SSH (Secure Shell) is a remote adminstration utility typically for UNIX systens that provides secure access to the command line.

The service is provided by the UNIX deamon SSHD which listens on TCP/IP port 22.

A popular utility for providing SSH on BlackBerry is midpssh ( http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/ ) which is now maintained at http://ota.deltatech.com.mx/ and most importantly now digitally signed to allow low level features.

Recently midpssh this has stoppped working due to RIM BlackBerry Internet Service only allowing HTTP and HTTPS traffic through their proxies.

The solution is to change the SSH listener port on the SSH server to listen to Port 443 (HTTPS) instead of Port 22.

This can be done by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_conf and changing the line

Listen 22

to

Listen 443

Then restarting the SSHD service.

service sshd restart

To check to see if the sshd deamon is now listening on port 443 run the following command:

netstat -anp | grep ssh

If the sshd deamon is not listening on port 443 then it could be that the Apache web web server also running with that listener socket for HTTPS. To resolve this change the file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf/ssl.conf will have to be modified to change the listener port from 443 to something else such as 444.

Listen 444

To access secure services on the web server after this change requires the URL to be:

https://domain:444

The restart Apache and SSHD


service Apache restart
service sshd restart


Now you should be able to use midpssh to login from your BlackBerry to your SSH server using port 443 instead of 22 by using

domainname:443

If you need to access another server than only works on port 22 then login into your server then ssh from your server to the target server.

BuddyPress, the social networking plug-in to multiuser wordpress (WordPress-MU) has been released from beta to general availability.

I now use BuddyPress on my home CentOS Linux server to provide a internal social network and blogging facility for the family.

I am still trying out different calendar plug-ins to provide a central calendar for the family.

SlySoft publish “AnyDVD” and “AnyDVD HD” for accessing and copying DVDs and Blu-Ray disks by defeating the copy protection mechanisms.

SlySoft is based in Antigua thus avoids penalties under the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 1998, the CDPA (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act) 1988 and other similar legislation in other parts of the world.

SlySoft are currently ahead of the arms race between protection circumvention and content protection.

DVD ripping has been possible for many years after the CSS (Content Scrambling System) encryption keys were compromised and DeCSS was created.  The digital rights management industry has learned that “security by obscurity” is not security at all. Most users of CSS cracking software claim it is used to defeat region encoding that stops DVDs being played outside their target market.

Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) were designed with better encryption, AACS (Advanced Access Content System) from the outset but this still was compromised. The technology also includes HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) which prevents digital recording equipment from recording the content by requiring the player and the television create a secure channel for the media.

Blu-ray players feature extensible protection so the scrambling system can be upgraded so new titles can be better protected against copying. This feature could be the reason that the studios preferred Blu-ray over HD-DVD.

The latest copy protection mechanism for Blu-ray is BD+ which 18 months ago was hailed as protection that will take 10 years to break. It features a virtual machine that authorized players use to run scripts to access the content. This virtual machine deliberately makes reverse engineering difficult by changing the way instructions are executed depending on the context.

Proving that nothing is unbreakable, SlySoft has cracked the latest BD+ scrambling system and can copy all existing titles as noted in this press release: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=24602

Macrovision, who develop the BD+ scrambling system, will no doubt respond in due course with better technology to defeat SlySoft.

The lesson here is that continuous development is required to protect digital rights.

But overall, is digital rights management worth all the inconvenience to the customer?

I use Windows and Linux interchagably so I like to choose open source toolsets that run on both platforms (I also find that Linux apps are generally also available on Mac OS X so that’s cool).

Miro is now my favourite video player (Xine has been deprecated in my A-List).

It supports all the video formats I use (Flash Video, AVI, H.264, Windows Media, Quicktime and MPEG), searches YouTube and Google Video, and allows downloads.

The only downside is the arms race between Miro and YouTube for enabling and disabling the download facility respectively but that is OK if you keep your version of Miro up to date.

You can get Miro here: Get Miro

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Fedora 9 was on a countdown and now Fedora 10 is almost ready.

The key features for me are:
* RPM 4.6 which is a major rewrite
* Faster graphical startup – including kernel graphical boot for flashless booting
* Rebase to Gnome 2.24
* Sbin sanity (at last!)
* AMQP Infrastructure – for high speed messaging

The full feature list is here

The Fedora distribution does not contain any patented or alleged patented technology such as MP3 and DVD players.

To enable this functionality use packages from the Linva (soon to be merged with RPM Fusion but that has not been completed just yet) from repository available at Livna

Livna now supports Fedora 9 (Annoucement)

To add Livna to your RPM distribution repository list for yum run the following line (you will need the root password):

su -c 'rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm'

My favourite Fedora add-ons are VLC and Xine.

Fedora 9 is soon to be released.

It contains amongst other improvements:

• Faster X Windows start-up
• Upstart service manager instead of initd
• Multi-timezone clock
• Preview of the ext4 filesystem (for the brave)
• Persistent LiveCD images on USB
• Firefox 3