This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers, to the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code, step on my toes, I'll post a million jpegs of you
and a fag pwned, in your digital stance getting firewalled ho, cause I'm riding the net in
my six-fold, I was a dick with my 56, now with my cable I'm able to get that stable,
on the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo, on the digital highway, my name is Neo and
I'm a hero, in a flash, I'll screw you on burning dreamcast, you need some ISO, let me through
my hard drive rifle, our exchange you could never stifle, in a digital hug, you just caught
the love bug, I bootlegged your CD, I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z, your CG, it's
all gonna be free, whether we take it by force or we take it nicely, you feel that rattling
your phones, when I tell you we just hacked out Jones, and NASDAQ leaves your fight on
your back, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack, cause I am he who loves to hack and
crack, this is dedicated to the hackers and the crackers, serial code, source code, ISO,
RANS, SIFS, SIFS, this is dedicated to the hackers and the crack, this is episode 166 and
today is Tuesday, September 26th, 2006, I am your host, Verbal, and today we have a very
special guest, Spag Dog, how's it going?
Special as in like rides the short bus to the show special?
Something like that, you take that as what you will, but today we have a good show for
you, but before I get into the specifics, let's do some housekeeping.
The first thing I would like to mention is that, well first of all, I want to thank you
everyone for emailing me about the mentorship program, I've gotten a lot of response and
a lot of people asking to help out, you know, as mentors, but we do need about five or so
more mentors, cause you know, mentees keep coming in and we're not keeping up with the
ratio, so if you have, you know, something you want to teach or anything, you know, if
you feel like you can be a mentor, please send an email to mentorship at binrep.com.
Most of the things right now are people asking to be mentored in coding and PEARL especially
for some reason, but PEARL and C and all of that junk, so if you know or know someone
who is familiar with that, please tell them to give us an email.
Stank, do you have any housekeeping?
I have a quick thing, a very short thing.
I mentioned last week on the show that we had gotten our spam woes cleared up and apparently
we don't.
We're back on another spam list, so bear with us a little bit, it's not one of the
biggest ones, but we are getting some bounces again saying we're on spam and it's kind of
getting on my nerves because it's such a hassle.
These things are very, very anal and they look at the tiniest little things and it makes it
so much work and so much burden to a webmaster of a legitimate site like ours to be able to
do something that should be simple and common.
I mean, their complaint now is that our mail server identifies itself by IP address.
When you issue a hello command, it identifies by IP address instead of a host name.
Big fucking deal, so what?
I mean, it's the correct IP address, it's the correct host name.
That may be common to spammers, I realize that, but single those individual IPs out of the
spammers and block them.
I mean, giving a false positive on anybody who actually runs a secure server is really pretty
freaking stupid and I'm politely choosing my words and I'm going to be happy and polite
about the whole thing and just say, bear with us, we'll get it solved, we're working on getting
our name off of these lists again and shouldn't take too awful long.
We might have to do a little reconfiguring on the mail server just to make the stupid thing
bow down to their rules.
So, uh, that's pretty much all I have to talk about in the housekeeping.
Yes, fuck those guys right in here, evidently.
Okay, so, we have a ton of shit to do on the show, actually.
So, I'm going to move right along and we're going to do some emails.
Okay, before I actually start reading some emails, you said you had something regarding
this you wanted to talk about.
So, do you want to do your thing?
I just wanted to let people know, and I kind of mentioned that last week, we had a couple
emails, we've had quite a few emails, which is fantastic, which is great.
I purposely saved a couple this week so that when we had you, because I knew that you were
going to be back on the show this week, that you would be actually running the show this
week.
So, I purposely saved a couple of these delayed to have you back on the show to address
some of them.
And we've kind of done the same again this week.
We've gotten quite a few emails and we're not going to be able to get to all of them on the
show.
However, I want people to know that we did get them.
And some of them were, we had put out a call, let me shorten it.
We put out a call last week for, if anybody is interested in some of the tools that Quine
and I had mentioned on the show, if you wanted more detail on them, we could do some more
in-depth analysis of some of these tools.
So, we got quite a few emails of people saying, yes, I'd like to hear a review of this tool
or that tool, which is kind of cool.
So, we are working on those.
We're putting them on the to-do list.
And we'll have some, I actually have a couple hosts in mind for some of these.
So, we will be doing those in the future.
So, we may not read your email on the air, but we did get it and we appreciate it.
But, and actually kind of as an aside note here, I guess, it's really easy to like do
a little quick review on any of these tools or give you a list or a general rundown or
even make some kind of how to use whatever this tool is.
How do you use Metasploit?
How do you use this?
And show you it in action.
You know, I can do a little presentation, step-by-step video, whatever.
But, it's actually a little bit different when, because see, we actually like to talk about
how things work, why they work the way they do, and maybe even expand on it a little bit
as far as the applications of some of these tools and some of the nuances about them, some
of the, you know, possible improvements, problems, or cool features that people might not
know.
So, doing a more in-depth show is not as simple as just saying, oh yeah, we're going
to do that next week and read you the fact or read you the website.
We kind of do it a little bit more in-depth than that.
So, anybody can throw together something quickly, but we don't want to do that.
So, we are putting these on the list and they should be coming up soon, but we are going
to put the time into them to make these interesting, because I know on the surface doing an entire
episode on one or two particular tools might not sound as interesting as you may think,
but I think if you give it a chance, you might be surprised at some of the information that
you will pick up on these.
So, I just wanted to kind of let people know that we did get their emails, and thank you
for that.
And then, I guess we had a couple specific ones we were going to address on the show
tonight.
Yeah, that idea actually is really good, and I'm sure a ton of people are going to want
like a how-to-use like step-by-step thing, you know, for whatever tool that they're interested
in.
It just makes it easier to get it, you know, start using it and all that stuff.
So, email specifics, or specific emails, sorry, my brain might not be working correctly, but
the first email is from Billy.
In regards to the episode on tunneling, he said, without talking about OpenVPN, it literally
installs a virtual NIC on your machine and the server, they're just moving together through
an encrypted channel through your real NIC.
The channel can even be configured to use UDP53 solely, so that it could look like DNS.
It takes maybe 30 minutes to set up the first time, and it's massively powerful in its configuration.
I'm actually listed as a major contributor to their open source project.
I've sent in various suggestions and some thanks money a couple times, and hopefully someday
I can contribute to the code if I ever get the time.
If your listeners want to make it an easy, secure VPN connection from their laptop through
some wireless access point to port 53 to their home network, they need to know about this.
And he gives the site, which is www.openvpn.net.
And VPN, and OpenVPN runs on, you know, Linux, Windows, and all the BFDs, OS X, Solaris, and even PocketBP.
So, it runs on, you know, pretty much everything.
Actually, have you ever used OpenVPN before?
I actually have not used OpenVPN at all.
I've only used the commercial vendors.
I really have never used OpenVPN.
I do regret that we didn't mention it, at least on the show for sure, because it is definitely
a worthwhile project.
Yeah, I mean, OpenVPN, like Felicia, is kind of like the one to get in the open source world.
You know, it supports everything.
It runs on everything.
And the code is, you know, pretty solid from as far as I can tell, you know, having used
it.
I mean, I've never actually audited the code or anything.
You know, it's stable.
It does what it's supposed to do.
And you can, like, you know, use all the options that we talked about on that show, like encrypting
with, like, IPsec or using, like, SSL or whatever.
It works.
So, if you are looking to use VPNs in, you know, in your own home environment or for your
travels or whatever, you should definitely look at OpenVPN.
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, I even, honestly, I feel a little bit bad because we are a big proponent of open
source and open projects like this.
And we really should have mentioned it.
So, I feel a little bit bad about that.
And we definitely support this.
Also, if you want to read more, I chopped the email off a little bit.
Oh, really?
Well, he just copied and pasted the list of features that came from the website.
