2021 彙整 - Page 27 of 70

Is your company really prepared for a cyber attack? Part 1

The rise of smart devices and shifting customer preferences have driven the global digital transformation at full steam. As a result, companies are discovering more and more opportunities and cutting-edge resources for competitive advantage and growth.

Moreover, the pandemic has forced many organizations to switch to remote work, which has spurred an increase in the adoption of new technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning, internet of things (IoT), big data, and social media. That’s when digital transformation shifted from a long-term goal to reality.

However, the rise of digital transformation initiatives in companies of all sizes is revealing specific vulnerabilities for most organizations. With the emergence of these new technologies, the threat is continually increasing.

This has made it critical for businesses and security teams to manage the risks of digital transformation, increasing and enhancing IT and cyber risk management capabilities to support this new paradigm.

Let’s move on and see how the digital transformation is changing IT and cybersecurity programs.

What Are Cyberattacks Types And Trends?

The future of cybersecurity brings with it many changes, some of which we can predict today. Companies tend to be unprepared for the fastest-spreading threats, including ransomware. Ransomware prevalence increased 365% between Q2 2018 and Q2 2019 and then grew another 148% during the COVID-19 crisis, according to research by Osterman Research.

Attackers’ strategies and techniques change quickly. According to IBM Security X-Force Incident Response, which saw an explosive increase in ransomware attacks especially in Q2 2020, today’s attackers are very agile. Ransom demands are steadily increasing as attackers narrow their focus to victims, such as manufacturers who can incur millions of dollars in losses for a day of downtime and therefore have little tolerance for it.

Threat agents are also combining new extortion tactics based on data theft into ransomware attacks, stealing confidential company information and threatening to make it public if their victims do not pay for the decryption key. These tactics require a review of incident response and crisis recovery plans, but many security teams are not keeping pace.

Learn about the most common types of cyberattacks in companies below.

Malware

Malware is a term used to describe malicious software, including spyware, ransomware, viruses, and worms. Malware breaches a network through a vulnerability, typically when a user clicks a dangerous link or email attachment that installs dangerous software. Once inside a system, malware can do the following:

Block access to key network components.
Install additional malware or harmful software.
Secretly obtain information by transmitting data from the hard drive.
Stop certain components and make the system inoperable.

Phishing

Phishing is the practice of sending fraudulent communications that appear to come from a trusted source, usually via email. The purpose is to steal sensitive data such as credit card and login information or install malware on the victim’s machine. Phishing is an increasingly common cyber threat.

Man-In-The-Middle

Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, also known as spy attacks, occur when attackers enter into a two-party transaction. Once attackers disrupt traffic, they can filter and steal data.

Two common entry points for MitM attacks are:

In insecure public Wi-Fi, attackers can insert themselves between a visitor’s device and the network. Without knowing it, the visitor passes all information through the attacker.

After a malware has breached a device, an attacker can install software to process all of the victim’s information.

DDoS (Denial-of-Service)

A denial-of-service attack floods systems, servers, or networks with traffic to exhaust resources and bandwidth. As a result, the system is unable to fulfill legitimate requests. Attackers can also use multiple compromised devices to launch this attack. This is known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

SQL Injection

A Structured Query Language (SQL) injection occurs when an attacker inserts malicious code into a server that uses SQL and forces the server to reveal information it normally would not. An attacker could perform a SQL injection simply by sending malicious code to a vulnerable website search box.

Zero-Day Vulnerability

A zero-day exploit occurs after a network vulnerability is announced, but before a patch or solution is implemented. Attackers target the vulnerability disclosed during this period. Detecting zero-day vulnerability threats requires constant awareness.

DNS Tunneling

DNS Tunneling uses the DNS protocol to communicate DNS traffic over port 53. It sends HTTP and other protocol traffic through DNS. There are several legitimate reasons to use DNS Tunneling. However, there are also malicious reasons to use DNS tunneling via VPN services. They can be used to mask outbound traffic such as DNS, hiding data that is normally shared over an Internet connection. For malicious use, DNS requests are manipulated to extract data from a compromised system into the attacker’s infrastructure. It can also be used to command and control callbacks from the attacker’s infrastructure to a compromised system.

What Are the Risks of a Cyberattack for Companies?

The PWC 2020 Annual CEO Survey has found that North America’s top executives reported cybersecurity as their number-one concern, with half of the respondents describing “extreme concern” regarding their cyber vulnerabilities. As data breaches and attacks become more ubiquitous, with estimates reaching 1 every 5 minutes since the GDPR laws went into effect, organizations are bracing themselves for these cybersecurity threats.

