Geek Bits – Page 6 – The Wacky World of Chris Knight

2014/05/262014/05/28

Raspberry Pi, and Breaking the Arduino Mindset

I build a lot of projects around Arduino micro-controller boards. They are simple, easy to program, have lots of fiddly I/O ports, and there are all kinds of crazy ‘shields’ for extending their functionality. I have published a couple of Instructables that utilize Arduino controllers, and I have several projects that I still need to document.

I had one of those D’oh! moments today, when I realized that I had become stuck in an Arduino mindset, and it was holding me back.

I’m building a set of Raspberry Pi image capture systems for my Jeep. Each Pi will be running a camera. One will be shooting GPS tagged stills, and the other will be recording video in five minute segments. I need two Pi’s because the cameras I am using have a single dedicated port on each Pi. Maybe the camera port dependency is what got me locked into mirrored system mindset, or maybe I’ve just spent too much time fiddling with Arduino projects. Either way, I ordered a pair of Ultimate GPS modules from Adafruit.

It wasn’t until after the order had already shipped that I realized this was a bit of waste. I don’t need multiple GPS units, I just need to network the Pi systems to access a single instance of GPSD. I’ve got a sweet ASUS WL-330N that I can use to build a low power-draw wifi network in the Jeep, and two USB 802.11n modules cost less than a single Ultimate GPS module. I plan on giving the Edimax EW-7811Un modules a try. There’s a decent write-up on making these work, so I hope I won’t get burned by the Cheap Parts Paradox. (I’m only giving these a shot because Adafruit is out of stock on their RTl8192cu based wifi modules.)

How many other Ardunio-isms can I break during this project…

2014/05/252014/05/28

The Importance of Monitoring SSL Certs

The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “swscan.apple.com” which could put your confidential information at risk.

As of 4:59 PM on 5/24/14, every Apple user is getting the same scary error.

Don’t worry, you are probably not the victim of a man in the middle attack. It appears that the SSL cert for swscan.update.com, which is hosted at Akamai, has expired. This was probably due to a gap in the monitoring and management of the SSL certs provided to Akamai.

It is certainly possible that Akamai has been hacked, and a compromised SSL cert was installed. Not likely, though. To be safe, just hold off on any updates until Apple and Akamai get the cert updated. Alternatively, you can download updates directly instead of using the App Store. You can download all major updates here, and this server uses a different SSL endpoint that has a valid certificate: http://support.apple.com/downloads/

Pro tip for Apple’s security team: Even though swscan.apple.com lives at Akamai, you should set up SSL cert checks in Nagios for all exposed HTTPS end-points that are in the apple.com domain. These are the sorts of things you want to get notified about 60 days in advance. In the unlikely event that Akamai has been hacked and the cert replaced, this type of monitoring would have immediately alerted you. Win-win.

Both Apple and Akamai should have been monitoring this SSL cert. I do not think anyone should lose their job over this. If anyone does lose their job over this, that would be a failure of management, not the person or team responsible for SSL certs. I think this should be seen as an opportunity for improving monitoring and business processes.

I tried sending an email to security@apple.com to let them know they had a critical SSL cert that has expired. My email received an error in response: “Your message to jmet-si@group.apple.com could not be delivered for the following reason: This group does not accept external messages.”

Update: I received a response from Apple’s Security Team. They obviously resolved the expired SSL certificate, and they’ve addressed the bounce issue I reported. Fairly promptly, for a holiday weekend.

2014/05/092015/01/07

PHPPwner3000

PHPPwner3000 is the ultimate PHP exploit tool. Utilizing fundamental vulnerabilities in ALL versions of PHP, it is able to upload files, query databases, and even slurp shadow files no matter what user php is running as. Using stealth sql injection, it can even bypass the protections provided by prepare/execute structures.

PHPPwner3000 is also completely fictitious. It is a honeypot entry in a job posting. I use it to determine if a candidate does sufficient recon and is capable of going the extra mile when they see a term with which they are unfamiliar.

If you have found this page because you saw an unfamiliar tool in a job posting, congratulations. You’ve just earned brownie points with one of the interviewers. It’s up to you to figure out which one.