Building The Net

Setting up IPv6 connectivity.

Back in December `09, my company ACT USA, began testing IPv6. These tests quickly advanced to our production environment. Over the last six months, I have been in the process of setting up native IPv6 connectivity for all our data centers. This connectivity is based on the dual stack model. This article attempts to cover the technology available, and the choices I made based on that technology.

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Exploit Against Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader.

I thought I got this posted the beginning of the week, but I guess it slipped through the cracks… June 4, 2010, Adobe confirmed that a zero day exploit exists in it’s Flash Player,  Acrobat and Adobe Reader software. This bug effects all of it’s supported platforms, and has been found in the wild.

So, you all know the drill, if your computer has the software listed in the Adobe Security Bulletin, then follow the instructions and get yourself safe!

— Stu

Building Redundant Networks in Data Centers.

I recently was asked to put together a brief web presentation on the different methods of creating redundant networks. I couldn’t think of a better place to put it, then right here on my blog. After all, I was overdue for a post anyways…

What do I mean by redundant networks?

A redundant network is two or more distinct paths for data to travel to and from an upstream network. In it’s simplest form, it can be a piece of equipment that can be manually placed into service easily upon a failure. More often though it is set up so that any single device or connection can fail, and without user intervention, a backup system or connection will automatically step in and take over the job of the failed device, or connection. A redundant network does not mean that no mater what happens, your data will still be reachable. There are many factors that need to be considered, ranging anywhere from your providers, to your applications, that can cause a failure.

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Amazon Brute Force SIP Attacks – Dave Michels Interviews Me.

Shortly After my “SIP Brute Force Attack Originating From Amazon EC2 Hosts” post, Dave Michels interviewed me for an article Dark Side of the Cloud. This is that interview:

Dave:   What do you believe the intent was of the attacks? Free long distance?

Stu: Certainly free long distance would be one reason… But there are many other reasons to hijack a SIP account. I’m sure that organized crime would pay for a block of active SIP logins. They could use them to circumvent surveillance, or possibly use them for fraudulent boiler room calls about extended warranties and such.

Remember, most folks still believe that the Telephone System is secure… They tend to believe someone who is calling them.

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SIP Brute Force Attack Originating From Amazon EC2 Hosts.

I woke up Saturday morning to find strangely high network activity on some of our inbound connections. After a quick review, it turned out that most of the traffic was going into several of our hosted PBX systems. After a little more digging, I discovered that several systems on the Amazon EC2 network were preforming brute force attacks, against our VoIP servers. They were attempting to guess user names and passwords for our SIP clients. I immediately blocked all traffic from the attacking IPs and examined the logs. Thankfully, I found that non of the attacks had succeeded in guessing passwords.

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The Technology of SCALE8x – A Post Event Review. PART – 2

This is the second installment all about the technologies used for SCALE8x. The first installment dealt with the services that the technology group has setup and maintains for the event year round. This installment will cover the pre-show setup that went into the technologies that were used at the show.

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The Technology of SCALE8x – A Post Event Review. PART – 1

Every February in Los Angeles CA, a group of dedicated volunteers get together to put on what many believe to be the largest all volunteer organized open source technology conventions in the US. This three day event features talks and exhibits specifically targeted at Open Source users, programmers, and system administrators.

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Adventures in IPv6… Or how I spent my Xmas Vacation!

Whether you are a network administrator, an end user, or someone that falls in between, you are going to be hearing a lot about IPv6 in the coming years. If you’re in the business of delivering network services, then you need to get up to speed on this… Because before you know it, you will have a client or end user come up to you with a problem that IPv6 is involved in.

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New ACT USA Web site using Drupal is now up and for all to see!

Thanks again to all the friends and co-workers that helped me get this done.

http://www.actusa.net

— Stu

A little history lesson.

For those of you that have been on another planet for the past 20 or so years, let’s cover some brief history. When I started playing with The Internet, if you wanted a web page, you created it with plain old HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. There weren’t really any WYSIWYG editors, so you had to know at least a little HTML language. Thankfully, the language was really simple. Simple, but rather limited.

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