Brian Kenny

I recently seen this posted on an IRC channel. Brings things into perspective. How the times change changed…

After numerous tactics and fire fighting, dictionary attacks is just becoming an annoyance for an open SQL server. We have moved behind our own VLAN, in a nice little nook behind the new Cisco ASA series products.

Yet there are still bad login requests reaching our SQL servers. Looks like it’s come to the stage of if (login_failed>100 && IP is the same) {ban ip}

I have just received a mail from our account manager that there is a hardware failure on the eclipse stratex equipment.

The installation is on hold until next week.

 I’ve just found out from a numpty-developer, that TV’s consume 60% of their electricity whilst on stand-by. I then received an ear-full about the power of one etc

It seems it’s gotten to the stage that the UK are currently talking about ‘outlawing’ standby’s on televisions, dvd players and other electrical items. More here

How hard is it to create a Infrared-Boot option on a TV ? Based along the same lines as Network-Boot option with NIC cards, the internal IR receiver would boot the tele on receipt of signal..

This also brings me back to the times when I had one of those Casio TV remote watches as kid. Run down to your local TV shop and cause havoc to the TV’s on standby in the window

Yesterday, the dish was placed on the meter high pole on the roof. The cabling was then ran down through the new trunking and into our cab.

The power to the stratex eclipse was also connected. It runs at low voltage to the PSU. This is done to allow none electrical certified engineers work on it.

Once the hardware was powered up, a multimeter was used to test signal strenght to three rock. Once this best signal strength was found, the eclipse was tested from both ends.

Apologies no pictures yesterday, will have some tomorrow!

We’ve invested in Smart telecoms as our primary ISP for our office. They will provide primary telecoms and data for the office. The data connection will be via a licensed radio frequency (which took comreq quiet some time to license).

Today is day one of the installation, and the guys have got quiet alot done. Our nearest point of fibre is three rock. The connection will be done via stratex equipment. Yum.

As the office has no line-of-sight from a current standing wall, the stratex dish will be placed on a 1 metre high pole. The foundation and pole were layed today:

From the dish, cabling and trunking was laid from the roof to our floor. I’m not sure of the type of cabling in use, but it is some sort of co-axial.

The stratex dish is also on site at present:

Finally, the cabling will run down into our floor and into a stratex eclipse, already racked. The eclipse has needs a PSU separate from itself which hasn’t been installed yet.

The cabling rolled up in the second picture will be the link to the PSU. Don’t worry the Cisco 515E is being upgraded to an ASA asap

Due to current attacks on our servers, we have migrated our primary live

envoirnment to our own VLAN. This is our first mention on RIPE also It might now seem like alot for many, but this is a big step for our availablity, reliablity and operations.

Our RIPE lookup can be see here and here.

The operation involved moving some servers from IX to DEG and finally moving around some servers in DEG to our new Cab. There all sittin nice and tightly now though

After much determination, hard work and testing - indublin.ie has hit the Internet. We’ve launched a Beta version to kick start things. Keep an eye on errors, listen to our user’s and what they would like more/less off to give you the best experience we can.

Data is key. With a dedicated team recruited, we’re ready to keep our content up to date. If your looking for a good pub to hit, a movie to see or just something to wind down at - check out indublin.ie

Of course, comments welcome.

I cannot stand people that turn televisions off at the button the tele. Then you go, stretch out on the couch… crawl and squiggle about, find the remote, hit the button and… ARRRGGGHHH

Chillin’ out by the pool on my holidays, readin the new edition of wired magazine. It seems Estonia has had a bad time of it recently.

What is believed to have been a Russian attack, the entire Estonian IT infrastructure grinded to a halt. What fueled this attack? Estonia relocated the “Bronze Soldier,” a Soviet-era war memorial commemorating an unknown Russian who died fighting the Nazis. The bot network was not hired out for money, but hired out for free in retaliation to this event. The first of the attacks was a DDoS attack on the country’s new papers. The attack then escalated to the banks websites etc.

Through contacting the (what the article calls) ‘vetted’, the retaliation of the attack began. These vetted came into contact with one IT director at the magazine. Understood the issue and began to help. First by banning as many malicious IPs as possible. The majority of the bots were from US.

After a period of exactly 2 weeks. The bot network began to reside to a full halt.