network. This is where you can get a little creative. One way to capture traffic on a switched LAN is by deploying ARP poisining, there are diffrent ways to do this but ettercap and its easy to use GUI is probably the easiest. Disclaimer... Do not do this on a network you do not own. There are network monitor systems that can identify computers performing ARP attacks and pn public networks this could be illigeal.

Now on to installing the tools. Using Ubuntu you can actually go to software install and update, make sure you allow all software sources and search for ettercap. Installing Ettercap this way will install the GUI portion automaticaly, if you use apt-get you will get the command line tool and you need to specify what GUI to use. Driftnet is easy to install eithier use the software install and update tool or go to terminal window and type sudo apt-get install driftnet. Once everything is install you will need to modify the Ettercap conf file.

First lets configure etter.conf file. (this also lets you sniff for email passwords)

bt ~ # cd /usr/local/etc
bt etc # nano etter.conf

Go down untill you find this:

#—————
# Linux
#—————

# if you use ipchains:
#redir_command_on = "ipchains -A input -i %iface -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 %port $
#redir_command_off = "ipchains -D input -i %iface -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 %port$

# if you use iptables:
#redir_command_on = "iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport $
#redir_command_off = "iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport$

and change this above part to this:

# if you use iptables:
redir_command_on = "iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport $
redir_command_off = "iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport$

press f2 then y then enter now open ettercap and driftnet

in driftnet all you have to do is type this:
driftnet -i interface

and in ettercap
sniff—>unifiedsniffing(click ok on your interface
press Ctrl and s at the same time
Mitm—>arpoisoning—->check sniff remote connection
start—>start sniffing

Thats it just wait for the other person to surf site and there pics will show up on your black screen.

hope you guys like.

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The Big Bang Theory & Leonard Nimoy

Can you believe it? I think Sheldon either cloned him from the napkin or the restraining order was lifted, but Leonard Nimoy will be guest staring on an episode of The Big Bang Theory, and I can't wait to see it.

Hold on a second though, how can Spock be topped? Nimoy in his twitter feed mentioned one Stephen Hawking will be guest staring on an episode this season, it's like a geek list of who's who in science and Sci-Fi.

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