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OK Google, be aesthetically pleasing

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/aesthetically-pleasing-ok-google/

Maker Andrew Jones took a Raspberry Pi and the Google Assistant SDK and created a gorgeous-looking, and highly functional, alternative to store-bought smart speakers.

Raspberry Pi Google AI Assistant

In this video I get an “Ok Google” voice activated AI assistant running on a raspberry pi. I also hand make a nice wooden box for it to live in.

OK Google, what are you?

Google Assistant is software of the same ilk as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. It’s a virtual assistant that allows you to request information, play audio, and control smart home devices via voice commands.

Infinite Looping Siri, Alexa and Google Home

One can barely see the iPhone’s screen. That’s because I have a privacy protection screen. Sorry, did not check the camera angle. Learn how to create your own loop, why we put Cortana out of the loop, and how to train Siri to an artificial voice: https://www.danrl.com/2016/12/01/looping-ais-siri-alexa-google-home.html

You probably have a digital assistant on your mobile phone, and if you go to the home of someone even mildly tech-savvy, you may see a device awaiting commands via a wake word such the device’s name or, for the Google Assistant, the phrase “OK, Google”.

Homebrew versions

Understanding the maker need to ‘put tech into stuff’ and upgrade everyday objects into everyday objects 2.0, the creators of these virtual assistants have allowed access for developers to run their software on devices such as the Raspberry Pi. This means that your common-or-garden homemade robot can now be controlled via voice, and your shed-built home automation system can have easy-to-use internet connectivity via a reliable, multi-device platform.

Andrew’s Google Assistant build

Andrew gives a peerless explanation of how the Google Assistant works:

There’s Google’s Cloud. You log into Google’s Cloud and you do a bunch of cloud configuration cloud stuff. And then on the Raspberry Pi you install some Python software and you do a bunch of configuration. And then the cloud and the Pi talk the clouds kitten rainbow protocol and then you get a Google AI assistant.

It all makes perfect sense. Though for more extra detail, you could always head directly to Google.

Andrew Jones Raspberry Pi OK Google Assistant

I couldn’t have explained it better myself

Andrew decided to take his Google Assistant-enabled Raspberry Pi and create a new body for it. One that was more aesthetically pleasing than the standard Pi-inna-box. After wiring his build and cannibalising some speakers and a microphone, he created a sleek, wooden body that would sit quite comfortably in any Bang & Olufsen shop window.

Find the entire build tutorial on Instructables.

Make your own

It’s more straightforward than Andrew’s explanation suggests, we promise! And with an array of useful resources online, you should be able to incorporate your choice of virtual assistants into your build.

There’s The Raspberry Pi Guy’s tutorial on setting up Amazon Alexa on the Raspberry Pi. If you’re looking to use Siri on your Pi, YouTube has a plethora of tutorials waiting for you. And lastly, check out Microsoft’s site for using Cortana on the Pi!

If you’re looking for more information on Google Assistant, check out issue 57 of The MagPi Magazine, free to download as a PDF. The print edition of this issue came with a free AIY Projects Voice Kit, and you can sign up for The MagPi newsletter to be the first to know about the kit’s availability for purchase.

The post OK Google, be aesthetically pleasing appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Messaging Fanout Pattern for Serverless Architectures Using Amazon SNS

Post Syndicated from Christie Gifrin original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/messaging-fanout-pattern-for-serverless-architectures-using-amazon-sns/

Sam Dengler, Amazon Web Services Solutions Architect

Serverless architectures allow solution builders to focus on solving challenges particular to their business, without assuming the overhead of managing infrastructure in AWS. AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.

When using Lambda in a serverless architecture, the goal should be to design tightly focused functions that do one thing and do it well. When these functions are composed to accomplish larger goals in microservice architectures, the complexity shifts from the internal components to the external communication between components. It’s all too easy to accidentally back into an architecture that is rigid to change because components are too knowledgeable of each other via the communication paths between them.

Solution builders can address this architectural challenge by using messaging patterns, resulting in loosely coupled communication between highly cohesive components to manage complexity in serverless architectures. As introduced in the recent Building Scalable Applications and Microservices: Adding Messaging to Your Toolbox post, a common approach when one component wishes to deliver the same message to multiple receivers is to use the fanout publish/subscribe messaging pattern.

The fanout pattern for message communication can be implemented in code. However, depending on your requirements, alternative solutions exist to offload this undifferentiated responsibility from the application. Amazon SNS is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that lets you fan out messages to large numbers of recipients.

In this post, I review a serverless architecture from PlayOn! Sports as a case study for migration of fanout functionality from application code to SNS.

PlayOn! Sports serverless video processing platform

PlayOn! Sports is one of the nation’s leading high school sports media companies. They operate a comprehensive technology platform, enabling high-quality, low-cost productions of live sports events for the NFHS High School Sports Network.

At the 2014 AWS re:Invent conference, Lambda was announced. The PlayOn! Sports technology team recognized the parallels between serverless demos featuring image processing using ImageMagick to video processing using ffmpeg.

At the time, PlayOn! Sports was broadcasting live video with adaptive bit rates, requiring a transcoding of the video stream to multiple quality levels for consumption on desktop, mobile, and connected devices. This is not unusual for an internet media company. However, with over 50,000 live broadcasts produced in 2014, the traditional media and entertainment technological approaches and pricing models would not work.

After some consultation with the Lambda team to validate support for custom binary execution, PlayOn! Sports moved forward with the development of a new serverless video processing platform according to the architecture diagram below.

In the architecture, a laptop in the field captures the video from a camera source and divides it into small fragments, according to the HLS protocol. The fragments are published to Amazon S3, through an Amazon CloudFront distribution for accelerated upload. When the file has been written to S3, it triggers a Lambda function to initiate the video segment processing.

Video transcoding fanout implementation in Lambda

Given Lambda’s integration growth across AWS, it’s easy to forget that it did not include managed integration with SNS when it was announced in November 2014.

PlayOn! Sports was actively experimenting with approaches to video processing to address quality control, audience growth, and cost constraints. Lambda was a great tool for rapid innovation. A goal of the architecture design was the ability to add and remove video processing alternatives to the workflow, using the fanout pattern to identify optimal solutions. Below is example code from the initial implementation:

import json
import logging
import boto3

logger = logging.getLogger('boto3')
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

client = boto3.client('lambda')
fanout_functions = ['media_info', 'transcode_audio']

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    logger.info(json.dumps(event))
    logger.info('fanout_functions: %s', fanout_functions)

    for fanout_function in fanout_functions:
        logger.info('invoke: %s', fanout_function)
        response = client.invoke(
            FunctionName=fanout_function,
            InvocationType='Event',
            Payload=json.dumps(event)
        )
        logger.info('response: %s', response)

    return 'done'

Each Lambda function is invoked asynchronously, injecting the same S3 event that triggered the original Lambda function. For example, the media_info Lambda function could be scaffolded similar to the following code snippet:

import json
import logging
import boto3

logger = logging.getLogger('boto3')
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    logger.info(json.dumps(event))

    # MediaInfo Processing
    # see: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/extracting-video-metadata-using-lambda-and-mediainfo/

    return 'done'

Refactoring fanout implementation using SNS

The PlayOn! Sports development team was familiar with SNS, but had not used it previously to support system-to-system messaging patterns. After the announcement of SNS triggering of Lambda functions, the PlayOn! Sports team planned to migrate to the new feature to offload the overhead of managing the fanout Lambda function.

When invoking a Lambda function, SNS wraps the original event with SNSEvent. The Lambda function can be refactored by adding a function to parse the S3 event from SNSEvent, as seen in the following code:

import json
import logging
import boto3

logger = logging.getLogger('boto3')
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    s3_event = parse_event(event)
    logger.info(json.dumps(s3_event))

    # MediaInfo Processing
    # see: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/extracting-video-metadata-using-lambda-and-mediainfo/

    return 'done'


def parse_event(event):
    record = event['Records'][0]
    if 'EventSource' in record and record['EventSource'] == 'aws:sns':
        return json.loads(record['Sns']['Message'])

    return event

This Lambda function modification can be authored, tested, and deployed before enabling the SNS integration to verify that the existing Lambda fanout execution path continues to operate as before. The Lambda function invocation can now be transferred from the fanout Lambda function to SNS without disruption to S3 processing.

As the diagram below shows, the resulting architecture is similar to the original. The exception is that objects written to S3 now trigger a message to be published to an SNS topic. This sends the S3 event to multiple Lambda functions to be processed independently.

Sample architecture deployment using AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation gives developers and system administrators an easy way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources. CloudFormation provisions and updates resources in an orderly and predictable fashion. To launch the CloudFormation stack for the sample fanout architecture, choose the following button:

 

 

Follow these steps to complete the architecture deployment:

  1. If necessary, sign into the console for your account when prompted.
  2. On the Select Template page, choose Next.
  3. Under Parameters, for S3BucketName, enter a globally unique name.
  4. For SnsTopicName, enter a region-unique name.
  5. Choose Next, Next.
  6. Select the checkbox for I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources, and choose Create.

After the stack has completed creation, you can test both paths of execution by uploading files to the S3 bucket that you created. Uploading a file to the “/uploads/lambda/” directory in S3 triggers the Lambda fanout function. Uploading a file to the “/uploads/sns/” directory in S3 triggers the SNS fanout execution path. You can verify execution by monitoring the Lambda function outputs in CloudWatch Logs.

Conclusion

In this post, I reviewed the fanout messaging pattern and options for its inclusion in a serverless architectures using Lambda application code and SNS. Using the PlayOn! Sports serverless video processing pipeline use case, I demonstrated how easy it is to refactor an existing application to use the SNS fanout approach.

I also provided a sample architecture in CloudFormation that you can run in your own account. Try it out and expand the sample architecture by adding other Lambda functions to the SNS topic, to demonstrate the flexibility of the fanout messaging pattern!

You can get started with SNS using the AWS Management Console, or the SDK of your choice. For more information about how to use SNS fanout messaging, see the following resources:

If you have questions or suggestions, please comment below.

New – AWS SAM Local (Beta) – Build and Test Serverless Applications Locally

Post Syndicated from Randall Hunt original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-sam-local-beta-build-and-test-serverless-applications-locally/

Today we’re releasing a beta of a new tool, SAM Local, that makes it easy to build and test your serverless applications locally. In this post we’ll use SAM local to build, debug, and deploy a quick application that allows us to vote on tabs or spaces by curling an endpoint. AWS introduced Serverless Application Model (SAM) last year to make it easier for developers to deploy serverless applications. If you’re not already familiar with SAM my colleague Orr wrote a great post on how to use SAM that you can read in about 5 minutes. At it’s core, SAM is a powerful open source specification built on AWS CloudFormation that makes it easy to keep your serverless infrastructure as code – and they have the cutest mascot.

SAM Local takes all the good parts of SAM and brings them to your local machine.

There are a couple of ways to install SAM Local but the easiest is through NPM. A quick npm install -g aws-sam-local should get us going but if you want the latest version you can always install straight from the source: go get github.com/awslabs/aws-sam-local (this will create a binary named aws-sam-local, not sam).

I like to vote on things so let’s write a quick SAM application to vote on Spaces versus Tabs. We’ll use a very simple, but powerful, architecture of API Gateway fronting a Lambda function and we’ll store our results in DynamoDB. In the end a user should be able to curl our API curl https://SOMEURL/ -d '{"vote": "spaces"}' and get back the number of votes.

Let’s start by writing a simple SAM template.yaml:

AWSTemplateFormatVersion : '2010-09-09'
Transform: AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31
Resources:
  VotesTable:
    Type: "AWS::Serverless::SimpleTable"
  VoteSpacesTabs:
    Type: "AWS::Serverless::Function"
    Properties:
      Runtime: python3.6
      Handler: lambda_function.lambda_handler
      Policies: AmazonDynamoDBFullAccess
      Environment:
        Variables:
          TABLE_NAME: !Ref VotesTable
      Events:
        Vote:
          Type: Api
          Properties:
            Path: /
            Method: post

So we create a [dynamo_i] table that we expose to our Lambda function through an environment variable called TABLE_NAME.

To test that this template is valid I’ll go ahead and call sam validate to make sure I haven’t fat-fingered anything. It returns Valid! so let’s go ahead and get to work on our Lambda function.

import os
import os
import json
import boto3
votes_table = boto3.resource('dynamodb').Table(os.getenv('TABLE_NAME'))

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    print(event)
    if event['httpMethod'] == 'GET':
        resp = votes_table.scan()
        return {'body': json.dumps({item['id']: int(item['votes']) for item in resp['Items']})}
    elif event['httpMethod'] == 'POST':
        try:
            body = json.loads(event['body'])
        except:
            return {'statusCode': 400, 'body': 'malformed json input'}
        if 'vote' not in body:
            return {'statusCode': 400, 'body': 'missing vote in request body'}
        if body['vote'] not in ['spaces', 'tabs']:
            return {'statusCode': 400, 'body': 'vote value must be "spaces" or "tabs"'}

        resp = votes_table.update_item(
            Key={'id': body['vote']},
            UpdateExpression='ADD votes :incr',
            ExpressionAttributeValues={':incr': 1},
            ReturnValues='ALL_NEW'
        )
        return {'body': "{} now has {} votes".format(body['vote'], resp['Attributes']['votes'])}

So let’s test this locally. I’ll need to create a real DynamoDB database to talk to and I’ll need to provide the name of that database through the enviornment variable TABLE_NAME. I could do that with an env.json file or I can just pass it on the command line. First, I can call:
$ echo '{"httpMethod": "POST", "body": "{\"vote\": \"spaces\"}"}' |\
TABLE_NAME="vote-spaces-tabs" sam local invoke "VoteSpacesTabs"
to test the Lambda – it returns the number of votes for spaces so theoritically everything is working. Typing all of that out is a pain so I could generate a sample event with sam local generate-event api and pass that in to the local invocation. Far easier than all of that is just running our API locally. Let’s do that: sam local start-api. Now I can curl my local endpoints to test everything out.
I’ll run the command: $ curl -d '{"vote": "tabs"}' http://127.0.0.1:3000/ and it returns: “tabs now has 12 votes”. Now, of course I did not write this function perfectly on my first try. I edited and saved several times. One of the benefits of hot-reloading is that as I change the function I don’t have to do any additional work to test the new function. This makes iterative development vastly easier.

Let’s say we don’t want to deal with accessing a real DynamoDB database over the network though. What are our options? Well we can download DynamoDB Local and launch it with java -Djava.library.path=./DynamoDBLocal_lib -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb. Then we can have our Lambda function use the AWS_SAM_LOCAL environment variable to make some decisions about how to behave. Let’s modify our function a bit:

import os
import json
import boto3
if os.getenv("AWS_SAM_LOCAL"):
    votes_table = boto3.resource(
        'dynamodb',
        endpoint_url="http://docker.for.mac.localhost:8000/"
    ).Table("spaces-tabs-votes")
else:
    votes_table = boto3.resource('dynamodb').Table(os.getenv('TABLE_NAME'))

Now we’re using a local endpoint to connect to our local database which makes working without wifi a little easier.

SAM local even supports interactive debugging! In Java and Node.js I can just pass the -d flag and a port to immediately enable the debugger. For Python I could use a library like import epdb; epdb.serve() and connect that way. Then we can call sam local invoke -d 8080 "VoteSpacesTabs" and our function will pause execution waiting for you to step through with the debugger.

Alright, I think we’ve got everything working so let’s deploy this!

First I’ll call the sam package command which is just an alias for aws cloudformation package and then I’ll use the result of that command to sam deploy.

$ sam package --template-file template.yaml --s3-bucket MYAWESOMEBUCKET --output-template-file package.yaml
Uploading to 144e47a4a08f8338faae894afe7563c3  90570 / 90570.0  (100.00%)
Successfully packaged artifacts and wrote output template to file package.yaml.
Execute the following command to deploy the packaged template
aws cloudformation deploy --template-file package.yaml --stack-name 
$ sam deploy --template-file package.yaml --stack-name VoteForSpaces --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM
Waiting for changeset to be created..
Waiting for stack create/update to complete
Successfully created/updated stack - VoteForSpaces

Which brings us to our API:
.

