Nifty tool

Like any self-respecting techno-geek, I'm always on the lookout for new tools. I love to comb through SourceForge or Freshmeat, looking for new and interesting software. Ever since VMware released VMware Server as a free product earlier this year, I've spent a lot of time messing with it, trying new and interesting ways to use it, etc. I've been doing some really interesting stuff with it recently (I'll make an extensive post on this at some point in the near future), and have downloaded and experimented with dozens of the free Virtual Appliances. Just when I thought that VMware couldn't be any cooler, I found this: VMware Converter. It essentially takes an image of a running Windows machine and creates a virtual machine. They claim that you can image a hot machine without actually disturbing the machine being imaged. And it can all be done over Ethernet. And (this is arguably the best part), it is free. It can also create VMs from older VMware formats, Symantec Bacukp Exec System Recovery, and Microsoft Virtual Server/Virtual PC. I haven't had a chance to extensively test this yet, but assuming it lives up to their claims, this has so much potential, I don't even know where to being.

Kudos to the VMware folks.

SnortSam, where have you been all my life?

I have been using Snort for years and years. A couple years ago I started messing with Snort_inline. Great concept, works beautifully. The downside is that Snort only works in inline mode when used in conjunction with iptables. Recently I was tinkering with a Linux box in VMware's Virtual Server and I was trying to get Snort_inline to work, alas to no avail. (Side note: if you haven't played with Virtual Server, you don't know what you're missing. Go get it now and download some of the Virtual Appliances. You won't be disappointed.) So I decided to take a look at SnortSam, a tool that I've had on my list of things to mess with for ages, but I just never got around to it. One word: wow. The possibilities for things you can do with Snort and SnortSam are nearly endless. It took a few minutes to get configured correctly and there were a couple of failed attempts on my part before I finally got it configured the way I wanted. All told about 20 minutes. It affords the opportunity to leverage just about any existing infrastructure and quickly create a full-blown IPS network. SnortSam is now on my short list of invaluable tools.