Basecamp 2 RSS Feed and Slack Integration

Abstract

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate how Basecamp updates can be automatically pulled into a Slack channel.

Pre-reqs

Before going any further, the following assumptions must be satisfied.

1. IFTTT must be integrated into your Slack team.
2. The Slack channel that will receive the Basecamp updates must be a public Slack channel.

Identify the Problem

Slack and Basecamp are both awesome tools in their own right, and both have a distinct purpose for successful project execution. Slack is great for real time troubleshooting and communication when a conference call is not necessary. Whereas Basecamp is great for task management and big picture tracking. What I have found while using both tools independently is that Basecamp can quickly be forgotten in favor of strictly Slack and email communication. This is typically a non-issue for small projects with very few moving parts, but as projects become larger with more teams involved it becomes even more important to keep track of tasks independently through Basecamp. To keep everyone on track and focused on their respective tasks the two tools need to be merged.

Fix the Problem

The solution to this problem is to pull Basecamp updates into Slack by using IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/). Basecamp 2 supports RSS feeds that are automatically updated when something new happens within a Basecamp project. See the link below for details.

https://basecamp.com/help/2/guides/projects/progress#rss-feeds

IFTTT can be used to pull updates from RSS feeds and post new updates into Basecamp. The link below will take you right to the If This portion of the IFTTT applet.

https://ifttt.com/create/if-new-feed-item?sid=3

Now here is where authentication comes into play and things are a bit trickier as the following links from StackOverflow will articulate.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2100979/how-to-authenticate-an-rss-feed

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/920003/is-it-possible-to-use-authentication-in-rss-feeds-using-php

A lot of RSS feeds are accessed via an unauthenticated means. However, Basecamp (thankfully) protects project RSS feeds so that not just anybody can view your project details. To authenticate against an RSS feed, the URL must be constructed in the following manner.

https://username:password@basecamp.com//projects/.atom

The  and  pieces of the above URL will be specific to your specific Basecamp identifiers. The username and password will be your username and password that you can use to access Basecamp. Since this is a URL that is used to access the RSS feed, then your username may need to be modified. I'll use the following email as an example.

zergrush@allyourbase.com

The ampersand (@) must be URL encoded when used for the RSS feed. The following is example of a properly constructed Basecamp URL.

https://zergrush%40allyourbase.com:password1234@basecamp.com/9999999/projects/99999999.atom

You can validate that the URL should work by copy/pasting it in your browser. If you do not see an RSS feed, then check to make sure that any other special characters in your username or password are encoded properly. Below is my favorite site for URL encoding and decoding.

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/

If IFTTT accepts the RSS feed URL, then  congrats! The hard part is over. You can then select Slack for the Then That action and use the Post to Channel option. One thing to note, is that the Slack channel must be a public channel for this integration to work. You can also customize how the RSS message is sent to Slack within the IFTTT settings. That's all there is to it. Test by doing anything on the Basecamp project associated with the RSS feed you configured, and then Slack should reflect the update in about 5 - 10 min. I hope anyone reading has found this article beneficial. Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions! Thanks, Brooks

How to use Mitmproxy and Ettercap together on OS X El Capitan

Abstract.

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance on how to configure both of the tools mitmproxy and ettercap to work together to monitor mobile application traffic. This document is intended for educational purposes. Using the techniques here with malicious intent may result in criminal consequences. Before going any further, I want to  point out one of the better quotes that I have seen in a man file :-). Below can be found in the man file of ettercap.

"Programming  today  is  a  race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

Install ettercap

Homebrew is amazing. Ettercap is as easy to install as issuing the following command.

brew install ettercap

Install mitmproxy

The docs for mitmproxy are fairly straightforward. Mitmproxy is a python package that runs on Python 2.7. The link below has the official documentation. http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/latest/install.html#installation-on-mac-os-x

Configure Port Forwarding

First enable IP forwarding. This is outlined in the transparent proxy guide in the following link,. http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/latest/transparent/osx.html.

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

Brian John does an excellent job explaining the new port configuration that needs to occur for OS X Mountain Lion. See the link below for his guide. http://blog.brianjohn.com/forwarding-ports-in-os-x-el-capitan.html I will go through the steps necessary for mitmproxy to work as expected based on the information that Brian John provided.

Create the anchor file.

