HOW TO : Download SSL certificate using openssl and importing it into a keystore

Following up on my earlier post about using keytool to import and export certificates into a keystore. Here is some more information on using openssl to download the certificate from a remote server and then using keytool to import it into the keystore.

keytool needs the certificate to be in X509 format, so we will use sed to format the certificate.

[code]echo -n | openssl s_client -connect HOST:PORTNUMBER | sed -ne ‘/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p’ > /tmp/$SERVERNAME.cert [/code]

breaking down the command

[code]echo -n[/code]

send an end of line signal to openssl. This allows openssl (or rather the server it is trying to connect to) to disconnect the session

[code]openssl s_client -connect HOST:PORTNUMBER[/code]

asks openssl to act as a client and connect to the HOST on the specificed PORTNUMBER

[code]sed -ne ‘/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p’ [/code]

asks sed to take the input from openssl and only output the content between BEGIN CERTIFICATE and END CERTIFICATE.

NOTE: If you get an error like “SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:sslv3 alert unexpected message”, it means the server doesn’t support SSL negotation. Using the command option -no_tls1 helps work around this error. This option will tell openssl to disable TLS1 negotiation.

October 15, 2012 by HOWTO Technology Uncategorized Web 0

2012 Half Marathons : An update

Quick update on the races Jhanvi and I ran so far this year. And yes, she kicked my butt in all of them as usual 🙂

2012 Rock and Roll Chicago Half Marathon

Showing off our medals in the train back home.. It was painful 🙂 

Endomondo’s view of how I ran 

2012 Northface Challenge : Madison

This is the third time, I am running this trail half marathon. And for the first time, I actually did better than the last race. And it was mainly due to Jhanvi encouraging me to practice. Not my best time, but better than last year 🙂

October 4, 2012 by 2012 : Half Marathons Running Uncategorized 4

HOW TO : Compare two directories in Linux

Quick post on using diff to compare two directories in Linux. This will show the list of files and subdirectories that are different in either directories

[code]diff /PATH_TO_FIRST_DIRECTORY /PATH_TO_SECOND_DIRECTORY -r –brief  [/code]

Options used

  • r : Searched recursively through the directory
  • –brief : Only shows the names of the files that differ. If you want details of the content that differs, remove this option
September 11, 2012 by HOWTO Linux Uncategorized 2

HOW TO : grep for response codes in apache logs

If you want to grep for certain http response codes in a apache log file

  • Look for all access requests with a 200 response code[code] grep -i "[: ]200[: ]" HTTP_ACCESS_LOG [/code]
  • Look for all access requests that do NOT have a 200 response code[code] grep -i -v "[: ]200[: ]" HTTP_ACCESS_LOG [/code]

Details of the options

  • [code]"[: ]"[/code]

    tells grep to look for space or tab before the specified string, which in this case is 200.

September 5, 2012 by HOWTO Linux Uncategorized Web 0

Another day.. Another Hack

The net is up in arms about a new release from team Ghostshell of compromise data. Details of the leak can be found at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/28/team_ghostshell_megahack/ and the source of the data is at http://pastebin.com/BuabHTvr .

I thought I would put my nascent python skills to use and write a simple script to parse through the release and download all the data. Hoping to analyze it later on. It is pretty basic, but does the job of parsing the release and downloading the content. You can get the script at https://github.com/kudithipudi/Misc-Scripts/blob/master/parseHellfire.py

Watch out for an analysis of the content soon :).

August 28, 2012 by Programming security Uncategorized Web 0

HOW TO : Use Python to look for credit card numbers

Simple script in python to look for credit card numbers in a file.

[code]

#Importing modules
import re
import os

# Define variables
inputFile = ‘test.txt’
searchPattern = ‘((\D(6011|5[1-5]\d{2}|4\d{3}|3\d{3})\d{11,12}\D)|(^(6011|5[1-5]\d{2}|4\d{3}|3\d{3})\d{11,12}\D))’

tempinputFile = open(inputFile)
tempLine = tempinputFile.readline()

while tempLine:
print ("LINE: " + tempLine)
foundContent = re.search(searchPattern,tempLine, re.IGNORECASE)
if foundContent:
print("FOUND: " + foundContent.group())
tempLine = tempinputFile.readline()

tempinputFile.close() [/code]

The script started out as a simple check for any 16 digit numbers that had a non numeric character on either end. But I tweaked it a little bit to look for credit card like numbers using the regex from http://www.regular-expressions.info/creditcard.html. Finally I added an option to match credit card like numbers if the numbers start at the beginning of the line (i.e there is no non-numeric number before the credit card number)

August 20, 2012 by HOWTO Programming security Uncategorized 0