Everquest 2 & Nvidia 3D Vision solved

I picked up an Nvidia 3D Vision headset about a month ago, and it's been very, very cool. The only problem is that while enjoy playing almost all video games, my favorite game (Everquest 2) did not seem to function properly with EQ2. The mouse pointer was in 3D but nothing else. I had searched the web, and even called tech support and nobody could tell me what the issue was. Latest drivers, game is patched, still no 3D. Well I was messing around with the settings today and there is a LETTERBOX function, which basically adds a strip of black to the top and bottom of the screen. This improves performance because the video card does not need to redraw, animate, anti-alias all of those extra pixels, and that area is full of spells, stats, and effects anyhow, so why not.

Well, after playing with various setting today I discovered that if you remove the letterbox completely that the 3D effects work perfect. This is great, because I shelled out quite a bit of cash for a new 3D card (GTX 480), a 3D monitor, and 3D glasses, so it was kind of miserable that it did not want to work with my favorite game. Anyhow, it's working now, just in time for a Double XP weekend :)

RAID 0 Good, SSD is great, but what about RAID 0 with SSD?

I had been putting off SSD for a while now, based on the high price, and the fact that most technologies need a bit of time to mature before they are worthwhile. Well, I finally broke down about two weeks ago and got my first SSD. I chose the OCZ Agility 2 based on performance / price combination. This model seems to be the best bang for the buck. Well, after adding it to my Alienware Aurora, which was already RAID 0 on WD 7200 RPM drives, I copied Everquest 2 to the new drive and launched it. Let me preface this by saying I had read many impressive reviews and my expectations were very high, however the SSD did not disapoint. My load times between zones were just great! When playing from a single 7200rpm drive on a different system a few nights later I realized what I must do next, and that was build a new box with 2 Agilty2 SSD's in RAID 0 .


Well the box has been built, I could try to describe it, but let my benchmarks speak for themselves. This is on an Asus P6T with onboard IHCR10 raid controller (nothing fancy).

BGP Looking glasses

I cover BGP in my migration course, however you don't really get the right feel for it in the small lab environment. I like to direct my students to various BGP looking glasses on the web to view what real tables look like. There is a site that contains a list of HTTP based data as well as live routers with public telnet access, this is much more interesting :).

Give it a shot, scroll down to category 2 and try to telnet into these devices. The "show ip bgp ?" command should get you started!

BGP Looking Glasses

Metasploit: The missing manual

While it would be difficult to find someone to disagree that the Metasploit Framework is one of the most powerful "hacking tools" of all time, it would be just as difficult to find someone that claimed to be a master of it. Metasploit has so many capabilities, it seems that nearly every class I take touches upon metasploit in someway that I hadn't seen before. Whether it's MITM attacks, or pattern creation used during buffer overflows, or token masquerading, etc. The problem has always been a source of useful documentation. I read the docs, I bought the Syngress Metasploit book (almost useless), and I follow the mailing-list which has been the most helpful until now. Well, the Metasploit Unleashed Class is online, it's provided by Hackers for Charity, and they ask for a $4 donation, which everyone should be more than happy to give. This is an awesome compilation of knowledge that would have been impossible to gather on your own.

Metasploit Unleashed

Lockpicking

In all of my security classes we discuss the importance of physical security, I never get much resistance from students here, everyone seems to nod and agree. Outside of the classroom however, there are too many scenarios to count (Car dealerships, Sports arenas, hospitals, schools, etc) where network equipment is behind a locked door, in what used to be a broom closet. Not much thought is given to the locks. Well, at Defcon this year I brought the wifey by lockpicking village (her 3rd defcon, but 1st attempt at lockpicking) and long-story-short she took to lock picking like a duck to water.

One of the guys doing presentations has a website with excellent videos that I wanted to share. Also, if you make it out to Defcon be sure to stop by the lockpicking village!

Lockpicking Videos

Update those ASA's guys..

To all of my past ASA students, and even those of you who aren't if you are running 5580's there were several ASA vulnerabilies posted last week. As you know the vulnerabilites have been there since the code shipped, but now the bad guys know about it and can DoS your firewalls with single malformed packets..

http://nvd.nist.gov/download/nvd-rss.xml


Also, some of the latest adobe exploits effect the Mac community now :(. When people tell me that Apple sucks, I generally just laugh internally and don't make an argument, the less people using it the better, as far as security through obscurity is concerned, looks like they are starting to become more of a target unfortunately.

My favorite con of the year is less than a Month away, as you should know Defcon is the premiere hacking conference. Not the best on the east coast, or west, not the best in the US, but the best in the world! It follows Blackhat Las Vegas which is held at Caesars Palace just before the Defcon weekend (July 30-August 1). It will certainly be a great time this year, there are some really great looking talks. If any of my past students make it out, I'd like to buy a round of drinks so contact me if you're going!