Khurshed Consulting

3Com 4200G Setup

zaheer — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:02:28 +0000

3COM 4200 G Managed switch Setup:

In case you come across some of these retired switches..I am trying to amalgamate some info from the web since they are not as searchable as Cisco devices. These were bought by HP and may also be called HP E4200-24G Switch

Getting In :

by default the switch should be DHCP, so use a good network scanner to locate it. It will show up as “3COM LTD.” A common app for this is “iNet Scanner”. My switch came set as 192.168.0.99.

Default Login: manager/manager.

Default Admin: admin/ BLANK

If you cannot get in using default info :

Open the terminal application, Console in using a console(RJ45) to USB cable. baud rate is 19200.

List your devices:

ls /dev/tty.*

Connect to your USB console cable:

e.g: screen /dev/tty.usbserial 19200

try recover/recover to login within the first 30 seconds of boot.

Enable SSH, so you can shove this beast in a room far away from you:

Set the IP and subnet mask:

system-view
interface vlan 1
ip address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm
save

rsa local-key-pair create
1024
user-interface vty 0 4
authentication-mode scheme
protocol inbound ssh
local-user admin
password simple password
service-type ssh
quit
ssh user admin authentication-type password
save

BOLD = Your personal values for username and password.

Current Config:

” dis cur” command will display current config. Remember to type “save” command after any change or a reboot will wipe out your config.

To update your config :

Get the latest firmware:

1.https://h10145.www1.hp.com/Downloads/ProductsList.aspx?lang=en&cc=us&prodSeriesId=4236411

2.startup a TFTP server, I used tftpserver.app from the Mac app store.

3.Set the working directory of TFTP server , your desktop is the easiest to avoid permissions issues.

4.Drop the latest 4200G firmware files in the working directory of the TFTP server. ( the .btm .web and .app files)

5.then go to the switch. ( SSH or console)

tftp GET < IP > < Filename >

repeat for the .app .btm and .web package.

disregard <> in your commands.

To apply the update:

Over SSH or console:

boot boot-loader flash: <.app filename>

boot bootrom flash: <.btm filename>

boot web-package <.web filename> main

disregard <> in your commands.

save

reboot.

Google’s foray into everything you see

zaheer — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:09:02 +0000

Google Glass and Augmented Reality

Google Glass is a project that the company launched to explore the idea of creating a pair of glasses that enhance reality. The concept is revolutionary, but it is certainly one that has been explored in science fiction stories and films for many years. With Google Glasses, the users would have a heads up display (HUD) that would overlay what they seen in front of them. The effect could be extraordinary and could make how we interact with the world much different.

Information at a Glance

Imagine looking at any city street and having detailed information about the establishments on it pop up as soon as you look at them. Imagine being given directions to a restaurant and having guidance arrows displayed right in your field of vision, eliminating the need to use a GPS. Imagine being able to read and respond to your emails by looking at them projected in front of you and without requiring any sort of handheld device. These possibilities—and many more—are behind Google Glass.

Google, of course, is a for-profit company and that means that advertising is already a part of their plans. The aforementioned storefronts for which information is displayed, for instance, could buy advertisements that could be integrated with Google Glass in creative ways. While there is potentially a sort of information utopia to be hand in the form of Google Glasses, there is also the potential for having advertisements right in your face whenever you’re out and about. Part of what Google will have to do is to make these advertisements attractive, and useful, to users so that the product remains interesting.

Practical Considerations

Google is working on Google classes that work with prescription lenses. This would be a necessity, of course, as many people will want to integrate the two. In a video put out by Google, quite a few scenarios are shown to demonstrate how Google Glasses could change people’s world. The overarching effect between all the examples given is that Google Glasses have the effect of making technology more present while, counterintuitively, making it less intrusive, as well. It becomes an organic part of the world that users live in and, because of that, it is made more useful. Advertisements, of course, will have to be integrated in a similar fashion.

The Glass Ceiling

While Google Glass is certainly innovative, it is, by no means, the be all end all of this type of development. It’s become predictable that, as soon as a new technology is released on the market, someone will come along with a smaller, more compact and more practical version of it. There are already contact lenses with similar capabilities—and other capabilities entirely—being developed.

