First, Basil, I hope to god your not a “cop”. (Just for the record, you should use ‘Police Officer’, it is a sign of respect.)
Basil also looks like he maybe Palin’s best choice for VP in 2012, because you know she doesn’t want anyone smarter then her being her being her “second in command”.

In other news I am thinking about taking to video blogging. Anyone have recommendations for software to use?

Almost all the attacks have been based out of China, so I gotta ask, WTF china?

It isn’t like these are awesome hack attempts either, most have been common wordpress exploits and port scanning and brute force attacks.  I even had one try to claim to be the hosting company  (which they got the name wrong :-/) via email.  Since I work for the hosting company I host with I laughed, looked at my mail logs, and again, it was a Chinese IP address that sent the email.

Now please keep in mind I do have a few scripts in place to add an extra layer of protection to my server, but for the most part, what has caught the hacks attempts have been two off the shelf applications.

First, SecureLive’s SecurePress protects my blog, I have posted about it before and I stand by that it is an awesome piece of software, and well worth the price. (In the last month over 100 emails has been sent to me about someone attempting to exploit/hack my site.)

Second I have a firewall installed and I make use of a brute force detection script to protect my server from brute force attempts.  I tend to use APF and BFD (found at rfxn.com under projects) as I like it better then some of the alternatives.  That is just me, your mileage may vary.

Between the two of those and a few scripts I have put in place (including my perl DoS Reject Script, found on my projects page.) I have blocked over 500 malicious attacks to my server in the last month.

Granted, the malicious attempts most likely wouldn’t have succeeded to do anything on/to my server, but why risk it?

First we have Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul (yes, the Ron Paul that ran in the Republican Presidential Primary in ’08).
This man won the Republican Primary in Kentucky, and apparently now can’t seem to keep his mouth shut. Since his “victory” Rand Paul has said :

1. “Accidents Happen” in regards to the BP Oil Spill that is now washing ashore
2. That he is not racist, but he thinks that private businesses should have the right to be.
3. Initially would not say he supported the civil right act. (Later, it looks like someone did a “Palin” and wrote his answers on cue cards for him to read from.)

And, if that wasn’t enough to ruffle some feathers, it came to national attention that he opposes parts of the Fair Housing Act and America’s with Disabilities Act. Ouch…

Again, this is the guy that won the Republican Primary in Kentucky. What did the other guy do? Post he was a Nazi on his twitter?

Now Rand Paul has become so volatile that no one else in the party really wants to be associated with him. It is so bad that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Leader, who is also from Kentucky has yet to endorse him (Rand also said we might need to replace the Senate Republican Leader).

Next we have Gov. Bob McDonnell, of Virginia. This guy wanted to make it a requirement that felons, once released from prison must submit a written essay before they could get their right to vote back. The “idea” took an amazing amount of heat (as it should have) for sounding a lot like a “Jim Crowe” law. Gov. McDonnell then said it was simply a part of an idea and was not going into effect. For the record, couple hundred previous felons got letters in the mail notifying them of the new procedure, which was quickly given the excuse that an over zealous intern sent them out, and to disregard the letter. Also for the record, you don’t need to submit an essay to get your voting privileges back if your a felon in Virginia, rather you simply need to fill out an application, which requires you to explain things you have done to help the community. According to Virginia State Office, the question is not an essay, as it is not on a separate piece of paper. Also, if the question is left blank it does not mean an application is rejected automatically, they will just assume you have nothing to say.

Next up, Ken Cuccinelli, the State Attorney General for Virginia (are we seeing a pattern here?). Ken has said that colleges in Virginia can’t have rules to protect it’s gay student from discrimination, or harassment.  He also has said he doesn’t think he will get a social security number for his new baby, because “that is how they track you” and believes that President Obama was born in Kenya. Ken also took a donation for over $55,000 from a questionable charity (being investigated in three states), and refuses to give to a real charity until the person is actually convicted a crime. When asked if he would investigate this charity (which was given permission to solicit donations with out a license in Virginia by two other people that got significantly smaller donations, and have since donated them real charities.) Mr. Cuccinelli’s office said it would be “atypical” for the attorney general to investigate such a matter. I can see the headlines now “Top Law Official in Virginia Sits and Does Nothing”…

How do I follow up a tale so asinine as that of Mr. Cuccinelli? How about Arizona’s recent law that makes racial profiling legal?