I’m going to hop over into the production stage and add some rate limiting in case you guys start voting a lot – but otherwise we’ve taken our local work and deployed it to the cloud without much effort at all. I always enjoy it when things work on the first deploy!

You can vote now and watch the results live! http://spaces-or-tabs.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

We hope that SAM Local makes it easier for you to test, debug, and deploy your serverless apps. We have a CONTRIBUTING.md guide and we welcome pull requests. Please tweet at us to let us know what cool things you build. You can see our What’s New post here and the documentation is live here.

– Randall

Automating Blue/Green Deployments of Infrastructure and Application Code using AMIs, AWS Developer Tools, & Amazon EC2 Systems Manager

Post Syndicated from Ramesh Adabala original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/bluegreen-infrastructure-application-deployment-blog/

Previous DevOps blog posts have covered the following use cases for infrastructure and application deployment automation:

An AMI provides the information required to launch an instance, which is a virtual server in the cloud. You can use one AMI to launch as many instances as you need. It is security best practice to customize and harden your base AMI with required operating system updates and, if you are using AWS native services for continuous security monitoring and operations, you are strongly encouraged to bake into the base AMI agents such as those for Amazon EC2 Systems Manager (SSM), Amazon Inspector, CodeDeploy, and CloudWatch Logs. A customized and hardened AMI is often referred to as a “golden AMI.” The use of golden AMIs to create EC2 instances in your AWS environment allows for fast and stable application deployment and scaling, secure application stack upgrades, and versioning.

In this post, using the DevOps automation capabilities of Systems Manager, AWS developer tools (CodePipeLine, CodeDeploy, CodeCommit, CodeBuild), I will show you how to use AWS CodePipeline to orchestrate the end-to-end blue/green deployments of a golden AMI and application code. Systems Manager Automation is a powerful security feature for enterprises that want to mature their DevSecOps practices.

Here are the high-level phases and primary services covered in this use case:

 

You can access the source code for the sample used in this post here: https://github.com/awslabs/automating-governance-sample/tree/master/Bluegreen-AMI-Application-Deployment-blog.

This sample will create a pipeline in AWS CodePipeline with the building blocks to support the blue/green deployments of infrastructure and application. The sample includes a custom Lambda step in the pipeline to execute Systems Manager Automation to build a golden AMI and update the Auto Scaling group with the golden AMI ID for every rollout of new application code. This guarantees that every new application deployment is on a fully patched and customized AMI in a continuous integration and deployment model. This enables the automation of hardened AMI deployment with every new version of application deployment.

 

 

We will build and run this sample in three parts.

Part 1: Setting up the AWS developer tools and deploying a base web application

Part 1 of the AWS CloudFormation template creates the initial Java-based web application environment in a VPC. It also creates all the required components of Systems Manager Automation, CodeCommit, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy to support the blue/green deployments of the infrastructure and application resulting from ongoing code releases.

Part 1 of the AWS CloudFormation stack creates these resources:

After Part 1 of the AWS CloudFormation stack creation is complete, go to the Outputs tab and click the Elastic Load Balancing link. You will see the following home page for the base web application:

Make sure you have all the outputs from the Part 1 stack handy. You need to supply them as parameters in Part 3 of the stack.

Part 2: Setting up your CodeCommit repository

In this part, you will commit and push your sample application code into the CodeCommit repository created in Part 1. To access the initial git commands to clone the empty repository to your local machine, click Connect to go to the AWS CodeCommit console. Make sure you have the IAM permissions required to access AWS CodeCommit from command line interface (CLI).

After you’ve cloned the repository locally, download the sample application files from the part2 folder of the Git repository and place the files directly into your local repository. Do not include the aws-codedeploy-sample-tomcat folder. Go to the local directory and type the following commands to commit and push the files to the CodeCommit repository:

git add .
git commit -a -m "add all files from the AWS Java Tomcat CodeDeploy application"
git push

After all the files are pushed successfully, the repository should look like this:

 

Part 3: Setting up CodePipeline to enable blue/green deployments     

Part 3 of the AWS CloudFormation template creates the pipeline in AWS CodePipeline and all the required components.

a) Source: The pipeline is triggered by any change to the CodeCommit repository.

b) BuildGoldenAMI: This Lambda step executes the Systems Manager Automation document to build the golden AMI. After the golden AMI is successfully created, a new launch configuration with the new AMI details will be updated into the Auto Scaling group of the application deployment group. You can watch the progress of the automation in the EC2 console from the Systems Manager –> Automations menu.

c) Build: This step uses the application build spec file to build the application build artifact. Here are the CodeBuild execution steps and their status:

d) Deploy: This step clones the Auto Scaling group, launches the new instances with the new AMI, deploys the application changes, reroutes the traffic from the elastic load balancer to the new instances and terminates the old Auto Scaling group. You can see the execution steps and their status in the CodeDeploy console.

After the CodePipeline execution is complete, you can access the application by clicking the Elastic Load Balancing link. You can find it in the output of Part 1 of the AWS CloudFormation template. Any consecutive commits to the application code in the CodeCommit repository trigger the pipelines and deploy the infrastructure and code with an updated AMI and code.

 

If you have feedback about this post, add it to the Comments section below. If you have questions about implementing the example used in this post, open a thread on the Developer Tools forum.

About the author

 

Ramesh Adabala is a Solutions Architect in Southeast Enterprise Solution Architecture team at Amazon Web Services.

Firefox 55 released

Post Syndicated from ris original https://lwn.net/Articles/730198/rss

Firefox 55.0 has been released. From the release
notes: “Today’s release brings innovative functionality, improvements to core browser performance, and more proof that we’re committed to making Firefox better than ever. New features include support for WebVR, making Firefox the first Windows desktop browser to support VR experiences. Performance changes include significantly faster startup times when restoring lots of tabs and settings that let users take greater control of our new multi-process architecture. We’ve also upgraded the address bar to make finding what you want easier, with search suggestions and the integration of our one-click search feature, and safer, by prioritizing the secure – https – version of sites when possible.”

Darth Beats: Star Wars LEGO gets a musical upgrade

Post Syndicated from Janina Ander original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/darth-beats/

Dan Aldred, Raspberry Pi Certified Educator and creator of the website TeCoEd, has built Darth Beats by managing to fit a Pi Zero W and a Pimoroni Speaker pHAT into a LEGO Darth Vader alarm clock! The Pi force is strong with this one.

Darth Beats MP3 Player

Pimoroni Speaker pHAT and Raspberry Pi Zero W embedded into a Lego Darth Vader Alarm clock to create – “Darth Beats MP3 Player”. Video demonstrating all the features and functions of the project. Alarm Clock – https://goo.gl/VSMhG4 Speaker pHAT – https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/speaker-phat

Darth Beats inspiration: I have a very good feeling about this!

As we all know, anything you love gets better when you add something else you love: chocolate ice cream + caramel sauce, apple tart + caramel sauce, pizza + caramel sau— okay, maybe not anything, but you get what I’m saying.

The formula, in the form of “LEGO + Star Wars”, applies to Dan’s LEGO Darth Vader alarm clock. His Darth Vader, however, was sitting around on a shelf, just waiting to be hacked into something even cooler. Then one day, inspiration struck: Dan decided to aim for exponential awesomeness by integrating Raspberry Pi and Pimoroni technology to turn Vader into an MP3 player.

Darth Beats assembly: always tell me the mods!

The space inside the LEGO device measures a puny 6×3×3 cm, so cramming in the Zero W and the pHAT was going to be a struggle. But Dan grabbed his dremel and set to work, telling himself to “do or do not. There is no try.”

Darth Beats dremel

I find your lack of space disturbing.

He removed the battery compartment, and added two additional buttons in its place. Including the head, his Darth Beats has seven buttons, which means it is fully autonomous as a music player.

Darth Beats back buttons

Almost ready to play a silly remix of Yoda quotes…

Darth Beats can draw its power from a wall socket, or from a portable battery pack, as shown in Dan’s video. Dan used the GPIO Zero Python library to set up ‘on’ and ‘off’ switches, and buttons for skipping tracks and controlling volume.

For more details on the build process, read his blog, and check out his video log:

Making Darth Beats

Short video showing you how I created the “Darth Beats MP3 Player”.

Accessing Darth Beats: these are the songs you’re looking for

When you press the ‘on’ switch, the Imperial March sounds before Darth Beats asks “What is thy bidding, my master?”. Then the device is ready to play music. Dan accomplished this by using Cron to run his scripts as soon as the Zero W boots up. MP3 files are played with the help of the Pygame library.

Of course, over time it would become boring to only be able to listen to songs that are stored on the Zero W. However, Dan got around this issue by accessing the Zero W remotely. He set up an online file upload system to add and remove MP3 files from the player. To do this, he used Droopy, an file sharing server software package written by Pierre Duquesne.

IT’S A TRAP!

There’s no reason to use this quote, but since it’s the Star Wars line I use most frequently, I’m adding it here anyway. It’s my post, and I can do what I want!

As you can imagine, there’s little that gets us more excited at Pi Towers than a Pi-powered Star Wars build. Except maybe a Harry Potter-themed project? What are your favourite geeky builds? Are you maybe even working on one yourself? Be sure to send us nerdy joy by sharing your links in the comments!

The post Darth Beats: Star Wars LEGO gets a musical upgrade appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Build Serverless AWS CodeCommit Workflows using Amazon CloudWatch Events and JGit

Post Syndicated from Chris Barclay original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/build-serverless-aws-codecommit-workflows-using-amazon-cloudwatch-events-and-jgit/

Sam Dengler is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services

Summary

Amazon CloudWatch Events now supports AWS CodeCommit Repository State Changes event types for activities like pushing new code to a repository. Using these new event types, customers can build Amazon CloudWatch Event rules to match AWS CodeCommit events and route them to one or more targets like an Amazon SNS Topic, AWS Step Functions state machine, or AWS Lambda function to trigger automated workflows to process repository changes.

In this blog, I will provide three examples for using AWS Lambda and JGit to build cost-effective serverless solutions to securely process AWS CodeCommit repository state changes:

  • Replicate CodeCommit Repository
  • Enforce Git Commit Message Policy
  • Backup Git Archive to Amazon S3

Source code and Amazon CloudFormation templates for the examples are located in the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-codecommit-examples.

AWS CodeCommit CloudWatch Events

Amazon CloudWatch Events delivers a near real-time stream of system events that describe changes in AWS resources. Below is an example Amazon CloudWatch Event for one of the new AWS CodeCommit Repository State Changes event types, referenceUpdated. Any change to the repository will trigger a referenceUpdated event, however triggers for particular branches can be filtered using the referenceType and referenceName fields in the event details.

{
    "version": "0",
    "id": "01234567-0123-0123-0123-012345678901",
    "detail-type": "CodeCommit Repository State Change",
    "source": "aws.codecommit",
    "account": "123456789012",
    "time": "2017-06-12T10:23:43Z",
    "region": "us-east-1",
    "resources": [
        "arn:aws:codecommit:us-east-1:123456789012:myRepo"
    ],
    "detail": {
        "event": "referenceUpdated",
        "repositoryName": "myRepo",
        "referenceType": "head",
        "referenceName": "myBranch",
        "commitId": "3e5983EXAMPLE",
        "oldCommitId": "1a7813EXAMPLE"
    }
}

We will use the Amazon CloudWatch Event’s fields to create a pattern to match the events for which we will trigger a target, in this case an AWS Lambda function.

Accessing AWS CodeCommit using HTTPS URLs

The HTTPS URL method for accessing an AWS CodeCommit repository is particularly suited to a serverless solution because an Amazon Lambda execution container already provides temporary AWS IAM key credentials associated to the function’s AWS IAM Execution Role. The function’s Execution Role is associated to one or more AWS IAM Policies, in which you specify permissions allowing the function to access AWS resources. For each function, we will limit the AWS IAM polices to only the AWS CodeCommit repository, Amazon S3 bucket, or Amazon SNS topics, following the AWS best practice to grant least privileged access.

For example, the AWS IAM Policy snippet below restricts the Amazon Lambda function to pull from the source repository and push to the target repository.

Policies:
  - Version: '2012-10-17'
    Statement:
      - Effect: Allow
        Resource: !Sub 'arn:aws:codecommit:${AWS::Region}:${AWS::AccountId}:${SourceRepositoryName}'
        Action:
          - 'codecommit:GetRepository'
          - 'codecommit:GitPull'
      - Effect: Allow
        Resource: !Sub 'arn:aws:codecommit:${TargetRepositoryRegion}:${AWS::AccountId}:${TargetRepositoryName}'
        Action:
          - 'codecommit:GetRepository'
          - 'codecommit:GitPush'

When using the HTTPS URL access method, a credential helper is configured for the Git client, which executes the “aws codecommit credential-helper” command to provide a SigV4 compatible user name and password using AWS IAM credentials (see more). When using JGit as the Git client, a CredentialsProvider can be supplied to Git commands to achieve the same result.

The Spring Cloud Config project provides an implementation of the JGit CredentialsProvider for AwsCodeCommit (source), which conveniently uses the AWS DefaultAWSCredentialsProviderChain to discover AWS credentials in the standard priority order supported by Amazon Lambda. The AwsCodeCommit.calculateCodeCommitPassword method is particularly interesting to review as an example of SigV4 transformation logic.

Cloning a repository is repeated across examples, and the functionality has been delegated to a supporting CloneCommandBuilder Class below.

public class CloneCommandBuilder {

    private File directory;

    public CloneCommandBuilder() throws IOException {
        directory = Files.createTempDirectory(null).toFile();
    }

    public CloneCommand buildCloneCommand(String sourceUrl) {
        return buildCloneCommand(sourceUrl, new AwsCodeCommitCredentialProvider());
    }

    public CloneCommand buildCloneCommand(String sourceUrl,
            AwsCodeCommitCredentialProvider credentialsProvider) {

        return new CloneCommand().setDirectory(directory)
                .setURI(sourceUrl)
                .setCredentialsProvider(credentialsProvider)
                .setBare(true);
    }
}

Next we’ll look at some examples to process the repository events using Amazon Lambda.

Example 1: Replicate CodeCommit Repository

Customers often need to replicate commits from one repository to another to support disaster recovery or cross region CI/CD pipelines. In this example, the Amazon Lambda function will clone a repository from the source and push to the target. This example is intended to update an existing target repository, which should not be empty before configuring replication prior to configuring replication.

Please note, Amazon Lambda functions are limited to 1.5GB memory, 512MB ephemeral disk capacity (“/tmp” space), and a 5 minute execution time. If your repository is unable to be processed within these limits, please see the Replicating and Automating Sync-Ups for a Repository with AWS CodeCommit blog article for an alternative approach to replicate repositories using an Amazon EC2 instance.

Let’s take a look at some code!

public class ReplicateRepositoryHandler
        implements RequestHandler<CodeCommitEvent, HandlerResponse> {

    private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(ReplicateRepositoryHandler.class);
    private final String targetUrl;
    private final AwsCodeCommitCredentialProvider credentialsProvider;

    public ReplicateRepositoryHandler() {
        String targetName = System.getenv("TARGET_REPO_NAME");
        String targetRegion = System.getenv("TARGET_REPO_REGION");

        CodeCommitMetadata target = new CodeCommitMetadata(targetName, targetRegion);
        targetUrl = target.getCloneUrlHttp();
        credentialsProvider = new AwsCodeCommitCredentialProvider();
    }

    // ...

