Tag: linux

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Mining

Unless you’ve been completely removed from society over the past 10 years or so, you’ve likely heard about Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. While the technology behind them may beyond most peoples understanding and buying a single Bitcoin is likely too expensive for many people (as of today its over $56,000 USD = 1 BTC), you can still get in on the craze by mining. At the core of crypto currency is some really complicated math, mining is the process of having a computer perform some of those calculations. Usually this is done with entire farms of computers with high-end CPUs or GPUs. Regardless of your hardware you can still get in on the action by joining services that combine the actions of many users into smaller units of work.

While there are many providers out there, I’ve found that the client offered by CudoMiner is one of the easiest for most users to install and run on modest hardware running Windows, Linux or OS/X. After setup, you just have to leave your device powered and connected to the web to use the idle time to earn some money.

With the increase in remote workers and students over the past year, I’d expect that at least a few of those organizations have figured out that they can use the idle time on those devices for mining to increase their revenue stream.

Geekcode

A very long time ago there was an online means to identify yourself online with a short abstracted code that resembled a PGP email signature, at that time I identified as:


-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
Created: 1999/02/02
GCS/IT d-(++@) s+:+ a- c++ UL++(++++$) P+++$ L+ E W+++$
N++ o++++ K w+++ O M V PS+ PE++ Y++ PGP+++ t+ 5 X++ R(-)
tv+ b+ DI+++ D+ G++ e++ h(-) r>++ y++*
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

REFERENCES:

Clear Linux bash history

While having history available with the simple use of the up arrow is a convenience feature common to most linux builds it can come with some risk. One such risk is when you have inadvertently typed a password instead of a command, or had to pipe credentials into a command.

Thankfully, you can clear the entire history with a variety of methods, the most common are below but others are available in the references.


history -c && history -w


cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c && exit

REFERENCES:

Cannot load VirtualBox after upgrading Ubuntu

If your computer uses SecureBoot, you may occasionally encounter this problem after upgrading the operating system. Thankfully, the solution is simple after some initial setup the first time.

The error generally reads something like: Could not load ‘modprobe vboxdrv’

First time:

  1. Create signing keys:

    openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout MOK.priv -outform DER -out MOK.der -nodes -days 36500 -subj "/CN=Descriptive name/"

  2. Sign the module (vboxdrv for this example):

    sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vboxdrv)

  3. Register the keys to Secure Boot:

    sudo mokutil --import MOK.der

  4. Supply a password for later use after reboot
  5. Reboot and follow instructions to Enroll MOK (Machine Owner Key).
  6. Restart after enrolling
  7. After the reboot, you may also need to load the module:
    sudo modprobe vboxdrv

After future updates you might re-encounter the problem, then you just need:

  1. sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vboxdrv)
  2. sudo modprobe vboxdrv

REFERENCES:

Modify Ubuntu Swappiness for performance

Sometimes, it is possible to improve the performance of Ubuntu on older hardware by modifying the disk swapping behavior.

Check your current setting:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To modify the behavior, just change the value and reboot. Most documentation recommends trying a value of 10.

sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf

Add (or change):

# Decrease swappiness value (default:60)
vm.swappiness=10

REFERENCES:

Google Chrome installation for Ubuntu

With a few simple steps, Google Chrome can be installed on Ubuntu.


wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -


sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'


sudo apt-get update


sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

or…


sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta

Clear Ubuntu ‘bash’ history

After a lot of use, your history file can become full of a lot of old commands… once in a while, it can be useful (and safer) to clean them up.

NOTE: this can be especially important if you have ever used a password as a command line parameter as it is stored without encryption in a text file.

Preferred:

cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c && exit

Also useful:

history -c
history -w

REFERENCES:

Install Fail2Ban on Ubuntu to protect services

Many common adminstrative services such as VPN and SSH are exposed on known port numbers, unfortunately this makes it easy for hackers to use tools to attempt to access the systems. Use of countermeasures such as Fail2Ban can block them after a few failed attempts.

Installation Steps:

  1. sudo apt-get install fail2ban
  2. sudo cp /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf /etc/fail2ban/jail.local
  3. sudo vi /etc/fail2ban/jail.local
  4. Update:
    destemail & sender
  5. OPTIONAL:
    Splunk:
    sudo /opt/splunkforwarder/bin/splunk add monitor /var/log/fail2ban.log -index main -sourcetype Fail2Ban

    Splunk (manual):
    sudo vi /opt/splunkforwarder/etc/apps/search/local/inputs.conf

    [monitor:///var/log/fail2ban.log]
    disabled = false
    index = main
    sourcetype = Fail2Ban

  6. sudo service fail2ban restart

REFERENCES:

Adding OpenSSH server logs to Splunk

By default, in most Linux distros, OpenVPN log output goes to the authlog, which is usually at /var/log/auth.log, as such it is trivial to add them to Splunk monitoring:

Splunk:
sudo /opt/splunkforwarder/bin/splunk add monitor /var/log/auth.log -index main -sourcetype OpenSSH

Splunk (manual):
sudo vi /opt/splunkforwarder/etc/apps/search/local/inputs.conf


[monitor:///var/log/auth.log]
disabled = false
index = main
sourcetype = OpenSSH

REFERENCES:

Adding OpenVPN logs to Splunk on Ubuntu

By default, in most Linux distros, OpenVPN log output goes to the syslog, which is usually at /var/log/syslog. However, your config files can set the logfile location explicitly, as shown below:

  1. sudo vi /etc/openvpn/server.conf
  2. Change or add:
    log-append /var/log/openvpn.log
  3. Restart to use the new config:
    sudo service openvpn restart
  4. Add to Splunk forwarder:
    sudo /opt/splunkforwarder/bin/splunk add monitor /var/log/openvpn.log -index main -sourcetype OpenVPN

    Splunk (manual):
    sudo vi /opt/splunkforwarder/etc/apps/search/local/inputs.conf

    [monitor:///var/log/openvpn.log]
    disabled = false
    index = main
    sourcetype = OpenVPN

REFERENCES: