Tor + Android = Orbot

I'm a pretty big fan of Tor, the anonymizing network known as an onion router. For this reason I was recently delighted to learn of Orbot which is a tor + local proxy implementation for Android! If you're not familiar with tor unfortunately an explanation is outside the scope of this article.

My android phone is rooted so I'm enjoying full transparent tor proxying. I read that on non-rooted phones Orbot will still provide some functionality with specific browsers so it's probably worth a download even if you don't have those magical superuser privileges.

RIP Whisper Systems, we hardly knew ye

Crypto-punks the 'net around are in mourning after yesterday's announcement that Whisper Systems was being purchased by Twitter. For those of you who haven't heard: Whisper Systems was the fledgling company of Moxie Marlinspike a hacker most recently in the news for his work with Wikileaks. His company produced many very interesting cryptographic tools for Android including WhisperCore - a full encryption and security system for Android, WhisperMonitor - a software firewall tightly integrated with WhisperCore, and FlashBack - an encrypted cloud backup system. Though the software will reportedly be available again soon it is the loss of the RedPhone service which will be mourned by geeks and activists alike.

RedPhone was an end-to-end encrypted VoIP platform combined with anonymous routing. This service was one of the most exciting technological developments I have ever encountered. The potential for such a service should not be understated. It would strike fear in the heart of tyrants and make authorities of all stripes tremble in their jackboots.

And so the app is already pulled from the market and the servers are down. What will Twitter do with their newly acquired technology? We'll have to wait and see. One thing's for certain, though, this couldn't have happened at a more inopportune time.

On a related note: another one of Moxie's controversial services WPA Cracker is still online. WPA Cracker does not appear to be affiliated with Whisper Systems which probably explains how it narrowly escaped the fate of the other services.

Missing .exe file association in Windows XP

I recently encountered an XP machine that seemed unable to execute anything. When opening an executable I'd be met with either "Application Not Found" or else the Open With... dialog box. Obviously this made the computer pretty well unusable. Though I'm not entirely certain how this occurred (virus?) I was able to correct the missing file association which enabled me to run the virus scanner. This page has a number of .reg files with the correct XP file associations for lots of different formats, notably .exe. There's some instructions at the top for getting these keys imported to the registry without being able to run regedit, but I found explorer correctly handled the .reg file without any tinkering. Once those keys were in place everything worked as it should. Easy as pi!

"The iPhone cannot be synced. The required disk cannot be found."

I recently ran across an iPhone that failed to sync in iTunes with this rather cryptic error message. It wouldn't allow me to sync any of the data quite properly and at one point even refused to allow me to delete music from the device. After a quick google search I came across this post on the Apple forums. Apparently this error can be caused by a number of different circumstances, but in my case it was in fact caused by a faulty USB port. The computer recognized the device and iTunes could even correctly identify the data on it, but that was as far as we could go. After plugging the USB cable into a different port everything worked as it should.

Octothorpe Grid Delivery Enhancehent

While attempting to watch the debate on CNN Live I was prompted to install the "octothorpe grid delivery enhancement".  Unsure of whether to proceed I checked google.  Turns out it's not only unnecessary to install this in order to watch the feed, this flash player "enhancement"  is essentially malware. 

Just click no to octothorpe!

Free Android Virus Scanner

The world of mobile computing is becoming increasingly risky. Viruses and other malware have been identified in both the Android and iOS marketplaces. As an Android user I've seen quite a number of different antivirus options on the market but until recently they were either a) from a developer I'd never heard of or b) expensive. Luckily I recently came across ESET Mobile Security RC.

I've used ESET Nod32 for desktop virus protection in my professional work and found it to be decently secure without requiring the obscene overhead of some other products. This product appears to be similarly light on resource usage while providing a complete suite of mobile security.

What do you get in the package? Well, real-time virus protection for one. ESET also provides call/sms spam protection with white and black list functionality. The security audit function scans installed applications and settings for anything untoward which could potentially leave you open for problems. The program also includes the ability to password protect any or all of these functions with a master password.

I've saved the best for last, though. ESET Mobile Security RC includes anti-theft functionality. With this program installed you can issue commands to your phone via SMS. Available commands are 'wipe' which clears your personal data, 'lock' which prevents use without your password, and 'find' which returns your phone's location data. In addition you can specify trusted contacts which are other phones (friends or family) from whose phones you could reset your password remotely if necessary.

