As of July 2008 I have established my own freelance infosec Consultancy 'Acasta'.  Most of the technical content (and nessql) will remain at this site for archive purposes, but all new technical resources will now appear at the Acasta web site.  For all intents and purposes, 'Rob's BSDBox' is now defunct!

I've now added a random set of photos from this year. Images include Malham, Gordale Scar, North Yorksire Moors, Lake District and London. Malham Cove and the preceeding Gordale Scar have to be one of the most visually stunning places within England. I would highly recommend it (and the Yorkshire Dales) for a long weekend. However, be warned, the clamber up Gordale Scar can be daunting. At peak times you can also expect to wait in the queue of eager hikers at the mouth of the Scar. Once above Gordale there is a stunning walk around Malham Tarn before you descend into the breathtaking Malham Cove. You can find more details here.

Careers make you do funny things. I left a great close knit, supportive and friendly team in June to further my exposure to HMG Infosec type work à la CLAS. This almost seems like Déjà vu having left a similar team environment in the NHS in 2005. However, the Information Security world is amazingly small. No sooner do you start talking to new colleagues about previous organisations than you start to hear familiar names mentioned...

One benefit of all this rain in South Yorkshire is that it has done wonders for my newly sown grass! The building project is now nearing completion with the garden put back in some order - although the top half is still looking like a builders yard... Click on the photo to see progress to date.

The wood and slates finally arrived (in a foot of snow!), and builder friend Mark came down with flu. As a consequence, the roofing work was delayed by a week. However, some warm and sunny weekend weather gave us the opportunity to finally fix the roof timbers in place. Every timber had to be individually screwed in due to the Paslow nail gun turning up without any nails!!! Click on the photo to see progress to date...

The NOC (Network Operations Centre) is now at the halfway stage!. The scaffold is up and the internals walls are built, minus some cavity insulation that blew away in last weeks high winds (if you see any yellow cavity wall insulation in your garden then you now know where it came from). Click on the photo to see progress to date...

I've finally gone and done it. I've set plans in motion for my very own NOC (Network Operations Centre)! My geekness knows no bounds. Technically, the building at the bottom of my garden will be a home-office, and secure garden equipment store - but unofficially, it's a NOC!

Following our decision not to move house, we decided to make use of an area of the garden that was abandoned and overgrown. This spot was ideal for a two room building that would satisfy all our storage needs, and act as a quiet study area come gym come music room. The building project will be a pure DIY effort with substantial help from friend Mark, a Building Site Manager by profession. Work has already started. Click on the photo to see progress to date...

Increasingly, many individuals and small businesses are networking their homes and organisations with a cacophony of both wired and wireless network devices. These days it’s not unusual to see small, low-cost, unmanaged desktop switches at the core of these networks.

Although trivial to set-up for even the most non-technical person, there are some frustrating problems common among these types of networks. There are a number of simple steps that can been taken to improve overall network hygiene and thus help avoid many common problems.

Read more... (1901 bytes more)

Recent experience has taught me that some technologies are intrinsically incompatible. For instance, take Indesit washing machines and SMC 802.11g wireless network cards. Just doesn't work, trust me.

Shortly after installing a FreeBSD based access point for my home network I experienced frequent wireless performance problems. Using ping to measure packet movement across my wireless and wired network, I observed average ping times of 2ms. During periods of poor wireless performance I observed average ping times of 20ms. Doesn’t sound much, but it was frustratingly noticeable.

Whilst attempting to troubleshoot the problem I was distracted by my washing machine revving noisily through its spin cycle. After switching it off to allow me to concentrate, my wireless ping times returned to 2ms average! Surely not? I switched the washing machine back on to resume its cycle and my ping times increased to a 20ms average.

There you have it – do not expect good wireless performance whilst washing your smalls.

The strength of opensource software is its ability to develop through its adoption and usage within the user community. During the past few months I've been using 'nessQuick' to process Nessus scan result files into a MySQL database backend. This approach greatly assists the later analysis and storage of large vulnerability scans.

Now, 'nessQuick' is a great little utility for dealing with single nbe files, but can be time-consuming when dealing with a dozen or so files. This is where the true benefit of opensource software is revealed.

I recently contacted Randy Nash (www.atriskonline.com), the author of 'nessQuick', to gain his permission to allow me to modify his original script. Randy not only welcomed and endorsed my proposed changes for directory parsing, but also kindly provided publicity for the new utility. I believe this is a truly excellent example of the spirit of opensource.

'nessql' may be downloaded here.