Let’s go to Barrancabermeja. I’m goingt to present a tutorial about OpenSource software.

Spam is a plague, everybody knows it. But everybody doesn’t know how to fight against it when your mail system servers are attacked. So I’m going to talk about this stuffs and give some advices to avoid spam in your servers and networks.

So, today ww are going to se how to identify if your IP address is catalogued as spam generator or is listed on black lists. I’ve to fight against this in 4 times and it’s a really hard thing.

¿My IP address is blacklisted?

We use to start to suspect about this when our mails  are bounced o get messages answeers like “Rejected”, “Mail delivery failure” or the mails we send to other people arrive directly to bulk folder. So, we have to check the blacklist.  There are a lot of sites and tools to do that, I suggest this site: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

When you insert your public IP address or the IP of the connection where are you connected, this service is going to check in several black list for a  register or something that list the IP given as IP on black lists. If we get all in green where clean. But when we get one or more registers in red, the hard work starts. It means that IP address is blacklisted, this will affect our mail service deliver (Look at this for an example of black listed IP address  http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3a190.27.231.130). It’s necesary to enter to the blacklist site and ask for a removal. You can fill a form, you can send a mail and the cleaning process will take from 2-48 hours. But there are some others services that take more time or ask for some money to clean your IP or do it express. Always check for a form, fill it and wait for a faster answeer.

Here an important thing. I have identify some other way that your mails can be bounced or banned thanks to black list. When you use Pop3 or Pop3s and SMTP service to send mails (using a mail client like Thunderbird, Outlook, Evolution, etc) according to the server configuration, the headers of the send mail use the IP address where are you connected, so if this is blacklisted this can be a reason why your mails aren’t delivered. So, the suggestion is search our home or work IP address and for example check if this is clean.

¿Why happend this?

• The mail server it’s accepting conections using not secure ports or there aren’t security controls with the outcoming mails.
• There is one or more PC in our network inside a Botnet and it’s being used to generate and send spam.
• Malware inside the PC and servers and it’s used to send spam and we have no idea about it.
• Irresponsible use of email marketing software like ccmail, sendblaster and other software to send mail.

Well, the next post is going to be about how to avoid Hotmail and Yahoo ban.

Be on Campus Party is a great experience, but the experience goes beyond the high speed internet channel or play games for several hours. This is my third year and I want to share some advices and things to sugest to you, to do on Campus Party and have a real party. This experience have been shared with Ruri Himura, my dear girl.

You can do a lot of things, you’re not alone, you can share with a lot of people, just break the geek and start to have fun. So, here some activities to do:

• Go to the presentations and tutorials, this could be very useful to you to increase your technology knowledge and have more tools and ideas to apply on your work.
• Do hacklabs, technical nights. This is te time to do all the things you have ever wanted but you can’t because there is always a excuse. Take ventage of the technological fever and do real cool stuff and activities. Don’t be hours and hours the same things yo do at home every night, really have fun.
• Be a Blogger, take photos, videos, meet people, interview people, and more.
• Share time and activities with people of other areas, like developers, gamers, astronomy, graphical designers. That’s the way you can stablish contacts and of course new friendship
• Participate in contest and tournaments, maybe some prize could be yours
• The party it’s made by yourself, so, don’t be bored and have fun

¿What I planned to do?

• Hack my old iphone and install Android on it
• Setup a Wargame about Operative systems and apps with some friends
• Give with Ruri Himura a great conference about information security and IT management.
• share with friends , bloggers, gamers, developers and security people activities, ideas and more.
• Release Software Freedom Day Bogotá 2010 with streaming for outside
• Share and get certification and study resources
• And of course, have fun

¿Y tu que vas a hacer?

OpenApps Febe 2.7

En su edición 2.7 llega OpenApps Febe. Una recopilación de aplicaciones libres para ser ejecutadas en sistemas operativos Microsoft Windows. Esta edición incluye 36 aplicaciones para uso en diferentes escenarios: Educación, Ofimática, Infantil, Internet, Diseño gráfico, Desarrollo, Utilidades y por supuesto, Multimedia. Con una sección especial dedicada al FLISoL 2010, este disco busca ser una herramienta para obsequiar a los asistentes al evento y claro, no sólo para el evento sino para todos. Para más información del disco ingrese aquí

Por sexto año llega el Festival de Instalación de Software Libre a la ciudad de Bogotá. Un nuevo espacio da la oportunidad para albergar más y más personas que desean conocer acerca de las tecnologías libres, de la cultura libre, del conocimiento de tipo abierto.