On instantiation, the Amazon Lambda function discovers the target AWS CodeCommit repository HTTPS URL by querying the repository metadata using the target repository name and region. This discovery process is repeated across the examples, and the code has been delegated to the CodeCommitMetadata class below.

public class CodeCommitMetadata {

    private RepositoryMetadata repositoryMetadata;

    public CodeCommitMetadata(String repoName, String repoRegion) {
        AWSCodeCommitClientBuilder builder = AWSCodeCommitClientBuilder.standard();
        AWSCodeCommit client = builder.withRegion(repoRegion).build();

        GetRepositoryRequest request = new GetRepositoryRequest();
        request.withRepositoryName(repoName);

        GetRepositoryResult result = client.getRepository(request);
        repositoryMetadata = result.getRepositoryMetadata();
    }

    public String getCloneUrlHttp() {
        return repositoryMetadata.getCloneUrlHttp();
    }
}

When the Amazon Lambda function is triggered by the AWS CloudWatch Event, the source repository name and region in the event are used to discover the source repository HTTPS URL. We use JGit to clone the source repository from this URL into a local repository stored in a temporary directory in the Amazon Lambda execution container.

public HandlerResponse handleRequest(CodeCommitEvent event, Context context) {
    try {
        String sourceName = event.getDetail().getRepositoryName();
        String sourceRegion = event.getRegion();
   
        // clone source repository
        CodeCommitMetadata source = new CodeCommitMetadata(sourceName, sourceRegion);
        String sourceUrl = source.getCloneUrlHttp();
        Git git = new CloneCommandBuilder().buildCloneCommand(sourceUrl).call();

        // ...

Once we’ve cloned the local repository to the Amazon Lambda execution container, the last step is to set the target AWS CodeCommit repository as a new remote location and push the local references using the reference specification “+refs/*:refs/*”.

// push target repository
git.push().setCredentialsProvider(credentialsProvider)
          .setRemote(targetUrl)
          .setRefSpecs(new RefSpec("+refs/*:refs/*"))
          .call();
// ...

In the next example, we’ll review how we can build a Lambda function to enforce commit message policies.

Example 2: Enforce Git Commit Message Policy

Some customers choose to enforce policies on a Git repository to maintain code quality. In this example, we use the same tools described above to clone a repository and validate the commit messages from the Git log using a regular expression.

public class PolicyEnforcerHandler implements RequestHandler<CodeCommitEvent, HandlerResponse> {

    private static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ArchiveRepositoryHandler.class);

    private final String mainBranch;
    private final String snsTopicArn;
    private final Pattern pattern;
    private final AmazonSNS snsClient;

    public PolicyEnforcerHandler() {
        mainBranch = System.getenv("MAIN_BRANCH_NAME");
        snsTopicArn = System.getenv("SNS_TOPIC_ARN");

        String messageRegex = System.getenv("MESSAGE_REGEX");
        pattern = Pattern.compile(messageRegex);

        String snsRegion = snsTopicArn.split(":")[3];
        snsClient = AmazonSNSClientBuilder.standard().withRegion(snsRegion).build();
    }

    // ...

On instantiation, the Amazon Lambda function compiles the regular expression for message validation and creates an Amazon SNS client to send notifications.

@Override
public HandlerResponse handleRequest(CodeCommitEvent event, Context context) {
    String sourceName = event.getDetail().getRepositoryName();
    String sourceRegion = event.getRegion();
    String commitId = event.getDetail().getCommitId();
    String oldCommitId = event.getDetail().getOldCommitId();

    try {
        // clone source repository
        CodeCommitMetadata source = new CodeCommitMetadata(sourceName, sourceRegion);
        String sourceUrl = source.getCloneUrlHttp();
        Git git = new CloneCommandBuilder().buildCloneCommand(sourceUrl).call();

        // ...

When the Amazon Lambda function is triggered by the AWS CloudWatch Event, the process to clone the repository is the same, discovering the AWS CodeCommit HTTPS URL from the AWS CloudWatch Event and cloning a bare Git repository to the Amazon Lambda execution container.

// use the OldCommitId, or default to the main branch
String toGitReference = Optional.ofNullable(oldCommitId).orElse(mainBranch);
Repository repository = git.getRepository();
ObjectId to = repository.resolve(toGitReference);
ObjectId from = repository.resolve(commitId);

// ...

JGit RevWalk is used to determine the range of commits over which to validate the message policy. When commits are added to an existing branch, AWS CodeCommit will emit an referenceUpdated event, which includes commitId and oldCommitId fields that establish the range of commits.

When commits are added to a new branch, AWS CodeCommit will emit a referenceCreated event, which includes a commitId but not the oldCommitId. In this case, we will use the main branch name to determine the common ancestry of the commit chains, called the merge base, in order to establish the range of commits.

// create a RevWalk and set the range of commits
try (RevWalk walk = new RevWalk(repository)) {
    walk.markStart(walk.parseCommit(from));
    walk.markUninteresting(walk.parseCommit(to));

    // iterate the list of commits and validate each message
    for (RevCommit commit : walk) {
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(commit.getShortMessage());

        // publish a message to the topic if the message does not match
        if (!matcher.find()) {
            String message = buildMessage(commit);
            logger.info(message);
            snsClient.publish(snsTopicArn, message);
        }
    }

    walk.dispose();
}

// ...

Once the range has been established, we iterate the list of commit messages, testing each against the message policy regular expression. If the message does not match the regular expression, then it is out of compliance from the policy, and a message is published to the Amazon SNS topic for notification.

In the next example, I’ll review how to backup an archive of the files in a Git repository.

Example 3: Backup Git Archive to Amazon S3

The previous examples have focused on the bare Git repository objects, however there are some use cases for processing the files in the Git repository at a particular reference. In this example, I’ll build a Lambda function to create a zip of the files in the repository and store it in Amazon S3 as a backup.

public class ArchiveRepositoryHandler
        implements RequestHandler<CodeCommitEvent, HandlerResponse> {

    private static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ArchiveRepositoryHandler.class);

    private final String ZIP_FORMAT = "zip"
    private final String targetS3Bucket;
    private final AmazonS3 s3Client;

    public ArchiveRepositoryHandler() {
        targetS3Bucket = System.getenv("TARGET_S3_BUCKET");
        s3Client = AmazonS3ClientBuilder.defaultClient();
        ArchiveCommand.registerFormat(ZIP_FORMAT, new ZipFormat());
    }

    // ...

On instantiation, the Amazon Lambda function creates an Amazon S3 client and registers the ZipFormat with JGit.

@Override
public HandlerResponse handleRequest(CodeCommitEvent event, Context context) {
    String sourceName = event.getDetail().getRepositoryName();
    String sourceRegion = event.getRegion();
    String commitId = event.getDetail().getCommitId();

    try {
        // clone source repository
        CodeCommitMetadata source = new CodeCommitMetadata(sourceName, sourceRegion);
        String sourceUrl = source.getCloneUrlHttp();
        Git git = new CloneCommandBuilder().buildCloneCommand(sourceUrl).call();

        // ...

When the Amazon Lambda function is triggered by the AWS CloudWatch Event, the process to clone the repository is the same, discovering the AWS CodeCommit HTTPS URL from the AWS CloudWatch Event and cloning a bare Git repository to the Amazon Lambda execution container.

// create and upload archive for commitId
File file = Files.createTempFile(null, null).toFile();
try (OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(file)) {
    ObjectId objectId = git.getRepository().resolve(commitId);
    git.archive().setTree(objectId)
                 .setFormat(ZIP_FORMAT)
                 .setOutputStream(out)
                 .call();

    String key = sourceName + "." + commitId + "." + ZIP_FORMAT;
    s3Client.putObject(targetS3Bucket, key, file);
}

// ...

Once the repository has been cloned, we use a JGit ArchiveCommand to create a zip artifact representing the working files of repository at the commit triggering the event. The generated zip artifact is then uploaded to Amazon S3 using the repository name and commit shortId as the key.

Conclusion

AWS CloudWatch Event’s support for AWS CodeCommit Repository State Changes event types opens possibilities to build event-driven source code workflow automation using the same AWS CloudWatch Events service that acts as an event bus across many AWS services. Combining this new capability with Amazon Lambda, the JGit client, and AWS IAM policy controls provides builders with a set of tools to build serverless solutions that securely access AWS resources, scale on demand, and are cost effective.

In this blog, I’ve demonstrated three example solutions built using these tools, however AWS CodeCommit’s integration with AWS CloudWatch Events allows you to integrate with other AWS CloudWatch Events targets, like Amazon SQS or AWS Step Functions.

I encourage you to visit the GitHub repository (https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-codecommit-examples), which has instructions to launch these examples in your own AWS account. Please share your ideas and questions in the comments below, or submit pull requests and issues to the GitHub repository!

How to Monitor and Visualize Failed SSH Access Attempts to Amazon EC2 Linux Instances

Post Syndicated from Assaf Namer original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-monitor-and-visualize-failed-ssh-access-attempts-to-amazon-ec2-linux-instances/

As part of the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, you are responsible for monitoring and managing your resources at the operating system and application level. When you monitor your application servers, for example, you can measure, visualize, react to, and improve the security of those servers. You probably already do this on premises or in other environments, and you can adapt your existing processes, tools, and methodologies for use in the AWS Cloud. For more details about best practices for monitoring your AWS resources, see the “Manage Security Monitoring, Alerting, Audit Trail, and Incident Response” section in the AWS Security Best Practices whitepaper.

This blog post focuses on how to log and create alarms on invalid Secure Shell (SSH) access attempts. Implementing live monitoring and session recording facilitates the identification of unauthorized activity and can help confirm that remote users access only those systems they are authorized to use. With SSH log information in hand (such as invalid access type, bad private keys, and remote IP addresses), you can take proactive actions to protect your servers. For example, you can use an AWS Lambda function to adjust your server’s security rules when an alarm is triggered that indicates an invalid SSH access attempt.

In this post, I demonstrate how to use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to monitor SSH access to your application servers (Amazon EC2 Linux instances) so that you can monitor rejected SSH connection requests and take action. I also show how to configure CloudWatch Logs to send SSH access logs from application servers that reside in a public subnet. Last, I demonstrate how to visualize how many attempts are made to SSH into your application servers with bad private keys and invalid user names. Using these techniques and tools can help you improve the security of your application servers.

AWS services and terminology I use in this post

In this post, I use the following AWS services and terminology:

  • Amazon CloudWatch – A monitoring service for the resources and applications you run on the AWS Cloud. You can use CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources.
  • CloudWatch namespaces – Containers for metrics. Metrics in different namespaces are isolated from each other so that metrics from different applications are not mistakenly aggregated into the same statistics. You also can create custom metrics for which you must specify namespaces as containers.
  • CloudWatch Logs – A feature of CloudWatch that allows you to monitor, store, and access your log files from EC2 instances, AWS CloudTrail, and other sources. Additionally, you can use CloudWatch Logs to monitor applications and systems by using log data and create alarms. For example, you can choose to search for a phrase in logs and then create an alarm if the phrase you are looking for is found in the log more than 5 times in the last 10 minutes. You can then take action on these alarms, if necessary.
  • Log stream – A log stream represents the sequence of events coming from an application instance or resource that you are monitoring. In this post, I use the EC2 instance ID as the log stream identifier so that I can easily map log entries to the instances that produced the log entries
  • Log group – In CloudWatch Logs, a group of log streams that share the same retention time, monitoring, and access control settings. Each log stream must belong to one log
  • Metric – A specific term or value that you can monitor and extract from log events.
  • Metric filter – A metric filter describes how Amazon CloudWatch Logs extracts information from logs and transforms it into CloudWatch metrics. It defines the terms and patterns to look for in log data as the data is sent to CloudWatch Logs. Metric filters are assigned to log groups, and all metric filters assigned to a given log group are applied to their log stream—see the following diagram for more details.
  • SSH logs – Reside on EC2 instances and capture all SSH activities. The logs include successful attempts as well as unsuccessful attempts. Debian Linux SSH logs reside in /var/log/auth.log, and stock CentOS SSH logs are written to /var/log/secure. This blog post uses an Amazon Linux AMI, which also logs SSH sessions to /var/log/secure.
  • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) – IAM enables you to securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users. In the solution in this post, you create an IAM policy and configure an EC2 instance that assumes a role. The IAM policy allows the EC2 instance to create log events and save them in an Amazon S3 bucket (in other words, CloudWatch Logs log files are saved in the S3 bucket).
  • CloudWatch dashboards – Amazon CloudWatch dashboards are customizable home pages in the CloudWatch console that you can use to monitor your resources in a single view, even those resources that are spread across different regions. You can use CloudWatch dashboards to create customized views of the metrics and alarms for your AWS resources.

Architectural overview

The following diagram depicts the services and flow of information between the different AWS services used in this post’s solution.

Here is how the process works, as illustrated and numbered in the preceding diagram:

  1. A CloudWatch Logs agent runs on each EC2 instance. The agents are configured to send SSH logs from the EC2 instance to a log stream identified by an instance ID.
  2. Log streams are aggregated into a log group. As a result, one log group contains all the logs you want to analyze from one or more instances.
  3. You apply metric filters to a log group in order to search for specific keywords. When the metric filter finds specific keywords, the filter counts the occurrences of the keywords in a time-based sliding window. If the occurrence of a keyword exceeds the CloudWatch alarm threshold, an alarm is triggered.
  4. An IAM policy defines a role that gives the EC2 servers permission to create logs in a log group and send log events (new log entries) from EC2 to log groups. This role is then assumed by the application servers.
  5. CloudWatch alarms notify users when a specified threshold has been crossed. For example, you can set an alarm to trigger when more than 2 failed SSH connections happen in a 5-minute period.
  6. The CloudWatch dashboard is used to visualize data and alarms from the monitoring process.

Deploy and test the solution

1.  Deploy the solution by using CloudFormation

Now that I have explained how the solution works, I will show how to use AWS CloudFormation to create a stack with the desired solution configuration. CloudFormation allows you to create a stack of resources in your AWS account.

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, choose CloudFormation, choose Create Stack, choose Specify an Amazon S3 template URL and paste the following link in the box: https://s3.amazonaws.com/awsiammedia/public/sample/MonitorSSHActivities/CloudWatchLogs_ssh.yaml
    Screenshot of creating the stack
  2. Choose Launch to deploy the stack.
  3. On the Specify Details page, enter the Stack name. Then enter the KeyName, which is the SSH key pair for the region you use. I use this key-pair later in this post; if you don’t have a key pair for your current region, follow these instructions to create one. The OperatorEmail is the CloudWatch alarm recipient email address (this field is mandatory to launch the stack), which is the email address to which SSH activity alarms will be sent. You can use the SSHLocation box to limit the IP address range that can access your instances; the default is 0.0.0/0, which means that any IP can access the instance. After specifying these variables, click Next.
    Screenshot of the "Specify Details" page
  4. On the Options page, tag your instance, and click Next. Tags allow you to assign metadata to AWS resources. For example, you can tag a project’s resources and then use the tag to manage, search for, and filter resources. For more information about tagging, see Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources.
    Screenshot of the "Options" page
  5. Wait until the CloudFormation template shows CREATE_COMPLETE, as shown in the following screenshot. This means your stack was created successfully.
    Screenshot showing the stack was created successfully

After the stack is created successfully, you have two distinct application servers running, each with a CloudWatch agent. These servers represent a fleet of servers in your infrastructure. Choose the Outputs tab to see more details about the resources, such as the public IP addresses of the servers. You will need to use these IP addresses later in this post in order to trigger log events and alarms.

Screenshot showing the public IP addresses of the servers

The CloudWatch log agent on each server is installed at startup and configured to stream SSH log entries from /var/log/secure to CloudWatch via a log stream. CloudWatch aggregates the log streams (ssh.log) from the application servers and saves them in a CloudWatch Logs log group. Each log stream is identified by an instance-ID, as shown in the following screenshot.

Screenshot of two log streams' instance-IDs

The application servers assume a role that gives them permissions to create CloudWatch Logs log files and events. CloudFormation also configures two metrics: ssh/InvalidUser and ssh/Disconnect. The ssh/InvalidUser metric sends an alarm when there are more than 2 SSH attempts into any server that include an invalid user name. Similarly, the ssh/Disconnect metric creates an alarm when more than 10 SSH disconnect requests come from users within 5 minutes.

To review the metrics created by CloudFormation, choose Metrics in the CloudWatch console. A new SSH custom namespace has been created, which contains the two metrics described in the previous paragraph.

You should now have two application servers running and two custom CloudWatch metrics and alarms configured. Now, it’s time to generate log events, trigger alarms, and test the configurations.

