Securing Your Operating System - A Ubuntu How-To

When people say that the Linux environment is 'more' secure than the well-known Microsoft Windows operating system, I have only one thing to say. . . your operating system is only as secure as you allow it to be. The first thing we are going to cover is one that normally goes unnoticed.

Why Protect the BIOS and GRUB?

All Linux user's should known, these two come right at the start-up of your computer. Let me tell you why you should protect these with a password that ONLY you know. If you leave your BIOS unprotected with a password, your allowing whoever has access to your computer to boot from a CD, a USB memory device, floppy, etc. This is bad because someone could load a LiveCD and completely override your login credentials and even remove your operating system(s) completely. They could also set their own password and that would prevent YOU from getting on your own computer. So, it is in your best interest to protect your BIOS with a password. As for GRUB, it is equally as important to protect this as well. For example, say someone wants in your linux account really bad because you have admin privileges. All they would have to do is reboot the computer, and select the recovery option from the GRUB boot menu and they would instantly have access to a root terminal. In turn, if they navigate to the /etc directory and type passwd [your username], they can reset your password without even knowing your current password. So, as you can see, this is just as important as the BIOS to protect.

Adding Password-Protection To Grub

There are two ways to do this, one is the super easy way which involves installing an application that has a GUI or you can do it manually (still pretty easy). Lets go over the manual way which will involve using the terminal. So go ahead, open your terminal. Type 'grub-md5-crypt' and press [Enter]. The grub-md5-crypt application will then ask you for a password. This is NOT your sudo password that it is asking for, it is the password you want to use to protect GRUB. So think of something complex but not forgettable, since you may need to reset your login credentials in the future. You will have to type your password in twice for confirmation. Afterwards, the application will output an MD5 hash. You need to copy this hash to a text file for the time being for reference later. Now we need to edit your GRUB menu list. In the terminal, type 'sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst' and press [Enter]. You will need to input your sudo password. Lets go ahead and place the password hash at the top. To do this, type 'password –md5 [the password hash you copied from the last step]'. Make sure this is on a line by itself. Now scroll down toward the bottom and you should see something like this:

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic (recovery mode)

lock

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=459a88e8-6641-40ae-832e-00d7645414d0 ro single

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic

You may notice that the 'lock' line is not included with yours. That's because you have to add it. Go ahead, add the word 'lock' to its own line under title. Sometimes there may be more than one option for recovery mode, so go ahead and put a lock line on those as well. If you want, you can lock everything but then you will need to input your password every time you boot-up. After you add the lock line to your recovery section(s), go ahead and click on Save and close this out. You are now finished protecting your GRUB. Pretty darn easy, right?

Final Word

You may notice that I did not provide a tutorial on how to protect your BIOS. I did not include this because BIOS systems differ from motherboard to motherboard and have their own methods of doing so. Usually, as soon as you turn your computer on, you will need to press F1, F2, F12, or DEL key to access the BIOS menu. If either of those work, try navigating around and finding the area where you will assign a password. Again, if I were you, make it the same as the GRUB so you don't forget this. Be careful while you are in the BIOS, if you edit something critical your computer could fail to load properly or even boot. Another note for computer security, disable the root login so no one can login as root. It is much safer to use sudo, that way you don't edit or delete anything critical while using the computer.

How to Create an Awesome Smoke Bomb

Prerequisites
There are two ingredients that you will need to construct this smoke bomb. First, you will need sugar. Make sure you have plenty on hand. Second, you will need Potassium Nitrate. Potassium Nitrate is not the easiest to find, so in this tutorial I will explain how to make it.

Potassium Nitrate
In order to create Potassium Nitrate, you are going to need a few things:

• 3 ½ gallons of Nitrate bearing Earth. (dirt that has been habitually pissed on)

• ½ cup of wood ashes

• One 4-5 gallon bucket

• Two pieces of finely woven cloth, each a bit bigger than the bucket in circumference

• Shallow dish or pan at least as large as the buckets bottom

• Shallow, heat resistant container

• Two gallons of water

• Tool to punch holes in bottom of bucket

• One gallon of any type of alcohol

• Heat source

• Paper and tape

The next steps walk you through the procurement.

