This script is a work by Webmaster Seth Leedy, but was inspired by and evolved from the scripts by [email protected]


I noticed that I was mentioned in the Security Now show(epi: 457, 558). Yipee!


Download any or all Steve Gibson’s GRC Security Now podcasts via a bash script.
The script can look at the episodes already downloaded and download the next one.
You can specify the episode(s). Download 1 or a range.
Another function is to search for text within ALL the episodes and copy the episode text to another directory for further reading.
Run it with “-h” for all the other options.


The code is now on GitHub ! Feel free to help develop it or fork it.

You can submit issues within GitHub or via email to me. Comments below are not actively monitored…


Command line examples:

  • Will download the latest episode and it will be the TEXT transcriptions.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -eptxt -latest
  • Will download the latest episode and it will be the PDF transcriptions.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -eppdf -latest
  • This will download the TEXT and .PDF.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -eppdf -eptxt -latest
  •  The arguments -ahq and -alq is for downloading AUDIO .MP3 files.
    • -AHQ = High Quality. -ALQ = Low Quality.
  • The arguments -vhq and -vlq is for downloading VIDEO .MP4 files.
    • -VHQ = High Quality. -VLQ = Low Quality.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -alq -vlq -eptxt -latest
      or
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -vlq -eptxt -ep 10
  • You can also download all video, in HD, and text- at once. At 10 downloads a time. *Not all episodes are in HD. The start of the show was not in video, let alone, HD.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -vhd -eptxt -ep 1:latest -pd 10
  • Will download every single text copy of the episodes and search for your text (TNO here) and put the results in a special directory for you to open at your leisure.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -dandstxt TNO
  • Will search only the text episodes already downloaded in the current directory and the cache used in the above -dandstxt option. It will not go online to search.
    • ./GRC-Downloader.sh -stxt TNO
  • Create a RSS feed file from the shows!

Count of script executions: [count_grc_runs]

 13,854 total views

The other war survivors in the US are victims of a lethal machine designed to extract maximum profit for as long as possible, as are their brothers and sisters in the cold ground, as are the murdered civilians in Asia and the Middle East, as are we all.

Picador Publishing recently released a 40th anniversary edition of Philip Caputo’s Vietnam masterpiece, A Rumor of War. I was happy to purchase a copy, having read my original copy to tatters some 30 years ago in my ongoing quest to better understand my oft-inscrutable father, and to better understand the war that left such a deep, damaging mark on him.

Caputo’s harrowing memoir was one of many dozens I pored through over the years in that endeavor, with limited success. The Vietnam War is everywhere, and nowhere. It touches everything and everyone even all these years later, yet nobody talks about it; Ken Burns made a mighty documentary attempt at opening a conversation on the massive meaning and impact of that war, but his endeavor fell far short by failing to recognize the significance of the war resistance that was, after all these years, proven absolutely right.

When I was a boy, the old men like my grandfather were veterans of World War II or Korea, or both. The sailors wore hats emblazoned with the ships they had served on, the infantrymen marched in the annual parades, and nobody avoided the subject of war around them. This seems strange in retrospect, because the “Good Wars” also involved astonishing acts of carnage committed against civilian populations. They also involved active war resistance, though not at the scale seen in the years to come.

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Now that I am a man, the old men are Vietnam veterans, and while we don’t flee the topic of the war the way we did 30 years ago, it is best left alone. Old scars still bleed, and the killing fields remain only a nightmare away.

Today, as with every Memorial Day year after year, there are flags. The Boston Common is filled right now with more than 37,000 small US flags, placed there by volunteers to commemorate every Massachusetts soldier killed in battle since the Revolution. Thousands of those flags represent soldiers who died in Vietnam. The fluttering sea of red, white and blue creates an uncommon silence in the heart of the city.

More than 100 soldiers from 93 different Massachusetts towns have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Their flags share the Common with their Vietnam forebears, but more than that, they share the vicious fate of having died in wars that should not have been fought. The astonishing Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC should not exist. Should someone finally choose to honor the fallen of the Forever War with a wall of their own, it will be a monument to our gross failure as a society to keep them alive. Should a wall ever be erected honoring the civilians murdered in these wars, it would blot out the sun and stand as brick-and-mortar evidence of crimes against humanity.