2.  Test SSH metrics and alarms

Now, let’s try to trigger an alarm by trying to SSH with an invalid user name into one of the servers. Use the key pair you specified when launching the stack and connect to one of the Linux instances from a terminal window (replace the placeholder values in the following command).

ssh -i <the-key-pair-you-specified-in-the-CloudFormation-template> ec2-user@<ec2 DNS or IP address>

Now, exit the session and try to sign in as bad-user, as shown in the following command.

ssh -i <the-key-pair-you-specified-in-the-CloudFormation-template> bad-user@<ec2 DNS or IP address>

The following command is the same as the previous command, but with the placeholder values replaced by actual values.

ssh -i "my-keycap" bad-user@ec2-XX-XXX-XXX.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Because the alarm triggers after two or more unsuccessful SSH login attempts with an invalid user name in 1 minute, run the preceding command a few times. The server’s log captures the bad SSH login attempts, and after a minute, you should see InvalidUserAlarm in the CloudWatch console, as shown in the following screenshot. Choose Alarms to see more details. The alarm should disappear after another minute if there are no more SSH login attempts.

Screenshot showing InvalidUserAlarm in the CloudWatch console

You can also view the history of your alarms by choosing the History tab. CloudWatch metrics are saved for 15 months.

When the CloudFormation stack launches, a topic-registration email is sent to the email address you specified in the template. After you accept the topic registration, you will receive an alarm email with details about the alarm. The email looks like what is shown in the following screenshot.

Screenshot of the alarm email

3.  Understanding CloudWatch metric filters and their transformation

The CloudFormation template includes two alarms, InvalidUserAlarm and SSHReceiveddisconnectAlarm, and two metric filters. As I mentioned previously, the metric filters define the pattern you want to match in a CloudWatch Logs log group. When a pattern is found, it transforms into an Amazon metric as defined in the MetricTransformations section of the metric filter.

The following is a snippet of the InvalidUser metric filter. Each pattern match—denoted by FilterPattern—is counted as one metric value as specified in the MetricValue parameter in the MetricTranformations section. The CloudWatch alarm associated with this metric filter will be triggered when the metric value crosses a specified threshold.

  InvalidUser:
    Type: AWS::Logs::MetricFilter
    Properties:
      LogGroupName:
        Ref: WebServerLogGroup
      FilterPattern: "[Mon, day, timestamp, ip, id, status = Invalid, ...]"
      MetricTransformations:
      - MetricValue: '1'
        MetricNamespace: SSH
        MetricName: sshInvalidUser

When a CloudWatch alarm is triggered, the service sends an email to an Amazon SNS topic with more details about the alarm type, trigger parameters, and status.

4.  Create a CloudWatch metric filter to identify attempts to SSH into your servers with bad private keys

You can create additional metric filters in CloudWatch Logs to provide better visibility into the SSH activity on your servers. Let’s assume you want to know if there are too many attempts to SSH into your servers with bad private keys. If an attempt is made with a bad private key, a line like the following is logged in the SSH log file.

Apr 27 21:44:49 ip-172-31-38-5 sash[28515]: Connection closed by <ip address> [preauth]

You can produce this log line by modifying the pem file you are using (a pem file holds your private key). In a terminal window, modify your private key by copying and pasting the following lines in the same directory where your key resides.

$ cat <valid-pem-file> | sed s/./A/25 > bad-keys.pem

$ cat bad-keys.pem | sed s/./A/26 > bad-keys.pem

These lines simply change the characters at positions 25 and 26 from their current value to the character A, keeping the original pem file intact. Alternatively, you can use nano <valid-keys>.pem from the command line or any other editor, change a character, save the file as bad-keys.pem, and exit the file.

Now, try to use bad-keys.pem to access one of the application servers.

ssh  -i "bad-keys.pem" [email protected]

The SSH attempt should fail because you are using a bad private key.

Permission denied (public key).

Now, let’s look at the server’s ssh.log file from the CloudWatch Logs console and analyze the error log messages. I need to understand the log format in order to configure a new filter. To review the logs, choose Logs in the navigation pane, and select the log group that was created by CloudFormation (it starts with the name you specified when launching the CloudFormation template).

Screenshot of the ssh.log file

In particular, notice the following line when you try to SSH with a bad private key.

Screenshot of one line of the ssh.log file

Let’s add a metric filter to capture this line so that we can use this metric later when we build an SSH Dashboard. Copy the following line to the Filter events search box at the top of the console screen and press Enter.

[Mon, day, timestamp, ip, id, msg1= Connection, msg2 = closed, ...]

Screenshot of pasting the line from the ssh.log file into the "Filter events" search box

You can now see only the lines that match the pattern you specified. These are the lines you want to count and transform into metrics. Each string in the message is represented by a word in the filter. In our example, we are looking for a pattern where the sixth word is Connection and the seventh word is closed. Other words in the log line are not important in this context. The following image depicts the mapping between a string in a log file and a metric filter.

To create the metric filter, choose Logs in the navigation pane of the CloudWatch console. Choose the log groups to which you want to apply the new metric filter and then choose Create Metric Filter. Choose Next.

Screenshot of creating a metric filter

Paste the filter pattern we used previously (the sixth word equals Connection and the seventh word equals closed) in the Filter Pattern box. Select the server you tried to sign in to with the bad private key to Select Log Data to Test and click Test Pattern. You should see the results that are shown in the following screenshot. When completed, click Assign Metric.

Screenshot of applying the filter pattern

Type SSH for the Metric Namespace and sshClosedConnection-InvalidKeysFilter for Filter Name. Choose Create Filter to see your new metric filter listed. You can use the newly created metric filter to graph the metrics and set alarms. The alarms can be used to inform your administrator via email of any event you specify. In addition, metrics can be used to generate SNS notification to trigger an AWS Lambda function in order to take proactive actions, such as blocking suspicious IP addresses in a security group.

Screenshot of creating a filter

Choose Create Alarm next to Filter Name and follow the instructions to create a CloudWatch alarm.

Screenshot of the "Create Alarm" option

Back at the Metrics view, you should now have three SSH metric filters under Custom Namespaces. Note that it can take a few minutes for the number of SSH metrics to update from two to three.

Screenshot showing you now have three SSH metric filters

5.  Create a graph by using a CloudWatch dashboard

After you have configured the metrics, you can display SSH metrics in a graph. CloudWatch dashboards allow you to create reusable graphs of AWS resources and custom metrics so that you can quickly monitor your operational status and identify issues at a glance. Metrics data is kept for a period of two weeks.

In the CloudWatch console, choose Dashboards in the navigation pane, and then choose Create dashboard to create a new graph in a dashboard. Name your dashboard SSH-Dashboard and choose Create dashboard. Choose Line Graph from the graph options and choose Configure.

Screenshot of creating a CloudWatch dashboard

In the Add metric graph window under Custom Namespace, choose SSH > Metrics with no dimensions. Select all three metrics you have configured (the CloudFormation template configured two metrics and you manually added one more metric).

By default, the metrics are displayed on the graph as an average. However, you configured metrics that are based on summary metrics (for example, the total number of alarms in two minutes). To change the default, choose the Graphed metrics tab, and change the statistic from Average to Sum, as shown in the following screenshot. Also, change the time period from 5 minutes to 1 minute.

Screenshot of changing the statistic from "Average" to "Sum"

Your graphed metrics should look like the following screenshot. When you have provided all the necessary information, choose Create Widget.

Screenshot of thet graphed metrics

You can rename the graph and add static text to give the console more context. To add a text widget, choose Widget and select text. Then edit the widget with markdown language. Your dashboard may then look like the following screenshot.

The consolidated metrics graph displays the number of SSH attempts with bad private keys, invalid user names, and too many disconnects.

Conclusion

In this blog post, I demonstrated how to automate the deployment of the CloudWatch Logs agent, create filters and alarms, and write, test, and apply metrics on the fly from the AWS Management Console. You can then visualize the metrics with the AWS Management Console. The solution described in this post gives you monitoring and alarming capabilities that can help you understand the status of and potential risks to your instances and applications. You can easily aggregate logs from many servers and different applications, create alarms, and display logs’ metrics on a graph.

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the “Comments” section below. If you have questions about the solution in this post, start a new thread on the CloudWatch forum.

– Assaf

Awesome Raspberry Pi cases to 3D print at home

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/3d-printed-raspberry-pi-cases/

Unless you’re planning to fit your Raspberry Pi inside a build, you may find yourself in need of a case to protect it from dust, damage and/or the occasional pet attack. Here are some of our favourite 3D-printed cases, for which files are available online so you can recreate them at home.

TARDIS

TARDIS Raspberry PI 3 case – 3D Printing Time lapse

Every Tuesday we’ll 3D print designs from the community and showcase slicer settings, use cases and of course, Time-lapses! This week: TARDIS Raspberry PI 3 case By: https://www.thingiverse.com/Jason3030 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2430122/ BCN3D Sigma Blue PLA 3hrs 20min X:73 Y:73 Z:165mm .4mm layer / .6mm nozzle 0% Infill / 4mm retract 230C / 0C 114G 60mm/s —————————————– Shop for parts for your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting Download Autodesk Fusion 360 – 1 Year Free License (renew it after that for more free use!)

Since I am an avid Whovian, it’s not surprising that this case made its way onto the list. Its outside is aesthetically pleasing to the aspiring Time Lord, and it snugly fits your treasured Pi.



Pop this case on your desk and chuckle with glee every time someone asks what’s inside it:

Person: What’s that?
You: My Raspberry Pi.
Person: What’s a Raspberry Pi?
You: It’s a computer!
Person: There’s a whole computer in that tiny case?
You: Yes…it’s BIGGER ON THE INSIDE!

I’ll get my coat.

Pi crust

Yes, we all wish we’d thought of it first. What better case for a Raspberry Pi than a pie crust?

3D-printed Raspberry Pi cases

While the case is designed to fit the Raspberry Pi Model B, you will be able to upgrade the build to accommodate newer models with a few tweaks.



Just make sure that if you do, you credit Marco Valenzuela, its original baker.

Consoles

Since many people use the Raspberry Pi to run RetroPie, there is a growing trend of 3D-printed console-style Pi cases.

3D-printed Raspberry Pi cases

So why not pop your Raspberry Pi into a case made to look like your favourite vintage console, such as the Nintendo NES or N64?



You could also use an adapter to fit a Raspberry Pi Zero within an actual Atari cartridge, or go modern and print a PlayStation 4 case!

Functional

Maybe you’re looking to use your Raspberry Pi as a component of a larger project, such as a home automation system, learning suite, or makerspace. In that case you may need to attach it to a wall, under a desk, or behind a monitor.

3D-printed Raspberry Pi cases

Coo! Coo!

The Pidgeon, shown above, allows you to turn your Zero W into a surveillance camera, while the piPad lets you keep a breadboard attached for easy access to your Pi’s GPIO pins.



Functional cases with added brackets are great for incorporating your Pi on the sly. The VESA mount case will allow you to attach your Pi to any VESA-compatible monitor, and the Fallout 4 Terminal is just really cool.

Cute

You might want your case to just look cute, especially if it’s going to sit in full view on your desk or shelf.

3D-printed Raspberry Pi cases

The tired cube above is the only one of our featured 3D prints for which you have to buy the files ($1.30), but its adorable face begged to be shared anyway.



If you’d rather save your money for another day, you may want to check out this adorable monster from Adafruit. Be aware that this case will also need some altering to fit newer versions of the Pi.

Our cases

Finally, there are great options for you if you don’t have access to a 3D printer, or if you would like to help the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission. You can buy one of the official Raspberry Pi cases for the Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero (and Zero W)!

3D-printed Raspberry Pi cases



As with all official Raspberry Pi accessories (and with the Pi itself), your money goes toward helping the Foundation to put the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world.

3D-printed Raspberry Pi cases

You could also print a replica of the official Astro Pi cases, in which two Pis are currently orbiting the earth on the International Space Station.

Design your own Raspberry Pi case!

If you’ve built a case for your Raspberry Pi, be it with a 3D printer, laser-cutter, or your bare hands, make sure to share it with us in the comments below, or via our social media channels.

And if you’d like to give 3D printing a go, there are plenty of free online learning resources, and sites that offer tutorials and software to get you started, such as TinkerCAD, Instructables, and Adafruit.

The post Awesome Raspberry Pi cases to 3D print at home appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Create Multiple Builds from the Same Source Using Different AWS CodeBuild Build Specification Files

Post Syndicated from Prakash Palanisamy original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/create-multiple-builds-from-the-same-source-using-different-aws-codebuild-build-specification-files/

In June 2017, AWS CodeBuild announced you can now specify an alternate build specification file name or location in an AWS CodeBuild project.

In this post, I’ll show you how to use different build specification files in the same repository to create different builds. You’ll find the source code for this post in our GitHub repo.

Requirements

The AWS CLI must be installed and configured.

Solution Overview

I have created a C program (cbsamplelib.c) that will be used to create a shared library and another utility program (cbsampleutil.c) to use that library. I’ll use a Makefile to compile these files.

I need to put this sample application in RPM and DEB packages so end users can easily deploy them. I have created a build specification file for RPM. It will use make to compile this code and the RPM specification file (cbsample.rpmspec) configured in the build specification to create the RPM package. Similarly, I have created a build specification file for DEB. It will create the DEB package based on the control specification file (cbsample.control) configured in this build specification.

RPM Build Project:

The following build specification file (buildspec-rpm.yml) uses build specification version 0.2. As described in the documentation, this version has different syntax for environment variables. This build specification includes multiple phases:

  • As part of the install phase, the required packages is installed using yum.
  • During the pre_build phase, the required directories are created and the required files, including the RPM build specification file, are copied to the appropriate location.
  • During the build phase, the code is compiled, and then the RPM package is created based on the RPM specification.

As defined in the artifact section, the RPM file will be uploaded as a build artifact.

version: 0.2

env:
  variables:
    build_version: "0.1"

phases:
  install:
    commands:
      - yum install rpm-build make gcc glibc -y
  pre_build:
    commands:
      - curr_working_dir=`pwd`
      - mkdir -p ./{RPMS,SRPMS,BUILD,SOURCES,SPECS,tmp}
      - filename="cbsample-$build_version"
      - echo $filename
      - mkdir -p $filename
      - cp ./*.c ./*.h Makefile $filename
      - tar -zcvf /root/$filename.tar.gz $filename
      - cp /root/$filename.tar.gz ./SOURCES/
      - cp cbsample.rpmspec ./SPECS/
  build:
    commands:
      - echo "Triggering RPM build"
      - rpmbuild --define "_topdir `pwd`" -ba SPECS/cbsample.rpmspec
      - cd $curr_working_dir

artifacts:
  files:
    - RPMS/x86_64/cbsample*.rpm
  discard-paths: yes

Using cb-centos-project.json as a reference, create the input JSON file for the CLI command. This project uses an AWS CodeCommit repository named codebuild-multispec and a file named buildspec-rpm.yml as the build specification file. To create the RPM package, we need to specify a custom image name. I’m using the latest CentOS 7 image available in the Docker Hub. I’m using a role named CodeBuildServiceRole. It contains permissions similar to those defined in CodeBuildServiceRole.json. (You need to change the resource fields in the policy, as appropriate.)

{
    "name": "rpm-build-project",
    "description": "Project which will build RPM from the source.",
    "source": {
        "type": "CODECOMMIT",
        "location": "https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/codebuild-multispec",
        "buildspec": "buildspec-rpm.yml"
    },
    "artifacts": {
        "type": "S3",
        "location": "codebuild-demo-artifact-repository"
    },
    "environment": {
        "type": "LINUX_CONTAINER",
        "image": "centos:7",
        "computeType": "BUILD_GENERAL1_SMALL"
    },
    "serviceRole": "arn:aws:iam::012345678912:role/service-role/CodeBuildServiceRole",
    "timeoutInMinutes": 15,
    "encryptionKey": "arn:aws:kms:eu-west-1:012345678912:alias/aws/s3",
    "tags": [
        {
            "key": "Name",
            "value": "RPM Demo Build"
        }
    ]
}

After the cli-input-json file is ready, execute the following command to create the build project.