1. Punch holes in bottom of bucket from within the bucket (so the holes are puckered outward from the bucket).

2. Spread cloth over holes at bottom

3. Place wood ashes on cloth and spread out evenly.

4. Place second cloth on top of wood ashes.

5. Place dirt in bucket.

6. Suspend bucket over shallow container.

7. Boil water and pour it over the earth very slowly. DO NOT pour all at once because this will clog the filters.

8. Allow water to run through holes into the shallow container.

9. Be sure the water goes through all of the dirt.

10. Allow water in dish to cool for an hour or so.

11. Carefully drain the liquid in the dish and discard the sludge in the bottom.

12. Boil this liquid over a fire for at least two hours. Small grains of salt will form – scoop these out with paper as they form.

13. When the liquid has boiled down to ½ its original volume let it sit.

14. After 30 minutes, add equal volume of the alcohol; when this mixture is poured through paper, small white crystals will appear. This is potassium nitrate.

Mixing the Ingredients
When mixing our two ingredients, Sugar and Potassium Nitrate, you need to mix in a ratio of 60% PN/40% Sugar. The easiest weight to divide the ingredients in to for easy preparation is 30 grams PN to 20 grams Sugar and this is what I will be referring to for the rest of the tutorial. So, carrying on, mix 30g/20g of PN/Sugar by pouring both ingredients in to a container that has a lid and shaking rigorously.

Procuring the Final Product
Pour the new mixture in to a heat-resistant container and place on a flame that is burning about medium-high. Using a butter knife (butter knife preferred to reduce the use of fingers when removing caramelized product from mixing tool), stir our heating mixture EVERY 30 seconds. The mixture will start to thicken and look like brown sugar and eventually, it will look like peanut butter. When it looks like peanut butter, quickly embed your match heads and transfer your paste in to the Styrofoam cup. If you want, you can add fuses from either firecrackers or bottle rockets to aid lighting. The final product will harden very quickly, so be fast. Once it is hardened, you can break off the Styrofoam cup and tada, you have a nice looking smoke bomb.

Final Words
Even though this smoke is considered non-toxic, it would be wise not to stand in a big cloud of it all day breathing deeply and PLEASE, don't do something stupid like setting this off around major intersections.

How to Make Thermite

Ever hear of Thermite? If you have a passion for destruction or perhaps your just a simple pyro, then you probably have. This article will explain what you need and how to make the components required to create Thermite. Also, I would also like to inform you that in the USA, it is NOT illegal to own or use Thermite.

Obtaining the Aluminum
1) Go to a machine shop. They will usually give you aluminum powder for sweeping the floor or something.
2) Break open an Etch-A-Sketch, the stuff inside is pure aluminum powder.
3) Go to a paint store, they usually have powdered aluminum that people use to mix into paints to give it pigment.
4) Get a grinder, and something made of aluminum. Good ideas are soda cans, bike frames, and lacrosse sticks. Start grinding the aluminum and collect the sparks in a container.
5) Search eBay, they sell it for pretty cheap.

Obtaining the Iron Oxide (Rust)
1) Take some steel wool then put it in a jar and then cover it wool with water. Use a magnet to make sure the steel wool doesnt float during the reaction process. Next, put in 5 tablespoons of regular bleach into the water and 5 tablespoons of regular vinager. Wait a day or so and then filter the brown paste with a coffee filter. Leave it out to dry overnight.
2) Go to a paint store, they usually have powdered iron oxide that people use to mix into paints to give it pigment.
3) Connect wires to a direct current (9-volt battery), strip both ends and put them into a saltwater solution. Let them sit for five minutes. One of them will start bubbling more than the other. This is the POSITIVE(+) wire. Put a nail tied to the positive wire into the jar. Now put the negative wire in the other end. Now let it sit overnight and in the morning scrape the rust off of the nail & repeat until you have a bunch of rust on the bottom of the glass. Let it dry out, and crush it into a powder.
4) Search eBay, they sell it for pretty cheap.