And I figured we could definitely send our listeners over to openvpn.net and let them
read them for themselves for sake of brevity on the show and time spent on email.
I thought we'd do that.
So, and you're breaking up a little bit on us there.
But I think you did mention that there was a Pocket PC port that was in development right
now.
So, that also is something that I think is, at least to me anyway, would be useful if I
can get that working on my PDA phone.
So, I think that's kind of cool.
Which PDA phone do you have?
The Trio?
I have the Trio 700.
The Trio 700, yes.
And it's hit and miss sometimes, but that's definitely a topic for, I think I've beaten
that horse to death.
Right, right.
I've done that to death.
Yeah.
Sorry if I break up a little bit.
I am on a cell phone.
And that's probably because I suck at the online.
You do that.
You do suck at the online.
Hopefully, at some point, I will get a landline, so I will be coming in clear.
And how's your spleen or your liver or your kidneys or whatever it is you have?
Yeah, I mean, if I talk to you on R&D or whatever, you'll know that last week I was MIA because
I was in the hospital.
I had a ruptured attenance in there to take that out.
A ruptured what?
Huh?
A ruptured what?
A ruptured appendix.
Appendix.
Oh, okay.
It's like the little organ that doesn't do anything on your large intestine, but it can
get infected and then explode, releasing tasty toxins into your stomach.
Well, I'm holding back a joke about an organ that doesn't do anything, but that's...
Oh, snap.
Oh, no, he didn't.
Actually, I didn't.
No, I held it back.
So, all right.
So, how about another email?
Okay.
So, the next email is from VoltageX.
Hi, guys.
Not going to address this to one particular host.
Hi, Verbal.
After listening to episode 162, I looked up DNS tunneling.
I'd had to look at it before, but only found some tools that were really hard to use.
One discussion I found was hgp slash tinyurl.com jxql5, and a potentially helpful site is www.dnstunnel.de.
I'm really starting to enjoy BinRev again, especially Stank's comments on what is a hacker.
I agree that many people are hackers or have the hacker mentality without realizing it.
I guess that's one of the reasons I wear the hacker hat from ThinkGeek, apart from all the funny reactions I get.
But I could get into more of this religious debate on hacker than that.
I'll save it for later.
Thanks again to Dex.
All right.
I don't know really what to reply to that.
I think that's pretty self-explanatory on my end.
Did you have anything to...
No, I mean, no, thanks for writing in, and I guess, you know, thanks for...
Thanks for the links.
Thanks for the links, for sure.
That tinyurl, jxql5, just to repeat it.
Yeah.
I was browsing through that earlier, so I think that's something that will definitely help our listeners out.
Yep.
Yeah, I'm trying to not get into another discussion about the what is a hacker thing.
Yeah, and that's...
We'll move on.
I'm holding my tongue.
Yeah, well, no, it's all right.
We'll move on.
That's something we've gone into multiple times.
I think our feelings are well-known on that, so...
Right.
Okay, the next email is from IronGeek.
Hi, guys.
What verb said about Gmail in episode 164 was mostly correct.
If you web surf to gmail.com, by default, it only encrypts the authentication and interactions thereafter.
Do not use SSL slash TLS.
However, if you set your entry page to HTTPS slash mail.google.com and log in, everything is encrypted, including email, and you send and receive it from Gmail.
Hope that helps.
Actually, so we were talking about this before the show, Stank and I, and we tried it out and it works, so that is definitely good to know.
It's something I did not know.
So what, just to recap, if you didn't get it, IronGeek is saying, if you just go normally to Gmail, because I always just type in, like, gmail.com and then go.
You know, if you do that, then when you get in, it forces you to log in via HTTPS.
And, you know, so that's what we were talking about on episode 164, where we're like, okay, it only encrypts your password, you know, so it doesn't send it to a clear text.
Subsequently, you know, over plain text.
But he's saying, if you go to a different URL to Skype, that's, like, the entry page, then it won't kick you out of HTTPS and, you know, leave you in it.
So all the emails you send and receive, you know, how you're using Gmail will be encrypted.
So everyone who uses Gmail, start doing that from now on.
And don't go to gmail.com.
Yeah, and part of that is just the browser's behavior in general by default, I guess, for lack of a better word, is if you don't specifically tell it which protocol to use, it uses HTTP protocol,
which makes common sense for 99% of the time, but hard coding that S in there, that secure HTTP, hard coding that will tell it to go through a different route and have everything encrypted.
And just in case anybody wanted to know, I mentioned on that episode also that Yahoo will automatically log you in with a secure protocol.
It will log you in through SSL, but once you're in there, it's sending everything in plain text.
So that is still true.
If you try the same trick, I just tried it on mail.yahoo.com, it kicks you back out to HTTP, even if you do hard code it.
So that is something that is unique to Gmail, and I will say that is definitely a good thing.
See, I can say good things about Google sometimes.
It's possible.
I also think the actual URL you use is important.
If you do, like, HTTPS slash slash gmail.com, I think it also will kick you out.
So you have to do, I think, mail.google.com.
Okay.
Good to know.
Yeah.
So, yes, that is definitely a good tip.
Thank you, Iron Geek, for that.
Yeah, I mean, thanks, Iron Geek, for telling us, because I definitely will start doing that.
Okay.
Next email.
This is from Anonymous.
Stank Company.
First off, I've been listening to the show since, well, I don't know, but it's been a long time now.
The show is the shit store.
Bang, bang, bang.
I would like to thank you and your co-hosts for the time and effort you guys and gals put into it.
I do have a question and or idea I was trying to get info on, so I'd be interested in seeing if yourself, co-hosts, and or listeners have any information on it.
I'm trying to find out information regarding the technology.
Gooba.com is slash are using to filter out copyrighted material from their users' uploaded videos.
From my understanding, it creates a map, in quotes, of the file and then looks through it, searching for a match of copyrighted maps and removes it.
I can see how this is great for them so they don't have issues with the owner of the copyrighted material.
I've emailed them and they are unable to comment on it.
Any idea what or how it works?
I love to create maps of TV ads, so they are insto-deleto-ed.
I think you made up a word there, insto-deleto-ed.
Oh, insto-deleto-ed.
Oh, I get it.
I get it.
Yeah, it works for me.
Now, do you know anything about this site?
Sorry, go ahead.
I said, do you know anything about this Gooba.com?
I know nothing.
Yeah, me either.
I've got to be honest.
I've never looked at it.
But may I – I actually have some questions about this myself.
And let me bounce these off of you and see what you think, actually.
First of all, this – I'm not sure if I'm – am I misunderstanding this?
If it creates a map of the file, as he says, and then looks through it, searching for a match of copyrighted maps and removes it.
So wouldn't you need copyrighted – maps of copyrighted material ahead of time, a database of copyrighted maps somehow?
Is that what he's saying in this email?
I think so.
I'm not exactly sure because I haven't been to the site.
No, but if he's – if I'm understanding his explanation – and, again, I admit I haven't – I glanced at the site when I got this email, but I didn't read it too in-depth.
So by all means, if any listeners know it, by all means email us and radioatvinrev.com let us know.
But here's what I'm wondering.
See if I'm thinking incorrectly here.
If you – you have to have the cooperation of everybody sending you their copyright map.
Here is a copyright map for X, Y, Z, and I would think you'd need a lot of them.
They'd have to send one for every show, every movie, every whatever to be stored in your database.
So you'd need a lot of cooperation from the distributors and the people.
And then second of all, which is all fine.
First of all, that seems like a big obstacle to overcome.
Now, I may be misinterpreting the way the site works.
I'll admit that.
Maybe the – when you upload something for the first time, you upload it with – you upload your mask with it at the same time, or your map with it, excuse me, at the same time.
But secondly, wouldn't that be defeated by simply – not making a copy of it, but extracting it again or re-encoding it again even with a no-loss codec or just kind of re – I'm not sure what the word is.
