Author Archive: Brian

My Life Up To Now

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Who is this Guy?  Well it’s me, Brian.  I’m 25 years old and live in a small Southern Minnesota town called Faribault.

These are pictures from where I work.  My office is at the Faribault Middle School. (Left: The Media and Technology Department’s Growing Office.  Middle: Front Entrance of Middle School.  Right: The Technology Center, where most of the new technology is piloted [pardon the old picture].)

To start with, I got my first career-field job as a Network/Data Services Technician with Faribault Public Schools in June 1997. My responsibilities are to maintain the enterprise network (which was installed in 1997), troubleshoot and repair PCs and Macs, and provide consultation to staff about computer hardware and software.   I work 11 months out of the year. I really enjoy working here. It’s my dream — getting paid for something I enjoy doing. You can check out the website I designed for the district at 
http://www.faribault.k12.mn.us. 
You would not believe how much I have learned by working here!

Gunshot Alley, Faribo Town Square. Notice the graffiti on the wall near the edge of the photo.

The first job I ever had was at National Business Systems, which I worked for over 2 1/2 years as a Data Entry Operator part-time after school.  I left many friends here, but I tried to stop in from time to time of course.  NBS’s office closed here in December 2002, but it turns out that I get to see my old friends more than ever now — I meet up with them once a month for lunch.

The picture above is “Gunshot Alley”, to get into the back door of NBS.  The name “Gunshot Alley” comes from several experiences we’ve all had here.  One time, at quitting time (7:30 p.m.), I walked out into the alley and about halfway to the car, I could have sworn I saw a flare being shot into the air close-by.  When I got back to the car, the car right beside mine had the passenger-side door left open, with NOBODY else around.  I was also hearing other noises like leaves crunching under footsteps.  The next day, the building maintenance worker had reported an attempted break-in at a utility entrance not unlike the one I was parked near.  Hmmm… really makes you wonder!

My Education and Other Interests

I went to the Faribault Schools all the way from Kindergarten to 12th grade.  Starting my Senior year of High School, I took classes at South-Central Technical College. I graduated from there in 1997 with a 3.5 GPA. I took the “Electronic Business Machine Technician” course, which consists of Computers, Networking, and Electronics Technology. I designed and created the website for them when I was there.

I am a changed person. I want to live life to its fullest. I want to be more independent. I want to be better at more things.

I’ve learned many new things over the past several years.  I learned how to ride a motorcycle (alright, sort of), learned how to get my hands in grease fixing cars and trucks, and I got into snowmobiles and ATVs.  I’m also an FCC-licensed Amateur Radio Operator, and I’m a member of the local radio club. During the summer, I assist local law-enforcement as well as the local National Weather Service office by spotting severe thunderstorms and tornadoes for Skywarn. Many weather warnings you hear on TV come from spotters from Skywarn. My amateur radio callsign is N0QVC.  Listen for me on APRS on 144.39 or on the six-meter ham band. I also occasionally monitor the local two-meter repeater, 146.79.

Wireless Network Security

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This month, I am writing an article on Wireless Network Security.  After working with 802.11b Wireless over the past few months, it is simply amazing how many simply keep their wireless network open for anybody that passes by!

Wireless equipment is now very affordable, and many people with technology in their homes and businesses are going out and purchasing equipment to build wireless networks.  Are the majority of the people installing this equipment aware of the security risks with plugging it in without exploring your security options?  The answer is absolutely NOT!  Many “wardrivers” find that it’s very easy to simply take a laptop with a wireless network card, and use somebody’s Internet access — because 75% of wireless networks don’t use even the most basic security features offered.

Wardriving

I define Wardriving as the mobile roaming around a geographic area with a computer and Ethernet-compatible wireless networking equipment to determine available access points, or points where access to a wired network can be gained.

More simply, wardrivers drive around in cars with a laptop with a wireless network card and try to find places that use wireless technology.

If you’ve ever watched the movie “Wargames” with Matthew Broderick in the 80s, or were actively involved in hacking or even cracking 10 years ago, you may be acquainted with software to dial a range of phone numbers with your MODEM to find computers to “login” to.  When the Internet wasn’t as popular as it is today, “wardialer” software was usually the first step to find computers to “play” with.  The term “wardriving” was chosen because it describes the “roaming” to find networks, and a good number of “wardrivers” will attempt to gain access to these resources.