While cybercriminals rarely discriminate, some industries are more vulnerable than others. So, here are some of the industries and sectors most at risk for cyberattacks and breaches.

Healthcare Industry

Healthcare organizations continue to be the ones most exposed to cyberattacks this year. Data breaches and ransomware attacks in the past year alone have cost the industry an estimated $4 billion, with the industry accounting for more than four out of ten breaches as well.

Technology Industry

With the launch of 5G, it is expected that more devices and sensors will be connected to supply chains, communities, organizations, and locations. Although this kicks off a new wave of the communications revolution, experts note this poses new risks for consumers and businesses. As it is a move to all-software networks and wider bandwidth, high-level hackers can exploit these emerging vulnerabilities and have a larger attack surface to work with. Meanwhile, the ubiquity of sensors and devices will require a newer and more rigid framework for endpoint security across all industries.

Financial Market

It is no surprise that cybercriminals are targeting financial data from the banking and finance industry. In fact, a Clearswift survey in the UK has found that over 70% of financial institutions were victims of cyberattacks in the past year. But as institutions and organizations implement stricter protections and protocols, some sectors of the industry remain vulnerable. While relatively small in scale, attacks on retirement accounts carry enormous risks.

The losses are not just monetary: according to a McAfee survey, 92% of companies felt other damages rather than just monetary losses. These losses include reduced efficiency and downtime, operational costs for incident response, and reputational damage. Nowadays, more and more people are considering trust as an aspect when relating to companies. In times of digital transformation and greater competition in the market, this makes all the difference.

Loss of customer and stakeholder trust can be the most damaging impact of cybercrime, as the vast majority of people would not do business with a company that has been breached, especially if it did not protect its customers’ data. This can translate directly into business loss as well as the devaluation of the brand you have worked so hard to build. Accepting a reputation scam can also affect your ability to attract top talent, vendors, and investors.

So far, how do you assess your company’s cybersecurity posture? If you believe there are actions to improve your posture, keep reading the article in part 2 available here.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the world ended 2020 with 300 billion passwords to protect. And the trend shows this number will increase dramatically. Email accounts (personal and professional), banking services, corporate systems, devices, and applications are some examples that require authentication through passwords. And with the increase in the number of data leaks, it is easy to find compromised credentials on forums on the dark web being sold for pennies.

And yes, we know that it is not easy to manage so many passwords. Even the most tech-savvy can struggle to manage and protect credentials in so many different environments. In times of personal data protection legislation, such as LGPD and GDPR, ensuring the protection of such data has become more than a security requirement – it is a business must.

Despite all the risks associated with their use, many users and companies use passwords that are easy to guess, such as numbers or sequential letters (123456 or abcdef). SolarWinds itself, the victim of a serious attack on its supply chain, was using the password solarwinds123 in its infrastructure. Certainly, your email password or mine is stronger than the one used by this American technology company.

So, on this World Password Day, here are some tips that should be considered by users to keep their data protected:

Use long and complex passwords. This prevents hackers from using techniques to guess them. However, just using complex passwords may not be enough to protect them from hackers.
Many devices are configured with default passwords. Change them immediately.
Avoid reusing your passwords on different accounts. Also, constantly check if you have already been the victim of a data leak through senhasegura Hunter. If so, change your passwords immediately.
Configure your passwords to be changed frequently. The ideal is at least every 3 months.
Do not write down, store in an easily accessible place, or share your passwords with others, thus avoiding unauthorized access.
Consider password management solutions, or even privileged access management (PAM), to manage the use of systems and devices.
Use Multiple-Factor Authentication (MFA) mechanisms to add a layer of security to your accounts.
Set up means of retrieving access, such as including phone numbers or emails.

Passwords are one of the oldest security mechanisms in the computing world and are also one of the main attackvectors by hackers. And in the “new normal” era, with increasing threats resulting from the covid-19 pandemic, it is vital that users be alert and properly protect their digital identities. In this way, we can avoid cyberattacks that can cause considerable damage not only to people, but also to companies. And on this World Password Day, remember: security starts with you!

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

Segura 2021

Meet the new guy on the block: BASHware and its use in the WSL

Meet the new guy: BASHware and its use in the WSL

Antecedents

In this blog we published last year, an interesting insight of the penguin’s OS in the field of proprietary software, specifically in Microsoft® Windows®. Redmond’s company had just finished its beta phase of “Windows Subsystem for Linux”® (WSL), and we asked ourselves: “Is there security in that environment? ”.
Our rhetorical question was answered at the Rootedcon 2018 Computer Security Congress, held in the city of Madrid in March where the Checkpoint team made a presentation on the subject.