When Philip Caputo marched off to war in 1965, he and his fellow soldiers were filled with the missionary zeal imbued by President Kennedy in those years, when the majority of people in this country bought into narratives of US exceptionalism and the moral righteousness of US military hegemony. “For Americans who did not come of age in the early sixties,” wrote Caputo in his memoir, “it may be hard to grasp what those years were like — the pride and overpowering self-assurance that prevailed.” It didn’t last, of course; the war beat the idealism out of them one long day at a time. “We left Vietnam peculiar creatures,” said Caputo, “with young shoulders that bore rather old heads.”

It is strange to imagine such idealism today. The Vietnam War lasted 25 years, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have lasted 27 years with no end in sight — the Trump administration is wrapping our seemingly eternal involvement in Afghanistan in multiple layers of secrecy — shattering the lives of millions in the gritty disarray of a military empire in collapse.

It took decades for the country to come to grips with the folly that was Vietnam, but it was abundantly clear that Iraq and Afghanistan were a disastrous fool’s errand before the shooting even started. Yet we invaded anyway, and still we remain so many years later, because war is what we do.

It is our principle export, a vital economic engine, the hub to which all the spokes of our rickety national wheel are attached, and it is visibly cracking. You can’t steal $6,000,000,000,000 from a country in less than 20 years and fail to make a monstrous impact on the very bones of that society, yet that six trillion is merely loose change compared to what we have squandered on permanent war since 1947.

Every bomb dropped, every missile launched, every bullet fired, every bandage used, every body bag filled represents money that once belonged to all of us but has been transferred to a small group of wealthy war profiteers we will never meet. The theft is generational in scope, and affects everything from the hospital bills we can’t afford to the roads too potholed to drive on to the schools without enough teachers and books. The damage done to us all is comprehensive, and that’s before we get to the body count.

And so there are the flags of Memorial Day, meant to honor the sacrifice of those who died in the wars. The remaining war survivors in the US are victims of a lethal machine designed to extract maximum profit for as long as possible, as are their brothers and sisters in the cold ground, as are the murdered civilians in Asia and the Middle East, as are we all.

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq … it’s all the same war, bolstered by the same profit motive and veiled in the same empty promises. Only the dead — the fallen US soldiers and those they have killed — know the true cost of war here at the end of empire. A truly fitting memorial would be a Memorial Day when no new flags are needed, when we have all the dead we can stand and choose not to make more.

Honor that, and you honor them all.

 770 total views

From: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/identify-loaded-svchostexe-in-windows-task-list/


Other than commonly using the Windows Task Manager to end a hung task or process, it is also very useful to quickly check the active running programs on your computer. You may noticed that there is quite a number of svchost.exe listed in the processes tab and is probably wondering what is it and how come there are so many of them running? Basically SVCHOST is used by Windows to run multiple Windows services and the reason why Windows services uses svchost.exe to run is because they are in DLL files and not an independent executable (.EXE) file. If you didn’t know, Windows Services is one of the startup method in Windows where it can automatically run in background without even requiring the user to login to their account in Windows, unlike other startup method where the programs will only run when the user is logged in to Windows.

svchost.exe in task manager

Normally users would ignore the existence of svchost.exe listed in the Windows Task Manager and only look for some dubious image name. This is where some malware takes advantage by using the file name as svchost.exe, hoping that you would not notice its presence. One easy way to find out a suspicious svchost.exe is by looking at the user name that is used to run the svchost.exe. If the svchost is ran by SYSTEM, NETWORK SERVICE or LOCAL SERVICE, then it should be legitimate but if it is ran under YOUR user account, then you need to investigate if the svchost.exe file is from another location than C:\Windows\System32\. If you’d like to identify the services that are ran behind the svchost.exe, here are 7 ways to do it. 1. Windows Task Manager

Starting from Windows Vista, Microsoft has made it easy because the Task Manager is capable of showing you the service name associated with the svchost.exe process. To run windows Task Manager, right click on the task bar and select “Start Task Manager”. Alternatively you can also simultaneously press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Then all you need to do is right click on the svchost.exe process and select “Go to Service(s)” where you will automatically jump to the Services tab and the service name being highlight.

svchost.exe services

You are able to start or stop the service by right clicking on the service name. The problem is, some virus disables the Windows Task Manager by changing a registry value and it is important to know other methods of identifying the svchost.exe service name.