$ aws codebuild create-project --name CodeBuild-RPM-Demo --cli-input-json file://cb-centos-project.json

{
    "project": {
        "name": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo", 
        "serviceRole": "arn:aws:iam::012345678912:role/service-role/CodeBuildServiceRole", 
        "tags": [
            {
                "value": "RPM Demo Build", 
                "key": "Name"
            }
        ], 
        "artifacts": {
            "namespaceType": "NONE", 
            "packaging": "NONE", 
            "type": "S3", 
            "location": "codebuild-demo-artifact-repository", 
            "name": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo"
        }, 
        "lastModified": 1500559811.13, 
        "timeoutInMinutes": 15, 
        "created": 1500559811.13, 
        "environment": {
            "computeType": "BUILD_GENERAL1_SMALL", 
            "privilegedMode": false, 
            "image": "centos:7", 
            "type": "LINUX_CONTAINER", 
            "environmentVariables": []
        }, 
        "source": {
            "buildspec": "buildspec-rpm.yml", 
            "type": "CODECOMMIT", 
            "location": "https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/codebuild-multispec"
        }, 
        "encryptionKey": "arn:aws:kms:eu-west-1:012345678912:alias/aws/s3", 
        "arn": "arn:aws:codebuild:eu-west-1:012345678912:project/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo", 
        "description": "Project which will build RPM from the source."
    }
}

When the project is created, run the following command to start the build. After the build has started, get the build ID. You can use the build ID to get the status of the build.

$ aws codebuild start-build --project-name CodeBuild-RPM-Demo
{
    "build": {
        "buildComplete": false, 
        "initiator": "prakash", 
        "artifacts": {
            "location": "arn:aws:s3:::codebuild-demo-artifact-repository/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo"
        }, 
        "projectName": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo", 
        "timeoutInMinutes": 15, 
        "buildStatus": "IN_PROGRESS", 
        "environment": {
            "computeType": "BUILD_GENERAL1_SMALL", 
            "privilegedMode": false, 
            "image": "centos:7", 
            "type": "LINUX_CONTAINER", 
            "environmentVariables": []
        }, 
        "source": {
            "buildspec": "buildspec-rpm.yml", 
            "type": "CODECOMMIT", 
            "location": "https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/codebuild-multispec"
        }, 
        "currentPhase": "SUBMITTED", 
        "startTime": 1500560156.761, 
        "id": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc", 
        "arn": "arn:aws:codebuild:eu-west-1: 012345678912:build/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc"
    }
}

$ aws codebuild list-builds-for-project --project-name CodeBuild-RPM-Demo
{
    "ids": [
        "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc"
    ]
}

$ aws codebuild batch-get-builds --ids CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc
{
    "buildsNotFound": [], 
    "builds": [
        {
            "buildComplete": true, 
            "phases": [
                {
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "endTime": 1500560157.164, 
                    "phaseType": "SUBMITTED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 0, 
                    "startTime": 1500560156.761
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "PROVISIONING", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 24, 
                    "startTime": 1500560157.164, 
                    "endTime": 1500560182.066
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "DOWNLOAD_SOURCE", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 15, 
                    "startTime": 1500560182.066, 
                    "endTime": 1500560197.906
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "INSTALL", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 19, 
                    "startTime": 1500560197.906, 
                    "endTime": 1500560217.515
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "PRE_BUILD", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 0, 
                    "startTime": 1500560217.515, 
                    "endTime": 1500560217.662
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "BUILD", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 0, 
                    "startTime": 1500560217.662, 
                    "endTime": 1500560217.995
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "POST_BUILD", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 0, 
                    "startTime": 1500560217.995, 
                    "endTime": 1500560218.074
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "UPLOAD_ARTIFACTS", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 0, 
                    "startTime": 1500560218.074, 
                    "endTime": 1500560218.542
                }, 
                {
                    "contexts": [], 
                    "phaseType": "FINALIZING", 
                    "phaseStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
                    "durationInSeconds": 4, 
                    "startTime": 1500560218.542, 
                    "endTime": 1500560223.128
                }, 
                {
                    "phaseType": "COMPLETED", 
                    "startTime": 1500560223.128
                }
            ], 
            "logs": {
                "groupName": "/aws/codebuild/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo", 
                "deepLink": "https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/home?region=eu-west-1#logEvent:group=/aws/codebuild/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo;stream=57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc", 
                "streamName": "57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc"
            }, 
            "artifacts": {
                "location": "arn:aws:s3:::codebuild-demo-artifact-repository/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo"
            }, 
            "projectName": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo", 
            "timeoutInMinutes": 15, 
            "initiator": "prakash", 
            "buildStatus": "SUCCEEDED", 
            "environment": {
                "computeType": "BUILD_GENERAL1_SMALL", 
                "privilegedMode": false, 
                "image": "centos:7", 
                "type": "LINUX_CONTAINER", 
                "environmentVariables": []
            }, 
            "source": {
                "buildspec": "buildspec-rpm.yml", 
                "type": "CODECOMMIT", 
                "location": "https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/codebuild-multispec"
            }, 
            "currentPhase": "COMPLETED", 
            "startTime": 1500560156.761, 
            "endTime": 1500560223.128, 
            "id": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc", 
            "arn": "arn:aws:codebuild:eu-west-1:012345678912:build/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:57a36755-4d37-4b08-9c11-1468e1682abc"
        }
    ]
}

DEB Build Project:

In this project, we will use the build specification file named buildspec-deb.yml. Like the RPM build project, this specification includes multiple phases. Here I use a Debian control file to create the package in DEB format. After a successful build, the DEB package will be uploaded as build artifact.

version: 0.2

env:
  variables:
    build_version: "0.1"

phases:
  install:
    commands:
      - apt-get install gcc make -y
  pre_build:
    commands:
      - mkdir -p ./cbsample-$build_version/DEBIAN
      - mkdir -p ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/lib
      - mkdir -p ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/include
      - mkdir -p ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/bin
      - cp -f cbsample.control ./cbsample-$build_version/DEBIAN/control
  build:
    commands:
      - echo "Building the application"
      - make
      - cp libcbsamplelib.so ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/lib
      - cp cbsamplelib.h ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/include
      - cp cbsampleutil ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/bin
      - chmod +x ./cbsample-$build_version/usr/bin/cbsampleutil
      - dpkg-deb --build ./cbsample-$build_version

artifacts:
  files:
    - cbsample-*.deb

Here we use cb-ubuntu-project.json as a reference to create the CLI input JSON file. This project uses the same AWS CodeCommit repository (codebuild-multispec) but a different buildspec file in the same repository (buildspec-deb.yml). We use the default CodeBuild image to create the DEB package. We use the same IAM role (CodeBuildServiceRole).

{
    "name": "deb-build-project",
    "description": "Project which will build DEB from the source.",
    "source": {
        "type": "CODECOMMIT",
        "location": "https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/codebuild-multispec",
        "buildspec": "buildspec-deb.yml"
    },
    "artifacts": {
        "type": "S3",
        "location": "codebuild-demo-artifact-repository"
    },
    "environment": {
        "type": "LINUX_CONTAINER",
        "image": "aws/codebuild/ubuntu-base:14.04",
        "computeType": "BUILD_GENERAL1_SMALL"
    },
    "serviceRole": "arn:aws:iam::012345678912:role/service-role/CodeBuildServiceRole",
    "timeoutInMinutes": 15,
    "encryptionKey": "arn:aws:kms:eu-west-1:012345678912:alias/aws/s3",
    "tags": [
        {
            "key": "Name",
            "value": "Debian Demo Build"
        }
    ]
}

Using the CLI input JSON file, create the project, start the build, and check the status of the project.

$ aws codebuild create-project --name CodeBuild-DEB-Demo --cli-input-json file://cb-ubuntu-project.json

$ aws codebuild list-builds-for-project --project-name CodeBuild-DEB-Demo

$ aws codebuild batch-get-builds --ids CodeBuild-DEB-Demo:e535c4b0-7067-4fbe-8060-9bb9de203789

After successful completion of the RPM and DEB builds, check the S3 bucket configured in the artifacts section for the build packages. Build projects will create a directory in the name of the build project and copy the artifacts inside it.

$ aws s3 ls s3://codebuild-demo-artifact-repository/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo/
2017-07-20 16:16:59       8108 cbsample-0.1-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm

$ aws s3 ls s3://codebuild-demo-artifact-repository/CodeBuild-DEB-Demo/
2017-07-20 16:37:22       5420 cbsample-0.1.deb

Override Buildspec During Build Start:

It’s also possible to override the build specification file of an existing project when starting a build. If we want to create the libs RPM package instead of the whole RPM, we will use the build specification file named buildspec-libs-rpm.yml. This build specification file is similar to the earlier RPM build. The only difference is that it uses a different RPM specification file to create libs RPM.

version: 0.2

env:
  variables:
    build_version: "0.1"

phases:
  install:
    commands:
      - yum install rpm-build make gcc glibc -y
  pre_build:
    commands:
      - curr_working_dir=`pwd`
      - mkdir -p ./{RPMS,SRPMS,BUILD,SOURCES,SPECS,tmp}
      - filename="cbsample-libs-$build_version"
      - echo $filename
      - mkdir -p $filename
      - cp ./*.c ./*.h Makefile $filename
      - tar -zcvf /root/$filename.tar.gz $filename
      - cp /root/$filename.tar.gz ./SOURCES/
      - cp cbsample-libs.rpmspec ./SPECS/
  build:
    commands:
      - echo "Triggering RPM build"
      - rpmbuild --define "_topdir `pwd`" -ba SPECS/cbsample-libs.rpmspec
      - cd $curr_working_dir

artifacts:
  files:
    - RPMS/x86_64/cbsample-libs*.rpm
  discard-paths: yes

Using the same RPM build project that we created earlier, start a new build and set the value of the `–buildspec-override` parameter to buildspec-libs-rpm.yml .

$ aws codebuild start-build --project-name CodeBuild-RPM-Demo --buildspec-override buildspec-libs-rpm.yml
{
    "build": {
        "buildComplete": false, 
        "initiator": "prakash", 
        "artifacts": {
            "location": "arn:aws:s3:::codebuild-demo-artifact-repository/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo"
        }, 
        "projectName": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo", 
        "timeoutInMinutes": 15, 
        "buildStatus": "IN_PROGRESS", 
        "environment": {
            "computeType": "BUILD_GENERAL1_SMALL", 
            "privilegedMode": false, 
            "image": "centos:7", 
            "type": "LINUX_CONTAINER", 
            "environmentVariables": []
        }, 
        "source": {
            "buildspec": "buildspec-libs-rpm.yml", 
            "type": "CODECOMMIT", 
            "location": "https://git-codecommit.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/codebuild-multispec"
        }, 
        "currentPhase": "SUBMITTED", 
        "startTime": 1500562366.239, 
        "id": "CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:82d05f8a-b161-401c-82f0-83cb41eba567", 
        "arn": "arn:aws:codebuild:eu-west-1:012345678912:build/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo:82d05f8a-b161-401c-82f0-83cb41eba567"
    }
}

After the build is completed successfully, check to see if the package appears in the artifact S3 bucket under the CodeBuild-RPM-Demo build project folder.

$ aws s3 ls s3://codebuild-demo-artifact-repository/CodeBuild-RPM-Demo/
2017-07-20 16:16:59       8108 cbsample-0.1-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm
2017-07-20 16:53:54       5320 cbsample-libs-0.1-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm

Conclusion

In this post, I have shown you how multiple buildspec files in the same source repository can be used to run multiple AWS CodeBuild build projects. I have also shown you how to provide a different buildspec file when starting the build.

For more information about AWS CodeBuild, see the AWS CodeBuild documentation. You can get started with AWS CodeBuild by using this step by step guide.

About the author

Prakash Palanisamy is a Solutions Architect for Amazon Web Services. When he is not working on Serverless, DevOps or Alexa, he will be solving problems in Project Euler. He also enjoys watching educational documentaries.

Open and Click Tracking Have Arrived

Post Syndicated from Brent Meyer original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ses/open-and-click-tracking-have-arrived/

We’re pleased to announce the addition of open and click tracking metrics to Amazon SES. These metrics will help you measure the effectiveness of the email campaigns you send using Amazon SES.

We’re also adding the ability to publish email sending metrics to Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) using event publishing. This feature gives you greater control over the sending notifications you receive through Amazon SNS.

What’s new in this release?

When you send an email using Amazon SES, we now collect metrics related to opens and clicks. Opens, in this sense, refers to the number of users who successfully received your email and opened it in their email clients; clicks refers to the number of users who received an email and clicked one or more links in it.

Additionally, you can now use event publishing to push email sending notifications—including open and click notifications—using Amazon SNS. Previously, you could send account-level notifications through Amazon SNS. These notifications were pretty limited: you could only receive notifications about bounces, complaints, and deliveries, and you would receive notifications about all of these events across your entire Amazon SES account. Now you can use event publishing to send notifications about deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, and complaints. Furthermore, you can set up event publishing so that you only receive notifications about emails sent using the configuration sets you specify in those emails.

Why should I use open and click tracking?

Whether you are sending marketing emails, transactional emails, or notifications, you need to know how effective your communications are. The email sending metrics feature of Amazon SES gives you data about entire email response funnel—the total number of emails that were sent, bounced, viewed, and clicked. You can then transform those insights into action.

For example, the open and click tracking feature can help you identify the customers who are most interested in receiving the messages you send. By narrowing down your list of recipients and focusing on your most engaged customers, you can save money (by sending fewer messages), improve the response rates of your marketing campaigns (by targeting only the customers who are most interested in what you have to say), and protect your sender reputation (by reducing the number of bounces and complaints against your sending domain).

How do I enable open and click tracking?

If you’ve set up Sending Metrics in the past, then you can easily add open and click tracking to your existing configuration sets. On the Configuration Sets page, choose the configuration set that contains your sending event destination; edit the event destination, check the boxes for Open and Click (as shown in the image below), and then choose Save.

How does open and click tracking work?

Amazon SES makes very minor changes to your emails in order to make open and click tracking work. At the bottom of each message, we insert a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent GIF image. Each email includes a unique link to this image file; when the image is opened, we can tell exactly which message was opened and by whom.

To track clicks, we set up a redirect for each link in the message. When a recipient clicks a link, they are sent to an Amazon SES server, and are immediately forwarded to the destination address. As with open tracking, each of these redirect links is unique, allowing us to easily determine which recipient clicked the link, when they clicked it, and the email from which they arrived at the link.

Can I disable click tracking?

You can disable click tracking by adding a special tag to the anchor tags in your HTML. For example, if you were linking to the AWS home page, a normal anchor link would look something like this:

<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a>

To disable click tracking for that same link, you would modify to look like this:

<a ses:no-track href="https://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a>

Because the ses:no-track attribute is non-standard HTML, we automatically remove it from the version of the email that arrives in your recipients’ inboxes.

How do I use event publishing with Amazon SNS?

If you’ve set up event destinations in the past, then the process of setting up an Amazon SNS event destination will be very familiar. You can add an Amazon SNS destination to an existing configuration set, or create a new configuration set that uses Amazon SNS as its event destination. To learn more, see “Set Up an Amazon SNS Event Destination for Amazon SES Event Publishing” in our Developer Guide.

We’re excited about this release. Let us know what you think of these new features in the SES Forum, or in the comments for this post.

Top 10 Most Obvious Hacks of All Time (v0.9)

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/07/top-10-most-obvious-hacks-of-all-time.html

For teaching hacking/cybersecurity, I thought I’d create of the most obvious hacks of all time. Not the best hacks, the most sophisticated hacks, or the hacks with the biggest impact, but the most obvious hacks — ones that even the least knowledgeable among us should be able to understand. Below I propose some hacks that fit this bill, though in no particular order.

The reason I’m writing this is that my niece wants me to teach her some hacking. I thought I’d start with the obvious stuff first.