Evaluating your own Wireless Network

(coming)

My Security Advice

Please be aware that this is only my opinion, and that I’m not responsible for any accidents or damages by following it.  If you want a more tailored, custom solution for your residence or business, please contact me directly.

  1. Fully understand your coverage areas.  KNOW how far your wireless network reaches.
  2. Enable WAP.  I know, I know, it’s not a perfect solution, but the encryption offered by WAP will keep the script-kiddies away, and the vast majority of “crackers” will not attempt to play with your network if you are encrypting it.  Did you know that the MAJORITY of wireless networks don’t enable encryption AT ALL?  Simply put, it takes a lot of traffic on your network and a wardriver within constant radio range of your wireless network to break your WEP codes.  If your access point and wireless network cards support 128-bit encryption, enable it.  If not, then enable the 64-bit/40-bit encryption.  Don’t use cards without encryption!  Oh, and please pick a key that will be difficult to guess.
  3. Change the default passwords on your access points!  Do this as soon as you get it online!  Lists of default passwords for many brands of access points are easily available from the Internet, and you could have your encryption disabled or your access control lists changed even from clients on your internal network!
  4. Disable DHCP on your network segment with your access point.  If a wardriver that has the intent on accessing your network is in your coverage area, and you’re not running encryption (or your key has been hacked, a pretty rare occurrence), they can simply release their current IP Address, and renew a lease with your DHCP Server, giving them an IP Address on your private network.  Yes, that’s right, your PRIVATE network.  If you have a firewall device or NAT device on your network, it will be INEFFECTIVE against this kind of attack.
  5. Enable Access Control, whenever possible.  Access control allows you to DENY access to your wireless network to all computers, except those in a specific list of MAC addresses that you choose.  Even if your WEP encryption is compromised, “crackers” will need to know a MAC address of an allowed client to gain access.  It’s very possible they’ll have to pull a “Kevin Mitnick”, or capture packets moving back-and-forth from your wireless clients, run a denial-of-service attack to shut down one of them, and poison the ARP Cache of your router to be successful.  Not for your run-of-the-mill “cracker”.
  6. Don’t broadcast your SSID.  If your access point has an option to shut off SSID Broadcasting, use it.  You’ll have to make sure the SSID set on both your access point and wireless clients match, but this should be the case already!
  7. For an even higher level of security, consider giving your wireless users no access to your private network at all, without connecting and authenticating through a virtual private network (VPN).

Software

NetStumbler — The Most Popular freeware for Wardriving hands down.  Works with Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 2000.  Support for Windows ME and XP is coming.  Their forum is an awesome resource, but please, read the FAQs and do searches before posting!  Many of the members have participated in DefCon 10’s Wardriving Contest, and are probably among the most knowledgeable on 802.11 security that I know.

Ethereal — This is a freeware Packet Sniffer utility.  You need a Wireless NIC that works in promiscuous mode (Sorry Orinoco Users).

Other Links

External Antennas with a D-Link DWL-1000AP Access Point (a work in progress)

The Cantenna, 802.11b Networking with a Coffee Can (this REALLY works)!

The State of Home Automation

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Check out the Tech Briefing on the W2Knews web site for a nice write up on the state of Home Automation.  The author compares the state of Home Automation in the present, to the computer industry in the early 80s.  Is Home Automation going to become as common as computers our in the household right now?

From the March 14, 2002 edition of “W2KNews” Magazine…

The State Of Home Automation

Last week I went to Orlando and visited the Electronic House Expo. Very interesting. It reminded me of the early PC shows in the eighties — small, just a few large and lots of small players, and no standards to be found. A telling tale was the guide I found for a coming expo in Seattle, the www.connectionsconference.com guide had a standard for every letter in the Alphabet.

A whopping 26 different “industry standard” organizations have thrown themselves in the alphabet soup fray, varying from Bluetooth to HomePlug, HomePNA, UPnP, WAP to X10. It’s dizzying! But everyone agrees it will soon become an 8 Zillion dollar industry. Sound familiar? MS-Dos, CP/M or DR-Dos, anyone?

