HOWTO : Using USB Devices on VirtualBox 4.1.8

Using USB devices on VirtualBox 4.1.8, which is installed on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, is easy.

sudo usermod -a samiux -G vboxusers

*where samiux is the user name

Then, logout and re-login. Or, reboot your system.

Now, you can use USB devices on VirtualBox without any problem. However, some devices do not work properly on USB 2.0 enabled on VirtualBox.

That's all! See you.

HOWTO : Create a normal user on MySQL and MariaDB

Using a root account on the web applications as user is risky. It is more secure to create a normal user for the web applications.

Step 1 :

mysqladmin -u samiux -p create mydatabase

*where samiux is the normal username and mydatabase is the name of the database of the web applications

Step 2 :

mysql -u root -p

Step 3 :

GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER ON mydatabase.* TO 'samiux'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';

*where mypassword is the password of the user samiux

That's all! See you.

Course Review - Am I ready for taking Penetration Testing with BackTrack (PWB)

Please be informed that this course has been renamed to "Penetration Testing with Kali Linux (PWK)"

If you decided to take the course - Penetration Testing with BackTrack (PWB), you are required to make sure your knowledge and hardwares are suitable or not. I am now going to share my experience with you all.

Although this course is an entry-level course of Offensive Security, you are required to have some knowledge of networking (including TCP/IP) and capable of operating Linux and Windows systems in command line.

You are also required to have some knowledge of programming. You are not required to be an elite programmer, but you need to understand what a program is and how to read it as well as understand what it is doing. The involved programming language are perl, c, python and bash shell script.

Using of virtual machine, such as VMWare Player or VirtualBox is required. It is because most of the students of the course running their BackTrack on the virtual machine instead of a dedicated machine. That means, you have at least 2GB of system memory for the host computer and guest machine. At least 1GB RAM for the guest will make you more comfortable.

A reasonable speed of internet connection is required. The lab is running on OpenVPN and your router (if any) should be capable of handling VPN connecting. After you registered to the course, you will have chance to test the VPN connection. If the connection is confirmed fine, you can then make the payment. Otherwise, you are not suitable to take the course and do not make the payment.

I have connecting the VPN over my Galaxy Nexus and/or Nexus One on 3G data connection via wifi share with no problem. Anyway, it all depends on the 3G connection quality.

If you will do your lab access at any place, you are suggested to install the BackTrack on the virtul machine and host it on a laptop. The size of the virtual machine is around 20GB as I find this size is more comfortable.

In addition, it is time. Make sure you have a lot of time to do the course and lab. As this course is very hard and time consuming as well as demanding, make sure your family members understood that you have a little time or have no time with them during the course. Sometimes, I even not sleeping for over 24 hours in order to compromise a box in the lab.

At last, taking care of yourself. Do not get flu or sick during the course. Hope you all enjoy the course as I was.

Course Review : Penetration Testing with BackTrack

Course Review - Penetration Testing with BackTrack (PWB)

Please be informed that this course has been renamed to "Penetration Testing with Kali Linux (PWK)"

The Background

About 2 to 3 years ago, I came to know BackTrack 3 and 4. I did not know what this distribution for. At that time, I knew that it is for bad guys according to a local computer magazine.

Later, I came to know the term of "Penetration Testing" and I wanted to know more about this kind of technology and skill. I searched for the videos on the YouTube and learnt something new. However, I did not fully understand what the videos actually talking about and doing.

Some guys in the internet stated that this course (Penetration Testing with BackTrack) is teaching you how to use the BackTrack Linux distribution only and nothing more. Okay, that was not bad at all as I knew nothing about this distribution. Why not took it a try?

Last year, I decided to take this course to learn more about Penetration Test and registered. The course vesion is 3.0 at the time when I took it and it is working very well on BackTrack 5 R1. The price is not high compares with other Information Security courses in the market.

The Course

This course is designed for beginners just like me. It requires you have some knowledge of networking and some programming experience as well as to know how to use Linux and Windows systems. This course is not designed for very skilled and experienced Penetration Testers, in my opinion.

