Backlight brightness of Apple Displays on a Windows PC

If you ever try to connect a Windows host to an Apple display you will most probably have a brightness problem. Despite the amount of time you spend fiddling with your graphics card settings, you will realise soon enough that the screen stays quite dark. 

The problem is not with the brightness of the colours being displayed but with the back-light illumination within the display. The Brightness Controller utility will "speak" to the screen and allow you to adjust the back-light brightness to your liking. 

Note: I am currently using it with Windows 8.1 and it works fine!

Currently supported displays:

27" Apple Thunderbolt Display 

27" Apple LED Cinema Display 

24" Apple LED Cinema Display

23" Apple Cinema Display HD (Acrylic frame)

20" Apple Cinema Display (Aluminum frame)

20" Apple Cinema Display (Acrylic frame)

In order to adjust this you will have to download this very useful utility called "Brightness Controller" from this website: http://www.holstschumacher.dk/p/brightness-controller.html

Download version 1.4.4 (Feb/2013)

RSA Conference Europe 2012

I was delighted to be invited to attend the RSA Conference Europe in 2012 (9-11/Oct) in London [1]. A number of interesting talks which included Jimmy Wales talking about the freedom of speech on the Internet and the distribution of knowledge through Wikipedia.

I was looking forward to Ira Winkler's talk "What the Security Profession Can Learn From the Intelligence Profession". Very interesting views as always and one of the few people in security that has something new to say, without repeating outdated ideas. 

OSFClone for Computer Forensics

It was about time to have such a bootable live CD/DVD solution to clone any type of OS. You may want to get your hands on OSFClone [1] which is a free and self-booting solution. As it states on the website: 

"OSFClone enables you to create or clone exact raw disk images quickly and independent of the installed operating system. In addition to raw disk images, OSFClone also supports imaging drives to the open Advance Forensics Format (AFF). AFF is an open and extensible format to store disk images and associated metadata. An open standard enables investigators to quickly and efficiently use their preferred tools for drive analysis."

[1] http://www.osforensics.com/tools/create-disk-images.html

KYOCERA default passwords

It is not uncommon to find KYOCERA systems while onsite conducting a penetration test. I had to find a comprehensive list of default usernames and passwords and these are the links where I could find some of the default credentials.


[1] http://blog.primaryschooltech.co.uk/2012/04/kyocera-command-center-default-admin.html


[2] http://www.gfbm.net/selfhelp_kma_copier_username_password.htm

Different options for updating your Linux Distribution (apt-get)

For some people it is not straightforward what each command does when they update their Linux Distribution. This brief blog post provides some information on the different commands being used for updating a distribution using the apt-get command.  

apt-get update

update downloads the package lists from the repositories and "updates" them to get 
   information on the newest versions of packages and their dependencies (for all 
   repositories and PPAs). It is used to re-synchronize the package index files 
   from their sources from the location(s) specified in /etc/apt/sources.list. An update
   should always be performed before any upgrade.

apt-get upgrade

upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the 
   system from the sources enumerated in /etc/apt/sources.list. Packages currently 
   installed with new versions available are retrieved and upgraded; under no

   circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already 
   installed retrieved and installed. New versions of currently installed packages that
   cannot be upgraded without changing the install status of another package will be left
   at their current version. An update must be performed first so that apt-get knows that
   new versions of packages are available.

apt-get dist-upgrade

dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently
   handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages; apt-get has a "smart"
   conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages
   at the expense of less important ones if necessary. So, dist-upgrade command may remove
   some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file contains a list of locations from which
   to retrieve desired package files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for 
   overriding the general settings for individual packages.

apt-get full-upgrade

full-upgrade performs the function of upgrade but may also remove installed packages if
   that is required in order to resolve a package conflict.