There are a few big names trying to establish some sort of order, like for instance the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) Forum promotes TCP/IP-based seamless proximity networking for the home and the office. They have their mission statement on a website and are backed by an impressive list of 450 outfits including Microsoft, General Electric, Intel and practically all major hardware manufacturers. I learned at the show that GE is building Windows XP embedded in their intelligent home devices.
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020314TB-UPNP

But there are also many other groups, take the HomePlug Alliance as an example. These people are committed to making home networks using your existing powerlines are reality. They compete head-to-head with the HomePNA that tries to do exactly the same thing over your existing phone lines!

This new market looks like a large roulette table at the moment. There are a lot of players from different industries (IT, Power companies, Telecom, Appliances) that have all different starting points and agendas. All of them are placing their bets on the table, with many players betting on more than one number and signing up for several of these standards alliances. The problem is of course that all this stuff needs to interface with each other and there lies the rub. Faites vos jeux! The issue is that there is no real “killer app” that will drive this industry. Entertainment comes close but just by itself is not cutting it, and Home Office is a second potential killer app but also not powerful enough to drive full home automation.

You can also compare it with a bunch of rivals that all eye a large chunk of loot, and everyone is positioning, weaving and bobbing to be in the best spot to start reaping those zillions. The divergence of all these different technologies has been closely followed by Microsoft and obviously they want to play a major role in this whole game. However, there are some other powerful (pun intended) players that are opposing that with all their might and hate to see MS move into their turf.

Admittedly it is a challenge to make all this work together:

bulletWired and wireless networking
bulletDistributed Audio and Video
bulletHome Theater
bulletSecurity / Closed Circuit TV
bulletSecure internet access
bulletLighting control
bulletHeating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning control
bulletA whole bunch of other stuff that will be here “Real Soon Now”

And have all of that available from one console and a non-tech enduser that needs to control all of that. Can you see the potential support nightmare?

So, what does a techie do who wants to start automating their home? Well, from what I see, there are a few options. The low-end is X10 which if you implement it well will work fine but is slooow. There are a few other standards, LONworks and CEBus. These are faster and definitely more advanced. Simplifying it big-time, they are 2-way as opposed to X10 which is just one-way. X10 devices cannot answer back after they receive a command.

And then there is UPnP. Think local network neighborhood on your home server, and ALL your home devices show up, from the fridge to the air conditioner to all the lights to the garage door as well as the other PCs, printers and wireless devices you may have. Sounds cool doesn’t it? Too bad it is still a while before we will see it, for the moment it is vaporware. The stacks are not even released but are supposed to see the light in Q2. I would not expect any consumer devices until 2003.

At the Expo, the latest thing that everyone seemed to push was video over CAT5E. In other words, the sales reps were saying, “you do not need that cumbersome and expensive coax anymore”. There may be a point to that, but you don’t know what killer app will emerge which would need mega-bandwidth. Not having the coax would be a real problem at that point. So, the solution is to “flood-wire” (a term I picked up at the show) your home with structured wiring so that you are prepared for any kind of thing that will surface.

You can start with X10 if you want, and upgrade later to a new standard which will certainly come. From what I understand, they will be backward compatible. I would stick with the large players as these have the best chance to survive the coming consolidation and inevitable shake-out period. The largest and oldest player in the home security bizz is HAI, and their OmniPro II is a pretty powerful piece of gear which even comes with an Ethernet port. I decided I’m going to get one myself. For structured wiring and X10 stuff I would check out Leviton at:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020314TB-Leviton

MailTalk, “The E-Mail Reader that talks”

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Watch this space for information on the public release of MailTalk, “The E-Mail Reader that talks”.  This mail program, designed for sight-impaired individuals, sends and receives E-Mail using very little system resources.  Matter of fact, it’ll run on any DOS-based IBM Compatible with a Sound Blaster compatible sound card.  And it’s distributed as freeware!  Until I get more information on the web, feel free to E-Mail me if you are interested.

Broadband Router Recommendation

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I respond to a gentleman who is looking for a hardware router, and I respond with a free software solution that would accomplish the same goal.