Google Glass could change the business and information technology worlds at once. The competition for high Google search rankings is famously fierce. With those search engine rankings—and their other services—being right in front of user’s faces in the near future, it’s likely that the advertising stakes for companies will only go higher.

B.Y.O.D In your business

zaheer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:14:51 +0000

BYOD in Enterprise

BYOD is another technology-related acronym. It stands for “Bring Your Own Device” and, while BYOD might sound like something that applies to consumers, it is increasingly becoming a factor in how businesses have to provide IT resources. The concept is simple; the implications are complex.

So What is BYOD?

Chances are that you have a cellular phone that has Internet access on it in your possession right now. There is also a very good chance that you use this device to check your email, browse the web and instant message. What’s becoming increasingly the norm is for people to use their own devices to access their work email and other communications. This is the heart of the BYOD concept. People buy and use their own devices in the workplace and outside the workplace and utilize those devices to access company information. This presents opportunities and potential pitfalls.

The Good

BYOD increases efficiency. It allows employees of a business to be more accessible without requiring them to be in the office for very long hours and without requiring them to carry an extra device around for business purposes. The fact that they own their own devices also allows employees to get something that they enjoy using and that gives them a sense of ownership and control. Not to mention, a higher likelihood that devices will be well cared for.

The Complex

There isn’t a serious downside to BYOD in enterprise, but it does introduce a level of complexity that did not exist before.

Costs:

Someone has got to foot the bill for mobile devices. In an enterprise company the typical scenario is that if you have need to be connected to work, work pays for the device. with BYOD, the door is opened for the employer to either purchase the device for an employee, subsidize the cost, or put the complete onus on the employee. This opens all sorts of complexities when it comes to device and bill management.

IT Mobile Control:

The IT departments of 10 years ago had almost total control over which devices were allowed to access their networks and how those devices were allowed to access their networks. As time passed, this loosened up. Laptop computers, for instance, were among the first employee-owned devices that were used to access company networks and information. As Internet-enabled devices have become smaller, more portable and more integrated with other devices, IT departments have had to become more accommodating.

Today, IT departments are oftentimes the facilitators who make it possible for companies to get the most out of their IT investments. The IT department used to have a very powerful influence where making decisions about technology was concerned. They could allow or forbid devices on their networks and employees did not expect to be able to get their company email or other information outside of the company itself. Today, the IT departments spend less time dictating what employees can and cannot do and more time helping them to use technology that works.

This is not a risk-free endeavour. Good IT departments will be able to accommodate these shifts in technology. IT departments that are too stuck in the past will not be able to accommodate these changes. This means that businesses without the type of IT talent that can change networks and make them more accessible to BYOD culture will likely suffer. Those businesses that have people who can make BYOD work, however, will likely see a great increase in what they get out of their technology and how that technology adapts to employee’s needs.

Cisco Holographic Technology

zaheer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:05:50 +0000

Doing Business Face-to-Face from Across the World

Holographic projections may change the way that people do business around the world. Technology from Cisco is among the innovations that are allowing businesses to step into an entirely new world where talking to someone over the Internet no longer means talking to a flat, two-dimensional image on a screen. In today’s world, having the person represented holographically is not something that the technology of the future may offer: it is already here.

Holograms and Humanity

One of the reasons that video conferencing is so popular with businesses is that actually seeing the person on you’re talking to enhances the level of communication you have with them. The way their face responds to what you say and the way that they communication information through their own facial expressions makes seeing someone a very effective way of making certain that the entire message of what they’re saying is conveyed.

While video conferencing can enhance this communication, having a hologram in the room makes communicating long distance a much more personal experience. Around the world there are already rooms set up that can accommodate Cisco’s holographic technology and that allow businesses, government agencies and other entities to conference with people around the globe as if they were in the room.