Commonly deemed the “Show me your Papers” Law, the legalization of racial profiling in Arizona “…would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime. It would also give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.” –qoute from docudharma.com

A friend of mine told me the law got amended that states that a police officer must have another reason for stopping a person before asking for their papers. He seemed ok with that but I’m not. Does anyone remember the 1960s? Trusting that all Police Officers are not racist and actually follow the rule, is pretty far fetched. Being the son of a police officer, I have seen my fair share of corrupted officers, and ones I personally feel should not be allowed on the force because of their attitudes. (I personally think Police Officers should have a teacher like mentality in most situations, unfortunately we are seeing more and more with hair triggers, and half wits)

There is another bill that is in the works for nAZi that would all but shred the 14th amendment, meaning any child born in AZ would not automatically become a US citizen. This opens up a whole new issue of selecting who is fit to be a citizen in our country. a poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller keeps coming to mind when I think about what is happening in nAZi.

“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

This country was based on the idea of being open and welcoming to all.

Excerpt from “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I do agree, we need to make some changes as to how we handle immigration and illegal aliens, but legalizing racial profiling/discrimination is not the answer.

And for a closing WTF?, the Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams Says “Muslim Terrorist Worship a Monkey God”. Umm, Mark you used Muslim in your hate speech, Muslims practice Islam. Islam has a single god, just like Christianity does, named Allāh.

Oh, your going to apologize great, you can start by… wait your not going to apologize to the Islamic Community? Your going to apologize to the Hindu Community because they do have a Monkey god called Hanuman, and you don’t want people to think that terrorist worship that god? Ok, really? You want people to by that the Tea Party movement isn’t racist? Your going to have to do better then that.

Feel Free to Comment.

Ok, first let me say this; I am pretty used to people saying derogatory things about who I am. I have had to deal with it my entire life, even from my family at some points, but who the hell still says ‘cracker’? I mean really, I would have been more impressed if they had called me Casper or something.

What confuses me about the whole thing is the woman on the other end sounded white (Southern, but not of the elegant variety), and cracker is such an uninspired insult, I mean really.

This post is more of wtf then anything. So if your looking for a point, there isn’t one. Just read it and take it as it is.

So, we have a customer who hosts his account with us. Lots of people do, this particular customer, who we will call x.com, also is a customer of rescuecom.com, which is where the shenanigans start.

Someone called in, stating that the x.com site was down, and mail forwards were failing. I checked the site and confirmed that it was indeed down, so I attempted to ping the IP which I could, and proceeded to do the troubleshooting stuffs that my job entails. (Not going to go step by step what I did, as it would take too long to type.) After determining that the server was not passing requests to the IP properly I restarted the Virtuozzo VPS. This brought the site up but I wanted to investigate further. I let the person on the phone know that the site was back up but I wanted to determine the cause of the problem with the IP and if it was alright to email him once I had found more information. He asked if I had his email address, I let him know what email address I had on file, he asked me to change it. So up until this point I had no reason to suspect the other person on the other end of the phone wasn’t the customer, but I wasn’t providing any information regarding the account or changing anything so I had no need to verify the account until this point. I asked the person on the other end to verify the account, and he flipped out, stating that he was the president of rescuecom.com and that if I wouldn’t do that then he was going to take the account to other hosting.

Now this is where I ask for a little common sense. First off, Josh (Kaplan) from Rescuecom.com is not mentioned anywhere on x.com’s account. This person can not verify any account information, and is requesting that I make changes to the account, that if made would give him access to the entire account, and have the ability to effectively hijack the entire account. From reading Josh’s background (built a support desk team) he should know all about social engineering and know that protecting customer requires that you have the customer verify information before you make any changes. Second making threats on an account your not listed on does not make a whole lot of sense. Lastly toting that your the president of a computer repair company to someone, when your being a jerk, probably isn’t the wisest thing you could do.

And if anyone cares, I fixed the issue with x.com’s ip, it simply had a server configuration issue where the IP got dropped. Simple.