Approach of the theoretical framework

Every time a work tool is added to any software, there will always be incidences -or “bugs“- that can even be analyzed to see if they can have sneaky intentions. Originally, Microsoft® clearly explained the limitations of the WSL: it was not for production (databases, web servers) nor did it support graphic programs. In short, it was just, as we say, an “amusement park” for programmers (both hackers and crackers). In the case of us hackers, this feature saves us a lot of time, since the scripts that we have written for GNU/Linux can be executed in that private environment, but always modifying the environment variables (in any case the work of adaptation is minimal, the unit “C:\” is mounted as “/mnt/C/user”.

In order to enable the “Windows Subsystem for Linux” – which, has nothing to do with the Linux kernel, since GNU utilities really run on the Windows® kernel – you need administrator rights and you need to restart the computer. Although this fact is comforting we must take into account the following: every day Windows 10® occupies every new computer, because it comes with that operating system preinstalled. Who guarantees us that it is disabled, by default? The latter approach is derived from point 15 of the GNU General Public License: “The entire risk of both the quality and performance of the program is at your own expense,” i.e. the final responsibility for our systems always rests on our shoulders.

We must clarify that The people from Microsoft have pronounced on the matter and have refuted that this is a vulnerability of Windows® and that they will not dedicate more time to the matter (nowadays, there are no news about it), but here at Pandora FMS it is our duty to analyze as many scenarios as possible and to provide the tools; Monitoring also includes future events. We’ll write from the point of view of how it might affect our systems.

Monitoring with Pandora FMS

Another very remote possibility, more direct because it is aimed at specific local or virtual networks, is that an actor who has control over some “Active Directory” orders the WSL enablement in hundreds or perhaps thousands of machines that connect to that domain (companies and complete branches). All antivirus programs and substitutes will not detect such changes because they are simply Microsoft® applications, legitimate and digitally signed, hence our responsibility to have knowledge of such an event.

This is when Pandora FMS and its flexibility can help us in our work: we publish an introduction to log monitoring (includes link to check the approach under Pandora FMS), as well as an article in which we explain the difference between filtering and selecting “syslogs” (that are generated even when we activate some Windows® feature), which are part of the common monitoring metrics in modern operating systems. That’s why the flexibility, we insist, is patent: we can configure Pandora FMS so that it informs if some characteristic is incorporated to some computer monitored by us.

This is used to suggest that antivirus applications start taking an “inventory” when they are installed and show a warning -or block it – of possible weaknesses. We also distinguish between what is already installed and the changes made: the first is the task of the antivirus, the second are events that can -and should- detect the monitoring tools.

Terminology: BASHware

“Malware” comes from the contraction of “malicious software” and as the first word comes from Latin malitiosus. But here’s our point: massifying the term “BASHware” with malignant denotation is incorrect, “malware” exists applied in different ways because the tools that we, the network administrators, migrate are entirely innocent. Now, if a person with malicious intentions develops scripts in BASH then we are talking about “badBASHware”.

Steps to use BASHware

Windows® has always integrated its own command line, but from Windows Vista® onwards it has a more powerful tool created to match the BASH/GNU features: Powershell®.

With this tool (Powershell®) we explain the next steps:

Enabling WSL in Windows 10®

Yes, WSL is only for Windows 10®, although in the last one we enabled the remote tools for a virtual machine with Windows 7®. Powershell is active by default, we run it with administrator rights and enter the following command (we must then restart the computer or simply wait for some other frequent Windows Update® task to do it):

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

It is also possible to enable it through a Windows terminal window:

dism /Online /Enable-Feature /All /FeatureName:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /NoRestart

WSL: enabling developer mode

The second thing we have to enable – and that makes the process we are proposing even more difficult – is the developer mode and making it permanent. This is accomplished by modifying (or adding) a key in the Windows® registry.

Warning: mishandling the Windows registry can lead to system corruption and even prevent system startup and even recovery. Please always test on disposable virtual machines.

In order to do this we use the command “New-Item“, to add the following key:

New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModelUnlock" -ItemType Directory -Force

and define its property with this one, a little longer:

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModelUnlock" -Name 
AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense -PropertyType DWORD -Value 1

Since we must check if such a key exists before setting the property to a value other than zero, system administrators like to develop scripts to save us from repeating the task again and automating everything. In this link you will be able to read a complete script ahead of its time -year 2016- and the only objection it is that it doesn’t capture the response of the New-Item command and then register in the syslog the work done with its own function intended for that purpose, called Write-CMLogEntry. A hacker cares to record for the audit logs we mentioned in section 2.1, a “cracker” is not aware of this as it boasts about not leaving a trace!