You have a VPN lab, which equipped with several subnets and over 50 machines (I discovered 58), to practice what you have learnt from the course materials. Those machines in the lab are not designed for simple or single step exploitation. You are required to use your creative thinking and skill to compromise those machines.

You are not required to compromise all the machines in the lab in order to take the final challenge, the exam. You can even compromise one machine in the lab and then enroll for the exam. You have 23 hours and 45 minutes to do the exam and submit the report within the next 24 hours. You should enroll the exam within 90 days after the expiration of the lab access time unless you extended it.

The compromised machines in the lab is required to document as well as the exercises in the course materials. In addition, the extra miles in the exercises may count for the exam, I think. So, I suggest to do them all if you can.

In my opinion, make some friends in the #offsec irc channel may help you to solve some problems during the lab access. The most interested thing is that the officials at #offsec irc channel will not help you much for the lab. Sometimes, they may give out hints but sometimes are misleading or useless. They will also tell you to "Try Harder!". Yes, "Try Harder!" is their slogan.

The Challenge

The exam was not easy as I think especially under the pressure. My exam was started in the late evening, that means, I needed to do the exam overnight in the early beginning due to my time zone. I was very tired during the exam. Even I took an hour or so nap, I could not thinking very well. I did some careless mistakes or silly things during the exam and I was wasting a lot of time. My mind was blocked with the problems that I came across. I did not perform very well in the exam.

Finally, the exam was over and the report was submitted. Within 3 business days, I received an email which informed me that I passed the challenge. If you passed the challenge, you will be an Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP). I am an OSCP now!

The Conclusion

In conclusion, this course will teach you all the basic Penetration Testing skill and it is worth to take if you are not a very skilled and experienced in this field. I am very enjoy during the course. I learn a lot with the lab and course materials. Recommended!

By toonmanz | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Course Review : Am I ready for taking the course of PWB

HOWTO : BackTrack 5 R1 Minor Bug Fix

(A) unicornscan GeoIP not found :

cp /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat /usr/local/etc/unicornscan/

(B) Waiting for audio system to respond

mkdir ~/.config/autostart
nano ~/.config/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/bin/pulseaudio
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name=Pulseaudio
Comment=Start Pulseaudio

(C) Wicd cannot connect to D-Bus

dpkg-reconfigure wicd
update-rc.d wicd defaults


BackTrack WiKi
BackTrack WiKi

HOWTO : Cryptohaze Multiforcer on 2 nVidia GeForce GTX 590 and Intel i7-3930K

The Cryptohaze Multiforcer is a high performance CUDA password cracker that is designed to target large lists of hashes. Performance holds very solid with large lists, such that on a suitable server, cracking a list of 1 000 000 passwords is not significantly slower than cracking a list of 10. For anyone who deals with large lists of passwords, this is a very useful tool! Algorithm support includes MD5, NTLM, LM, SHA1, and many others. The official website of Cryptohaze Multiforcer is here.

Download Cryptohaze-Linux_x64_1_30.tar.bz2

tar -xjvf Cryptohaze-Linux_x64_1_30.tar.bz2

cd Cryptohaze-Linux

nano single_charset

Append the following :

ABCEDFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890~!@#$%^&*()_+|}{":?><`-=\][';/.,

Cracking the sample SHA1 hashes on my two nVidia GeForce GTX 590 system :

./Cryptohaze-Multiforcer -h SHA1 -f test_hashes/Hashes-SHA1-Full.txt -c single_charset --threads 512 --blocks 512 -m 500

Hardware Configuration :

CPU : Intel i7-3930K (12 cores with Hyper-Threading, Socket 2011)
Motherboard : ASUS SaberTooth X79
RAM : Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 32GB (4GB x 8)
Display Card : Inno3D nVidia GeForce GTX 590 384bit 3072MB DDR5 x 2
Hard Drive : Seagate SATA II 1TB x 2
Power Supply : Seasonic X-series 1250W
CPU Heat Sink : Corsair H100 Liquid CPU Cooler
Case : Corsair Graphite Series 600T Black

Remarks :

Installation of CUDA on Back|Track 5 R1

That's all! See you.