2. Command Prompt

Another method to reveal the service that is associated with the svchost.exe is by using tasklist.exe from command prompt. In command prompt, type the command below, hit enter and the service name will be displayed at the right side of the tasklist output.

tasklist /svc /fi “IMAGENAME eq svchost.exe”

Tasklist svchost.exe

There are some limitations in using the tasklist.exe command line tool because it only the cryptic service name, not the display name or description. Just like Task Manager, command prompt too can be disabled from running by malware which is why sometimes it is good to have third party tools in hand.


3. Process Explorer

Process Explorer is the grandfather of all task managers. So far it seems to be the most comprehensive tool to control and view the information associated with svchost.exe. Simply double click on the svchost.exe in Process Explorer and click on the Services tab.

Process Explorer services

First you get to see all the services registered in the process that you’re viewing, then it shows the service name, display name and the path to do DLL file that was loaded. You are also able to configure the permissions for the service plus stopping, restarting, pausing and resuming the service.

Download Process Explorer 


4. Process Hacker

Process Hacker is another popular free and powerful open source task manager that is capable of showing and controlling the services from svchosts.exe process. Just like Process Explorer, double click on svchost.exe process and go to the Services tab. The list of associates services is shown and you can stop or pause the service. Double clicking on the service will bring up a more advanced property window to configure the permissions, startup type, error control and many more.

Process Hacker Services Properties

There are both installer and portable versions available including 32-bit and 64-bit builds.

Download Process Hacker 


5. Svchost Process Analyzer

Svchost Process Analyzer

Svchost Process Analyzer is a free and portable program that analyzes the svchost.exe and shows services that is associated with the process. Clicking on any ID on the top window will display the services at the bottom together with the DLL file and status. The description of the service will automatically refresh and shown at the top bar of the program. This tool can only display information but lack of control options.

Download Svchost Process Analyzer 


6. Svchost Viewer

Svchost Viewer

Svchost Viewer is another free and open source utility hosted at CodePlex that gives you the basic information such as service name and description. There are also two checkboxes to show if the service can be paused or stopped. If it can be stopped, click on the Service Control menu bar and select “Stop Selected Service”. A piece of interesting information shown in Svchost Viewer is the amount of data written and read.

Download Svchost Viewer 


7. Services In Svchost

Services In Svchost is a very simple program that simply shows the services in the svchosts.exe. There is no description, no control, or DLL file information. The only unique feature found in this utility is the ability to view the services on remote computers by entering the computer name or IP address.

Services in Svchost

There are requirements if you want to get the services on remote computer. Firstly it requires a user account that has a password set (empty password is not allowed) and the Remote Registry service must be manually started. Make sure the Windows Firewall is not blocking the connection. Once all this 3 requirements are met, you need to manually authenticate with the remote computer by accessing the shared folders. After authentication, simply enter the computer name and click Get Services button.

Download Services In Svchost 
Read More: 
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/identify-loaded-svchostexe-in-windows-task-list/

 1,580 total views

From: https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/installing-nginx-with-php7-fpm-and-mysql-on-ubuntu-16.04-lts-lemp/


Nginx (pronounced “engine x”) is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on an Ubuntu 16.04 server with PHP 7 support (through PHP-FPM) and MySQL 5.7 support (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced “engine x”) + MySQL + PHP).

 

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial, I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.1.100. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

I’m running all the steps in this tutorial with root privileges, so make sure you’re logged in as root:

sudo -s

 

2 Installing MySQL 5.7

In order to install MySQL, we run:

apt-get -y install mysql-server mysql-client

You will be asked to provide a password for the MySQL root user – this password is valid for the user [email protected] as well as [email protected], so we don’t have to specify a MySQL root password manually later on:

New password for the MySQL “root” user: <– yourrootsqlpassword
Repeat password for the MySQL “root” user: <– yourrootsqlpassword

To secure the database server and remove  the anonymous user and test database, run the mysql_secure_installation command.

mysql_secure_installation

You will be asked these questions:

[email protected]:~# mysql_secure_installation

Securing the MySQL server deployment.

Enter password for user root: <– Enter the MySQL root password

VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin?

Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No: <– Press y if you want this function or press Enter otherwise.
Using existing password for root.
Change the password for root ? ((Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : <– Press enter

… skipping.
By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.

Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : <– y
Success.

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
‘localhost’. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : <– y
Success.

By default, MySQL comes with a database named ‘test’ that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.

Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : <– y
– Dropping test database…
Success.

– Removing privileges on test database…
Success.

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes
made so far will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : <– y
Success.

All done!

