.:Computer Defense:.

After my last review of Note applications, I was asked to review a few more apps, some by the author and others by friends who wanted to know if programs were worth buying (I guess they prefer I spend my money ).

As last time, I'm using the Pogo Sketch for all on screen activities and I'll use the same chart as last time:

• P -- Pen Function
• E -- Eraser Function
• T -- Text (Keyboard) Function
• U -- Undo Function
• R -- Redo Function
• C -- Colour Support

neuNotes (Free) -- PEURC

The author of neuNotes commented on my last post and suggested I look at the software. I'd have to say that if I wanted notebook style software (similar to PaperDesk and Penultimate) that this is by far the best free option. I've come to like Sundry Notes more and more lately but it's still got a lot of feature bloat, and Adobe Ideas is really more of a whiteboard, neuNotes finds a nice middle ground. I can draw in multiple colours and also select the transparency, which means I can use it as a highlighter. It allows for multiple notebooks with multiple pages and several transmission options (Mail Page as PDF, PNG, or JPG; Tweet Page; Mail All Pages as PDF).

The feel of the software isn't quite as refined as some of the other apps, the icons and colours made it feel a little juvenile but that's a pretty minor sticking point.  I've spent so much money on note taking apps, that I'm not sure this one will make the cut in the end on my iPad, but if you haven't spent money on an app yet, this is probably a good starting point.

The transparency, multiple pages and email options were all high wins for me, while the lack of paper types (lined paper can be useful) and look of the software were the primary cons. As an added benefit, you can replace a page out of a notebook with an imported image and mark up the image, and you can name each page individually.

Note Taker HD ($4.99) -- PEURC

The biggest sticking point on this software has to be the price. It, along with Notes Plus, take the cake as the most expensive pieces of notebook software. From a features standpoint, they'd almost seem worth it (they have some of the nicer features) but there are some basics that are definitely lacking in both cases. Additionally the Note Taker HD UI takes some getting used to. While the colour and icons of neuNotes were bothersome for me, in this case it's the buttons themselves, they don't fit the typical iPad buttons that I've become accustomed to and the UI layout is a little wonky.

Where Note Taker HD is nice is in the edit modes. You can mark up an entire page, or you can switch edit modes and write in a small zoom box so that you can take notes like you would on paper (and the functionality works quite well). Another point that many people may like is that Note Taker HD is like a single notebook. You add pages, title pages and work with pages, just as if you had a real notebook that you carried around to scribble in. While this may not be quite as organized as multiple notebooks, the tagging and favourites features help to make up for that.

While I really like the zoomed writing features, I'd want the UI to feel a little more 'iPad-like' to make this a part of my daily use.  Given that this app only supports lined paper, I'd say that it's really meant to be treated like a notebook that you carry around and scribble down random thoughts in, and in that case, for people that do that... this might just be the perfect app.

Notes Plus ($4.99) -- PETURC

While I'll likely keep a few of the other apps (Penultimate and Adobe ideas) this may soon become my primary note taking tool.  You have multiple notebooks with multiple pages; multiple pen, text and paper options, group select and move (try the erase tool out and drag instead of deleting).  The software also contains zoom and write functionality like Note Taker HD. The UI also has a very professional look and feel that improves the overall user experience.

If I was to nitpick, it'd be that the only email option is PDF. I'd like to be able to email a specific page as an image (PNG or JPG preferably). I'd also like a real eraser, so that I could "tidy" my notes. The only option write now is to use the group select and delete the highlighted chunk of writing.

The ability to intermingle typing and hand writing is also a nice feature. While the cost is a little high, in this case it may almost be justifiable. I wouldn't recommend this software if you aren't serious about taking notes (then the cost isn't justified) but if you are, this is the option for you.

Ghostwriter Notes ($1.99) -- PEUC

This is pretty standard note taking software. You have the ability to select from a few pen colours/types and a couple of types of paper. The zoom functionality is the only way to enter input with this software, which means no drawing diagrams (unless you can do that while zoomed into a couple of lines). This software may actually be the closest representation to pen and paper and the pen strokes are quite nice (no blocky text with this app).