It's just recreating the actual bytecode or – I'm not sure.
Right, so what you're saying is, you know, you can, like, pass it through another filter and maybe, like, down a little bit or something like that.
It seems to me like this map would be easily – you know, I guess a good thing is, like – a good idea would be, like, you know how if you get past the DRM on, like, iTunes or whatever is you can burn it to a CD, then use a ripping software to re-rip it back off of said CD.
And it's ripped it off without the DRM intact.
You're bypassing it that way, and there's no longer the same map.
It's a new encoding of your material, but it's still at the quality.
And it seems like that would be easy to do here as well.
But maybe I'm not understanding properly.
Yeah, that doesn't sound – yeah, like, just from reading the email, though, it doesn't sound like the best solution.
And, you know, to be honest, it's probably not that good of a solution, and it's not, like, all over the news as, you know, the thing to use.
But then again, that just might be easy to say.
Yeah, and again, I admit that I don't know much about it, so, again, if our listeners know it.
Actually, do you think this might actually make a good – because it is interesting to me.
This might be an interesting, like, research project for somebody in the forums to do, and, you know, maybe you'll find out something interesting enough to put together an article or something like that.
Yeah, definitely.
Like, start, you know, start a thread and, you know, get some people interested and start poking around at it.
Yeah, even if it's just one or two people, I mean, right, put the research together and see if you can find something there and release it as an article.
I'd read it.
You know, I find it interesting.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
You know, it could turn into a con presentation or something or whatever you want to do.
You'd be surprised.
I'm sure it's cool.
Yeah, you'd definitely be surprised at what people find interesting.
I absolutely – just joking – I mean, I'm being very serious.
I do find that interesting.
I would like to see if somebody finds that out, so.
Yeah.
All right.
Me, too.
All righty.
Next email.
Matt says, I don't think it's cool to start hitting on people in grocery stores.
Wait a minute.
You better –
Apple store, et cetera.
You better –
They just want to do their shopping, not bothered by some dude.
Wait, wait.
I think you ought to preface this and explain what this is in response to.
So, if you didn't listen to episode 163 and 164, I think are the two numbers.
My friend, Noholani, came on the show and she started – we had this little segment where
she did, like, dating advice and kind of, like, geek-long thing from the perspective of, you
know, someone who is actually married to a geek and have been, like, dating them for
a while.
So, I asked her, you know, like, what's the best way to approach someone and, like, how
I should – conversation, et cetera, et cetera.
So, this is what Matt is referring to.
Okay.
Right.
So, continuing on, he says, second, even if it is so successful to do that, I tend to
be a little twitchy about things.
I might be wrong here.
Is there a way to meet women without having to feign ignorance of whatever?
First is duplicitous.
Second, which is more attractive?
Which is more attractive?
Someone who knows shit or a buffoon wondering how easy Final Cut Pro is to use.
The hard part is to ask questions on an equal footing.
I would ask, hey, I'm thinking of getting this.
Do you have any experience with it?
Is there anything else I should get or need to know?
If it's legit, that's fine.
But if you're faking it, it's blame.
Even my wife thought so.
Now, my solution is radically different.
Just find a hot hacker chick.
We don't have proper picks up yet.
I'm working on it.
Just been busy with other pursuits.
But we were married July 29, 2006.
Yeah, I think we should probably skip the specific URL here or anything.
Just in case, I'm sure he knew that he was sending us the radio address.
But let's play safe and not read the URL to the pictures.
Yeah.
So he posts a URL with photo albums about, I mean, pictures of him and his wife.
He says, I picked her up in the computer lab.
She was a fellow admin at an assistant department in the same college.
So we met, had classes together, et cetera.
At first, she thought I was an asshole, which I am.
But since class is a captive audience, she had to deal with me and realize that I have
redeeming qualities.
So I asked you to dinner.
Long story short, she spent the night, and we've been together ever since.
Aw.
All right.
Aw.
We need, like, some music playing in the background.
Some nice sappy.
I know, right?
So, Matt, well, I almost agree with you with the part that, you know, saying, like, don't
pretend like you don't know anything about something and just, like, start talking to
them.
But I think, you know, one of the main things that Noelani was getting at is you need to
start a conversation somehow.
So if you're in that situation, I mean, you know, it's like, you're not going to be able
to start a conversation by going up to someone and being like, hey, I know about that.
Let me tell you some stuff about that thing, you know, that you're holding.
But, you know, the other thing is that, like, you're not, well, you know, like, if you want
to be 100% truthful all the time, that's cool with me, but, I mean, sometimes you just kind
of have to get the ball rolling, as they say.
But, I mean, whatever works for you.
If you have a wife and I do not, maybe you definitely know, you know, maybe you know more
than I do.
But the other thing I don't really understand your solution is find a hot hacker chick.
I think that's what we're trying to do.
Exactly.
You know?
Like, it's nothing to it.
That's the whole thing, is, and that's my, I agree with what the guy's saying, too, and,
but, I mean, the thing is, I don't think he realized, you, dude, you got lucky.
You met her in a computer lab at college, and you got lucky.
You landed a good one, I guess it sounds like, but what happens when you're not in college
anymore, or there are no hacker chicks in your college or classes?
That's the question, and, and, for me, anyway.
Exactly.
Because, like, you know, a lot of people that, you know, that, well, a lot of people in general
aren't in school, you know, because they're working or whatever, and it's hard to find
someone after the fact, because you don't have, like, you know, specific things that you're
forced to be at with other people that you don't know.
Right.
Well, I think that's the, that's the key here.
And I think he even used the phrase in there, so, I don't remember, I thought he used the
phrase captive audience, which is exactly what he had, and you don't have that if you're
not in a computer lab with this, or in a class where the, yeah, you're with the chicks.
So, I mean, he kind of said that in his email, so I guess he didn't realize exactly how lucky
he really is.
Oh, I'm going to cry.
I'm getting reclipped.
I think you should, I think you should do it on the email.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, I'm going to move on before Spank says something more emo.
Okay, the next email is from Freak, spelled with a P-H, all right, just got to F-165, damn
you and your Mac users don't have a right-click statement, L-O-L.
We have the Uber Mighty Mouse, damn it, no buttons, but now biatch, and then he gives
a link to the Mighty Mouse.
Which is apple.com slash Mighty Mouse, but yeah, I guess I'll take that one since I made
the comment.
Great.
Yeah, I mean, this is typical Apple, this is typical Macintosh, they're going backwards
as usual, instead of finally adding the second button, and actually third, fourth, fifth
buttons that a lot of the new mics have, Apple's taking the buttons away!
Hey, what the hell are they thinking?
They're going the opposite direction!
Actually, I'm joking, it's not, the Mighty Mouse is their new thing where it clicks, but
there's not really an actual visible button that you can see, I don't know if, you've seen,
you know, you've seen the Mighty Mouse before, they're new mice before, right?
Yes, I've used one a lot.
Yeah.
I hate it.
Well, and actually, I'll put you on the spot right now, because we've gone into a lot
of, see, I have this love-hate relationship with Apple, I love OSX, I love the design
of the Apples, especially the PowerBooks, MacBooks, whatever they call them these days,
I love the design, I just hate the proprietary nature of them, and because of that, I subsequently
hate the ridiculous cost of them.
If they were a little bit more reasonably priced, I've been dying to get a Mac, and when the Mac
Minis came out, I was dying to get one, but they overpriced the damn things for what you
get, so, I love Mac, but I hate Mac, so I'm kind of, you know, I'm joking in a lot of the
stuff I say, but I'm going to put you on the spot, I don't think you've ever come out
on the record, and made your feelings, what do you think about Apple and Macintosh, what
do you think about Apple?