MySQL is secured now.

3 Installing Nginx

In case that you have installed Apache2 already, then remove it first with these commands & then install nginx:

service apache2 stop
update-rc.d -f apache2 remove
apt-get remove apache2

Nginx is available as a package for Ubuntu 16.04 which we can install.

apt-get -y install nginx

Start nginx afterwards:

service nginx start

Type in your web server’s IP address or hostname into a browser (e.g. http://192.168.1.100), and you should see the following page:

The Ubuntu Nginx default page.

The default nginx document root on Ubuntu 16.04 is /var/www/html.

 

4 Installing PHP 7

We can make PHP work in nginx through PHP-FPM (PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites) which we install as follows:

apt-get -y install php7.0-fpm

PHP-FPM is a daemon process (with the init script php7.0-fpm) that runs a FastCGI server on the socket /run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock.

 

5 Configuring nginx

The nginx configuration is in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf which we open now:

nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

The configuration is easy to understand (you can learn more about it here: http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxFullExample and here: http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxFullExample2)

First (this is optional) adjust the keepalive_timeout to a reasonable value:

[...]
    keepalive_timeout   2;
[...]

The virtual hosts are defined in server {} containers. The default vhost is defined in the file /etc/nginx/sites-available/default – let’s modify it as follows:

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

[...]
server {
 listen 80 default_server;
 listen [::]:80 default_server;

 # SSL configuration
 #
 # listen 443 ssl default_server;
 # listen [::]:443 ssl default_server;
 #
 # Note: You should disable gzip for SSL traffic.
 # See: https://bugs.debian.org/773332
 #
 # Read up on ssl_ciphers to ensure a secure configuration.
 # See: https://bugs.debian.org/765782
 #
 # Self signed certs generated by the ssl-cert package
 # Don't use them in a production server!
 #
 # include snippets/snakeoil.conf;

 root /var/www/html;

 # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
 index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

 server_name _;

 location / {
 # First attempt to serve request as file, then
 # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
 try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
 }

 # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
 #
 location ~ \.php$ {
 include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;

 # With php7.0-cgi alone:
 # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
 # With php7.0-fpm:
 fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
 }

 # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
 # concurs with nginx's one
 #
 location ~ /\.ht {
  deny all;
 }
}
[...]

server_name _; makes this a default catchall vhost (of course, you can as well specify a hostname here like www.example.com).

root /var/www/html; means that the document root is the directory /var/www/html.

The important part for PHP is the location ~ \.php$ {} stanza. Uncomment it to enable it.

Now save the file and reload nginx:

service nginx reload

Next open /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini

nano /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini

… and set cgi.fix_pathinfo=0:

[...]
; cgi.fix_pathinfo provides *real* PATH_INFO/PATH_TRANSLATED support for CGI.  PHP's
; previous behaviour was to set PATH_TRANSLATED to SCRIPT_FILENAME, and to not grok
; what PATH_INFO is.  For more information on PATH_INFO, see the cgi specs.  Setting
; this to 1 will cause PHP CGI to fix its paths to conform to the spec.  A setting
; of zero causes PHP to behave as before.  Default is 1.  You should fix your scripts
; to use SCRIPT_FILENAME rather than PATH_TRANSLATED.
; http://php.net/cgi.fix-pathinfo
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
[...]

Reload PHP-FPM:

service php7.0-fpm reload

Now create the following PHP file in the document root /var/www/html:

nano /var/www/html/info.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Now we call that file in a browser (e.g. http://192.168.1.100/info.php):

PHP Info on Ubuntu with Nginx.

As you see, PHP 7 is working, and it’s working through FPM/FastCGI, as shown in the Server API line. If you scroll further down, you will see all modules that are already enabled in PHP. MySQL is not listed there which means we don’t have MySQL support in PHP yet.

 

6 Getting MySQL Support In PHP 7

To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php7.0-mysql package. It’s a good idea to install some other PHP modules as well as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP modules like this:

apt-cache search php7.0

Pick the ones you need and install them like this:

apt-get -y install php7.0-mysql php7.0-curl php7.0-gd php7.0-intl php-pear php-imagick php7.0-imap php7.0-mcrypt php-memcache  php7.0-pspell php7.0-recode php7.0-sqlite3 php7.0-tidy php7.0-xmlrpc php7.0-xsl php7.0-mbstring php-gettext

APCu is an extension for the PHP Opcache module that comes with PHP 7, it adds some compatibility features for software that supports the APC cache (e.g. WordPress cache plugins).