Mixing the Stuff
Thermite is 8 grams of iron oxide to 3 grams of aluminum. The formula is by weight but because aluminum is very light, it will appear to be approximately a 50-50 mix. Put them together in a container and mix them until it is an even mixture. If you want, mix four parts thermite with one part clay or Play-Doh and knead thoroughly for moldable thermite.

Igniting

Thermite needs a lot of heat to light, that means magnesium. Find some magnesium ribbon, or a sparkler that contains magnesium and put it into a pile of thermite. Light it with a torch, and run!

External Links

Magnesium Ribbon
Iron Oxide
Aluminum Powder
Video of Thermite in Action

How to Download Massive Amounts of Pornographic Sample Movies

Prologue

First things, first. You are going to need some software solutions to aid us through this tutorial. You will need Mozilla Firefox. Secondly, you will need DownThemAll! and FlashGot. After downloading Firefox, DownThemAll! and FlashGot, Install Firefox first, then execute the add-on programs. It is highly recommended that you download everything to your desktop for easy install. You can always remove the installation packages when you are finished.

Find Your Preferred MTGP(Movie Thumbnail Gallery Post)

You will need to find your preferred MTGP. If you already have one, then skip this section. Otherwise, I can recommend DansMovies. Once you have navigated here, you can browse for your selected pornography. Note that at the bottom of most MTGP's there are links to other MTGP's (also PTGP – P meaning Picture so be aware).

URL Identification and Disection

Example URL: http://www.ramis-girls.com/ECG/148/01.htm

If you do not already have a basic understanding of URL's, then let me give you a quick explanation. After the .com or whatever the extension is you normally have a backslash. This backslash represents the navigation in to a new directory. So, that noted, ECG is a sub-directory of the main site and 148 is a sub-directory of ECG. The numbers are the important part, because that is what we will be working with.

Discovering the Hidden Pornography

Navigate to the URL shown to you in URL Identification and Disection. If you notice, you have four sample movies that you can download from this one page. Well, obviously this is not enough material to jerk your meat to since these sample clips rarely go over 15 seconds a piece. This is where the 148 comes in to play. Change the 148 to a 149 and navigate to the new url. Notice the page looks somewhat the same, except for one thing. . . new pornographic movies! Same with the last page, you have four sample movies that you can download and this identifies the pattern needed to use FlashGot and DownThemAll! to download all the sample movies the site has to offer. Add 10 to your 149 number and keep navigating until you receive a Page Not Found error, or you get redirected somewhere else. When this happens, you now want to keep subtract one from your new number until you get a working page. Repeat this step in reverse by subtracting 10 from 149 and adding 1 when you are redirected until you find the first available movie page. Make a mental note of the beginning and end numbers.

The Gallery Building Wonderland

On one of the working pages, right click a blank spot on the page. This will bring up a right-click menu. You will need to click on “Build Gallery...”. There now is a new window that popped up that should be titled “FlashGot – Build Gallery” with two editable text boxes with the labels Preview and Content. Lets work with the preview URL. The preview URL should match this:

http://galleries.exploitedcollegegirls.com/bevo/[148-148;1]/[1-1;1].jpg

See the 148-148, you will need to change the first 148 to the lowest number that you discovered without being redirected and the highest for the second 148. Now, we need to change the [1-1;1] section. Remember how there were 4 movies per page? Well, you now need to reflect that or you will only be downloading the first movie from each page. So change that section to [1-4;1]. Now, there should be a down arrow between Preview and Content that has the label Synchronize Ranges. Click the down arrow and both text boxes should match your changes, except for the last 4 characters (.JPG and .MPG). We are now finished with this window, so click OK and you should get a new web page window that pop's up with thumbnails popping up all over it. These are all the available movies that we are going to download, neatly organized on to one page.