Choosing Favorite BASH

Not many to choose from, but Microsoft has behaved democratically by adding more GNU distributions in addition to Ubuntu, which is the default. To date there is support for:

openSUSE Leap
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Debian GNU/Linux
Kali Linux
Short-term: Fedora
And many more are on the way

The most logical thing is to write for Debian and its son, Ubuntu. In any case, if we want to know which we have available we introduce:

wslconfig /l

If Ubuntu is listed, without further delay:

wslconfig /setdefault Ubuntu

Or the one you need or want, changing the last word for one of the ones that appears in the list. We are already halfway towards achieving our BASHware test!

Configuring the default user

The goal here will be to guarantee the necessary privilege, another setback for the reason of the statements of the personnel of the software of the popular window; we execute it in a sale of Windows 10® commands:

Ubuntu: «ubuntu config –default-user root»
openSUSE Leap 42: «opensuse-42 –default-user root»
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12: «sles-12 –default-user root»

Needless to say that since we are here we will be able to create our users for different tasks, that is, each user will leave different registers according to the BASHware assigned to execute. With the famous command to add users:

sudo adduser new_user_name

The icing on the cake: syslog, the event logger, although preinstalled, is not enabled by default in WSL. That problem is still open on the Github page at the time of writing and that is out of our reach and it’s a good thing we always keep it in mind.

Installing Wine

We quickly explained that Wine is software that, installed on GNU/Linux, allows certain Windows® applications to run. This is where the very remote possibility presents itself: to be able to run programs beyond the reach of antivirus programs or Windows® itself. Precisely, monitoring takes care of keeping track of these situations, although the line separating the tasks of security and monitoring is extremely thin. To illustrate this point we will say that, by way of example, data is one thing and information is another: the latter is obtained from the former by means of a process or algorithm (monitoring); this information is converted back into data when requested by the personnel in charge of security.

To install Wine, if we choose Debian or Ubuntu:

apt-get install wine

We may well install a graphical system for WSL and run Wine but we don’t want to go that far; in Wikipedia there are instructions on how to do it.

Final recommendations

While this article is written from the point of view of a possible vulnerability, we have also focused on the antivirus defenses and the control mechanisms of the OS itself against possible malBASHware. Also remember at all times that Pandora FMS is always and will be a useful tool due to its flexibility, which we can adapt to our work and the personalized alarms we have created. We can add your possible results to the Integria IMS incident management software, since it has the ability to take hardware inventory, as well as to record and categorize the requests of your users in your technical support center. Ten, a hundred or even thousands of computers: both programs are capable of satisfying the demands of your work!

About Version 2 Digital

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

2021 Pandorafms

Microsoft SQL Server can now be run on Linux GNU.

Microsoft SQL Server ® on Linux GNU is here to stay. Get ready

Introduction

On December 28, 2016 – feast of the Holy Innocents, that special day when Spanish speakers make jokes throughout the day – it was announced the acquisition of a “Platinum” type membership by the company Microsoft ® in the Linux Foundation and the launch of Microsoft SQL Server ®. We took this news very seriously since for us, English-speaking people, we have April Fools’ Day on April 1st, that special day when we joke around. And if we had any doubts, it was officially published in the blog of the Microsoft ® technical team, which included a funny figure which showed a “Microsoft Linux” (sic) sign along with a penguin.

We have been using computers since 1989 with the famous MS-DOS® (Mr. Linus Torvalds wasn’t even studying at university at that point) we are still trying to conceive the idea that Microsoft SQL Server ® can be run on Linux. But nowadays, this is an unavoidable reality and those days of antagonism with former CEO Steve Ballmer are long gone. He left office in 2014 and his successor Mr. Satya Nadella led the company and he developed one of the largest computer infrastructures on the cloud computing network with the product “Microsoft Azure®” (formerly known as “Windows Azure®”).

This “Windows Azure®” product stands out because of its software development kit or “SDK” which is published as open-source (which is different from the free software license in Linux). To this day, artificial intelligence is already being developed in “Microsoft Azure®”, which is now known as “machine learning”.

This brief introduction leads us to our article today: Microsoft SQL Server ® on Linux GNU.