/etc/pf.anchors/mitm.pf

Add the following lines to the anchor file, mitm.pf.

rdr pass on en0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080

rdr pass on en0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 443 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080

Create the pfctl config file.

/etc/pf-mitm.conf

Add the following lines to the pfctl config file.

rdr-anchor "forwarding" load anchor "forwarding" from "/etc/pf.anchors/mitm.pf"

Enable or Disable Port Forwarding.

To activate or deactivate port forwarding, use one of the following commands.

Enable.

sudo pfctl -ef /etc/pf-mitm.conf

Disable.

sudo pfctl -df /etc/pf-mitm.conf

Combining the tools.

Now that port forwarding is now configured, fire up mitmproxy with the following command.

python2.7 mitmproxy -T --host

mitmproxy will by default listen for incoming HTTP and HTTPS traffic on the proxy port 8080. Next, use the following command to start ARP spoofing the target device.

sudo ettercap -T -M arp:remote ///80,443/ ////

The final command should look something like the following.

sudo ettercap -T -M arp:remote /192.168.0.1//80,443/ /192.168.1.54///

You will need to trust the mitmproxy CA if you would like to inspect HTTPS traffic. The steps for this configuration can be found in the following link, http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/latest/certinstall.html.   Once mitmproxy and ettercap are both running, then you should be start seeing network traffic from your mobile device on your OS X device. Good Luck with inspecting traffic! Let us know in the comments below if you have any questions or feedback on this article. Brooks  

No Private Key, No Problem. How to Decrypt SSL/TLS traffic with Session Keys.

The purpose of the paper is to provide a guide on how to decrypt SSL/TLS traffic without a private key.

There are many times when IT admins need to utilize a packet inspection such as Wireshark. When the application data is encrypted however, troubleshooting application data becomes more of a challenge. The easiest way to decrypt data is to use the private key for the corresponding public key. Wireshark provides another means for decrypting data as well by using the pre-master secret. I will not dive into the intricacies of why this can be used to decrypt data because that part of cryptology is an entirely separate topic. For an in-depth explanation see http://www.moserware.com/2009/06/first-few-milliseconds-of-https.html. Now let’s dive in.

Step 1.

The first thing you will need to do is configure an environment variable (Windows 7). Right click on My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced System Settings. In the Advanced Tab click Environment Variables.

 

Step 2.

Under the System variables, click New. You will add the System variable SSLKEYLOGFILE. Create a path from the variable ending with premaster.txt. See the image below for more details.

Step 3.

Once this is set, we will point Wireshark to the premaster file by navigating to Edit –> Preferences –> Protocols –>SSL(Pre)-Master-Secret log filename. Click browse and select the premaster.txt file we created earlier. You will need to generate some encrypted traffic via Firefox or Chrome before the file will show up. Internet Explorer will not work for decrypting data using this method.

 

Step 4.

Any new network traces taken through Wireshark while navigating SSL/TLS encrypted sites that leverage a premaster secret and RSA will now be decrypted. A trace can also be taken from a NetScaler appliance, and then decrypted for a specific client utilizing the SSLKEYLOGFILE Environment Variable. For information on sharing a trace without distributing a private key, please see http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX135889.

I’d like to give special credit to the author of the article below for inspiring this article.

http://www.root9.net/2012/11/ssl-decryption-with-wireshark-private.html

Happy Decrypting!

BC

Resilient Storefront Optimal Gateway Routing with GSLB

Pre-Requisites Before reading further, if you don’t know what StoreFront Optimal Gateway Routing (OGR) is, STOP and check out:

• eDocs (http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/dws-storefront-26/dws-configure-ha-optimal.html)
• Sarah Stienhoff’s blogs (http://blogs.citrix.com/2014/10/13/storefront-multi-site-settings-some-examples/ and http://blogs.citrix.com/2014/10/15/gateway-integration-with-storefront-lessons-learned/).

If you need a refresher on DNS or NetScaler GSLB, then STOP and review eDocs and relevant CTX article and resources. For information on NetScaler GSLB, see the links below:

• DNS and GSLB Primer http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX122619
• Citrix NetScaler Global Server Load Balancing Primer: Theory and Implementationhttp://support.citrix.com/article/CTX123976

And if you want to see how DNS works in your own environment, then check out one of my favorite ways to tools to troubleshoot and learn about DNS with http://digwebinterface.com/. Try resolving your own site with the “trace” option checked and unchecked. Abstract The purpose of this blog is provide an overview on how GSLB can be used to provide a redundant solution with StoreFront Optimal Gateway Routing (OGR). A few questions will be answered in this blog for a multi-datacenter design.