I think if you know me, then you know that I'm a Mac user, I'm looking at my PowerBook
right now, I've started using, I mean, I use Apple stuff because of OS X, you know, I never
used it before that, OS 9, everything before, but ever since OS X, I mean, that's why I use
Apple, and, you know, with the cost, I think they're trying, I mean, to be honest, like,
they need to sell boxes, right, like, Apple is a hardware company, and since they don't
have the volume, they have to go with the quality, and the price reflects that, and now, as they
gain more, you know, volume with their laptop sales and their station sales, you know, like
the iMacs and stuff, too, they're going in the right direction, I think, like, the MacBook
is what, you can go and get one for, like, $1,300, I mean, that's not that bad, like, that's
definitely much lower than what you could have gotten them before, right?
Yeah, but if you compare that to what you could get for $1,300 in the PC world, you could get
a top-of-the-line system.
Right, but the problem is, you're, see, like, for me, I'm paying for the software, and,
like, the, not the privilege, but, like, I'm paying for the capability of running all
it in on a box, like, if I buy a, if I buy, you know, some box, actually, I just bought a
new workstation for $1,300, like, you know, it's, like, some crazy AMD, whatever, dual-core
crap.
What do you mean, crap?
What do you mean, dual-core crap?
What?
What do you mean, dual-core crap?
Well, you know.
It's badass.
No, it is badass, but the thing is, right now, all I'm doing, not all I'm doing, but,
like, I'm not, you know, I'm using the CPU to do stuff, generate rainbow tables, and,
like, download media files, and, like, do all this junk, but it's not a desktop system.
It's a workhorse.
Like, I don't want to use GNOME or PD or Flexbox or anything else.
Like, I've messed with, you know, the BSTs, Linux, and Windows for, like, my GUI desktop,
and I can't deal with it.
You know, like, OS X gives me the best combination of usability and power that I can get out of
any OS.
And I do like, I do like my limited experience with OS X, but actually, that poses another
question.
It's funny this came up, because I had kind of this conversation with a couple friends
earlier this week.
What exactly is, see, Apple, we know Microsoft is in the business of software.
They're selling operating systems and Office and packages, server, software, etc.
They're not in the hardware business.
Dell is clearly in the hardware business, but not in the software business.
Apple doesn't know what the fuck they want.
They're trying to double dip out of every bucket.
They're trying to, triple dip if you really want to get down to it.
They're making money on software, making money on hardware, and now on intellectual property
with iTunes and buying the software and trying to get their hand out and get a cut of that
as well.
I just really think that if they focus...
Dude, iTunes and, like, their whole iPod thing, that's the, like, media section.
So, like, that's separate.
Oh, it's Apple.
With the software and hardware, I mean, Apple has always been a hardware company, and they
sell their hardware by writing good software, I mean, they don't really make money off
the software.
Like, you can buy a new version of OS X for, like, $100.
Same as Windows.
For, like, $150 or whatever.
Same as Windows.
You know, that's nothing compared to how much Vista is going to cost, you know?
What are you talking about?
Vista's going to be $100.
It's going to...
Actually, they have low-end versions that are going to be, like, $59, $79, something like
that.
Wait, is that true?
Because...
There's, like, five different ones.
It's going to be, like, $300 at least.
But I could just be wrong.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
It's definitely...
No, there's, like, five or six or seven, maybe, different versions.
They're going to have a lower-end version for home users.
It'll have limited functionality.
And I...
Wait a minute.
Don't get me wrong here.
I'm not defending Microsoft, exactly, for stripping stuff out and selling it cheaper.
Although, to a certain extent, I do like that idea because you pay for what you use.
You shouldn't have to buy a whole lot of stuff you might not use.
Now, that's not to justify or deny.
I'm just saying that they are equivalent as far as that goes.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think Apple...
Do you think if they...
How do I phrase this?
Do you think if Apple started focusing on selling OSX that ran on x86 architecture or the Intel
architecture, which they could now since they're switching to Intel processors, do you think
if they started selling OSX that I could install on my Dell, for example, that they'd make
money selling the operating system?
Do you think they could be...
No.
They will never do that.
Well, okay.
I didn't say will they.
I said do you think they could.
They will not do that in the foreseeable future.
I mean, OSX currently runs on Intel processors.
I mean, I'm running it right now, right?
And, you know, like I said before, Apple's a hardware company.
They need to sell boxes to make money.
They don't sell software.
And, you know, Apple has always been very, well, good or bad, depending on which side
you're on, about keeping OSX running on Apple hardware only.
Like, for a while, they had those, like, clones or whatever.
I mean, it was too far back for me to actually remember because I didn't actually use OSX,
use Apple stuff then, Macintoshes.
But, you know, people try to do that and, you know, Apple came down on them with righteous
theory because Apple, you know, they need to sell their hardware.
And if you can run OSX on Dell boxes, then, to be honest, no one's really going to buy
Apple boxes because while they look good and, you know, and it's cool and shiny, but,
like, if you can spend $1,000 by buying a Dell box instead and running the same software,
I think a lot of people would have to do that instead.
I don't know.
I'm just thinking out loud.
Obviously, it's just my opinion.
But I think that people would still buy Dell hardware, or excuse me, would still buy Apple
hardware and OSX for the simple fact that, yes, you're buying it, I guess, bundled, for
lack of a better word.
You would get it supported.
You know, guaranteed that it's going to run because it is their hardware.
But I still don't see why.
And, again, maybe I'm just being naive.
I'll admit that.
If they would sell OSX that I can install on my Dell and they don't, even if they didn't
support it or it's in whatever with the hardware, just make it available that I could buy it
and run it on a different box, I think they wouldn't really hurt so much their hardware
sales.
If anything, I think they would increase their software sales that would more than offset
any of their hardware losses.
I mean, they're in such a small market share now that I think the dividends would be more.
But, I mean, that's just a business opinion.
Secondly, I mean, anybody who's taken basic economics knows that, you know, the change
in price is going to increase or decrease the demand, the quantity demanded.
I mean, you're going to have a direct relationship.
When you lower the price, people are going to want more of them.
And when you raise the price, people aren't.
And I just don't think they have that ratio to where – they're fine.
They're stable.
They'll sit there and hold on to that 3% market share or 4% or whatever it is, maybe
even 5%, not counting the iPods.
And that's fine.
They'll be stable like that.
But I'm just thinking there's a huge opportunity, in my opinion, that they could grow.
And I just – I don't know.
Now, the other thing that frustrates me is now that they're on Intel architecture, that
they're running – you're using an Intel processor soon, they're cheaper for them
to make, cheaper for them to manufacture.
How do they justify not lowering the price by $100 or $200?
What?
They are lowering the price.
What are you talking about?
Oh, you're crazy.
Still make the comparison.
Still make the comparison to what you would get.
It's not even – no, they didn't.
They dropped it a little tiny bit, but not enough to make it compatible – not enough
to make it worthwhile.
In my opinion, obviously.
So I guess we'll lay that to bed for this episode.
Yes.
We can talk about this for four days.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
We've got about, what, like 40-some minutes maybe to jump into our main – I don't want
to push it along.
Are we done with email or no?
Yes, we are done with email.
Okay.
Let's do the main show topic.
All right.
And actually, before we do, if I may, I kind of have a follow-up question.
I wanted to cover this on our last episode, so I'll kind of – I'll just pose it as a
question now because I think it's kind of related to this show as well.
The last episode that you and I did anyway, which was what, 163, we talked about tunneling
and VPNs and tunneling in general, the concepts of tunneling, what it is, how it is.
Now, I can't help but think and get confused sometimes, the difference between tunneling
and covert channels because I heard that buzzword or that term thrown around a lot at DEFCON
recently.
And I know what covert channels is, but I thought it might be helpful to differentiate for the
audience, and myself as well, kind of the difference between the two because they – are
they somewhat – aren't they pretty closely related or no?
No, not really.
No, okay.
Explain covert channels.
So let me talk a little bit about that.