Microsoft SQL Server ® on Microsoft Windows®

Okay, we don’t want to fool you and yes, we are going to talk about GNU/Linux but first we need to know the framework of that popular database engine. Microsoft SQL Server ® was born in 1989 to be run on … IBM OS/2, yes, I am not joking. At that time, it was the “Ashton-Tate” company with its flagship product dBase that caused large volumes of data to flow through the local area network because each customer took a copy of the database to each computer where it was running. That’s why Microsoft bought the SQL Server ® license from Sybase which worked with the client/server model through simple commands and returned limited amounts of data (almost all the work is done separately and remotely on the server). Ashton-Tate provided its customer market and dBase worked as an interface for the user, while Microsoft and Sybase handled the work on the server side.

After some time (in 1994) the version 6 of SQL Server ® appeared, which was also run on the recent Windows NT® and that version was no longer made by Sybase. From version 7.0 onwards, it was massively rewritten in C ++ language and as of 2000, when it was time for OS/2 to be discontinued, SQL Server ® remained only for the Windows NT ® operating system. Then in 2001 its successor Windows XP® inherits the Windows NT® technology – by the way, “NT” means “New Technology” – and it was able to reach common users and their small and medium enterprises: the efficient management of relational data was no longer for exclusive use for large corporations.

In 2005, a dilemma emerged: the rise of 64-bit and multi-core processors, as well as a large amount of RAM for which Microsoft SQL Server ® was not prepared to take full advantage of all this potential. In reaction to this, it is decided to make a platform layer to contain “SQLOS layer”. A SQLOS is a “highly configurable user-level operating system with a powerful application-programming interface.” (You can have a look at the official and detailed explanation here) We will soon see why it was a very good choice, since it completely separates programming from the workloads and threads on a computer, on which Microsoft® SQL Server ® is installed.

Microsoft SQL Server ® on Linux GNU

In the world of web servers, GNU/Linux distributions have been the leading ones for many years. Debian has the Ubuntu Server, used by many companies of different sizes, to publish their sites on the Internet. But for the databases there are quite a few programmers who have chosen Microsoft SQL Server ® and because of this, companies must acquire a Microsoft Windows® operating system, this way creating additional work in the management of the local area network due to a mixed environment.

This concern gradually surfaced among Microsoft® customers and so they told the Redmond-based company (in Washington, USA) which put them on the spot because they did not know how to carry the millions of lines of code, accumulated during all these years, to the environment of the operating system of the penguin. The answer to this problem was found in a project dating back to 2011 called Drawbridge®, which was originally intended for virtualization of applications in a secure environment (called “sandbox”).

It was then necessary to “isolate” Microsoft SQL Server ®. Programmers coded in a carefree way as they worked in a well-known environment, which dealt with the various existing hardware. Once the Drawbridge processes were well understood and adapted, the following parameters were established:

Quality and security must meet the same high bar we set for SQL Server ® on Windows
Provide the same value, both in terms of functionality, performance, and scale
Application compatibility between SQL Server ® on Windows and Linux
Enable a continued fast pace of innovation in the SQL Server ® code base and make sure new features and fixes appear immediately across platforms
Put in place a foundation for future SQL Server suite services (such as Integration Services) to come to Linux

To make SQL Server ® support multiple platforms, the engineering task is essentially to remove or abstract away its dependencies on Microsoft Windows®, as we can see, it wasn’t easy for the developers, who were being pushed out of their comfort zone!

This is how they created “SQL Platform Abstraction Layer” (SQL PAL) that merges the concepts of “SQLOS layer” and Drawbridge®. From now on the development team can work with a single base code and they do not need to worry about where the code will run (this includes the new Microsoft Azure® platform we talked about earlier). As we can see, so far, everything has come to fruition and the projects and resources of the computer giant, which seemed scattered, are now part of a whole.

Installing Microsoft SQL Server ®

As St Thomas once said: “Seeing is believing” that is why we took a virtual machine with 4 gigabytes of RAM (the minimum requirement is 3.25 gigabytes). Then, we downloaded Ubuntu Server 16.04 through Torrent technology and after installing it and doing the required security updates (just because it is a test server, we shouldn’t loose our good work habits!) and then we decided to install Microsoft® SQL Server ® on this “clean” machine. (Jimmy Olano, writer of this article, has made a 23 minutes recording with the complete installation process, you can watch it on YouTube by clicking on this link)

Essentially the instructions are to import the Microsoft® enabled security keys of its website so that we can certify that the content downloaded from that company has not been altered. Then we will add the link of the location of the repository in our file made for this, and then we need to update the list of components and give the order to download and install the packages. In fact, in the Microsoft® blog, where the instructions are published, it talks about the use of the “-y” parameter in order to accept the license immediately. We recommend installing without this option, so that we are always aware that we are using exclusive software and that we must stick to the license shown in the following figure of our authorship (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International):