You're limited in what you can do with this software, but along side Adobe Ideas or Penultimate you may end up with a nice pair of apps.  There's a catch though... wait a version or two. Current the software has some lag issues (not sure why) but you end up with pen strokes that aren't acknowledged with leaves you with half written characters, or the zoom window lags and you don't see what you've written until you're down a line or two. Either way it could be very annoying to use in a real-world situation and risk encountering this problem

iBrainstorm (Free) -- PE

This is the last piece of software I'll look at, I've almost got more note taking software on my iPad that I do games (almost, but not quite ). This software is clearly a competitor to Adobe Ideas and perhaps the two belong in their own category but I'll lump them in here. The easiest way to sum this app up is to say that when I'm done the review, Adobe Ideas will be staying on the iPad.

iBrainstorm has a single screen, no clear page and no new page. If you want to start over you sit with the tiny eraser and wipe it all out. It also have buttons that seemly do nothing, and occasionally the screen greys out for no reason. Those issues aside, it actually has a few cool features.

The first cool feature is the ability to insert a Sticky Note. The tool itself is all freehand, but you can add a Sticky Note, and type a note to go along with your drawing. The other cool aspect, which I couldn't test, is the ability to connect multiple devices to bring along group think functionality. I'll hopefully get a few people running this in the future and test it out and if it's amazing, I'll write more about it.

One of the biggest reasons to get an iPad, in my opinion anyways, is that a tablet seems like the perfect note taking platform. So I was rather surprised when I first turned it on and encountered Notes, the built in software. If Apple's goal was notepad, then sure... mission accomplished but I expected more from a company that does graphics and media so well. This lead to the search for the perfect note taking tool and I've played with a few at this point, so I figured they were worth comparing. All on screen writing was done using the Pogo Sketch, an absolutely amazing stylus that I recommend for anyone using one of these tools.

There are a number of common features, so as I walk through these tools, next to their names I'm going to list a series of letters, the letters stand for:

• P -- Pen Function
• E -- Eraser Function
• T -- Text (Keyboard) Function
• U -- Undo Function
• R -- Redo Function
• C -- Colour Support

In playing with my iPad, I determined that editing code in vi via SSH just wasn't going to be possible (the on screen keyboard just doesn't work well for vi keyboard commands). That meant I had to look at AppStore alternatives. I came across two that advertised what I wanted to do; for i ($9.99) and Monkey Wrench ($6.99). Given that I'm used to Komodo IDE, which has a price tag of $245 I wasn't expecting much.

I decided to play with for i first and was impressed with a number of things. One of which was the addition of an extra row to the keyboard with most of the commonly used programming characters. This meant I wouldn't have to switch to numeric and then to symbols. It also included a tab key which was useful, since I work primarily with Python.  I wrote out a few lines of code and was happy with the speed. I couldn't type as quickly as I can on a keyboard, but I was quicker than some people I've seen attempt to write Python. Syntax highlighting, a built in web server (for file sharing), and some settings were all nice to have, along with the exceptional language support.

After I wrote out my quick demo script, I switched over to Monkey Wrench to do a comparison. The first thing I noticed was that it didn't look quite as nice. I'm not sure what it was, but it looked outdated.  What I did like about Monkey Wrench was the line numbering, however it was mostly a viewer and it felt like code editing was added as an after thought. I also didn't like that Monkey Wrench was written primarily for use with FTP and then local files were thrown in afterward. There was no need to select a language as I had in for i, I simply typed... syntax formatting need not apply right now (but it is listed as a planned future improvement). The keyboard, while it added extra characters, didn't had enough of them and coding was almost a pain (keys like = / ( and ) were missing ).

for i Pros

• Syntax Highlighting for numerous languages
• Attractive Interface
• Enhanced Keyboard
• Wifi File Sharing

for i Cons

• Lack of Line Numbering
• No SFTP support
• Copy/Paste support was extremely poor and inaccurate

Monkey Wrench Pros

• Line Numbering

Monkey Wrench Cons

• UI felt more like a viewer than an editor
• Lacking certain enhanced keyboard functionality
• No Syntax Highlighting
• Had to enter typing mode
• Wedged in a viewer and an editor instead of sharing the space for a single window.

In the end, I'll use for i for now but I'll keep both up-to-date and see what happens with them in the future. Either way, it's nice to see this type of app available... now if only Python was in the AppStore.

[Update: Added Screenshots]

A long time ago I decided that I would never review software that I was asked to look at, and that I probably wouldn't post deals sent my way unless they were truly valuable to my readers. So when I was contacted by Neobyte Solutions with a "special offer" for my readers, I almost hit the spam button. However, I've recently been considering personal backup software (storage is dropping in price and I have a number of systems with critical files these days), so I looked online and saw some features of Titan Backup that I really liked. The initial offer was a copy of Titan Backup 1.5 [download] for free with this serial: 000020-ACM8KK-1YXTMT-JZT4C6-JF18HG-VTR9BJ-VKM9KR-K2923Y.  They also offered a 50% off discount code [NEOB-SGKO] which could be used here to upgrade to Titan Backup 2.5.