Not Taking that Flight

Although efficiency, profits, communication and a host of other reasons may be used to justify it, flying somewhere to attend a business meeting is sometimes done just to make the entire affair more personal. With the holographic technology that Cisco and others are coming out with, globe-trotting for the sake of business will likely no longer be a necessity. Not only can all of the travel expenses that businesses pick up every year be replaced by holographic technology, those holograms can show up at a meeting instantly, eliminating all of the logistics involved in getting people important to the business to these meetings.

The effect of the holographic technology being introduced these days is likely one that will further shrink the globe. People will be—and already are—able to meet face-to-face over Internet connections that do more than provide a small webcam image. Not to discount the impact that video conferencing has had; it has been significant. Holographic conferencing, however, will likely change the world in a much more profound way than did being able to conference over webcams.

According to Cisco’s information, holographic technology will also be important to public speaking events. Rather than having to fly someone across the world to make a presentation to a board or another group of people within a corporation, holographic technology allows the presenter to interact with the audience from anywhere. Not only this, but the presenter has the advantage of using their stage presence and body language to communicate. This technology is already very advanced. It is being used by businesses from finance to the entertainment industry and has even been used to recreate performances by deceased musicians in recent months. This technology is not the wave of the future; it is very much already a part of the present.

Malware on Mac OS X

zaheer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:38:47 +0000

Update: There is yet another piece of malware called pubSab. This malware takes advantage of the exact same vulnerability as the flashback virus. Apple has released a removal tool for flashback , but not PubSab. I have written a package that uses Apples removal binary, but also a removal script for PubSab and MacKontrol. Installing this and running all software updates on your Mac should remove PubSab, Flashback, MacKontrol.

FlashBackPuBSab-Remover.zip

The Mac Flashback Virus:

In the endless debates between Apple and PC users, security has always been a contentious issue. Mac users and Apple itself are quick to bring up that there are far fewer viruses that attack Mac computers and, among some Mac users, there was a misconception that Macintosh products were completely invulnerable to virus infection in a way that PCs just could not compete with. This misconception, and the vulnerability of Apple products to viruses was demonstrated by the Flashback Trojan, a piece of malware for which Apple only recently released a fix, approximately 6 months after it became a problem. Mac OS X continues to be a highly resilient platform however, it must be recognized within the Mac OS X community that highly resistant does not equate to impervious.

The Trojan:

Flashback is among the many Trojans that make the computers they infect part of botnets. These are networks of compromised PCs and Macs that perform some sort of a service for Internet criminals. They may be part of a spam distribution network, they may be used to launch distributed denial of service attacks on servers or they may be used for most any other purpose. The important element is that the person or persons running the botnet has some significant control over the computers that make it up.

The Trojan attacked Macs though a Java vulnerability. Java is one of the most widely-used technologies in the world and, for that reason, it is a frequent target of attackers. The Flashback virus was loaded from a drive-by download website that infected the computer via an applet. This applet loaded an executable on the computer. That executable then downloaded the Trojan and made the computer part of the botnet.

Flashback is sophisticated. Every computer infected with this Trojan gets a unique ID on the botnet and it can switch the computer between servers. This level of sophistication is common for Internet attacks today.

Fixing the Flaw:

On April 3, 2012, Apple finally released a fix for the vulnerability in their Java version. This followed nearly 2 months behind Oracle—the company that makes the main version of Java—who released their security patch of February 14, 2012. Trojans and other malware almost always have variants and Flashback is no exception. Apple released a fix for those variants on April 12, 2012.

Currently, there are no fixes available for Mac OS versions prior to Lion and Snow Leopard. If you happen to be running one of these older versions, Apple recommends that you just turn off Java to avoid the problem which, of course, limits the user experience you’ll have with your computer.

In the end, approximately 600,000 Macintosh computers were infected with this virus. This number included many that were located in Cupertino, CA, where the Apple Corporation has its headquarters located.

This Trojan is potentially very dangerous to security. If you have a Macintosh computer and have not checked it for the Trojan or downloaded a fix, you should do so immediately. If you have an older version of Mac OS that is still vulnerable, turning off your Java or using a third-party app to remove the Trojan are your best options.