That’s a hell of a walk. Here’s the making of.

View Guy Walks Across America! in a larger map

For more awesome videos like this, check out my other site, I have No Pants And Must Scream.

[Source]

So much to talk about, so little time. Let’s start in chronological order.

Note: This post may not be too interesting to people who don’t really know me or interact with me, but I really need to write something because I’ve been having an urge to write.

My contract with Burger King ended at the end of June. They offered to extend me but seeing as they were paying below the poverty line of Miami-Dade County, I said thanks but no thanks and said my goodbyes to everyone. I actually got an email from two of my former co-workers asking how I am doing and how things are going. I was stunned because I had never experienced anything like that before. People who care. What a thought. It’s also how I found out there will be a local production of Evil Dead as a musical comedy with a three row splatter zone! I’ve never been to a musical play before, but it’s freaking Evil Dead. I know Bruce Campbell is here in Coconut Grove filming Burn Notice and probably won’t want to do a show like this, but the mere fact that it is possible has me giddy.

Moving on.

After four months of being separated by four time zones I finally have been reunited with my wife! I never want to do that again. Speaking of my wife, she started a design firm that was strictly web and print design but she is still trying to find our niche. Originally she was going to do it her self, but I’ve since been brought into the loop to help with technical matters. She handles all the pretty design stuff like Photoshop, typography, print design, etc, and I handle all the backend stuff like the servers, web server software (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), desktop configuration, technical documentation, backups, network, etc. She wants to cater towards small and medium business image management, but really, any design work from print, packaging, web work, video, photography, ads, etc is doable for us. I’ve been experimenting in Blender and designing our own furniture. I’m building out a lego 3D printer for rapid prototyping to see how things look physically and spatially but this is more of an interest of mine and doubt it’ll be used professionally. My wife has a background in graphic design, architecture and interior design so between the two of us, we can do a lot of things with a lot of variety.

We also booked out honeymoon. A week cruise from Miami to the Bahamas and Key West. Nothing fancy, but we really want to do something before we leave Miami. Which brings me to the point that I am moving out of Miami come the end of July and joining my wife in Seattle. That teaser I posted a bit back is our planned, three week or so road trip across America. I’ve never seen most of the places but my wife has, so I am eager to see how the Midwest is like. My brother is already in Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio doing an intership, so it’ll be nice to visit him. A whole host of combination of things is affecting my decision to leave, but let me just leave it that my family has not made it a very hard choice. I will miss a lot of things about South Florida but I am very excited about moving to Seattle with all the possibilities. I’ve never lived outside of South Florida as an adult so I am going to make it work, no matter the amount of effort.

Last but not least, I’m an uncle as of Monday night! My sister in law gave birth in Flint, MI in under twenty minutes. That has to be a record. Baby Naomi was born healthy and now the timer kicks off before my sister in law can return to Mexico to join her husband. Congrats to Hannah and Richie! I look forward to spoiling her throughout the years. I’ve already planned to turn her into a geek and teach her how to hack satellite boxes so you guys have TV in rural Mexico. Current geeky gifts include babies first robot, the infant owners manual (RTFM!), and a solar system mobile.

Till next time.

This one was too good not to share.

In this RSA Animate, radical sociologist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?

This is based on a lecture at the RSA (www.theRSA.org).

I have a Linksys BEFSX41 router for sale on Craigslist. While that’s not unusual, the call I got asking about it was very unusual. A gentleman in Broward called asking if he could VPN to a Watchguard firewall but not exactly. He was unable to describe what exactly he was trying to do so I asked him what his goal was. He wanted to add another layer of connection authenticity into his network to prevent someone from getting past it an in. Basically, he notices that someone is hacking around in his network.

The jist is, for years, there has been a cat and mouse game with a hacker, which just happens to be his boss, snooping on his network with a packet sniffer, trojan and key logger. He see’s it in his logs but he’s powerless to do anything. The crimes are too small to take to the local district attorney and suing his employer in civil court will cost him his paycheck. Man’s got to feed his family, especially considering how the local job market is in South Florida, can’t say I can blame him.

For context, one of his PC's runs Windows XP and the other runs Ubuntu.

Mr. Hacked Employee (MHE) has a serviceable firewall. So why is this guy still in his network? MHE got lazy and used Internet Explorer to log into his work network while not using a proxy. It doesn’t matter if you use the NSA’s own homebuilt firewall. If your own PC has been compromised, whoever infected you, usually has free reign within your network. Since we didn’t know to what extent his systems were compromised, I ordered a full planetary bombardment. It’s the only way to be sure. That means we assumed he had a way to see everything, what was typed, what sites he visited, everything. Here is what you should do if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Pull The Whole Network Offline

This is an absolute must step to get your house in order. Once you are offline, everything can be done without fear of re-infection and minimizes the chances your systems and network will be compromised to nearly zero. I say nearly zero because MHE runs a wireless network at home that leaves him vulnerable there. In this case, we have a general location of this hacker to another state so we don’t really have to worry about this wireless network being compromised by him. In either case, setup WPA2 and authentication whether its via LDAP, Active Directory or RADIUS. In the case of MHE, his Watchguard firewall handles all of those and much more.