Installing SQL Server ® command-line tools

Once we have installed our SQL Server ®, we must configure the “firewall” and establish the access policies to the computer which should be ready to start receiving data through other computers. But if we want to work directly on the console of our machine we must install the command-line tools with the command «sudo apt-get install mssql-tools unixodbc-dev» which, as expected, also contains questions for the acceptance – or denial – of accepting the conditions of use.
In our case, in that video we mentioned earlier, apart from installing the “command-line tools” we had the opportunity to create a database, as well as to create a table, and to introduce a few values and to make a simple conditional query. But, we will not forget about this tool, which can offer a lot more.

Monitoring SQL Server ®

As a monitoring tool, the Microsoft® SQLCAT12 development team concluded that three tools are needed to monitor:

collectd.
InfluxDB.
Grafana.

We will focus on collectd and we will talk briefly about InfluxDB and Grafana.

“collectd”

This open source software is written in C language and is a daemon or service which we will install and run on the server where Microsoft® SQL Server ® is hosted. It is very popular in routers that use OpenWrt, which is a well-known Linux distribution specially designed for these devices, which also has more than 100 plugins, which makes it easier to configure popular Linux applications such as Apache and MySQL (When writing this article, we reviewed that list and we did not find a specific one for Microsoft® SQL Server ®, given the novelty of the arrival of this software in the GNU world.
In order to deliver the “collectd” data, you can either write them in RDD file format (“RDDfile”) so that they can then be plotted with RDDtool or they can be collected using a plugin.
Currently Pandora FMS does not have a plugin for collectd but it has no problem connecting via SNMP.

To install collectd we must have Git and Docker Engine installed and then create an account in Microsoft® SQL Server ® using the following instructions:

USE master; GO CREATE LOGIN [collectd] WITH PASSWORD = N'mystrongpassword'; GO GRANT VIEW SERVER STATE TO [collectd]; GO GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO [collectd]; GO

The latter is very important in order for collectd to have proper access to our database server. Microsoft® invites you to clone your repository in GiHub, where you can find some very detailed instructions and we can contribute with any observation, correction or we can collaborate with an improvement if we request a pull request.

“InfluxDB”

It is responsible for communicating with collectd and then it saves and organises the data collected.

“Grafana”

Software that produces stunning graphics and drawings that represent the data collected by InfluxDB. It is strongly recommended that both InfluxDB and Grafana be installed on another computer different from the one running Microsoft® SQL Server ® or even each one on their own machine if the amount of systems to be monitored is large enough.

Conclusions

Microsoft® made sure to make a good deal with its application SQL Server ®: the code will not be able to run away towards Linux and it avoids compromising its reliability. It also has a base code ready to be improved upon the arrival of new hardware or to cover other operating systems.

All trademarks named herein are accompanied by the “®” symbol and are owned by Microsoft® Corporation and comply with the proper use of such trademarks.

About Pandora FMS

Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

About Version 2 Digital

2021 Pandorafms

PowerShell 101: let’s get to know its use and main commands

PowerShell 101: an alternative to command line on Linux and Mac

The Command Line Interface (CLI) in Windows® exists and resists the passage of time, from those distant days of MS-DOS® to the current PowerShell 101. Let’s see the basic PowerShell.

When I went to college in the 1980s, proprietary software reigned. The old German computers with Unix® that printed our schedules were being replaced by “modern” personal computers. The Microsoft® software house – at that time – was tied to MS-DOS®, so we learned to use the commands: dir, cls, format for our floppy disks…

A little over a decade ago, back in Redmond they decided to dust off, modernize and empower the CLI. Born as Monad®, renamed PowerShell®, today we present you with the basic PowerShell or PowerShell 101.

Description: Basic Powershell – Logo
(Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PowerShell_5.0_icon.png)

Basic PowerShell

The Linux operating system has been going on strong; there are many articles in Pandora FMS blog about it. Also in the monitoring of proprietary systems we are always present; Windows®, as its maximum exponent. And every time a new version comes out we’re there, testing and checking.

I think, because of this Linux thing, Microsoft decided to make a compilation of tools along with new concepts, as a counterpart to the GNU features that come with Linux. Considering that PowerShell Core exists since 2016 as open software (MIT license) but with Windows® proprietary components, now we have it available in Ubuntu, CentOS (the OS recommended for Pandora FMS) and macOS and even in another hardware architecture such as ARM.