I countered with a request for a few 2.5 keys that I could give away to my readers and they were happy to provide a couple. As such, I'm going to give away a few serials for Tital Backup 2.5 on Friday by selecting random people from the comments. Please be sure to include your email address so I can get back to you.

Read more...

I'll start of by saying the second day of SecTor was amazing compared to the first day. We started off with Stepto giving the opening keynote. While it wasn't anything groundbreaking, it was exactly as advertised and well presented. I fully enjoyed hearing him walk through how he got into security, his time with MSRC and how things he'd learned working in security applied to other aspects of his life... it was great.

Following the keynote, I was torn between Pwning the Proxy and Lock picking. In the end personal interest won out and I attended the lock picking session. There was quite a bit of interest information shared and I managed to take a couple pages of notes. One of the coolest things was the how-to on making a combination lock shim using a piece of aluminum from a pop/beer can.

Following the lock picking session was lunch. The meal was much better than the day before. One thing that I didn't get was why so many tables were reserved and there was staff keeping people from sitting at them. The same thing existed on day 1 and the tables were never used, so why were they there are day 2?

Lunch was also great because Johnny Long was the lunch keynote. If you've never seen Johnny speak... make every attempt you can to see him somewhere. He spoke with regards to his No Tech Hacking book (proceeds of which go to Charity) and the presentation was quite amusing and a lot of fun to watch. He gave examples of information gathered by shoulder surfing, dumpster diving, etc. It essentially centered around the non-technical side of reconnaissance or pen-testing. The entire crowd spent the time laughing and fully enjoying themselves (or at least that's how it seemed).

After lunch I checked in on Hoff's virtualization talk. It actually had some interesting information and I was really glad that I'd attended it. I was unaware that there was a Cisco vSwitch for ESX but I really like the concept. It'll enable some very interesting things to happen.

I had planned on attending the talk on identifying crypto in code for the last session of the day, but a old coworker showed up and we spent the session catching up in the keynote room. Following that there was some brief conversation and the wrap-up (which including the awarding of prizes). I did note that a couple of the prizes weren't given away (Checkpoint wireless router/firewall for instance), so hopefully that wasn't just a scam to get business cards.

Then a small group of us (9 people I believe, both speakers and attendees) went out for all you can eat sushi, and a few drinks. I really enjoyed myself day 2 and really enjoyed the con as a whole, there were just some really bad experience on the first day.

I'm definitely looking forward to SecTor 2009!

I debated what to write here, and if I would present the positive or negative points but I figured the only fair way was to describe both, so without further ado, I present SecTor Day 1 - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

I figured I'd describe my day from start to fishing, instead of breaking it up by what I did or didn't enjoy.  The day started off with breakfast at Cora's, a group of us met there only because this years SecTor schedule made no mention of a breakfast similar to the one provided last year. Of course, when we showed up, it turned out there was a provided breakfast... at least we know for tomorrow.

The initial keynote was done by the RCMP and I don't even know what to say. Last year's RCMP presentation was depressing (many people that I spoke to today said it was the worst part of last year, and there was a debate over which RCMP keynote was actually worse. This years was made worse by the fact that it was first thing in the morning. It was presented with little enthusiasm and I'll say it... it sucked.

When the RCMP speaks, you'd expect to learn something interesting, in fact a number of attendees mentioned that to me today. Yet nothing interesting was learned. I was eager for this talk (as I was eager for the keynote last year), I figured they had learned from last year and that this year the RCMP would do better. I took about a page of notes, but got nothing of interest. The names of a few councils (ITAC Cyber Security Forum and CBOC's Council on Security & Tech) and learned that there was a Cyber Security Conference in Gatineau on Nov. 5 & 6. That could have been a single slide, or better yet a hand-out. The rest was useless, this was evident by the people falling asleep and the notes left on Twitter.m

I was also rather offended by a closing remark that David Black made regarding them looking for trained University graduates. I attempted to open my notebook and write down his email address to contact him but unfortunately the slide was removed from the screen. If anyone wants to pass this along to him, it would be appreciated. [Begin Side Rant] I'm getting really tired of this biased hiring practice in many places that requires a University degree, it's a useless, archaic requirement (much like the requirement for various certifications [which we see more and more people dropping from job postings]).  Many of the really bright IT/IS people that I know have no formal education or a college education... it's a shame to see so many places discriminate... especially places like the government. I'd think that workplace equality would include method of education, and place the importance on actual skills and knowledge[End Side Rant].