So tunneling, we did before, it's kind of like – so tunneling is a trick you play with
the headers, right?
You don't really have anything to do with the information inside.
You're kind of just – okay, I'm trying not to use the word tunnel, but you're trying
to pose a packet as another type to send over a different channel that is out of band from
what you want to – from the channel you want to communicate, you know, because for whatever
reason that we talked about before.
Right.
But now covert channel is more like information hiding.
So you're referring to – thanks.
So you're referring to the talk that someone gave at DEFCON recently about doing covert channels
on IPv6, right?
Well, it was actually – it was in several places in several different presentations, but
that's definitely one that I – you and I sat in on that, didn't we?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that was definitely one of them.
And actually, that's kind of why I guess I had it in my head that it's somewhat related
here.
It's a good topic because we're going to go into some IPv6 stuff later.
So, yeah, that's a good –
All right.
So, so for covert channel, like, it's all really about information theory.
If you don't know what information theory is, it's kind of – it's a branch of mathematics
that deals with, like, information and how it is sent and, like, how it looks and other
stuff.
So, Alan Turing was actually one of the people who kind of did this during the war a lot.
And, you know, he kind of made the feel, actually – there are some other important
names in there, but I don't really care.
Yeah.
That's okay.
So, basically, the deal is this.
You have some channel of communication.
Let's say you take, I don't know, all the calls that, like, people make to each other
in an area and then you do something like, I don't know how long they are, and then you
graph it, like, against time or something.
So, what you'll end up with probably is, like, a bell curve, which is, like, basically most
of the people make, you know, make calls of a certain duration, like, a minute or two
minutes or something.
And then, like, you'll get, like, a tapering off where, like, a few people would make
calls of a second or two minutes or two minutes, but I don't know, probably some bad number or
whatever.
Okay.
Hold on.
You broke up really bad there.
You were saying that some people might make a lot of calls that are two minutes, but it
tapers off for longer?
You broke up right there.
Okay.
Sorry.
So, what I'm saying is if you have a graph of all the people that make phone calls in a
certain area and you graph it according to, like, the time versus the duration or something,
like, the time at which they made them and how long the call was, then you would probably
have a bell curve.
So, a bell curve means that in the middle you have a lot of people concentrated and then
as you move towards, like, the end of the graph in either direction, it tapers off and
there are less and less people.
So, what that means, for my example, is that you have a lot of people making calls that last,
like, some duration of time, like, let's say one or two minutes.
Then you have, you know, as, like, your time, the duration of the call is, like, higher.
So, you have less and less people making calls that duration.
So, it could be, like, only a few people making calls that will be, you know, 10 to 20 minutes
or, like, a few people making calls that will, like, you know, two to four seconds or something.
Right?
Right.
On each extreme end of the curve is what you're saying.
The extreme ends of low and the extreme ends of high.
Right.
Yeah, okay.
So, that is kind of, like, you know, that's information theory stuff is you kind of look
at how information about, like, nature and how all that stuff is analyzed and, like, what
you expect to see.
So, covert channels are basically hiding information in kind of the sea of information that's already
out there.
So, I mean, like, you can imagine that was very useful during the war and stuff where
they had, you know, they wanted to transmit messages about, like, killing pirates and sinking
ships or whatever, like, while, you know, so the other side doesn't, you know, know that
they're sending information.
But, now, in this day and age, what we're doing with covert channels is hiding information
in what appears to be legitimate data.
Now, in the, you know, so let's say we had that example with the curve, right, with the
bell curve.
Now, if it were some other kind of traffic, like IP traffic or whatever, you have some
sort of distribution that when you look at it, you're like, okay, this is, this looks
like legitimate traffic.
Like, you know, because you know, like, let's say it's what we were talking about with the
phone calls.
So, you know it's supposed to look like a bell curve.
So, say at some point, someone is doing something weird and they're trying to send extra information
and they're, like, making a lot of phone calls that last a long time, right?
So, then, if you plot that graph again, then you won't get a nice, smooth curve.
You'll get a curve and then, like, bump somewhere.
And if you do that, then what that's going to do is, you know, alert someone that you're
sending something that you're not supposed to.
So, in that case, you have to use, you know, some sort of, if you want to use some sort
of covert channel, you have to do something mathematically to get the curve to look the
same.
Now, this curve really relates to, in real life, like, you know, posing your actual
legitimate traffic, I mean, posing your illegitimate traffic into something that's
legitimate.
So, let's, you know, one example of this application is steganography.
Now, steganography is hiding information in pictures.
So, that, you know, like, Stank, you were asking me before, how does this relate to covert
channels and stuff, right?
Right.
But, the thing is, let's say I send you a picture, right?
And you, and if someone intercepts that, it just looks like a picture.
Now, unless they do a lot of, you know, tweaking and, like, looking at the bits, they're not
going to know that I've hid a message in the picture.
Right.
So, in steganography, you end up hiding your information in, like, the high order bits,
I think, or the lower order bits, one of those.
And the change to that image file is not perceivable by the human eye.
So, what happens is if the receiver knows that the image has a special, you know, encoding
in it, so it has some message, then he or she can extract it.
But, now, that relates to, you know, a bunch of other stuff, too.
So, you can do that in everything.
But, mostly, if you're talking about, like, networks and sending, like, traffic on the
internet, et cetera, you're talking about probably hiding information in packets, right?
Right.
So, what you can do is, so you look at a packet, and some legitimate packet, let's say some IP
packet doing HTTP or something, to make a covert channel out of that packet, what you need to
do is modify the contents of that packet without making it seem like you did, which sounds kind
of weird, but, you know, there are a lot of places in the IP packets that you can add stuff.
So, for example, if you have, like, the IPv4 header, you have the type of service bits that's used for, like,
QWAS and all of that stuff.
QWAS is quality of service.
But, most routers today don't use them.
So, if you have a packet, and it goes through, it just ignores the TOS bits.
And, that's, like, three bits, I think, or something.
And, that's, you know, that's, like, one place you can put your information.
Now, either side has to know that you're sending, you know, your information in the TOS bits.
Right.
But, right.
So, I mean, all that is predetermined.
Isn't QWAS...
I mean, there are all these places that you can hide things, and it would look as though
it was a legitimate packet to someone who's just, like, passively monitoring traffic.
Right, right.
I get what you're saying.
I think it's clear.
But, now, but is QWAS the best example?
Because, I thought QWAS is actually still very much used, especially in the age of VoIP.
Isn't that what a lot of cable companies that are offering VoIP phones, that's how they're
guaranteeing bandwidth, is because they are prioritizing those packets with the QWAS bit.
And, I thought that was still very much in use.
I don't know if...
I mean, there's...
I don't, like, I...
Well, I mean, I know what you're saying, but I don't think that's true for some reason.
Like, a lot of people, well, I mean, not people, but a lot of routers just ignore those
pits, because they don't use them.
I mean, things could be changing because of, like you said, the book stuff, but I don't
think that's true, but I could be wrong.
Well, actually, and you've already opened up, actually, we should probably segue into the
main topic, I would think, now, as time keeps on running here, but I think that, basically,
if I can oversimplify this, it sounds like, basically, the difference between tunneling
is that you're redirecting packets, whereas with covert channels, you're actually injecting
extra data in packets, with the goal of sending that data quietly, covertly, secretly, to another
destination, someone else, to yourself, another server you've got somewhere, or whatever.
You're actually injecting extra data into your packets instead of simply redirecting or
changing the types of packets that you're sending.
Is that good?
Yeah, that's a good summary.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds about right.
All right, well, that's, that's, um, they're kind of, sort of, similar, but not.
I guess they're only similar in that they both are, deal with details in, with the packet
itself, and how the packet is formed and directed and stuff.
So I guess that's where, I guess I sometimes get the two related, even though they're not.
But I still don't know that steganography is, I kind of see the same thing, you're hiding
data, but, I don't know, one's, one's transport and one's a, a file application.