Shared Passwords

If you use the same password for every website, and one of those websites gets hacked, then the hacker has your password for all your websites. The reason your Facebook account got hacked wasn’t because of anything Facebook did, but because you used the same email-address and password when creating an account on “beagleforums.com”, which got hacked last year.

I’ve heard people say “I’m sure, because I choose a complex password and use it everywhere”. No, this is the very worst thing you can do. Sure, you can the use the same password on all sites you don’t care much about, but for Facebook, your email account, and your bank, you should have a unique password, so that when other sites get hacked, your important sites are secure.

And yes, it’s okay to write down your passwords on paper.

Tools: HaveIBeenPwned.com

PIN encrypted PDFs

My accountant emails PDF statements encrypted with the last 4 digits of my Social Security Number. This is not encryption — a 4 digit number has only 10,000 combinations, and a hacker can guess all of them in seconds.
PIN numbers for ATM cards work because ATM machines are online, and the machine can reject your card after four guesses. PIN numbers don’t work for documents, because they are offline — the hacker has a copy of the document on their own machine, disconnected from the Internet, and can continue making bad guesses with no restrictions.
Passwords protecting documents must be long enough that even trillion upon trillion guesses are insufficient to guess.

Tools: Hashcat, John the Ripper

SQL and other injection

The lazy way of combining websites with databases is to combine user input with an SQL statement. This combines code with data, so the obvious consequence is that hackers can craft data to mess with the code.
No, this isn’t obvious to the general public, but it should be obvious to programmers. The moment you write code that adds unfiltered user-input to an SQL statement, the consequence should be obvious. Yet, “SQL injection” has remained one of the most effective hacks for the last 15 years because somehow programmers don’t understand the consequence.
CGI shell injection is a similar issue. Back in early days, when “CGI scripts” were a thing, it was really important, but these days, not so much, so I just included it with SQL. The consequence of executing shell code should’ve been obvious, but weirdly, it wasn’t. The IT guy at the company I worked for back in the late 1990s came to me and asked “this guy says we have a vulnerability, is he full of shit?”, and I had to answer “no, he’s right — obviously so”.

XSS (“Cross Site Scripting”) [*] is another injection issue, but this time at somebody’s web browser rather than a server. It works because websites will echo back what is sent to them. For example, if you search for Cross Site Scripting with the URL https://www.google.com/search?q=cross+site+scripting, then you’ll get a page back from the server that contains that string. If the string is JavaScript code rather than text, then some servers (thought not Google) send back the code in the page in a way that it’ll be executed. This is most often used to hack somebody’s account: you send them an email or tweet a link, and when they click on it, the JavaScript gives control of the account to the hacker.

Cross site injection issues like this should probably be their own category, but I’m including it here for now.

More: Wikipedia on SQL injection, Wikipedia on cross site scripting.
Tools: Burpsuite, SQLmap

Buffer overflows

In the C programming language, programmers first create a buffer, then read input into it. If input is long than the buffer, then it overflows. The extra bytes overwrite other parts of the program, letting the hacker run code.
Again, it’s not a thing the general public is expected to know about, but is instead something C programmers should be expected to understand. They should know that it’s up to them to check the length and stop reading input before it overflows the buffer, that there’s no language feature that takes care of this for them.
We are three decades after the first major buffer overflow exploits, so there is no excuse for C programmers not to understand this issue.

What makes particular obvious is the way they are wrapped in exploits, like in Metasploit. While the bug itself is obvious that it’s a bug, actually exploiting it can take some very non-obvious skill. However, once that exploit is written, any trained monkey can press a button and run the exploit. That’s where we get the insult “script kiddie” from — referring to wannabe-hackers who never learn enough to write their own exploits, but who spend a lot of time running the exploit scripts written by better hackers than they.

More: Wikipedia on buffer overflow, Wikipedia on script kiddie,  “Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit” — Phrack (1996)
Tools: bash, Metasploit

SendMail DEBUG command (historical)

The first popular email server in the 1980s was called “SendMail”. It had a feature whereby if you send a “DEBUG” command to it, it would execute any code following the command. The consequence of this was obvious — hackers could (and did) upload code to take control of the server. This was used in the Morris Worm of 1988. Most Internet machines of the day ran SendMail, so the worm spread fast infecting most machines.
This bug was mostly ignored at the time. It was thought of as a theoretical problem, that might only rarely be used to hack a system. Part of the motivation of the Morris Worm was to demonstrate that such problems was to demonstrate the consequences — consequences that should’ve been obvious but somehow were rejected by everyone.

More: Wikipedia on Morris Worm

Email Attachments/Links

I’m conflicted whether I should add this or not, because here’s the deal: you are supposed to click on attachments and links within emails. That’s what they are there for. The difference between good and bad attachments/links is not obvious. Indeed, easy-to-use email systems makes detecting the difference harder.
On the other hand, the consequences of bad attachments/links is obvious. That worms like ILOVEYOU spread so easily is because people trusted attachments coming from their friends, and ran them.
We have no solution to the problem of bad email attachments and links. Viruses and phishing are pervasive problems. Yet, we know why they exist.

Default and backdoor passwords

The Mirai botnet was caused by surveillance-cameras having default and backdoor passwords, and being exposed to the Internet without a firewall. The consequence should be obvious: people will discover the passwords and use them to take control of the bots.
Surveillance-cameras have the problem that they are usually exposed to the public, and can’t be reached without a ladder — often a really tall ladder. Therefore, you don’t want a button consumers can press to reset to factory defaults. You want a remote way to reset them. Therefore, they put backdoor passwords to do the reset. Such passwords are easy for hackers to reverse-engineer, and hence, take control of millions of cameras across the Internet.
The same reasoning applies to “default” passwords. Many users will not change the defaults, leaving a ton of devices hackers can hack.

Masscan and background radiation of the Internet

I’ve written a tool that can easily scan the entire Internet in a short period of time. It surprises people that this possible, but it obvious from the numbers. Internet addresses are only 32-bits long, or roughly 4 billion combinations. A fast Internet link can easily handle 1 million packets-per-second, so the entire Internet can be scanned in 4000 seconds, little more than an hour. It’s basic math.
Because it’s so easy, many people do it. If you monitor your Internet link, you’ll see a steady trickle of packets coming in from all over the Internet, especially Russia and China, from hackers scanning the Internet for things they can hack.
People’s reaction to this scanning is weirdly emotional, taking is personally, such as:
  1. Why are they hacking me? What did I do to them?
  2. Great! They are hacking me! That must mean I’m important!
  3. Grrr! How dare they?! How can I hack them back for some retribution!?

I find this odd, because obviously such scanning isn’t personal, the hackers have no idea who you are.

Tools: masscan, firewalls

Packet-sniffing, sidejacking

If you connect to the Starbucks WiFi, a hacker nearby can easily eavesdrop on your network traffic, because it’s not encrypted. Windows even warns you about this, in case you weren’t sure.

At DefCon, they have a “Wall of Sheep”, where they show passwords from people who logged onto stuff using the insecure “DefCon-Open” network. Calling them “sheep” for not grasping this basic fact that unencrypted traffic is unencrypted.

To be fair, it’s actually non-obvious to many people. Even if the WiFi itself is not encrypted, SSL traffic is. They expect their services to be encrypted, without them having to worry about it. And in fact, most are, especially Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and other major services that won’t allow you to log in anymore without encryption.

But many services (especially old ones) may not be encrypted. Unless users check and verify them carefully, they’ll happily expose passwords.

What’s interesting about this was 10 years ago, when most services which only used SSL to encrypt the passwords, but then used unencrypted connections after that, using “cookies”. This allowed the cookies to be sniffed and stolen, allowing other people to share the login session. I used this on stage at BlackHat to connect to somebody’s GMail session. Google, and other major websites, fixed this soon after. But it should never have been a problem — because the sidejacking of cookies should have been obvious.

Tools: Wireshark, dsniff

Stuxnet LNK vulnerability

Again, this issue isn’t obvious to the public, but it should’ve been obvious to anybody who knew how Windows works.
When Windows loads a .dll, it first calls the function DllMain(). A Windows link file (.lnk) can load icons/graphics from the resources in a .dll file. It does this by loading the .dll file, thus calling DllMain. Thus, a hacker could put on a USB drive a .lnk file pointing to a .dll file, and thus, cause arbitrary code execution as soon as a user inserted a drive.
I say this is obvious because I did this, created .lnks that pointed to .dlls, but without hostile DllMain code. The consequence should’ve been obvious to me, but I totally missed the connection. We all missed the connection, for decades.

Social Engineering and Tech Support [* * *]

After posting this, many people have pointed out “social engineering”, especially of “tech support”. This probably should be up near #1 in terms of obviousness.

The classic example of social engineering is when you call tech support and tell them you’ve lost your password, and they reset it for you with minimum of questions proving who you are. For example, you set the volume on your computer really loud and play the sound of a crying baby in the background and appear to be a bit frazzled and incoherent, which explains why you aren’t answering the questions they are asking. They, understanding your predicament as a new parent, will go the extra mile in helping you, resetting “your” password.

One of the interesting consequences is how it affects domain names (DNS). It’s quite easy in many cases to call up the registrar and convince them to transfer a domain name. This has been used in lots of hacks. It’s really hard to defend against. If a registrar charges only $9/year for a domain name, then it really can’t afford to provide very good tech support — or very secure tech support — to prevent this sort of hack.

Social engineering is such a huge problem, and obvious problem, that it’s outside the scope of this document. Just google it to find example after example.

A related issue that perhaps deserves it’s own section is OSINT [*], or “open-source intelligence”, where you gather public information about a target. For example, on the day the bank manager is out on vacation (which you got from their Facebook post) you show up and claim to be a bank auditor, and are shown into their office where you grab their backup tapes. (We’ve actually done this).

More: Wikipedia on Social Engineering, Wikipedia on OSINT, “How I Won the Defcon Social Engineering CTF” — blogpost (2011), “Questioning 42: Where’s the Engineering in Social Engineering of Namespace Compromises” — BSidesLV talk (2016)

Blue-boxes (historical) [*]

Telephones historically used what we call “in-band signaling”. That’s why when you dial on an old phone, it makes sounds — those sounds are sent no differently than the way your voice is sent. Thus, it was possible to make tone generators to do things other than simply dial calls. Early hackers (in the 1970s) would make tone-generators called “blue-boxes” and “black-boxes” to make free long distance calls, for example.

These days, “signaling” and “voice” are digitized, then sent as separate channels or “bands”. This is call “out-of-band signaling”. You can’t trick the phone system by generating tones. When your iPhone makes sounds when you dial, it’s entirely for you benefit and has nothing to do with how it signals the cell tower to make a call.

Early hackers, like the founders of Apple, are famous for having started their careers making such “boxes” for tricking the phone system. The problem was obvious back in the day, which is why as the phone system moves from analog to digital, the problem was fixed.

More: Wikipedia on blue box, Wikipedia article on Steve Wozniak.

Thumb drives in parking lots [*]

A simple trick is to put a virus on a USB flash drive, and drop it in a parking lot. Somebody is bound to notice it, stick it in their computer, and open the file.

This can be extended with tricks. For example, you can put a file labeled “third-quarter-salaries.xlsx” on the drive that required macros to be run in order to open. It’s irresistible to other employees who want to know what their peers are being paid, so they’ll bypass any warning prompts in order to see the data.

Another example is to go online and get custom USB sticks made printed with the logo of the target company, making them seem more trustworthy.

We also did a trick of taking an Adobe Flash game “Punch the Monkey” and replaced the monkey with a logo of a competitor of our target. They now only played the game (infecting themselves with our virus), but gave to others inside the company to play, infecting others, including the CEO.

Thumb drives like this have been used in many incidents, such as Russians hacking military headquarters in Afghanistan. It’s really hard to defend against.

More: “Computer Virus Hits U.S. Military Base in Afghanistan” — USNews (2008), “The Return of the Worm That Ate The Pentagon” — Wired (2011), DoD Bans Flash Drives — Stripes (2008)

Googling [*]

Search engines like Google will index your website — your entire website. Frequently companies put things on their website without much protection because they are nearly impossible for users to find. But Google finds them, then indexes them, causing them to pop up with innocent searches.
There are books written on “Google hacking” explaining what search terms to look for, like “not for public release”, in order to find such documents.

More: Wikipedia entry on Google Hacking, “Google Hacking” book.

URL editing [*]

At the top of every browser is what’s called the “URL”. You can change it. Thus, if you see a URL that looks like this:

http://www.example.com/documents?id=138493

Then you can edit it to see the next document on the server:

http://www.example.com/documents?id=138494

The owner of the website may think they are secure, because nothing points to this document, so the Google search won’t find it. But that doesn’t stop a user from manually editing the URL.
An example of this is a big Fortune 500 company that posts the quarterly results to the website an hour before the official announcement. Simply editing the URL from previous financial announcements allows hackers to find the document, then buy/sell the stock as appropriate in order to make a lot of money.
Another example is the classic case of Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer who did this trick in order to download the account email addresses of early owners of the iPad, including movie stars and members of the Obama administration. It’s an interesting legal case because on one hand, techies consider this so obvious as to not be “hacking”. On the other hand, non-techies, especially judges and prosecutors, believe this to be obviously “hacking”.

DDoS, spoofing, and amplification [*]

For decades now, online gamers have figured out an easy way to win: just flood the opponent with Internet traffic, slowing their network connection. This is called a DoS, which stands for “Denial of Service”. DoSing game competitors is often a teenager’s first foray into hacking.
A variant of this is when you hack a bunch of other machines on the Internet, then command them to flood your target. (The hacked machines are often called a “botnet”, a network of robot computers). This is called DDoS, or “Distributed DoS”. At this point, it gets quite serious, as instead of competitive gamers hackers can take down entire businesses. Extortion scams, DDoSing websites then demanding payment to stop, is a common way hackers earn money.
Another form of DDoS is “amplification”. Sometimes when you send a packet to a machine on the Internet it’ll respond with a much larger response, either a very large packet or many packets. The hacker can then send a packet to many of these sites, “spoofing” or forging the IP address of the victim. This causes all those sites to then flood the victim with traffic. Thus, with a small amount of outbound traffic, the hacker can flood the inbound traffic of the victim.
This is one of those things that has worked for 20 years, because it’s so obvious teenagers can do it, yet there is no obvious solution. President Trump’s executive order of cyberspace specifically demanded that his government come up with a report on how to address this, but it’s unlikely that they’ll come up with any useful strategy.

More: Wikipedia on DDoS, Wikipedia on Spoofing

Conclusion

Tweet me (@ErrataRob) your obvious hacks, so I can add them to the list.

Is DefCon Wifi safe?

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/07/is-defcon-wifi-safe.html

DEF CON is the largest U.S. hacker conference that takes place every summer in Las Vegas. It offers WiFi service. Is it safe?

Probably.

The trick is that you need to download the certificate from https://wifireg.defcon.org and import it into your computer. They have instructions for all your various operating systems. For macOS, it was as simple as downloading “dc25.mobileconfig” and importing it.

I haven’t validated the DefCon team did the right thing for all platforms, but I know that safety is possible. If a hacker could easily hack into arbitrary WiFi, then equipment vendors would fix it. Corporations widely use WiFi — they couldn’t do this if it weren’t safe.

The first step in safety is encryption, obviously. WPA does encryption well, you you are good there.

The second step is authentication — proving that the access-point is who it says it is. Otherwise, somebody could setup their own access-point claiming to be “DefCon”, and you’d happily connect to it. Encrypted connect to the evil access-point doesn’t help you. This is what the certificate you download does — you import it into your system, so that you’ll trust only the “DefCon” access-point that has the private key.

That’s not to say you are completely safe. There’s a known vulnerability for the Broadcom WiFi chip imbedded in many devices, including iPhone and Android phones. If you have one of these devices, you should either upgrade your software with a fix or disable WiFi.

There may also be unknown vulnerabilities in WiFi stacks. the Broadcom bug shows that after a couple decades, we still haven’t solved the problem of simple buffer overflows in WiFi stacks/drivers. Thus, some hacker may have an unknown 0day vulnerability they are using to hack you.

