So I went googling around to find a good way to monitor login activity and ban IP’s for people who have more than 7 failed logins.  I should note here that the best bet would be to have an IP whitelist that only allows ssh connections from specified IP’s but I’m jumping all over the place so often that that’s a bit of a pain in the ass, which leads me to the following solution found herE:

http://www.freebsdwiki.net/index.php/Block_repeated_illegal_or_failed_SSH_logins

First thing to do is setup some precautionary measures with sshd:

Limiting SSH login sessions

In your sshd_config file the following settings can also help slow down such attacks.

• LoginGraceTime

The server disconnects after this time if the user has not successfully logged in. If the value is 0, there is no time limit. The default is 120 seconds.

• MaxStartups

Specifies the maximum number of concurrent unauthenticated connections to the sshd daemon. Additional connections will be dropped until authentication succeeds or the LoginGraceTime expires for a connection. The default is 10. Alternatively, random early drop can be enabled by specifying the three colon separated values “start:rate:full” (e.g.,”10:30:60″). sshd will refuse connection attempts with a probability of “rate/100″ (30%) if there are currently “start” (10) unauthenticated connections. The probability increases linearly and all connection attempts are refused if the number of unauthenticated connections reaches “full”

Next you want to make sure your log files are up to snuff and then setup a real basic script that scans those files(via a cron) and blocks IP’s based on the results.  I find IPFW invaluable for the work I do, so that’s the route I’m going but if you use PF or IPF there are instructions in the link above for them.

/etc/syslog.conf

You need an auth.* line in your syslog.conf file in order to log all authentications.

auth.*                                          /var/log/auth.log

Using IPFW

Create sshd-fwscan.sh and put it somewhere handy like /usr/local/sbin/

#!/bin/sh
if ipfw show | awk '{print $1}' | grep -q 20000 ; then
        ipfw delete 20000
fi
# This catches repeated attempts for both legal and illegal users
# No check for duplicate entries is performed, since the rule
# has been deleted.
awk '/sshd/ && (/Invalid user/ || /authentication error/) {try[$(NF)]++}
END {for (h in try) if (try[h] > 5) print h}' /var/log/auth.log |
while read ip
do
        ipfw -q add 20000 deny tcp from $ip to any in
done

Note: To make sure IP’s expire we delete and add rule 20000 of the firewall each time, thus if the IP’s are no longer duplicates in the auth.log they are no longer firewalled.

 

That’s that, I just ran the script as a test and viola, I’ve got 3 new rules in IPFW blocking those IP’s.. hoorah!

I’ll save you the looking up time and paste it below but make sure to thank to the original author on their blog:

<?php
// Find and replace facility for complete MySQL database
//
// Written by Mark Jackson @ MJDIGITAL
// Can be used by anyone - but give me a nod if you do!
// http://www.mjdigital.co.uk/blog

// write the output out to the page
echo '<pre>';
echo $output."\n";
echo '<pre>';
?>

So today I stumbled upon a motherload of amazing 3D space art at http://joejesus.deviantart.com and I go completely gaga over space art.. My wallpapers are all sci-fi scenes, I just can’t get over how breath taking some of these are.  So I raided the guys stash and ended up with around 30-40 new pieces for my wallpaper slideshow and like hell was I going to enter all of these in by hand so off I went searching for a nice little script that would do it for me.  I mean come on, one of the reasons I’m a linux user because I gave up the notion that time consuming repetitive tasks were something that you had to do by hand and sure enough I found a wonderful gentlemen over at the ubuntu forums who coded up a beauty of a script that worked like a charm.  So make sure to head over to : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9578962 and give the guy a big thank you hug for saving you hours of work, and read the instructions on how to use it.

Here’s the script, just copy and paste this into a file, chmod it to 755 and you’re off to the races:

#!/bin/sh
#This script creates xml files that can act as dynamic wallpapers for Gnome by referring to multiple wallpapers
#Coded by David J Krajnik
if [ "$*" = "" ]; then
  echo "This script creates xml files that can act as dynamic backgrounds for Gnome by referring to multiple wallpapers";
  echo "Usage: mkwlppr.sh target-file.xml [duration] pic1 pic2 [pic3 .. picN]";
else
  files=$*;
  #Grab the name of the target xml file
  xmlfile=`echo $files | cut -d " " -f 1`;
  #remove the first item from $files
  files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;
  if [ "`echo $xmlfile | grep '\.xml$'`" = "" ]; then
    echo "Your target file must be an XML file";
  else
    inputIsValid="true";
    firstItem=`echo $files | cut -d " " -f 1`;
    duration="1795.0";#set the default duration
    if [ "`echo $firstItem | grep '^[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+$'`" != "" ]; then
      echo "The duration must be an integer";
      files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;
      inputIsValid="";
    elif [ "`echo $firstItem | grep '^[0-9]\+$'`" != "" ]; then
      #If the item is a number, then use it as the duration for each wallpaper image
      duration="`expr $firstItem - 5`.0";
      #remove the duration from the list of files
      files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;
    fi
    if [ "$files" = "" ]; then
      echo "You must enter image files to associate with the XML file";
    else
      for file in $files
      do
        if [ ! -f $file ]; then
	  echo "\"$file\" does not exist";
	  inputIsValid="";
        elif [ "`echo $file | sed 's/^.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\|bmp\|png\|gif\|tif\|tiff\|jif\|jfif\|jp2\|jpx\|j2k\|j2c\)$//'`" != "" ]; then
	  echo "\"$file\" is not an image file";
	  inputIsValid="";
	fi
      done
      if [ $inputIsValid ]; then
        currDir=`pwd`;
        echo "<background>" >> $xmlfile
        echo "  <starttime>\n    <year>2009</year>\n    <month>08</month>\n    <day>04</day>" >> $xmlfile;
        echo "    <hour>00</hour>\n    <minute>00</minute>\n    <second>00</second>\n  </starttime>" >> $xmlfile;
        echo "  <!-- This animation will start at midnight. -->" >> $xmlfile;
        firstFile=`echo $files | cut -d " " -f 1`;#grab the first item
        if [ "`echo $firstFile | sed 's/\(.\).*/\1/'`" != "/" ]; then
          #If the first character in the filename is not '/', then it is a relative path and must have the current directory's path appended
          firstFile="$currDir/$firstFile";
        fi
        firstFile=`echo $firstFile | sed 's/[^/]\+\/\.\.\/\?//g'`;#Remove occurrences of ".." from the filepath
        files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;#remove the first item
        prevFile=$firstFile;
        currFile="";
        #TODO add absolute path to the filenames
        #if $currFile =~ "^/.*" then the file needs to path appended
        echo "  <static>\n    <duration>$duration</duration>\n    <file>$firstFile</file>\n  </static>" >> $xmlfile;
        for currFile in $files
        do
          if [ "`echo $currFile | sed 's/\(.\).*/\1/'`" != "/" ]; then
            #If the first character in the filename is not '/', then it is a relative path and must have the current directory's path appended
            currFile="$currDir/$currFile";
          fi
          currFile=`echo $currFile | sed 's/[^/]\+\/\.\.\/\?//g'`;#Remove occurrences of ".." from the filepath
          echo "  <transition>\n    <duration>5.0</duration>\n    <from>$prevFile</from>\n    <to>$currFile</to>\n  </transition>" >> $xmlfile;
          echo "  <static>\n    <duration>$duration</duration>\n    <file>$currFile</file>\n  </static>" >> $xmlfile;
          prevFile=$currFile;
        done
        echo "  <transition>\n    <duration>5.0</duration>\n    <from>$currFile</from>\n    <to>$firstFile</to>\n  </transition>" >> $xmlfile;
        echo "</background>" >> $xmlfile;
      fi
    fi
  fi
fi

But now I wanted to be able to take a single article with a ton of spinnable content and have a script generate 10-20-100 different versions of this article.  I would have a sentence where 80% of the content was spinnable with infinite amount of results.  I could handle this with the old method but it would require creating a ton of external files for each search/replace possibility which would get insane.  Instead I knew that there had to be a relatively simple method with bash to make this happen, and much to my delight the boys over at #bash on irc.freenode came to the rescue

Big props out to \amethyst and geirha, my two heroes for the day.  Some useful info from #bash as well:

FAQ: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ | Guide: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide | ref: http://tinyurl.com/txlv | http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/ | USE MORE QUOTES!: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Quote.html | Scripts and more: http://www.shelldorado.com/

And without further ado here are the scripts that were created by these two gents.

http://pastebin.com/xNgKaR2c:

FAQ: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ | Guide: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide | ref: http://tinyurl.com/txlv | http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/ | USE MORE QUOTES!: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Quote.html | Scripts and more: http://www.shelldorado.com/

And without further ado here are the scripts that were created by these two gents.

The first by Geirha, is setup to read from an external file , and if not will take the input from stdin

http://pastebin.com/xNgKaR2c:

spinner_thingy ()
{
while read -r -d ‘{‘; do
printf “%s” “$REPLY”;
IFS=’|’ read -r -d ‘}’ -a words;
n=${#words[@]};
((n)) && printf “%s” “${words[RANDOM%n]}”;
done < “${1:-/dev/stdin}”;
printf “%s” “$REPLY”
}

The second by\amethyst can be found here: http://pastebin.com/tAXJ04L6

I went ahead and replaced the example line at the top with a reference to a filename

line=”$(<test.txt)”
makesentence ()
{
local line=”$1″
while [[ $line = *{*}* ]]; do
local -a choices
local prefix=${line%%{*} rest=${line#*{}
local choice=${rest%%\}*}
line=${rest#*\}}
IFS=’|’ read -a choices <<< “$choice”
[[ $choice = *"|" ]] && choices+=( “” )
printf “%s” “$prefix”
if (( ${#choices[@]} )); then
printf “%s” “${choices[RANDOM % ${#choices[@]}]}”
fi
done
printf “%s\n” “$line”
}
makesentence “$line”

So there you have it.. 30 minutes in IRC and the helpful boys over at #bash have me right as rain.. Again a big shout out, these guys have been integral in helping me with all of my scripting in this project.. I would have jack if it wasn’t for them.

As a parting gift I also found a way to do this with php, but alas I wanted a shell script that I could easily integrate into the mothership so it was all one nice neat package.. But for those php guys here it is:

<?php
$text = "The {quick|slow|reasonably paced} {brown|green|blue|pink} {fox|goat|rat|camel}
{jumped|walked|hopped} {over|past|under} the {lazy|tired|boring} {dog|cat|stoat}";
$count = 0;
while ($count++ < 100){
echo Spin($text);
echo "<br />";
}
?>

Now go generate some content!