Yeah, they feel a little bit different.
Well, I mean, you can hide data anywhere.
Yeah, they work the same way.
It doesn't have, covert channels doesn't even have to be over the network.
Like, uh, if, if you're on some system, um, that's like, you know, some military system
or whatever that uses access control lists or whatever, then you, you can, you know, let's
say me and you, right, have access to that system, but you're like a general and I'm like
some, some janitor, right?
Then we can have a covert channel that, that between us to leak, like for you to leak top
secret information to me without, you know, me actually know, without the other people
actually knowing it.
Like, for example, we, we can have some pre-agree thing where it's like, okay, uh, if I like,
you know, write, write some memory to some obscure section in, in, you know, not obscure
section, but like some predefined section in my RAM, in, in the system's RAM, then like,
you know, that stands for something.
So like, it's not just networking.
Right, right, right, right.
It's, you know, also, um, in OS's and everything.
Yeah, absolutely.
I, I got you.
I, I see it.
It's, um, it's not necessarily networking.
It can be anywhere.
It's the same principle being applied in different places.
I got you.
Okay, so let's go to the main topic then.
And since now we have this covered, um, tonight's main topic is going to be about
IPv4 versus V6.
Now, I know that's been done a ton of times, but the thing I want to kind of emphasize
on is not so much me or Stang saying, like, V4 is better or V6 is better, but more like
tell, tell the viewers the differences, the key differences between the two and kind
of letting them decide.
Because to be honest, I don't really have an opinion 100%.
Like, I, I lean toward one, but that's just me.
And I think it's better if you get, you know, the information yourself and decide for yourself.
Well, and.
Because I, because I see, the thing is, I, I see a lot of people, like, they'll read
an article or someone will tell them that, like, oh, V6 is better because there's more
addresses.
Or, like, V6 is more secure or something like that.
Right.
And, like, they'll, they'll just go with that and, then spread that around.
And, you know, without actually understanding why or whether it's true at all.
Yeah, and, and actually, I guess we're going to have to rush this into 20 minutes, I think.
But, um, maybe, I don't know, would it be better?
Can I start, like, with a little quick, like, a very quick discussion of IPv4 as it is now?
Now meaning the most predominant, you know, IPv4, which has been around for a while.
Um, gosh, how can I do this quickly?
All right, I, I, I'll tell you what, first of all, go back and listen to IPv, or excuse
me, go back and listen to episode 164, I think we did this, right?
Yeah.
I think, um, where we talked about the relationship between TCP and IP.
Because everybody talks about TCP slash IP like it's one big thing, but there is a distinction
between the two of them.
Um, and I think it would take too much time to go into it again or recap it, but the long
and short of it is that the internet, the IP is the internet protocol, and the TCP, the
transfer control protocol, do two different things.
They certainly work cooperatively, but it's that, it's the IP part that we're really going
to focus on, thus IPv4, IPv6, right?
Yeah.
Well, IP addresses and IPv4, okay, let's, basically that's what we all know and are used
to and have been used to for years.
That's those four nodes, those, you know, number, dot, number, dot, number, dot, number addresses
that we all see.
And that's IPv4 in action.
And that's used for addressing, of knowing where servers are, how to get to them, how
to route to them as they're handed over these, these switches, this backbone that forms the
global interweb as we know it.
Um, and I guess I'll briefly kind of mention, too, the different classes of addresses because
that's very much how the routing takes place.
It's, it's kind of like, I always use this, this metaphor and verbal, I don't know if you
can chastise me if this is a bad metaphor, but I always use the metaphor of a phone number,
the way area codes work, and a phone number, if I'm explaining this to, to non-techies,
I'll talk about, you know, that's why different states, different cities, different, even regions
within big cities like New York have different area codes, so that the phone system knows how
to route your call.
So that if I make a call from here to, um, I don't know, 212 in New York or, or whatever,
uh, 305 Miami or whatever, the phone company is going to know from those first couple of
numbers how to direct my phone call to the person on the other end.
And I always make that comparison to the same way IP addresses work.
Do you think that's a good metaphor?
Um, I, I, well, okay, so if you talk, so when you talk about IP, uh, address classes,
if you're just going with, like, the regular Class A, Class B, Class C, Class C address
family, then the area code metaphor kind of works.
Right.
But, you know, like, like all metaphors, it kind of breaks down at some point.
Right.
You just have to know when it stops working as a metaphor, and, you know,
Right, right, right.
You have to understand what's actually going on.
Yeah, it's, it's definitely not regional, that's for sure.
So that doesn't, you know, like area codes are somewhat regionable, reason, uh, regional
for the most part, although VoIP blurs those lines again, but that's a different topic.
But as far as the classes of addresses, you know, Class A address being that first node,
and let's say, for example, I don't know, 240, I don't even know who owns that or whatever,
but anything that's 240.x.x.x is a Class A address that is assigned to a certain company,
usually the big telcos, the big backbone providers, that then are allowed to distribute addresses
within that.
Uh, so let's, I'm going to make up an example.
This is not a real example.
I'm making it up.
But let's pretend, uh, 240, uh, Class A address is assigned to, um, I don't know, Bell
South, for example.
Bell South serving a large number of clients, whether they be business clients or, or home
users on DSL or whatever, can assign and break that 240 down to whatever they want.
And they may subsequently break that down and say, okay, well, we're doing business with
this large local ISP, and we own everything that's 240.whatever.
So they may say, we're going to sell you, or assign you 240.1.x.x, and sublet that down
to a smaller company.
Um, normally a company is not going to get a Class B address either.
Class C maybe, possibly for larger companies, but generally A's and B's are reserved for the
large companies to then distribute out.
So, understanding the, the Class A address, Class B, the, basically the Class A is the
largest, anything under 240.x, you can imagine that goes from 240.1.x.x to 240.255.x.x.
So, you've got 255 to the third power.
That's a lot of fucking addresses in a Class A block.
Right?
Okay, yes.
That, that is a lot of addresses.
But, uh.
But, I mean, like, I'm going to get into that later, I don't want to jump into it now, but.
Right.
You know, we, we need more addresses too.
Like, that may seem like a lot, and it probably is right now.
Right.
But, I mean, in the future.
Well, and that is.
In the near future.
That is, of course, the reason for the big push to IPv6, because right now, the, the total
number of addresses you have possible, mathematically.
Now, we're not going to get into, as you were well aware, any of the reserved addresses,
10.x, 127.x, all those, a lot of those, some of the 198s are reserved and stuff.
We're not going to get into those, but just mathematically, two, it's a 32-bit address
range.
So, with 32-bits, you have a limited number of possible addresses with the whole thing.
So, you've got basically, again, mathematically only, 255 to the fourth power.
That's 255 times 255 times 255 times 255, um, which, get, basically, works out to around
4.2, 4.3 billion addresses.
Now, again, take a few away from that for reserved addresses, but you're talking a little
over 4 billion addresses.
Sounds like a lot, like you just said.
That sounds like a lot of addresses.
But when you say that for the whole...
How many people do we have on the earth right now?
Oh, my gosh.
I wouldn't even know.
I'm sure census data, a whole lot more than that.
A whole lot more.
Really?
Okay.
I would, I would imagine so.
I would guess.
I mean, how many, I don't know.
Actually, that's a very good question.
I really don't know.
But certainly, there's not enough to go around.
And I think estimates, and these are, of course, just people estimate, people's analysis on this
or whatever, is saying that we're going to run out around 2009, 2010, somewhere in that
range.
We're going to run out of IPv4 addresses.
So, as we're running out, they are coming up...
Well, they keep saying that.
Well, yeah, and I'm not lending any credence.
But the deal is, you have NAT.
Well, and that's what I was getting ready to go into.
There are actually some solutions to this problem, and NAT is one of them.