Las instalaciones del Instituto De Recreación y el Deporte (IDRD), abrirá sus puertas el próximo 24 de Abril entre las 8am y 7pm para una nueva edición de la fiesta de tecnología más grande del mundo.

Conferencias, talleres, exposiciones, actividades para niños y adultos y por supuesto, una gran jornada de instalación de Software Libre (sistemas operativos, aplicaciones y más), darán cita a todo aquel que desee conocer un poco más de estas tecnologías cada vez más fuertes e importantes en la actualidad.

Trae tu máquina, trae tu familia, trae a tus amigos, este gran evento está abierto para todo público y ofrecerá diversión, aprendizaje y alegría a todos.

Web: http://bogota.flisol.info

Inscripción a talleres: http://flisol.info/ColombiaBogota/2010/TalleresInformaticos

Inscripción de equipos: http://www.aclibre.org/registro.html

Conferencias: http://flisol.info/ColombiaBogota/2010/Conferencias

También estamos en facebook (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=287415192070) y Twitter (flisol_bogota)

Have been some years using Google platforms: Mail, Documents, Storage, News and also social networks. Today almost 60% of the people use Gmail or Google Apps as mail server. But all that glitter is not gold. A lot of technology experts thinks about the mega growth of Google as a potencial danger. They are creating a technological dependence, this can create a situation related with the best years of Microsoft, asociated to this appear terms like Monopoly, goverment manipulation and more. A few days ago, a Germany minister talks about the dangerous growth of this corporation and de power gained thanks to the informatacion and data manipulation.

I’m user of google and some services, therefore I always have been aware. So much information in their hands is dangerous because as happend in George Orwell novel “1984″, the information can be changed according to the situation. This weeks after China hack to Google,  some people have make a question, Google Friend or foe?

Now, they released the web browser, the smartphone, and the operative system is comming (far away for countries with slow networks). It’s time to thinks about the future and decide how much info we are going to give to them, and remember, the information is power.

Endian Firewall

Almost 2 years ago,  Juan Baptiste talk to me about an open source software called Endian Firewall. This software it’s a Linux distribution created for security and  networking management using it like an appliance.

I decide to use it on a “home server”, everything was perfect, but unfortunately I couldn’t  use all his available features.  I was using Endian 2.2rc1. Important, Endian it’s a Linux From The Scratch, this increase security because isn’t a fork or modified version of another Linux.

In my previous job I have two servers running Endian Firewall 2.2. Throught them I managed firewall, port forwarding, proxy, content filtering, NTP server, Snort, Ntop and OpenVPN, my favorite one . But, some day  Ruri told me about Dansguardian and it’s group management, so we check and Endian support it but any change made on command line get lost because the web interface isn`t support them.

Today, in my new job and related with other stuff I’m learning, one question appear in my head: What about autentication using LDAP instead IP address on my proxy?, Well Endian, until 2.2 don’t have this option, but, today yes

Endian Firewall development team have release a new shiny version which includes:

-Automatic backups

- Alert and Warnings mail to your sysadmin

- Autentication throught  LDAP (AD, OpenLDAP, etc) for the proxy Sweet

- QoS Module (Quality of Service, priority and all that useful stuffs)

- Groups on Dansguardian management

-  HotSpots module

So, I invite you to try it. More info here

Well, Software Freedom Day 2009 is here. A new year for this great event arround the Open Source Software, Free Software, Open Culture and Freedom philosophy. This is my second year on organization team and this year everything shows that is going to be a really big day in Bogotá because we have a lot of activities and things to show, teach, learn and share

Los Libertadores Fundación Universitaria is going to be this year seat. He hope 2009 be a year with more people than 2008. We hope give a path to continue FLISoL and open the doors to Semana Linux Universidad Distrital and JSL.

On September 19th, starting at 8:30am until 4:00pm there going to be conferences, tutorials, expo and also some culture spectacle. More info available here

Final day in Campus Party 2009 was a good day for a lot of activities. We start with Rurihimura’s Speech “Be creative and professional designing with open source software”. Was a excelent tutorial and all asistants work with entusiasm and the resultant was good. Here a gallery of tutorial photographs.

Later, after lunch, were contest price ceremony, unfortunately we didn’t win, but we have fun. The rest of the day we stay downlading stuffs, sharing information, sharing time with pals and friends, playing a little soccer match and of course, saying a “See you soon”. Here some photos of modding contestand Some funny stuffs