Installing PowerShell Core at Linux

In Ubuntu we must install the package manager snap: with sudo apt install snap we will achieve our mission. Next we’ll run snap install powershell -classic

Description: snap install powershell – classic

First commands

Having launched with the command pwsh (in Windows® we should look for powershell.exe), we will have a terminal window, with “PS” of indicative (prompt) followed by the location of the directory. In both environments the aspect is very similar, so we will generalize from now on.

Then let’s put our memory into practice:

cls: “clears” the screen, leaving space to execute a new cycle of commands. It’s not necessary at all, but it’s similar to writing with chalk on a blackboard and erasing to begin to explain another subject.
dir -ad: to list directories only.
echo message: when we want to show specific text on the screen. This doesn’t seem to be useful, but when we integrate it in a script it is of tremendous utility to indicate the progress of some task or the result of the same one.

We won’t delay any longer with the old MS-DOS commands. In the twenty-first century, we would need to continue using such old technology, and in the process with those old programs that communicated or interacted with text strings (STDIN, STDOUT).

Basic Command-let in PowerShell 101

In the 21st century everything is more complex, they are years of accumulated experience. PowerShell 101 is not a simple tool like the one we use in Linux. For this tool there are command-let and its name is abbreviated as cmdlet. This means that the commands we tested are not really the ones we thought they were: they are aliases of the default cmdlet and this allows backward compatibility. Now, there’s more. Let’s analyse the case of the command date, used to remunerate the date.

Its real name is Get-Date and although it returns in a slightly different format the current date and time to that of the alias, basically both do the same thing. For monitoring tasks we need to deliver that value in a very specific format: this is when the cmdlets do their job in a totally different way.

Description: «Working with cmdlet with date and time variables»

With the cmdlet Get-Date we can:

Display the date of the computer.
Display it in a custom format.
Use methods; in this case we visualize what day number is the date May 20, 2019 (it is the 140th day of the year).
Save a date variable in a custom format.
Convert this variable to a text string and save it in a file.
Notice that we have used the pipe to communicate one cmdlet with another. The cmdlet you receive used to write to disk is called Add-Content. (Don’t you remember Linux?).
The reading counterpart is Get-Content and its alias is called… “cat”, just like the one used in Linux to list the contents of a text file!

Take a pause, check this before moving on to the next point.

Working with cmdlet

With all this as a base, we can stop thinking of basic Powershell as a tool and start evoking it as a toolbox. To do this we will use the Get-Command command:

Using it without any parameter will give us back a lot of tools; the ones we have installed in our computer.

If we inquire about a particular command, for example Get-Command Get-Date will return information about the command type, name, version and source (the library it belongs to). For Get-Date it will indicate that it is a cmdlet belonging to Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility and for Clear-Host (clear screen, cls) that it is simply a function. Entering an alias will return the original cmdlet or function.

If we don’t remember the name exactly we’ll use wildcards; for example, with Get-Command *date* we’ll get a list of all the commands that contain that string.

Help with basic Powershell

The help was also thought as a repository, since with the Get-Help command we can also download content to our computer:

Get-Help Get-Date: will show complete information about how to use Get-Date, its syntax, its aliases, etc.
Get-Help Get-Date -Online: will open an instance of our web browser and open the latest online information about the Get-Date command.
To work offline, i.e. to save the updated help: Update-Help.

Using Get-Help, let’s learn about the commands Get-Location and Set-Location.

Let’s suppose we have to create a folder or a file; for this we will no longer use the command md or mkdir (the latter is written exactly the same in Linux) but we will use the New-Item command:

New-Item “path/name” -type directory

New-item Command.

“path/name” of the directory; quotation marks are required when interspersed.

Parameter -type and then what we have installed as provider: File, Directory, SymbolicLink, Junction or HardLink

Now let’s talk about providers: we can download the providers we need or we can create our own providers and associate them to the command. My imagination flies: we develop a program that acts as an FTP client and we offer it as a provider so we can sell it to anyone to integrate it into their PowerShell… but wait, there is more. If we do this in turn -if our license allows it- our client can add our FTP program as a library to their own projects. What do you think?

Note: PowerShell is also able to work via API and even security analysts have created their own PowerShell environments, some mixed with Python language… who don’t even need Microsoft executable files!

Pandora FMS and monitoring tasks

Pandora FMS flexibility allows us to use PowerShell to quickly access complex commands. For example, in Windows environment we need to know which patches are installed:

Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_QuickFixEngineering -ComputerName

We will be able to visualize the components with the Get-Member command, extract the contents and make our complement in Pandora FMS for PowerShell!