Dynamic IP addresses, I think, is one that people don't even consider or they overlook a lot.
You're reusing addresses.
When you get a dynamic address from your local ISP, they may have 5,000 users, but they don't
need 5,000 addresses because they might not all be on at the same time.
Especially that was true in the dial-up days and the AOLs and stuff like that in the world,
the dial-up ISPs.
Not everybody's on at the same time, so they can share them and reuse them and just reassign
the address to somebody dynamically when it's needed.
So, your friend may have that IP address in the morning, but he logged off and you log in.
You may get that same IP address later.
So, you can reuse some of those addresses, and that's something I think people overlook.
The thing is, wouldn't it be nice, and this is probably a good segue to IPv6, is wouldn't
it be nice if everybody had their own address?
Well, skip right over IPv5 because that was this totally experimental thing.
It was all testing and experimenting.
So, that didn't really, it's nothing.
It's not even worth mentioning.
But IPv6 now is, well, you know a whole lot more about it than I do.
I know some basics and some statistics.
But first of all, instead of being 32-bit, which is limited, you have 128 bits to work
with, right?
Yeah.
Well, actually, before we move on, let me just say that, so I went online and looked
at how many people there are, and there are like 6.5 billion people right now on the earth.
So, a little more than 4.3.
Yeah, a few.
Right.
So, okay.
And growing.
There are definitely more addresses, the addresses is bigger for IPv6.
Now, in v4, you were saying like it's 255, 255, 255, 255 for each, you know, octal.
Right.
Now, what that means is that one IPv4 address has 32 bits in it.
So, when you write like, you know, the four sections, so each section is 8 bits, which
has a range of 0 to 255.
Good, right.
So, yeah.
In IPv6, however, each address has 128 bits, and that is 50 octillion addresses.
I don't even know what an octillion is, but that's a whole hell of a lot.
Um, so, uh, the, the scientific notation ends up to be like 3.4 times 10 to the 38, whereas
a billion is just 10 to the 9.
Wow.
10 to the 38.
It's such a big number that they don't even try to, like in the beginning they were saying
that it would be possible.
Like, this is one of the things touting IPv6 is that every single person in the world
will have, be able to have 100 IP addresses for themselves.
You can put one on your coffee maker, on your refrigerator.
You can have five for your computers.
You can, just enough that you can hand them out like candy.
And basically, effectively, I should say, unlimited.
I mean, it's obviously limited, but there's so damn many of them, it's ridiculous.
Have you seen the ones about, they're saying that, um, every atom in your human body could
have an IP address?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
I actually thought it was in the universe, but that's probably not true.
There's several different versions.
But yeah, every single atom in your body can have an IP address.
Yeah, there's several different things like that.
Which sounds about right.
It's, yeah, it's ridiculous.
Well, okay, so think about it this way.
It's 2006, and we're, like, you know, not that advanced yet, in the grander scheme of
things.
Some of us less than others.
How many IP, like, if you died right now, and you no longer existed, how many, like, less
P's would the world be using, you know?
Like, you have boxes everywhere, you have, you know, this and that, whatever, right?
Right.
So it's not, you know, so each person uses a lot of IPs.
Oh, and, you know, I'm not saying you're going to die, but if you and someone is going
to die, then, you know, you would not be using at least, like, 10 IPs.
I mean, you have accounts, and you have, like, hosting, or you have boxes, or whatever.
So, not only that is, you know, now you're going to get IPs for your Xbox 360, for your
PS3, for your coffee maker, and all that junk, too.
But one thing you have to realize is that there are other things in the world taking
up IP addresses besides, like, people and, like, their computers.
Like, every single router between you and, like, Pakistan has an IP on the interface.
Excellent point.
So, it's not just, like, people.
It's all the stuff in between, and, you know, who knows how many of that there are.
Excellent, excellent point.
Each interface, very good.
No, I was saying that is an excellent point, and I'm so glad you mentioned that.
Excellent point that people overlook.
They don't factor in the backbone itself that has needs to keep the whole infrastructure running.
It's an excellent point.
All right, cool, thanks.
So, like, that, too, and all this other junk, right?
And, you know, like, I don't have to tell you, like, all these predictions that people
make, and they turn out to be grossly, you know, underestimations of what people really
need.
Right.
So, kind of, like, the argument that, oh, this is too much, like, we don't need it, that's
going to probably prove wrong with time, just like most other things in this area.
But, you know, the increased address space is not just for, you know, giving people more
IP addresses.
Like, it definitely does that, but, you know, there are other benefits and implications from
that.
Let's try to squeeze it all in here for a chance.
Like, you were saying, Frank, people are kind of limping by on IPv4 and the lack of addresses
from, with the use of NAT.
So, like, my apartment or your house or whatever, you know, we only need one external IP address
and we have NAT on the inside.
Right?
Right, right.
Right.
So, the thing with that is, I mean, as you know, that you might have had problems with,
like, directly connecting with people.
You know, I'm not going to go, really go into how NAT works, but basically, all the machines
behind the NAT share an IP address.
So, when you, you know, send some traffic into a NAT, it doesn't really know which box on
the inside it needs to go to unless you already have established some state.
So, I mean, that's a major problem with NAT that they're trying to solve.
But the thing is, you know, if you have IPv6, you don't need to solve that problem.
So, I mean, you can have, you can have everyone have an IP address, then, you know, then with
that, some people are saying, like, oh, there are security concerns or, you know, there are
problems with, like, well, if I can just access every single box and they're not protected
by NAT, then, you know, that, that could screw a lot of people.
But the thing is, you know, why, NAT was not designed for, from a security standpoint, like,
as a tool for security, just like, because, you know, that's like making something not
accessible is kind of protecting it, which kind of makes sense, but it's really not, it's
not actually unaccessible.
It's just kind of, like, hidden and it makes it one step harder.
And the other thing is, if you don't have NAT and everyone has an IP address, you can still
use firewalls and other security devices to protect the machines, you know, that's, quote,
quote, in your network, inside your network.
Right.
But we, we probably need to focus on IPv6, specifically some of the things, because I don't
know if we can fit five more minutes.
That's a lot of material.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
So, one, the last thing I want to mention with the address space is, in 1984, some people
over at MIT wrote this, like, really important paper called the Enchant Arguments in System
Design.
And you should definitely go read it.
But the crux of it is it's saying that functionality should be implemented in the correct layer of
abstraction.
So, if, you know, the transport layer should only deal with getting packets from one place
to one port to another, and you shouldn't, like, stuff any additional functionality in
there.
If, like, the application layer, some higher layer of abstraction needs, you know, to use
something, then they should implement it themselves.
And IPv6 is going to allow you to do that, because it's going to restore, like, the end-to-end
principles back to the Internet, where, like, I can access thanks box without having to go to
any, like, NAT or any, like, translation stuff.
Right.
Now, right.
So, I'm going to post that URL onto the show notes so you can read that.
But there's another paper called Rethinking the Design of the Internet, the End-to-End
Argument versus the Brave New World, which is basically saying, like, okay, well, when they
wrote that in 84, you know, some stuff were true, but now things are a little different.
And so it re-evaluates the issue that it brings up in, you know, like, the modern times, I
guess.
So I will put that link in the show notes also, and then you can read it and discuss
it yourself.
Okay.
So let's get back to more IPv6 and less other things.
If you have v6 addresses, right, so you have more addresses, that means that you can allocate,
like, bigger blocks of addresses for each AS.
So let's say you run, like, AOL.com, and, you know, they may not have one giant, like,
they may not have a Class A to give you.
So if you need more IP addresses than that, then you might have to run, like, several Class
Cs and a Class B, you know, to satisfy your needs.
But if they had enough addresses, they can just give you one block of one contiguous block
of addresses, and you can run your whole network.
So what that's going to do is simplify everyone's routing tables so you will have fewer entries
because you can have enough addresses to segment the, you know, basically group everything
together, and you won't have, like, fragmentation of your IP addresses for your network.