Re-format All Hard Drives.

Purge the infection from the host. Nothing sucks more than reinstalling your OS on a partition that is already infected. Make your life simple and get rid of every infected and uninfected file. It will probably take too long to try and find the infection so just go ahead and get rid of it all. It’s simple and effective.

Re-Install All Operating Systems.

Once your hard drives are clean of anything malicious, it’s time to get yourself back up and running. I highly recommend MHE to get Windows 7 and NOD32, the best anti-virus ever,  if he absolutely must have Windows on his computer. In his extreme case of being actively targeted, I instructed him to get a Virtual Machine running for his Window’s needs. This protects the host from infection directly and gives you a sandbox to do whatever you want. If his virtual machine was compromised, he could very easily just reload from the last snapshot or even just blow it away and create a new virtual machine. This gives him a chance to use a clean and fresh machine every single time. Virtual Box was recommended because it’s free and it works well enough to web browse and work.

Reconfigure Your Firewall

If you got a firewall that’s as good as the Watchguard, use all of it’s nice advanced features. It will protect you from a good amount of attacks no matter who it’s coming from. Stateful packet inspection, deep packet inspection, proxy firewall, all are useful and should be employed to protect you from maniacs like MHE’s boss.

Reset Modem To Obtain New IP address & Use TOR

While obtainning a new IP address will only be useful till MHE re-connects to his work network, thereby revealing his IP address, this will give us time to do what we need to do. The Onion Router (TOR) is a wonderful piece of software by the lads at the EFF, and will do wonders to prevent MHE from revealing his IP address to his maniac of a boss. Ramping up the amount of TOR nodes (servers that bounce your connection between origin and destination) between himself and his employer gives him that much anonymity. Here is a great explanation and graphics that explain how TOR works to protect yourself.

Change Every Password

Everything MHE had from his email down to his AT&T DSL password. All bank accounts, websites, everything. Any combination of packet sniffer, key logger, and trojan probably gave his boss the hacker, everything he ever wanted. Once MHE brings his network and systems back online, inside his new, clean virtual machine, it’s time to go around and change all passwords. If MHE can call the various companies to change passwords, the better, as that can remove any chances of it being intercepted by your boss.

Find Another Job

I know the economy is tough, but Jesus Christ. Do you realize all the effort you just went through to prevent your boss from gaining access to all your things that she not have access to? Once you find another job, gather evidence and freaking sue the bastard into oblivion. Unless he has more money than you, then you’re probably boned.

Conclusion

After spending nearly two hours on the phone with MHE helping him out, I left him with a laundry list of things to do and a clear plan on what to do. While this maybe simple for me to do, MHE isn’t as well versed in this. It still surprises me how programmers (MHE’s occupation) are ill suited for general IT stuff. If you read this MHE, I wish you the best of luck. You’re in a tough situation with no clear way out. The sooner you get out of that hostile work environment, the better you are going to be. I know I covered a lot of concepts and terms, so please do not hesitate to ask for further clarifications in the comments. As for me, if you need a good router with a firewall and VPN capabilities, contact me.

Do you have a security, tech or other question? Leave me a comment and I can help you out!

Available in all local newsstands around the UK.

This was published in Micro Mart issue 1109 published Thursday 3rd of June, available in UK newsagents/supermarkets. A huge thank to Dave for sending this to me! I have another article being printed soon and will let you guys know when and where.

Micro Mart

Hey there intrepid readers. I just wanted to give you a heads up on new feature I have. Ever since picking up photography as a hobby, I’ve been a subscriber to flickr. Now, my photo stream will be showing off some of the latest photos I upload as a way to converge my writing space here with my photography space on flickr. I hope you enjoy the treats! Also note that I am experimenting with new themes and feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Available in all local newsstands around the UK.

There’s going to be a small article in Micro Mart issue 1109 published Thursday 3rd of June, available in UK newsagents/supermarkets. I obviously can’t get a copy but if someone can, I’d be willing to pay to get a copy. If you can help me out, please contact me.

Finally, someone who knows the proper definition and difference between a geek and a nerd. Please make a note for future reference.

The definitions I grew up with were that a geek is someone unusually into something (so you could have computer geeks, baseball geeks, theater geeks, etc) and nerds are (often awkward) science, math, or computer geeks. But definitions vary.

Kosher Klash
(Deli | North Miami, FL, USA)

Customer: “Could I have a hot dog?”

Me: “Sure, would you like any toppings?”

Customer: “Cheese, please.”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this is a Kosher deli and as per our religious belief, we cannot serve cheese with certain kinds of meat.”

Customer: “Well, I’m not Kosher, so I want cheese on my hot dog.”

Me: “Well, even if I was permitted to serve that, which I’m not, we do not have any cheese which would be suitable for melting onto the hot dog.”

Customer: “Well fine, then I’ll take my business elsewhere! I’m not going to stand here and be discriminated against! You Kosher people should just go back to…Kosheria or wherever it is you come from!”

Source