Needless to say... KeyNote #1 was a fail.

Up next was the first session. None of the session interested me, so I decided to check out the lock picking village. I was in the hall by the vendor displays, so I visited each display on my way over, and failed to make it to the lock picking village before the first session was over. I did have some great conversations with the vendors that were present though. A big thank you to all of them for the sponsorship that they provide.

While there was nothing that caught my interest, I know people that attended both 'Double Trouble: SQL Rootkits and Encryption' and 'Network Security Stripped: From layered technologies to the bare essentials". I can say that I didn't hear negative reviews about either presentation. In fact most people liked what they saw, and those that didn't like it were fairly neutral in their comments.

Lunch and a Panel Discussion were up next. The lunch was Monday's left overs... my chicken fell off the plate and bounced; there was Twitter discussion around having a chicken bouncing competition. Yet that was almost the highlight of the lunch. The real saving grace on the panel was Hoff. I understand why everyone was up there; a number of them were sponsors and probably wanted to say their piece, but still... We basically had 8-minute, extremely dry lightning talks. A panel usually involves some sort of discussion or interaction, they was basically everyone bragging about themselves and drew quite a bit of twitter traffic

Following lunch, we had what I would call worst organizational decision made by the organizers. They did fairly well this year... there is some good content (you just have to dig to find it -- My favourite part of today was hearing (a couple of times), 'the talk that you submitted would have been much better than this'), the swag was cool, a lot of people had positive comments about the notebooks and the bags and there's an increased social aspect. The mistake however, was a really bad one... it was the mistake of placing the bulk of the good speakers in competing time slots. This happened today by having HD Moore, Jay Beale and Raven in the same time slot. Those are three talks I would have gladly gone to see, and I had to pick one. From what I hear this happens tomorrow as well. I'm really looking forward to Hoff's talk, however I've been told that James Arlen is quite the impressive presenter as well.

In the end I decided to go with Jay Beale's discussion of the concepts behind his new tool, 'The Middler'. It was everything that a tool presentation should be. The tool wasn't shown or mentioned... the concepts and techniques were discussed. Not only did the presentation have some interesting information (I filled three pages in my notebook) but Jay did an amazing job with his presentation. This presentation alone made up for the lackluster performances up to that point (although I was quite disappointed about the stacking of the time slot).

To briefly go back to the time slot, I believe the concept that was tried was to put the big speakers up against each other and then everyone else was grouped together, this was to ensure a somewhat even distribution of attendees and to avoid empty rooms. My feeling on this... if the persons presentation runs the risk of an empty room, regardless of what they are up against... don't accept the presentation. I'll stop ranting on this now... it's done and unfortunately it can't be fixed.

For the next time slot, I decided on attending Googless. I was excited... it seemed really relevant to some of the work that I do. I don't even want to talk about this presentation... the slide show background was disturbing, and Christian had no life to him, as well he asked for donations on like the third slide (also the first time I've seen a license on a presentation) and informed us that would have to wait until December to see obtain the slide deck. I guess Christian thought that this was the most popular presentation at SecTor... judging by how many of us walked out during the presentation, I really doubt that. It wasn't good.

I spent the last portion of that presentation speaking with colleagues before the rooms emptied out and the last series of sessions were to begin. I had originally intended to see the RFID presentation, however I managed to catch up with Jay Beale to further discuss the Middler as I was rather intrigued. So we were able to sit and discuss it for a short period of time. A few more people joined us and we moved to the keynote room for discussion and to await alcohol. This once again was an amazing opportunity to network with people, and proved to be more useful than attending the talks (or so I read (and heard)). I once again have to say kudos to the organizers for this... Anything that lets you get together with other people to basically 'talk shop' is a great thing and many opportunities were presented.

During the Microsoft sponsored reception our table grew and we had a lot of fun. Then speakers departed and the bar closed, and unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the party, however the day still had a number of high points. I realize this may seem like a griped a lot, but given that this was year two, I had higher expectations than last year and I'm not sure those expectations were fully met... but as I said, I did enjoy quite a bit of it. Tomorrow is another day, and there are a number of time slots where I'm interested in more than one presenter, so we'll see how it goes.