Date: June 22, 2001 01:02 PM
Subject: Re: broadband router recommendation

> Hey all,
>
> Currently I’m using an evaluation
> copy of Microsoft ISA Server, but when that runs
> out I’m probably going to want to switch to a
> hardware solution to connect my LAN to the
> Internet over DSL. I know the Linksys routers are
> the most popular, but they also were the first
> ones on the market. Has anyone looked at the SMC
> or other broadband routers and compared them to
> the Linksys? Any
> opinions?
>
> _–Will–_ http://www.inside-corner.
> com http://www.mp3.com/hypnoticsuggestion

Will,

How many users are you supporting on your LAN? Is this an “in-home” LAN, or a business LAN?

If it’s an “in-home” LAN with a small amount of users, may I suggest trying Internet Connection Sharing, which is built into Windows 98SE, Windows ME, and Windows 2000? I am currently using an evaluation copy of Windows 2000 Advanced Server on my server, and I have Internet Connection Sharing setup to share the Cable connection. This piece of software uses an IP masquerade to make computers on your LAN appear as one computer to the remote network, as far as TCP/IP addressing is concerned…

And best of all? Internet Connection Sharing is a free solution. I have been very happy with it so far, with a total of 4 computers accessing the Internet. Can’t beat the bang for the buck!

Brian Klier
Forum Pro
http://kliernetwork.net

(http://www.connectedhomemag.com/Forums/thread.cfm?CFApp=80&Message_ID=186415)

Windows XP and old thingys

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Today we respond to someone concerned about legacy parallel devices on Windows XP.

Date: June 22, 2001 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: Windows XP and old thingys

> I’ve spent forever getting my old Ditto Max Pro
> tape drive (Iomega) to be nice to the other
> devices on the sacred LPT 1, which no one wants
> to share. What will be the fate of this, and
> other devices no longer under warrenty when XP
> comes out in fall? I would like to get a new
> computer at that time, but I’m really worried
> about my peripherals. In addition to my scanner,
> three printers and a digital camera, I have an
> external ZIP drive (100) Will this stuff work on
> the new operating system?

Hi Charlotte!

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to your question. I’m pretty positive Microsoft will continue to support the parallel port in Windows XP, however, the more difficult question is, “Will the manufacturers of my peripherals support Windows XP?”

Users of the Apple Macintosh faced a similar dilemma after Apple discontinued producing the actual hardware Serial Port. All of a sudden, Apple users who purchased a new iMac found themselves not able to use any of the legacy peripherals they had purchased. Other companies eventually discovered this out, and provided USB-to-serial interface boxes for sale. These boxes work most of the time, but as always, some experience problems with them.

Fortunately for the PC users, most motherboard manufacturers today still incorporate an on-board parallel port to support these legacy devices. Some computer manufacturers are building what are known as “Legacy-Free” PCs, and these computers usually do away with connectors that most new equipment do not need to take advantage of, such as the serial and parallel ports. Most of the industry has already moved the direction of USB, and I think it’s safe to assume that this trend will continue.

My recommendation to you would be to contact the manufacturers of the devices you own, and ask them if they intend on releasing drivers that function on Windows XP. I’ve found companies that are very good at supporting their legacy products, and others that drop support quickly for products over a year old. Embrace those companies that give a long useful life to your peripheral by supporting them. For those that don’t, new peripherals may be the only option.

Brian Klier
Forum Pro
http://kliernetwork.net

(http://www.connectedhomemag.com/Forums/thread.cfm?CFApp=80&Message_ID=186414)

Connectedhome Forum Pro

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I’ve been selected as an online Forum Pro for the new “Connected Home” magazine. Connected Home Media is dedicated to helping IT professionals and technically savvy users implement, maintain, and secure home networks for telecommuting, working at home, and integrating all home technology into their lives. The premiere issue of this magazine will be on the newsstand January of 2002.

The MisterHouse/APRS Tracking System

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Welcome, “Home Automation” magazine subscribers!  Please look below If you are interested about hearing more about the MisterHouse/APRS Tracking System published in the July 2001 issue.  Miss the article?  Click here for a scanned copy of the article.  You can view my original copy of this article by clicking here.  If you are not a subscriber to Home Automation magazine, visit their website for more information.

Wall Cloud in Western Rice County

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Storm on March 29, 1998, about 10 miles west of Faribault:

You are not seeing a tornado. You are seeing a very defined wall cloud (last frame shows scuds being sucked into a tail cloud). This storm did produce a tornado near Lonsdale, and damaging downbursts near Montgomery.  This is the same storm that leveled the city of Comfrey.