True, it's only a release candidate and will likely cost a bundle when finally released, but this seems to be an awesome product. Grab it while it's free and give it a spin!

Toll-free ANAC

Have you ever needed to figure out the number of a phone line that you're dialing from? In my IT support work I regularly find myself without the necessary documentation regarding what lines are available where. Or even when I know what lines are in a particular location I may not know specifically which pair of wires corresponds to which number.

Enter ANAC, or automatic number announcement circuit. Generally these are special phone lines which read back the caller's number. The wikipedia article contains a rather extensive list of such numbers but contains no mention of what may be the most popular number at this time. Operated by Sprint, 1-800-444-4444 is toll free, easy to remember, and reliably gets you the information you need in a hurry. Tuck this tip away in your memory banks, it's sure to come in handy eventually.

Enable telnet on ShoreTel SG90

I needed to telnet into our ShoreTel switch this morning. This information is not listed in the manual but I was able to piece it together from a couple of other sources. First, navigate to C:\Program Files\Shoreline Communications\ShoreWare Server\. Next issue the command:

ipbxctl.exe -telneton <switch IP address>

You should then be prompted for a password. This default password on this model switch is "ShoreTel". You should then see the message "telnet access enabled". That's all there is to it. I understand the V version of the switches require ssh, but the plain jane SG90 still uses telnet.

Convert .ova to .ovf in Linux

I just spent the better part of 20 minutes searching for a method to convert a .ova file downloaded from the web to the .ovf format required by my version of VirtualBox-ose. VMWare has a program called OVFTool that may do this conversion but requires registering to download and may only be available as a windows binary. After hitting several dead ends I found the simple answer. As it turns out the .ova file format is a tar image!

tar xvf SomeVMImage.ova

will dump the .ovf and related files. Easy as pi!

New G-Mail Layout

Google recently began rolling out the new layout for G-Mail. Initially I was annoyed at the popup window offering me the "new look" but I figured I better dive in since it was going to be forced on everyone eventually. These are my initial impressions.

I was surprised and disappointed that they didn't port over the old themes, but after a week now I've been very happy with the new Basic Black theme. In addition I've found the new button layout to be absolutely fantastic. I think my favorite aspect is that I can now mark all as read with two clicks rather than the four it took me previously.

I did find the default display density of comfortable to be a massive waste of my screen real estate, but luckily this is easily changed with two clicks of the inbox settings button. The compact display density shows many more messages per page which is a much more efficient method of displaying the inbox.

I've heard some grumbling about the fact that the labels in the navigation pane to the left are hidden unless there are new messages. Sure, the rollover effect may be slow on some older machines or browsers, but in any modern environment this is a great improvement. I can now keep all of my 15+ labels neatly hidden away unless they require my attention.

Overall I think this was a step in the right direction. The interface is simplified and cleaned up and the other improvements Google made have pushed this product in a good direction.

Stuttering x264 720p in vlc

There are various tips and tricks floating around for how to fix this problem, but the only one that worked for me was to switch to Media Player Classic - Home Cinema.  I was initially resistant because I thought this was some kind of hacked version of the old windows media player.  Much to my surprise and delight it's just an open source project with a similar name and interface.  Support for hd content seems to be way better than vlc.  Give it a try if you're having trouble with vlc.

Can't login to Joomla! after JoomlaPack/Akeeba restore?

I recently moved a Joomla! 1.5.14 site to a different server for testing. I ran JoomlaPack to create a backup, moved the backup file, and ran kickstart to restore it. This seemed to work fine but when attempting to login to the admin backend the login page would simply reset after I entered my credentials.

As it turns out there appears to be some incompatibility with MySQL 5.5.16 that was preventing me from logging in, but providing no error that I could find. I downgraded to MySQL 5.5.8 and everything appears to be back in order.

Install gmote on 64 bit linux

It appears that gmote and vlc may not play nicely together on 64 bit systems (specifically Ubuntu 11.10). Gmote consistently complained that it was unable to load libvlc.so even though vlc was correctly installed and working. I found this tip here to issue the following command to fix the problem:

sudo apt-get install libvlc-dev

One command, and 20 seconds of patience, and now gmote works like a charm.

Rationale

I work in IT, at least in theory, for a medium sized nonprofit agency. I spend a lot of my day using google to find obscure answers to annoying problems. Once in a while I have to come up with those answers myself. My rationale for this blog is to post my problems and solutions so that they may be indexed by google and help any other poor souls who find themselves in the same predicament. Ready, set, GO!