So I was lucky enough to be able to take part in SecTor training this week (as I previously mentioned). I spent all day Monday in HD Moore's Metasploit training.

Having been been an avid metasploit user for quite some time, I was hoping that the training would include some features that were unknown to me.  I definitely wasn't disappointed.

The initial portion of the training was fairly straight forward and included writing a basic auxiliary module and a plugin. The basics of Metasploit use were also covered.

This occupied roughly half the day, at which point we had lunch... the food wasn't great but it also wasn't awful. Then we were right back into the training.

Over the course of the afternoon we covered meterpreter, NTLM (smb_relay, and some others), Wireless and IPv6. A number of new and interesting things were covered and I really enjoyed the afternoon.

Following the training, myself and a colleague who also attended to the training met up with HD and a few other speakers and attendees to grab dinner. This was the sort of thing that I really enjoy about the cons, sitting around the table with a few beer talking shop. While I enjoy the talks, a lot of the time there's nothing overly new and it's when you're chilling and chatting that you really get a chance to discuss the interesting things.

At the end of the day, the training was definitely worth it. The only real shame (although a bonus for those of us attending) was that the training room was so empty... We had ~11 people. My worry is that SecTor won't be able to get decent trainers next year unless they can increase the attendance numbers.

Stayed tuned for another post on SecTor - Day 1... (which will eventually be followed by SecTor - Day 2).

So I spent today in training @ SecTor. I attending HD Moore's metasploit training and rather enjoyed myself... I picked up a couple of things that I'd been previously unaware of.  Since I was already onsite, I took advantage of the open registration booth and picked up my SecTor goodies.

Instead of the cooler bag (last years very cool SecTor registration goodie), there's a rather nice tote with the SecTor logo on it. Inside the bag was the usual advertising literature, a nice Leed's notebook with a metal (I think) cover, with the SecTor logo, and a pen and BlackBerry screen cleaner.

The badges are quite nice... given that the program includes a picture of the DefCon badge, I imagine they were trying to go with something along those lines. Rather than the hard plastic, "corners will cut you when you attempt to touch it" badge of last year, the badge this year is rather cool. There's a usb cable enclosed on the back of the badge and when you connect it, you find that it's a 1GB storage device. Definitely a step up.

I took pictures to attach, but I'm getting an error, so I won't be uploading them tonight... I'll try again tomorrow.

Now given that it's 2AM and I'm meeting people for breakfast in 5.5 hours, I should probably grab some sleep... but on that note... The program this year doesn't mention a breakfast, so some of us are meeting at Cora's on Spadina (not far from the MTCC) at 7:30 if anyone happens to read this between now and then and wants to join us.

Hey All,

I wanted to do a brief repost over here to direct everyone to the 5-part non-technical blog series that I did on cons (for the most part) and con experiences. This was my contribution to blogging following Blackhat / DEFCON.

1. Being a Research Engineer at a Blackhat Booth
2. Competitors Can Be Civil
3. Why DEFCON Sucks
4. Why the Social Aspect of Cons is Important
5. What Can Be Done to Improve the Cons.

Enjoy!

Hey Everyone,

So Blackhat/Defcon is behind us... Instead of blogging about the talks, I've taken a different approach and I've been doing some non-technical blogging. In the end it will be a 5-part series, but the first three are already up.

They are:

1. Being a Research Engineer at a Blackhat Booth
2. Competitors Can Be Civil
3. Why DEFCON Sucks

The last two will most likely appear early next week.

Also, now that Blackhat/ DEFCON are over... What's next? As far as I know the next Con I'll be attending is SecTor. Last year was the first SecTor and I had the opportunity to attend. SecTor will actually make it's way into my upcoming blog series (from above) on the VERT Blog. That being said, I wanted to remind people that it's coming up, after all... it's held in Toronto and I live in Toronto, so the more people that attend, the more people I get to meet.

For anyone who didn't get a chance to visit SecTor last year and is curious about the quality / style of the talks, I tried to write-up everything that I saw.

• Overview
• Growing the Security "Profession"
• TCP/IP Perversion
• Zen and the Art of Cybersecurity
• Web Application Works - The Future of Browser Insecurity
• Exploit-Me Series
• Defending Layer 8
• Black Ops 2007: DNS Rebinding Attacks
• Hacking Hollywood
• Modern Trends in Network Fingerprinting.

Of course, these are biased because they're all my opinion, but I do recommend the Con for anyone that can make it up this way. Let me know if you'll be coming up and we'll make arrangements to get together for a beer.