Of course, this can apply to any WiFi usage anywhere. Frankly, if I had such an 0day, I wouldn’t use it at DefCon. Along with black-hat hackers DefCon is full of white-hat researchers monitoring the WiFi — looking for hackers using exploits. They are likely to discover the 0day and report it. Thus, I’d rather use such 0-days in international airpots, catching business types, getting into their company secrets. Or, targeting government types.

So it’s impossible to guarantee any security. But what the DefCon network team bas done looks right, the same sort of thing corporations do to secure themselves, so you are probably secure.

On the other hand, don’t use “DefCon-Open” — not only is it insecure, there are explicitly a ton of hackers spying on it at the “Wall of Sheep” to point out the “sheep” who don’t secure their passwords.

Email2git: Matching Linux Code with its Mailing List Discussions (Linux.com)

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/729090/rss

Linux.com is carrying an article about email2git by its developer, Alexandre Courouble. Email2git is a way to match up commits and the email thread that discussed them. It currently targets the kernel and threads from the linux-kernel mailing list. There are two separate ways to use it, as an extension to cregit (at https://cregit.linuxsources.org/) that allows browsing changes at the token level or via a search by commit ID interface. “The Linux project’s email-based reviewing process is highly effective in filtering open source contributions on their way from mailing list discussions towards Linus Torvalds’ Git repository. However, once integrated, it can be difficult to link Git commits back to their review comments in mailing list discussions, especially when considering commits that underwent multiple versions (and hence review rounds), that belong to a multi-patch series, or that were cherry-picked.

As an answer to these and other issues, we created email2git, a patch retrieving system built for the Linux kernel. For a given commit, the tool is capable of finding the email patch as well as the email conversation that took place during the review process. We are currently improving the system with support for multi-patch series and cherry-picking.” The code for email2git is available on GitHub.

Run Common Data Science Packages on Anaconda and Oozie with Amazon EMR

Post Syndicated from John Ohle original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/run-common-data-science-packages-on-anaconda-and-oozie-with-amazon-emr/

In the world of data science, users must often sacrifice cluster set-up time to allow for complex usability scenarios. Amazon EMR allows data scientists to spin up complex cluster configurations easily, and to be up and running with complex queries in a matter of minutes.

Data scientists often use scheduling applications such as Oozie to run jobs overnight. However, Oozie can be difficult to configure when you are trying to use popular Python packages (such as “pandas,” “numpy,” and “statsmodels”), which are not included by default.

One such popular platform that contains these types of packages (and more) is Anaconda. This post focuses on setting up an Anaconda platform on EMR, with an intent to use its packages with Oozie. I describe how to run jobs using a popular open source scheduler like Oozie.

Walkthrough

For this post, you walk through the following tasks:

  • Create an EMR cluster.
  • Download Anaconda on your master node.
  • Configure Oozie.
  • Test the steps.

Create an EMR cluster

Spin up an Amazon EMR cluster using the console or the AWS CLI. Use the latest release, and include Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, Apache Hive, and Oozie.

To create a three-node cluster in the us-east-1 region, issue an AWS CLI command such as the following. This command must be typed as one line, as shown below. It is shown here separated for readability purposes only.

aws emr create-cluster \ 
--release-label emr-5.7.0 \ 
 --name '<YOUR-CLUSTER-NAME>' \
 --applications Name=Hadoop Name=Oozie Name=Spark Name=Hive \ 
 --ec2-attributes '{"KeyName":"<YOUR-KEY-PAIR>","SubnetId":"<YOUR-SUBNET-ID>","EmrManagedSlaveSecurityGroup":"<YOUR-EMR-SLAVE-SECURITY-GROUP>","EmrManagedMasterSecurityGroup":"<YOUR-EMR-MASTER-SECURITY-GROUP>"}' \ 
 --use-default-roles \ 
 --instance-groups '[{"InstanceCount":1,"InstanceGroupType":"MASTER","InstanceType":"<YOUR-INSTANCE-TYPE>","Name":"Master - 1"},{"InstanceCount":<YOUR-CORE-INSTANCE-COUNT>,"InstanceGroupType":"CORE","InstanceType":"<YOUR-INSTANCE-TYPE>","Name":"Core - 2"}]'

One-line version for reference:

aws emr create-cluster --release-label emr-5.7.0 --name '<YOUR-CLUSTER-NAME>' --applications Name=Hadoop Name=Oozie Name=Spark Name=Hive --ec2-attributes '{"KeyName":"<YOUR-KEY-PAIR>","SubnetId":"<YOUR-SUBNET-ID>","EmrManagedSlaveSecurityGroup":"<YOUR-EMR-SLAVE-SECURITY-GROUP>","EmrManagedMasterSecurityGroup":"<YOUR-EMR-MASTER-SECURITY-GROUP>"}' --use-default-roles --instance-groups '[{"InstanceCount":1,"InstanceGroupType":"MASTER","InstanceType":"<YOUR-INSTANCE-TYPE>","Name":"Master - 1"},{"InstanceCount":<YOUR-CORE-INSTANCE-COUNT>,"InstanceGroupType":"CORE","InstanceType":"<YOUR-INSTANCE-TYPE>","Name":"Core - 2"}]'

Download Anaconda

SSH into your EMR master node instance and download the official Anaconda installer:

wget https://repo.continuum.io/archive/Anaconda2-4.4.0-Linux-x86_64.sh

At the time of publication, Anaconda 4.4 is the most current version available. For the download link location for the latest Python 2.7 version (Python 3.6 may encounter issues), see https://www.continuum.io/downloads.  Open the context (right-click) menu for the Python 2.7 download link, choose Copy Link Location, and use this value in the previous wget command.

This post used the Anaconda 4.4 installation. If you have a later version, it is shown in the downloaded filename:  “anaconda2-<version number>-Linux-x86_64.sh”.

Run this downloaded script and follow the on-screen installer prompts.

chmod u+x Anaconda2-4.4.0-Linux-x86_64.sh
./Anaconda2-4.4.0-Linux-x86_64.sh

For an installation directory, select somewhere with enough space on your cluster, such as “/mnt/anaconda/”.

The process should take approximately 1–2 minutes to install. When prompted if you “wish the installer to prepend the Anaconda2 install location”, select the default option of [no].

After you are done, export the PATH to include this new Anaconda installation:

export PATH=/mnt/anaconda/bin:$PATH

Zip up the Anaconda installation:

cd /mnt/anaconda/
zip -r anaconda.zip .

The zip process may take 4–5 minutes to complete.

(Optional) Upload this anaconda.zip file to your S3 bucket for easier inclusion into future EMR clusters. This removes the need to repeat the previous steps for future EMR clusters.

Configure Oozie

Next, you configure Oozie to use Pyspark and the Anaconda platform.

Get the location of your Oozie sharelibupdate folder. Issue the following command and take note of the “sharelibDirNew” value:

oozie admin -sharelibupdate

For this post, this value is “hdfs://ip-192-168-4-200.us-east-1.compute.internal:8020/user/oozie/share/lib/lib_20170616133136”.

Pass in the required Pyspark files into Oozies sharelibupdate location. The following files are required for Oozie to be able to run Pyspark commands:

  • pyspark.zip
  • py4j-0.10.4-src.zip

These are located on the EMR master instance in the location “/usr/lib/spark/python/lib/”, and must be put into the Oozie sharelib spark directory. This location is the value of the sharelibDirNew parameter value (shown above) with “/spark/” appended, that is, “hdfs://ip-192-168-4-200.us-east-1.compute.internal:8020/user/oozie/share/lib/lib_20170616133136/spark/”.

To do this, issue the following commands:

hdfs dfs -put /usr/lib/spark/python/lib/py4j-0.10.4-src.zip hdfs://ip-192-168-4-200.us-east-1.compute.internal:8020/user/oozie/share/lib/lib_20170616133136/spark/
hdfs dfs -put /usr/lib/spark/python/lib/pyspark.zip hdfs://ip-192-168-4-200.us-east-1.compute.internal:8020/user/oozie/share/lib/lib_20170616133136/spark/

After you’re done, Oozie can use Pyspark in its processes.

Pass the anaconda.zip file into HDFS as follows:

hdfs dfs -put /mnt/anaconda/anaconda.zip /tmp/myLocation/anaconda.zip

(Optional) Verify that it was transferred successfully with the following command:

hdfs dfs -ls /tmp/myLocation/

On your master node, execute the following command:

export PYSPARK_PYTHON=/mnt/anaconda/bin/python

Set the PYSPARK_PYTHON environment variable on the executor nodes. Put the following configurations in your “spark-opts” values in your Oozie workflow.xml file:

–conf spark.executorEnv.PYSPARK_PYTHON=./anaconda_remote/bin/python
–conf spark.yarn.appMasterEnv.PYSPARK_PYTHON=./anaconda_remote/bin/python

This is referenced from the Oozie job in the following line in your workflow.xml file, also included as part of your “spark-opts”:

--archives hdfs:///tmp/myLocation/anaconda.zip#anaconda_remote

Your Oozie workflow.xml file should now look something like the following:

<workflow-app name="spark-wf" xmlns="uri:oozie:workflow:0.5">
<start to="start_spark" />
<action name="start_spark">
    <spark xmlns="uri:oozie:spark-action:0.1">
        <job-tracker>${jobTracker}</job-tracker>
        <name-node>${nameNode}</name-node>
        <prepare>
            <delete path="/tmp/test/spark_oozie_test_out3"/>
        </prepare>
        <master>yarn-cluster</master>
        <mode>cluster</mode>
        <name>SparkJob</name>
        <class>clear</class>
        <jar>hdfs:///user/oozie/apps/myPysparkProgram.py</jar>
        <spark-opts>--queue default
            --conf spark.ui.view.acls=*
            --executor-memory 2G --num-executors 2 --executor-cores 2 --driver-memory 3g
            --conf spark.executorEnv.PYSPARK_PYTHON=./anaconda_remote/bin/python
            --conf spark.yarn.appMasterEnv.PYSPARK_PYTHON=./anaconda_remote/bin/python
            --archives hdfs:///tmp/myLocation/anaconda.zip#anaconda_remote
        </spark-opts>
    </spark>
    <ok to="end"/>
    <error to="kill"/>
</action>
        <kill name="kill">
                <message>Action failed, error message[${wf:errorMessage(wf:lastErrorNode())}]</message>
        </kill>
        <end name="end"/>
</workflow-app>

Test steps

To test this out, you can use the following job.properties and myPysparkProgram.py file, along with the following steps:

job.properties

masterNode ip-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.us-east-1.compute.internal
nameNode hdfs://${masterNode}:8020
jobTracker ${masterNode}:8032
master yarn
mode cluster
queueName default
oozie.libpath ${nameNode}/user/oozie/share/lib
oozie.use.system.libpath true
oozie.wf.application.path ${nameNode}/user/oozie/apps/

Note: You can get your master node IP address (denoted as “ip-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx” here) from the value for the sharelibDirNew parameter noted earlier.

myPysparkProgram.py

from pyspark import SparkContext, SparkConf
import numpy
import sys

conf = SparkConf().setAppName('myPysparkProgram')
sc = SparkContext(conf=conf)

rdd = sc.textFile("/user/hadoop/input.txt")

x = numpy.sum([3,4,5]) #total = 12

rdd = rdd.map(lambda line: line + str(x))
rdd.saveAsTextFile("/user/hadoop/output")

Put the “myPysparkProgram.py” into the location mentioned between the “<jar>xxxxx</jar>” tags in your workflow.xml. In this example, the location is “hdfs:///user/oozie/apps/”. Use the following command to move the “myPysparkProgram.py” file to the correct location:

hdfs dfs -put myPysparkProgram.py /user/oozie/apps/

Put the above workflow.xml file into the “/user/oozie/apps/” location in hdfs:

hdfs dfs –put workflow.xml /user/oozie/apps/

Note: The job.properties file is run locally from the EMR master node.

Create a sample input.txt file with some data in it. For example:

input.txt

This is a sentence.
So is this. 
This is also a sentence.

Put this file into hdfs:

hdfs dfs -put input.txt /user/hadoop/

Execute the job in Oozie with the following command. This creates an Oozie job ID.

oozie job -config job.properties -run

You can check the Oozie job state with the command:

oozie job -info <Oozie job ID>

  1. When the job is successfully finished, the results are located at:
/user/hadoop/output/part-00000
/user/hadoop/output/part-00001

  1. Run the following commands to view the output:
hdfs dfs -cat /user/hadoop/output/part-00000
hdfs dfs -cat /user/hadoop/output/part-00001

The output will be:

This is a sentence. 12
So is this 12
This is also a sentence 12

Summary

The myPysparkProgram.py has successfully imported the numpy library from the Anaconda platform and has produced some output with it. If you tried to run this using standard Python, you’d encounter the following error:

Now when your Python job runs in Oozie, any imported packages that are implicitly imported by your Pyspark script are imported into your job within Oozie directly from the Anaconda platform. Simple!

If you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below.

Additional Reading

Learn how to use Apache Oozie workflows to automate Apache Spark jobs on Amazon EMR.

 

About the Author

John Ohle is an AWS BigData Cloud Support Engineer II for the BigData team in Dublin. He works to provide advice and solutions to our customers on their Big Data projects and workflows on AWS. In his spare time, he likes to play music, learn, develop tools and write documentation to further help others – both colleagues and customers alike.

 

 

 

New – High-Resolution Custom Metrics and Alarms for Amazon CloudWatch

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-high-resolution-custom-metrics-and-alarms-for-amazon-cloudwatch/

Amazon CloudWatch has been an important part of AWS since early 2009! Launched as part of a three-pack that also included Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing, CloudWatch has evolved into a very powerful monitoring service for AWS resources and the applications that you run on the AWS Cloud. CloudWatch custom metrics (launched way back in 2011) allow you to store business and application metrics in CloudWatch, view them in graphs, and initiate actions based on CloudWatch Alarms. Needless to say, we have made many enhancements to CloudWatch over the years! Some of the most recent include Extended Metrics Retention (and a User Interface Update), Dashboards, API/CloudFormation Support for Dashboards, and Alarms on Dashboards.

Originally, metrics were stored at five minute intervals; this was reduced to one minute (also known as Detailed Monitoring) in response to customer requests way back in 2010. This was a welcome change, but now it is time to do better. Our customers are streaming video, running flash sales, deploying code tens or hundreds of times per day, and running applications that scale in and out very quickly as conditions change. In all of these situations, a minute is simply too coarse of an interval. Important, transient spikes can be missed; disparate (yet related) events are difficult to correlate across time, and the MTTR (mean time to repair) when something breaks is too high.

New High-Resolution Metrics
Today we are adding support for high-resolution custom metrics, with plans to add support for AWS services over time. Your applications can now publish metrics to CloudWatch with 1-second resolution. You can watch the metrics scroll across your screen seconds after they are published and you can set up high-resolution CloudWatch Alarms that evaluate as frequently as every 10 seconds.

Imagine alarming when available memory gets low. This is often a transient condition that can be hard to catch with infrequent samples. With high-resolution metrics, you can see, detect (via an alarm), and act on it within seconds:

In this case the alarm on the right would not fire, and you would not know about the issue.

Publishing High-Resolution Metrics
You can publish high-resolution metrics in two different ways:

  • API – The PutMetricData function now accepts an optional StorageResolution parameter. Set this parameter to 1 to publish high-resolution metrics; omit it (or set it to 60) to publish at standard 1-minute resolution.
  • collectd plugin – The CloudWatch plugin for collectd has been updated to support collection and publication of high-resolution metrics. You will need to set the enable_high_definition_metrics parameter in the config file for the plugin.

CloudWatch metrics are rolled up over time; resolution effectively decreases as the metrics age. Here’s the schedule:

  • 1 second metrics are available for 3 hours.
  • 60 second metrics are available for 15 days.
  • 5 minute metrics are available for 63 days.
  • 1 hour metrics are available for 455 days (15 months).

When you call GetMetricStatistics you can specify a period of 1, 5, 10, 30 or any multiple of 60 seconds for high-resolution metrics. You can specify any multiple of 60 seconds for standard metrics.