About Version 2 Digital

2021 Pandorafms

如何運用 Zoom 分享畫面中的「第二攝影機的內容」功能

如果電腦本身內建視訊鏡頭，再加上一臺 IPEVO 視訊教學攝影機，可使用 Zoom「分享畫面」中的「第二攝影機的內容」功能，一個鏡頭拍攝教師、一個朝下拍攝課本、教材或操作示範，同時顯示兩個畫面，大幅提升互動教學效果。

① 將 IPEVO 視訊教學攝影機連接上有內建視訊鏡頭的電腦裝置

② 下載並開啟 Zoom 軟體，選擇「新會議」或「加入」進入視訊

③ 選擇電腦內建視訊鏡頭，同時也可以看到已連接上的視訊教學攝影機

④ 點選「分享畫面」功能，選擇「進階」設定中的「第二攝影機的內容」後，點選「分享畫面」按鈕

⑤ 成功分享第二臺攝影機拍攝的影像：小視窗為內建攝影機畫面；大視窗為視訊攝影機畫面。

內建視訊鏡頭或一般網路攝影機，因為拍攝角度有限，僅能拍攝正面影像，但無法往下俯拍呈現文件、或是用多種拍攝角度，展示手作細節及示範操作過程的畫面。Zoom 分享畫面中的進階功能「第二臺攝影機的內容」，正是為了解決這樣的困擾。外接一臺 IPEVO 視訊攝影機，作為第二個畫面，利用旋轉鏡頭以及多關節支架，調整最適合的拍攝角度，是線上教學、手作直播或是呈現設計圖或模型時必備的工具。

使用IPEVO的視訊教學攝影機作為第二個分享畫面，可以在線上即時呈現做重點註解的影像、或操作實驗步驟畫面，調整支架高度及鏡頭角度，還可展示不同視角與重點，讓實作課程也能實現線上教學，不用受限內建攝影機有限的拍攝角度。習慣板書的老師，使用視訊攝影機呈現桌上的小白板，一邊書寫，一邊搭配內建攝影機的老師影像，師生都有實體課堂的互動感受。

手作者在解說及示範時，若僅使用單一視訊鏡頭，一邊面對鏡頭解說卻無法同步呈現手中的示範畫面；呈現手作示範步驟時，又得調整鏡頭拍攝手作畫面，內建鏡頭或是一般網路攝影機鏡頭角度有限，無法呈現由上往下拍或其他多種視角，讓許多操作細節無法呈現，線上解說的效率大受影響。

使用 IPEVO 視訊教學攝影機可多種角度拍攝的靈活支架及鏡頭，打破僅能一個畫面、正面拍攝、單一視角的困擾。 IPEVO 視訊教學攝影機作為第二個畫面，能同時呈現手作者解說以及手作的細節、示範的步驟、展現不同角度，線上觀眾可以同步看到實作與講解兩個重要畫面。解決原本不適合搬上線上的手作課程困境，也將課程受眾由地方擴大到了整個網路世界。

進階祕技：使用 IPEVO CamControl 快速調整 Zoom 視訊攝影機畫面

① 在視訊軟體開啟並連接 IPEVO 視訊教學攝影機的狀況下，下載並開啟 IPEVO CamControl 調整 IPEVO 視訊攝影機分享的畫面

② 可 180 度旋轉畫面（支援 DO-CAM、VZ-R 和 VZ-X ）

③ 可調整曝光值及白平衡

④ 可調整其他進階的色彩設定，如亮度、飽和度、對比、銳利度等

⑤ 可更改對焦設定：例如拍攝繪畫或手做課程時，使用 AF-S 鎖住自動對焦，避免畫面重複對焦。或讓相機對焦後，將對焦列旁邊的鎖圖示鎖上即可
*V4K PRO、V4K、VZ-R、VZ-X 可使用機身上的鎖定對焦按鍵。

About Version 2

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

關於IPEVO
IPEVO源自於PChome Online硬體事業部門，2007年7月正式獨立。自2004年於台灣營運Skype網絡電信服務，使台灣成為Skype全球發展中最成功的市場。2005年起以IPEVO品牌推出一系列Skype專屬硬件產品，將Skype虛擬服務轉化為使用者實質經驗。IPEVO以簡單、實際且具有價值的經驗為產品目標，其簡潔俐落的產品風格呼應著IPEVO的核心思考與產品精神。目前已研發之產品包括：Skype有線USB話機、Skype無線話機、Skype會議系統、Skype視訊設備、Stand-alone免電腦Skype話機。

IPEVO 2021