The Miracle of DownThemAll!

On the new web page that popped up from our last section, you need to right-click somewhere on that page in a blank spot and click “DownThemAll!...”. A new window, titled DownThemAll! - Make Your Selection, should now appear. Go down to the Save Files In section and click the folder icon to the right of the first editable text box and select a location where you would like all this pornography downloaded. A good suggestion would be a sub-folder on the desktop. Now, under Inclusive Filters, check the Videos option. In the bottom right-hand portion of this window, is a Preferences option. Click this once to bring up the preferences. Under “If A Filename Already Exists:”, select Rename. Under “Max Contemporary Downloads”, change the number to 1. Close this window now. Now click Start! and your pornographic material will initialize the download process.

Outroduction

I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something new. Please keep up with my little space on the web for future satirical pieces.

Need Further Help? View The Screen Shots

How to Masturbate Correctly

Introduction
This tutorial will explain techniques to properly masturbate without hurting yourself or others in the process. The Art of Masturbation has been around since the beginning of humanity. The fact that humans are very sexual creatures turns masturbation in to a beautiful and natural activity.

Steps

1. Prepare your environment. Remove all clothing, jewelry and any other items that may seem uncomfortable during this exercise. Turn on some music to calm yourself and meditate for a few moments if necessary.

2. Obtain the necessary tools. Lubrication will be the number one tool (besides your tool). I recommend KY Warming Gel. Next, you will need a few paper towels, toilet tissue or an old sock. This is to capture the semen that you will release upon climax.

3. Lay down and relax. Think of something sexually stimulating. I've noted a lot of people like to view pornographic movies prior and during the masturbatory cycle. Rub on your groin to obtain a sturdy erection suited for masturbation. If you are unable to gain a suitable erection, then please check out http://www.viagra.com

4. Start to stroke your penis in a gentle up and down motion. Be careful not to bend your wrist in any abnormal directions or you may suffer from a pulled muscle. During the stroking phase, close your eyes and visualize a sexual fantasy with whomever you like. Don't feel guilty of who you visualize, this is your fantasy not theirs (or is it?).

5. If your forearm starts to tire, you can switch hands or try a different stroking technique. A good technique to use in replacement of the standard up and down motion is to add a “twist” to the up and down motion. Another technique, which is almost intolerable, is to add a large amount of lubrication to your hand and simply twist (no up and down motion) around the head of penis. Do NOT apply a lot of pressure by squeezing as this may result in a detached penis. Close your hand only enough so that you feel the twisting of your hand.

6. Now comes the payoff. As you start to feel the excellent 'tingling' sensation you should reach, with your free hand, over and grab your catcher as described in Step 2. This can be anything (i.e. Toilet tissue, Kleenex, Paper towel, Towel, Rag, Sock, etc). Hold the catcher close to the tip of your penis. The catch should be almost parallel with your shaft with a slight upwards angle (thumb pointing up if catcher is placed in palm). As you climax, all the semen should

   end up on the catcher and no where else. With enough practice, you can simply lay the catch on your stomach and shoot your semen straight on to the catcher with little effort.

Tips
* Twist motion

* Keep wrists straight

* Don't be conservative about the lubrication. Use what you need.

* This activity should be executed behind closed doors and not as a family exercise.

Warnings
* Make sure you keep your wrists straight or you may get a spranged wrist.

* Excessive masturbation can result in lacerations on the sensitive skin close to the head of the penis.

* Dry-handing should only be performed when absolutely necessary and should not be done more than once a day.

* Use only qualified lubrication. Using shampoo, conditioner, hand-soap, motor oil, gasoline or tire lube is NOT advised and may cause severe burning. If contact with the above items occur, please flush your penis with water for 15 minutes and consult a Poison Control Center.

Supplies
* KY Warming Lube recommended

* Paper towel, Kleenex, Toilet tissue, Rag, Towel, Sock, or some other form of a Catcher.