A Quick Demo
I grabbed my nearest EC2 instance, installed the latest version of collectd and the Python plugin:

$ sudo yum install collectd collectd-python

Then I downloaded the setup script for the plugin, made it executable, and ran it:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/awslabs/collectd-cloudwatch/master/src/setup.py
$ chmod a+x setup.py
$ sudo ./setup.py

I had already created a suitable IAM Role and added it to my instance; it was automatically detected during setup. I was asked to enable the high resolution metrics:

collectd started running and publishing metrics within seconds. I opened up the CloudWatch Console to take a look:

Then I zoomed in to see the metrics in detail:

I also created an alarm that will check the memory.percent.used metric at 10 second intervals. This will make it easier for me to detect situations where a lot of memory is being used for a short period of time:

Now Available
High-resolution custom metrics and alarms are available now in all Public AWS Regions, with support for AWS GovCloud (US) coming soon.

As was already the case, you can store 10 metrics at no charge every month; see the CloudWatch Pricing page for more information. Pricing for high-resolution metrics is identical to that for standard resolution metrics, with volume tiers that allow you to realize savings (on a per-metric) basis when you use more metrics. High-resolution alarms are priced at $0.30 per alarm per month.

Landmine-clearing Pi-powered C-Turtle

Post Syndicated from Janina Ander original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/landmine-c-turtle/

In an effort to create a robot that can teach itself to navigate different terrains, scientists at Arizona State University have built C-Turtle, a Raspberry Pi-powered autonomous cardboard robot with turtle flippers. This is excellent news for people who live in areas with landmines: C-Turtle is a great alternative to current landmine-clearing robots, since it is much cheaper, and much easier to assemble.

C-Turtle ASU

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Why turtle flippers?

As any user of Python will tell you*, turtles are amazing. Moreover, as the evolutionary biologist of the C-Turtle team, Andrew Jansen, will tell you, considering their bulk** turtles move very well on land with the help of their flippers. Consequently, the team tried out prototypes with cardboard flippers imitating the shape of turtle flippers. Then they compared their performance to that of prototypes with rectangular or oval ‘flippers’. And 157 million years of evolution*** won out: the robots with turtle flippers were best at moving forward.

C-Turtle ASU

Field testing with Assistant Professor Heni Ben Amor, one of the C-Turtle team’s leaders (Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now)

If it walks like a C-Turtle…

But the scientists didn’t just slap turtle flippers on their robot and then tell it to move like a turtle! Instead, they implemented machine learning algorithms on the Pi Zero that serves as C-Turtle’s brain, and then simply let the robot do its thing. Left to its own devices, it used the reward and punishment mechanisms of its algorithms to learn the most optimal way of propelling itself forward. And lo and behold, C-Turtle taught itself to move just like a live turtle does!

Robotic C-Turtle

This is “Robotic C-Turtle” by ASU Now on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Landmine clearance with C-Turtle

Robots currently used to clear landmines are very expensive, since they are built to withstand multiple mine explosions. Conversely, the total cost of C-Turtle comes to about $70 (~£50) – that’s cheap enough to make it disposable. It is also more easily assembled, it doesn’t need to be remotely controlled, and it can learn to navigate new terrains. All this makes it perfect for clearing minefields.

BBC Click on Twitter

Meet C-Turtle, the landmine detecting robot. VIDEO https://t.co/Kjc6WxRC8I

C-Turtles in space?****

The researchers hope that robots similar to C-Turtle can used for space exploration. They found that the C-Turtle prototypes that had performed very well in the sandpits in their lab didn’t really do as well when they were released in actual desert conditions. By analogy, robots optimized for simulated planetary conditions might not actually perform well on-site. The ASU scientists imagine that C-Turtle materials and a laser cutter for the cardboard body could be carried on board a Mars mission. Then Martian C-Turtle design could be optimized after landing, and the robot could teach itself how best to navigate real Martian terrain.

There are already Raspberry Pis in space – imagine if they actually made it to Mars! Dave would never recover…

Congrats to Assistant Professors Heni Ben Amor and Daniel Aukes, and to the rest of the C-Turtle team, on their achievement! We at Pi Towers are proud that our little computer is part of this amazing project.

C-Turtle ASU

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

* Check out our Turtley amazing resource to find out why!

** At a length of 7ft, leatherback sea turtles can weigh 1,500lb!

*** That’s right: turtles survived the extinction of the dinosaurs!

**** Is anyone else thinking of Great A’Tuin right now? Anyone? Just me? Oh well.

The post Landmine-clearing Pi-powered C-Turtle appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Top Ten Ways to Protect Yourself Against Phishing Attacks

Post Syndicated from Roderick Bauer original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/top-ten-ways-protect-phishing-attacks/

It’s hard to miss the increasing frequency of phishing attacks in the news. Earlier this year, a major phishing attack targeted Google Docs users, and attempted to compromise at least one million Google Docs accounts. Experts say the “phish” was convincing and sophisticated, and even people who thought they would never be fooled by a phishing attack were caught in its net.

What is phishing?

Phishing attacks use seemingly trustworthy but malicious emails and websites to obtain your personal account or banking information. The attacks are cunning and highly effective because they often appear to come from an organization or business you actually use. The scam comes into play by tricking you into visiting a website you believe belongs to the trustworthy organization, but in fact is under the control of the phisher attempting to extract your private information.

Phishing attacks are once again in the news due to a handful of high profile ransomware incidents. Ransomware invades a user’s computer, encrypts their data files, and demands payment to decrypt the files. Ransomware most often makes its way onto a user’s computer through a phishing exploit, which gives the ransomware access to the user’s computer.

The best strategy against phishing is to scrutinize every email and message you receive and never to get caught. Easier said than done—even smart people sometimes fall victim to a phishing attack. To minimize the damage in an event of a phishing attack, backing up your data is the best ultimate defense and should be part of your anti-phishing and overall anti-malware strategy.

How do you recognize a phishing attack?

A phishing attacker may send an email seemingly from a reputable credit card company or financial institution that requests account information, often suggesting that there is a problem with your account. When users respond with the requested information, attackers can use it to gain access to the accounts.

The image below is a mockup of how a phishing attempt might appear. In this example, courtesy of Wikipedia, the bank is fictional, but in a real attempt the sender would use an actual bank, perhaps even the bank where the targeted victim does business. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing confidential information by getting the victim to visit the phisher’s website. Note the misspelling of the words “received” and “discrepancy” as recieved and discrepency. Misspellings sometimes are indications of a phishing attack. Also note that although the URL of the bank’s webpage appears to be legitimate, the hyperlink would actually take you to the phisher’s webpage, which would be altogether different from the URL displayed in the message.

By Andrew Levine – en:Image:PhishingTrustedBank.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=549747

Top ten ways to protect yourself against phishing attacks

  1. Always think twice when presented with a link in any kind of email or message before you click on it. Ask yourself whether the sender would ask you to do what it is requesting. Most banks and reputable service providers won’t ask you to reveal your account information or password via email. If in doubt, don’t use the link in the message and instead open a new webpage and go directly to the known website of the organization. Sign in to the site in the normal manner to verify that the request is legitimate.
  2. A good precaution is to always hover over a link before clicking on it and observe the status line in your browser to verify that the link in the text and the destination link are in fact the same.
  3. Phishers are clever, and they’re getting better all the time, and you might be fooled by a simple ruse to make you think the link is one you recognize. Links can have hard-to-detect misspellings that would result in visiting a site very different than what you expected.
  4. Be wary even of emails and message from people you know. It’s very easy to spoof an email so it appears to come from someone you know, or to create a URL that appears to be legitimate, but isn’t.

For example, let’s say that you work for roughmedia.com and you get an email from Chuck in accounting ([email protected]) that has an attachment for you, perhaps a company form you need to fill out. You likely wouldn’t notice in the sender address that the phisher has replaced the “m” in media with an “r” and an “n” that look very much like an “m.” You think it’s good old Chuck in finance and it’s actually someone “phishing” for you to open the attachment and infect your computer. This type of attack is known as “spear phishing” because it’s targeted at a specific individual and is using social engineering—specifically familiarity with the sender—as part of the scheme to fool you into trusting the attachment. This technique is by far the most successful on the internet today. (This example is based on Gimlet Media’s Reply All Podcast Episode, “What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?“)

  1. Use anti-malware software, but don’t rely on it to catch all attacks. Phishers change their approach often to keep ahead of the software attack detectors.
  2. If you are asked to enter any valuable information, only do so if you’re on a secure connection. Look for the “https” prefix before the site URL, indicating the site is employing SSL (Secure Socket Layer). If there is no “s” after “http,” it’s best not to enter any confidential information.
By Fabio Lanari – Internet1.jpg by Rock1997 modified., GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20995390
  1. Avoid logging in to online banks and similar services via public Wi-Fi networks. Criminals can compromise open networks with man-in-the-middle attacks that capture your information or spoof website addresses over the connection and redirect you to a fake page they control.
  2. Email, instant messaging, and gaming social channels are all possible vehicles to deliver phishing attacks, so be vigilant!
  3. Lay the foundation for a good defense by choosing reputable tech vendors and service providers that respect your privacy and take steps to protect your data. At Backblaze, we have full-time security teams constantly looking for ways to improve our security.
  4. When it is available, always take advantage of multi-factor verification to protect your accounts. The standard categories used for authentication are 1) something you know (e.g. your username and password), 2) something you are (e.g. your fingerprint or retina pattern), and 3) something you have (e.g. an authenticator app on your smartphone). An account that allows only a single factor for authentication is more susceptible to hacking than one that supports multiple factors. Backblaze supports multi-factor authentication to protect customer accounts.

Be a good internet citizen, and help reduce phishing and other malware attacks by notifying the organization being impersonated in the phishing attempt, or by forwarding suspicious messages to the Federal Trade Commission at [email protected]. Some email clients and services, such as Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail, give you the ability to easily report suspicious emails. Phishing emails misrepresenting Apple can be reported to [email protected].

Backing up your data is an important part of a strong defense against phishing and other malware

The best way to avoid becoming a victim is to be vigilant against suspicious messages and emails, but also to assume that no matter what you do, it is very possible that your system will be compromised. Even the most sophisticated and tech-savvy of us can be ensnared if we are tired, in a rush, or just unfamiliar with the latest methods hackers are using. Remember that hackers are working full-time on ways to fool us, so it’s very difficult to keep ahead of them.

The best defense is to make sure that any data that could compromised by hackers—basically all of the data that is reachable via your computer—is not your only copy. You do that by maintaining an active and reliable backup strategy.

Files that are backed up to cloud storage, such as with Backblaze, are not vulnerable to attacks on your local computer in the way that local files, attached drives, network drives, or sync services like Dropbox that have local directories on your computer are.

In the event that your computer is compromised and your files are lost or encrypted, you can recover your files if you have a cloud backup that is beyond the reach of attacks on your computer.

The post Top Ten Ways to Protect Yourself Against Phishing Attacks appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Defending anti-netneutrality arguments

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/07/defending-anti-netneutrality-arguments.html

Last week, activists proclaimed a “NetNeutrality Day”, trying to convince the FCC to regulate NetNeutrality. As a libertarian, I tweeted many reasons why NetNeutrality is stupid. NetNeutrality is exactly the sort of government regulation Libertarians hate most. Somebody tweeted the following challenge, which I thought I’d address here.

The links point to two separate cases.

  • the Comcast BitTorrent throttling case
  • a lawsuit against Time Warning for poor service
The tone of the tweet suggests that my anti-NetNeutrality stance cannot be defended in light of these cases. But of course this is wrong. The short answers are:

  • the Comcast BitTorrent throttling benefits customers
  • poor service has nothing to do with NetNeutrality

The long answers are below.

The Comcast BitTorrent Throttling

The presumption is that any sort of packet-filtering is automatically evil, and against the customer’s interests. That’s not true.
Take GoGoInflight’s internet service for airplanes. They block access to video sites like NetFlix. That’s because they often have as little as 1-mbps for the entire plane, which is enough to support many people checking email and browsing Facebook, but a single person trying to watch video will overload the internet connection for everyone. Therefore, their Internet service won’t work unless they filter video sites.
GoGoInflight breaks a lot of other NetNeutrality rules, such as providing free access to Amazon.com or promotion deals where users of a particular phone get free Internet access that everyone else pays for. And all this is allowed by FCC, allowing GoGoInflight to break NetNeutrality rules because it’s clearly in the customer interest.
Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent is likewise clearly in the customer interest. Until the FCC stopped them, BitTorrent users were allowed unlimited downloads. Afterwards, Comcast imposed a 300-gigabyte/month bandwidth cap.
Internet access is a series of tradeoffs. BitTorrent causes congestion during prime time (6pm to 10pm). Comcast has to solve it somehow — not solving it wasn’t an option. Their options were:
  • Charge all customers more, so that the 99% not using BitTorrent subsidizes the 1% who do.
  • Impose a bandwidth cap, preventing heavy BitTorrent usage.
  • Throttle BitTorrent packets during prime-time hours when the network is congested.
Option 3 is clearly the best. BitTorrent downloads take hours, days, and sometimes weeks. BitTorrent users don’t mind throttling during prime-time congested hours. That’s preferable to the other option, bandwidth caps.
I’m a BitTorrent user, and a heavy downloader (I scan the Internet on a regular basis from cloud machines, then download the results to home, which can often be 100-gigabytes in size for a single scan). I want prime-time BitTorrent throttling rather than bandwidth caps. The EFF/FCC’s action that prevented BitTorrent throttling forced me to move to Comcast Business Class which doesn’t have bandwidth caps, charging me $100 more a month. It’s why I don’t contribute the EFF — if they had not agitated for this, taking such choices away from customers, I’d have $1200 more per year to donate to worthy causes.
Ask any user of BitTorrent which they prefer: 300gig monthly bandwidth cap or BitTorrent throttling during prime-time congested hours (6pm to 10pm). The FCC’s action did not help Comcast’s customers, it hurt them. Packet-filtering would’ve been a good thing, not a bad thing.

The Time-Warner Case
First of all, no matter how you define the case, it has nothing to do with NetNeutrality. NetNeutrality is about filtering packets, giving some priority over others. This case is about providing slow service for everyone.
Secondly, it’s not true. Time Warner provided the same access speeds as everyone else. Just because they promise 10mbps download speeds doesn’t mean you get 10mbps to NetFlix. That’s not how the Internet works — that’s not how any of this works.
To prove this, look at NetFlix’s connection speed graphis. It shows Time Warner Cable is average for the industry. It had the same congestion problems most ISPs had in 2014, and it has the same inability to provide more than 3mbps during prime-time (6pm-10pm) that all ISPs have today.

The YouTube video quality diagnostic pages show Time Warner Cable to similar to other providers around the country. It also shows the prime-time bump between 6pm and 10pm.
Congestion is an essential part of the Internet design. When an ISP like Time Warner promises you 10mbps bandwidth, that’s only “best effort”. There’s no way they can promise 10mbps stream to everybody on the Internet, especially not to a site like NetFlix that gets overloaded during prime-time.
Indeed, it’s the defining feature of the Internet compared to the old “telecommunications” network. The old phone system guaranteed you a steady 64-kbps stream between any time points in the phone network, but it cost a lot of money. Today’s Internet provide a free multi-megabit stream for free video calls (Skype, Facetime) around the world — but with the occasional dropped packets because of congestion.
Whatever lawsuit money-hungry lawyers come up with isn’t about how an ISP like Time Warner works. It’s only about how they describe the technology. They work no different than every ISP — no different than how anything is possible.
Conclusion

The short answer to the above questions is this: Comcast’s BitTorrent throttling benefits customers, and the Time Warner issue has nothing to do with NetNeutrality at all.

The tweet demonstrates that NetNeutrality really means. It has nothing to do with the facts of any case, especially the frequency that people point to ISP ills that have nothing actually to do with NetNeutrality. Instead, what NetNeutrality really about is socialism. People are convinced corporations are evil and want the government to run the Internet. The Comcast/BitTorrent case is a prime example of why this is a bad idea: government definitions of what customers want is actually far different than what customers actually want.