Tuesday, January 20, 2015

You have CCTV at home/work. Just make sure that you are not exposed!

With CCTV being SOMEHOW mandatory to home/business users. Some of the users configure their devices in a manner that jeopardize their privacy. A simple ip/port scan would show a dozen of insecure DVRs or monitoring devices (IP Cameras, NVRs..etc) installed.
Whether at home or at work, securing your devices is more mandatory than having them in some cases. You can achieve that by doing the following:

  • Set a complex password on the DVR or monitoring device account
  • Changing the password of the DVR or monitoring device built in users like default and guest, disabling them would be a plus
  • changing the default tcp/udp ports (80,8080,34599, 34567 etc.) of the DVR or monitoring device
  • Disable ICMP on your WAN "internet" interface
  • It is not the installer responsibility, it's yours!

Monday, May 13, 2013

Make your own hotspot "hosted network"

MAKE SURE YOU READ THE LAST PARAGRAPH!!
Warning! this is my first blog and I'm so bored

Imagine yourself at your room at home or in a hotel. Your WIFI connection strength is giving you 3 or 4 bars on the laptop but you're dying to make your phone connected to the network. You even tried holding your phone with two fingers on a side, holding it upside down or even left it on an object and tried watching it seeing it connecting and disconnecting. Now we have to stop all this none sense. We do have a good reception on the laptop, why don't we just connect through it. Thanks to the new virtual instances of wireless network cards, and a little help of windows you will be able to create a wifi access point out of your laptop.

At first you will need to run the command prompt as and administrator. In windows 7 and 8 just press the windows key on the keyboard and start typing the magical word "cmd". A shortcut to the application will appear, you just need to right click on it and choose "run as administrator". Now the command screen will popup "THE BLACK SCREEN!!". Type the following commands into this screen:


  • netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=albosta key=haconsultancies.com


  • netsh wlan start hostednetwork


After that you will need to go the the network and sharing center and choose "change adapter settings" on the side bar "another way of doing it is just opening any explorer window like document and typing "network connections" on the address bar".


  • Right click on your "Wireless Network Connection" (Make sure that the adapter is not microsoft virtual wifi miniport adapter) and choose properties.
  • Choose Allow other network users blah blah..
  • One the home network connection choose "Wireless Network connections 2" (Make sure that the adpater is Microsoft virtual wifi miniport adapter)


Press OK and that will solve your issues in the room.


Now let's expand our vision, let's assume that you are with a group of 5 or 6. You are heading to a paid wifi hot spot. Based on whatever they gave you each or only some of you a 1 hour voucher only. You are planning to stay for at least 2 or 3 hours. The solution is just enter the voucher on the host machine and let the rest connect to it using the previous steps.

Enjoy the boredom!