APCu can be installed as follows:

apt-get -y install php-apcu

Now reload PHP-FPM:

service php7.0-fpm reload

Now reload http://192.168.1.100/info.php in your browser and scroll down to the modules section again. You should now find lots of new modules there, including the MySQL module:

The PHP Modules have been installed.

 

7 Making PHP-FPM use a TCP Connection

By default PHP-FPM is listening on the socket /var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock. It is also possible to make PHP-FPM use a TCP connection. To do this, open /etc/php/7.0/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

nano /etc/php/7.0/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

… and make the listen line look as follows:

[...]
;listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
[...]

This will make PHP-FPM listen on port 9000 on the IP 127.0.0.1 (localhost). Make sure you use a port that is not in use on your system.

Then reload PHP-FPM:

php7.0-fpm reload

Next go through your nginx configuration and all your vhosts and change the line fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock; to fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;, e.g. like this:

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

[...]
        location ~ \.php$ {
 include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;

 # With php7.0-cgi alone:
 fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
 # With php7.0-fpm:
 # fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
 }
[...]

Finally, reload nginx:

service nginx reload

That’s it. The Nginx LEMP server is installed.

 2,192 total views,  1 views today

#!/bin/bash

LAN_INT="eth1" #Internal LAN Interface
BR_INT="br0"  #Bridge Interface
ZT_INT="zt0" #ZeroTier Interface

BRIDGE_IP="192.168.0.90/23"
GATEWAY_IP="192.168.0.2"

SLEEP_TIMER="30s"
RUN_TIME=`date`
#Delay Timer to give the system a chance to finish booting
sleep $SLEEP_TIMER

echo $RUN_TIME > /var/log/bridge.log

#Disable Interfaces, Remove IP addresses
echo "Disabling Interface" >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/ifconfig $LAN_INT down >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/ifconfig $ZT_INT down >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/ip addr flush dev $LAN_INT >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/ip addr flush dev $ZT_INT >> /var/log/bridge.log

echo "Setting up Bridging..." >> /var/log/bridge.log

/sbin/brctl addbr $BR_INT >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/brctl addif $BR_INT $ZT_INT $LAN_INT >> /var/log/bridge.log

/sbin/ifconfig $LAN_INT promisc up >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/ifconfig $ZT_INT promisc up >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/ifconfig $BR_INT up >> /var/log/bridge.log

#/sbin/ip addr add $BRIDGE_IP dev br0 >> /var/log/bridge.log
/sbin/dhclient br0

/sbin/route add default gateway $GATEWAY_IP
echo "Finished!" >> /var/log/bridge.log

 

 1,871 total views,  1 views today

It’s often useful to know what logical and physical drives are available to Windows, and sometimes this needs to be done from the command line.

Logical drives

Here’s a handy command to return a list of logical drives in Windows.

1
wmic logicaldisk get caption,description,drivetype,providername,volumename

The Win32_LogicalDisk WMI class represents a data source that resolves to an actual local storage device on a computer system running Windows. While Caption, Description, DriveType, ProviderName, and VolumeName are useful in most cases, more properties are available, and a complete list is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394173(v=vs.85).aspx. The output will be formatted as a table, the properties will be the column headings, and they will be placed into alphabetical order.

Caption is the drive letter of the logical disk. The Name property also returns the drive letter.

Description is the type of disk. For example: Local Fixed Disk, CD-ROM Disc, or Removable Disk.

DriveType is returned as an integer that corresponds to the type of disk drive the logical disk represents (and this matches the Description, making DriveType sort of superfluous).

0 = Unknown
1 = No Root Directory
2 = Removable Disk
3 = Local Disk
4 = Network Drive
5 = Compact Disc
6 = RAM Disk

ProviderName is the network path to the logical device.

VolumeName is the volume name of the logical disk.

Physical drives

And here is a command to return a list of physical drives.

1
wmic diskdrive list brief /format:list

The Win32_DiskDrive WMI class represents a physical disk drive as seen by a computer running Windows. Like the Win32_LogicalDisk WMI class, it has lots of properties, as listed at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394132(v=vs.85).aspx.

For simplicity, though, and ease of reading in command window, wmic diskdrive list brief /format:list does the trick, particularly in combination with wmic logicaldisk.

 1,525 total views,  1 views today