Muppethouse

Tacacs+ Web Interface

In the past few years since I began writing perl I have collected a little arsenal of half-baked programs that have never really been exposed to the world, probably because I was too lazy to clean them up. I decided that I would use this week to expose some of the programs that I have written over the years. For the most part I worked on these until they worked rather than until they were done correctly, but they may serve as a starting point for someone else looking to do the same thing.

The first program on the list (download here) is a little web interface to the open source tacacs+ AAA server from shrubbery.net. The Cisco SecureACS server can be fine, but if you need regular expression support in ACLs or a way of automating entries it may not be the tool for you. That said, editing a flat config file can be problematic for some folks. This was my quick solution.

This is just a series of CGI scripts that allows the user to admin the tacacs+ server without learning vi. It includes the ability to add users, delete users, administrative password resets, show configuration, and test authentication. When a users password is near expiration they can log in and change it. Passwords are checked against the aspell dictionary to make sure that they’re not a simple word (yeah, there is room for much more improvement here).

There are also a couple little bonus scripts, one useful and one for fun. The tac2rad.pl script is for tying the shrubery tacacs+ user database in with a freeradius server with the MySQL back-end. It copies the users and passwords over to MySQL from tacacs+. The second, crack.pl, was just for my own learning experience. It scours the config file for des encrypted passwords and cracks them if they’re simple dictionary words… which I somehow thought would be difficult… it is not.

I don’t maintain these or fix them, but if they’re useful to you drop me a comment and let me know.

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Coverflow… meet fleow

Sometimes I don’t understand why in the commercial software world companies like Apple purchase companies like coverflow. There are amazing folks in the open source community like Macslow and David Reveman that continually show that innovation requires little more than dedication and one very talented individual.

Anyway, here is a plugin for Banshee called fleow. It basically does what coverflow does, then some. Sometimes commercial software is one step ahead, like with digital video editing – but watch out. Open source is communal, counterintuitive, and a force to be reckoned with.

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I Have a Dream…

that people will understand the difference between freeware and free software. Every time I hear someone use the term freeware or shareware I cringe, because nine times out of ten they mean open source software – but don’t understand that the word free has two meanings, liberty, and zero cost.

That reminds me, remember when the first amendment to the Constitution stated that we had the right to zero cost religion, zero cost speech, and zero cost press. That was rad. I just stole the Sunday post on my way to church today where I yelled “I refused to tithe” – didn’t pay for the church, post, or speech. Again, pure rad – go forefathers.

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