1. How can we use a single URL for external access?
2. How can we send users to specific datacenter where users’ unique data or backend application dependencies reside?
3. How can we deploy a resilient solution to protect against a datacenter outage?

Let’s get into it Acme is our example customer. Acme has three (3) datacenters, NY, LA, and Atlanta (ATL). User’s on the East coast have non-persistent desktops, but have their roaming profile on a file server at NY. User’s on the West coast have non-persistent desktops, but have their roaming profile on a file server at LA. All users have access to a unique application that has backend requirements at the ATL datacenter. So the answer to question number one is fairly straight forward. Use GSLB with NetScaler Gateway. The common external FQDN can be “access.acme.com”. Three (3) NetScaler Gateway VIPs will reside at each datacenter and will be included in the GSLB configuration. If we didn’t care where we sent users, then we could stop here. However, with the scenario outlined above, we want to avoid scenario where a NY user (user data is in NY) launches a desktop that is proxied by the LA Datacenter. This user would then have their Citrix session go from client’s locations –> LA NetScaler Gateway –> NY datacenter, which is certainly not the optimal route. More importantly this routing will utilize precious private site-to-site bandwidth and could be detrimental to a user’s experience. This is where OGR comes into play. Let’s answer question #2. How can we send users to a specific datacenter where their unique data or backend application dependencies reside? We want to use site prefixes to make each site unique. For those of you already thinking ahead, yes, a SAN certificate is required for this solution. Below are the prefixes we will use for the example:

• NY NetScaler Gateway VIP = ny.access.acme.com
• LA NetScaler Gateway VIP = la.access.acme.com
• ATL NetScaler Gateway VIP = atl.access.acme.com

With OGR and under normal work conditions we can direct users accessing a XD Site at NY will be proxied by the NY NSG (ny.access.acme.com), users accessing a XD Site at LA will be proxied by the LA NSG (la.access.acme.com), and users accessing the unique application (AutoCAD) will be proxied by the ATL NSG (atl.access.acme.com). With this solution, users are able to authenticate at any site and launch applications that will utilize the public WAN to cross the nation, instead of using potentially costly MPLS connections. How are users able to authenticate at NY, but still able to launch apps from ATL? Using STAs of course! All NetScaler appliances in the environment will need to be able to communicate with all of the same STAs. For information on STAs, please see: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX101997. With this configuration, authentication and application enumeration are separate events from application launch. It is key to understand that fact. Authentication can occur anywhere, but application launch is more granularly specified with unique site prefixes and OGR. So let’s answer question # 3 and add some resiliency. How can we deploy a resilient solution to protect against a datacenter internet outage? What happens when a construction company’s backhoe accidently severs Acme’s internet POP in LA while laying down city infrastructure, but Acme’s MPLS connection remains intact? A unique GSLB vServer exists for each of the site unique prefixes. A separate GSLB vServer also exists for “access.acme.com”. Configuring the “access.acme.com” vServer as a backup vServer for all of the GSLB vServers with the site prefix will protect the individual and unique FQDNs against a datacenter failure. For example, when the LA datacenter’s internet connection is broken, the NetScaler appliances at NY and ATL will recognize an outage via either MEP or explicit health monitors. Users are then sent to the available NY and ATL NSG when resolving “la.access.acme.com” and “access.acme.com”. Users can then be proxied through the internal MPLS via the available sites. If the MPLS (or other private site to site connection) went down, then StoreFront can be configured with DR (http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/dws-storefront-26/dws-configure-ha-lb.html), but we will save that talk for another day ;-). I have included some diagrams to help clarify things. A key things to keep in mind is that authentication and application launch are two completely separate events and workflow. The diagram below is for the authentication and application enumeration workflow.     The diagram below illustrates the application launch workflow. The thick lines represent normal working conditions. The dotted lines represent the backup workflow in the event that site is experiencing an outage.     Thank you for reading. I hope you found this beneficial. Please let me know if you have questions in the comments below. BC