So that is one good thing about v6.
I mean, Stank, like, at your work or whatever, do you have to look at, like, router configs
and stuff like that and, like, routing tables?
No, not myself, no.
Okay, so I do a lot of times in, like, production networks, and what ends up happening is, like,
people have these, like, shit-long, like, 5-meg config files on, like, their Cisco routers
or, like, Juniper or whatever, and it's, like, it's mostly because their network is all over
the place, and they have to, like, you know, go and, you know, have a bunch of routing rules
for different subnets because they couldn't get an actual, like, one subnet for all their stuff.
So, okay, so that's one benefit.
And the other thing is, like, have you heard people say that IPv6 kind of offers better
security from, like, something?
I don't know.
I don't know that I've heard.
I've heard that it has inherently, that it is inherently more secure, but honestly, I've
never heard any explanation of why.
But that's why, you know, I know, I don't know that much about IPv6 other than the statistics
that get thrown around.
Okay, so, you know, the thing is, when I heard that, like, way back in the day, it kind
of seemed weird to me because, you know, why would you, like, why would a new IP layer
protocol have better security?
Right.
And I think these are, like, the two things that it is saying, that people say mean when
they say that.
The first one is it has a bigger address space, again.
So, what that means is, I mean, as you know, people scan networks all the fucking time.
Right.
You put a box out there and people are scanning and, you know, if you have vulnerability, like,
you know, like minutes, it will be picked up.
But with a much larger address space, what they're saying is it will be impractical to scan, you know,
with the scan networks and do all that stuff, like, the enumeration will be harder and it
will just be not practical.
Because there's so many addresses, so, like, the kind of hit-to-miss ratio is going to be so
great that it's not going to be worth it.
Right.
Well, it's a simple concept of brute-forcing a short password versus a longer.
You're brute-forcing or scanning, enumerating, through 4.3 billion addresses, 4.2 billion we
were talking about earlier, versus 50 octillion try to scan through those.
I mean, that's a pretty big difference.
Yeah.
I mean, so, I mean, my opinion on that is just, like, you know, that's not really a security
feature.
You know, like, people, like, a number is a number.
Like, compared to, I don't know, like, 5,000, 4.3 billion is pretty fucking big, right?
Right.
So, right, so, you know, it's like, at some point, people are going to find clever ways
to get around that or just throw more power at it.
I mean, not power, but, like, throw more boxes that scan addresses at it or something.
Well, will there still be blocks, address blocks, somehow in IPv6?
Yeah, so what happens is you still have the network portion, and you still have, like,
your host portion, I think they call it.
So, basically, in V4, you have, like, a mask, right?
And it's like, okay, the mask tells you how many bits are, like, how long my network is.
And, like, so if you do, like, a slash 8, that's, like, class A or whatever.
So it's just saying, like, the first 8 bits are my network, and then the rest are the host-specific
or network-specific host IPs, right?
So they have the exact same thing in IPv6.
All right, well, then, I guess if you knew which ones were assigned to a certain place,
you could limit your scan to within that.
You know, I don't know.
Right.
Do we have time?
You can definitely do that.
Like, no one's telling you to scan the whole Internet.
Verbal, do we still have time to do all that you want to do on this topic, or should we split this up?
I'm not sure if we're going to be able to.
No, I think we have time.
Do we have, like, 10 more minutes?
Nope.
Oh, well, I guess that's not a question.
I guess I'll wrap this up next show.
Yeah, I hate breaking stuff up in the middle, but unfortunately, I think, um, I don't know
that we're going to have the time to do it this episode, unfortunately.
Okay, sorry, everyone.
Yeah, I guess some of these tops were biting off too big.
We probably should have skipped covert channels or something in the beginning and saved that
for a different show.
Yeah, probably, but this is my first time hosting, so, uh, next time it'll be better.
And you know what, I take some fault because I was interrupting with questions here and
there, but let's, um, I will come up with some specific questions next week on this because
I think it's a little bit better to answer some questions on this, Q&A on this.
So we'll do, next episode, we'll do some IPv6.
This one was mostly covert channels and IPv4, which are definitely related, and so will covert
channels and IPv6 based on that presentation we saw at DEF CON, but, um, yeah, we're going
to have to break up IPv6 to another episode.
There's just too much to talk about, really.
Yeah, that's true, and I mean, that's fine, but, like, I would rather do a show, you know,
the show correctly than to rush through it.
Exactly, exactly.
All right, so, um, well, what are we going to do from here then?
Shouts?
Oh, so right now, uh, let's do some shouts.
Uh, Stan, do you have any shouts you want to give out?
Um, well, I'll give shouts to my regular crew at, uh, BR-407, the Benref-407 meeting.
Um, I'll give some shout-outs to Chilean hackers, hackers from Chile, got contacts all
over the planet, biatch, so I was kind of thinking how funny it would be, I would make
a trip around the world one, one time, sometime in the upcoming years, maybe make a trip around
the world and crash with a different hacker in a different country along the way, kind
of do this hack the planet, literally, I guess, go around the, go around the planet and meet
a bunch of different people, because so many people in so many different countries that
I've met, um, so shouts to everybody, but Chile is my country of the week, and, uh, and I
guess I'll throw in some shouts to BlackRash, but I haven't given him, given him shouts
in a while, so, uh, that's enough for me.
Chile?
I'm sorry, Justin, I laughed.
Did I say that and laugh?
Okay.
Uh, yeah, I just want to give shouts to my mentee, Crackpin, for writing and debugging
his first program, and see, good job.
Woo!
Um, do we have a side of the week?
I think we do.
Uh, how about, uh, let's see, side of the week is, um, not related to the topic exactly,
at all, actually, but, um, I've been finding myself going to a site called hotdeals.org,
that's H-O-T dash D-A-L-S dot org, uh, doing some shopping, they find a bunch of the stuff
that's on sale, cool, uh, sales, misprices, things like that, so I've been shopping, I
bought a 2GB flashcard for, uh, it's like $34, and then a $20, $20 rebate on top of that,
so, like, $15 for a 2GB flashcard, hells yeah!
Nice, sounds awesome.
Um, all right, uh, as always, you can email us at radio at binrev.com, or you can email
me personally at verbal at binrev.com, and the closing music is from ArtRenSpace, I'm a
fucking moron remix.
Hey, do you have anything to say about that?
Well, that's, um, that was, uh, some of my comments from a recent show, or I even made,
I even said and made the joke, the comment, somebody's going to remix this into a three
and a half minute song on MySpace, me saying, I'm a fucking moron, and, yep, sure enough,
it came true, so this is hilarious, closing song for tonight, it's R-N-Y Space, which is
my, an attempt at MySpace, I think it's somebody who wanted to stay anonymous is what it is,
they thought I might get mad or something, but I think it's hilarious, so, that's going
to be our closing music for the week.
All right, thanks a lot, we'll see you next week, same hack time.
Same hack channel.
I will suck it up and admit, I'm a fucking moron.
Hey, somebody's going to take that clip and loop it a little bit.
I will suck it up and admit, I'm a fucking moron.
Hey, somebody's going to take that clip and loop it a little bit.
It's already a three and a half minutes on, and somebody's MySpace.
I'm going to say dumb enough.
Dumb, dumb enough.
Dumb, dumb, dumb enough.
I'm a fucking moron.
Hey, somebody's going to take that clip and loop it a little bit.
I'm a fucking moron.
I'm a fucking bitch.
Why don't you throw that out there and leave that hanging?
You know, something we always come back to.
And I'm not going to preach on it again, but quite frankly, I'm a fucking moron.
I'm a fucking moron.
Hey, you're so much going to take that slip and move it a little bit.
You ain't dumb enough.
I'm a fucking moron.
It's already a three and a half minute song on somebody's MySpace.