This video shows a preview of RFID authentication with SecurePass. SecurePass is a service that allows easy strong authentication in your web applications, VPN, DMZ servers and all your internet services. We are integrating RFID tags to act as a username, so that the user can just swipe the card into a reader and provide only OTP+PIN to authenticate him/herself. We are not bound to a given RFID tag, but we are adopting open standards and the tag can be into a card or just a label in your mobile phone. If you already have a travel card, such as the one used in this video, or another MIFARE RFID/NFC capable card, just re-use that. Just to give another hint, ePassport are RFID compliant, therefore you will be able to integrate user authentication using passports in the long run.

The wonderful thing is that the effort to enable RFID in your application is ZERO! Yes, Z-E-R-O effort!! We are able to automatically detect RFID when comes in the form of username and translating the RFID tag to your username on-the-fly. And that will come part of SecurePass account at no additional costs. This is the philosophy of SecurePass: acting as a broker from any strong authenticatication technologies to simple to integrate protocols such as LDAP, RADIUS and web APIs.

The use of RFIDs opens up a world of new possibilities, for example physical access security or kiosk based authentication.

If your are interested in trying SecurePass, open your free account on http://www.secure-pass.net/open and get 5 users for free …. forever!

Discover how easy is integrating SecurePass into your environment. Most of your network equiment, like VPN devices, operating systems can work with SecurePass in a matter of minutes. Your Enterprise and web applications will integrate in less than a day. Check it out integration examples on http://www.secure-pass.net/wiki/index.php/Help:Contents

Non sono mai riuscito a trovare la ricetta ufficiale, ne’ a sapere come i “panellari” riescono a dare la tipica forma alle panelle. Questa ricetta e’ frutto della mia esperienza in vari tentativi. Allora, diciamo che dividiamo la ricetta in tre fasi.

Fase 1: preparazione dell’impasto delle Panelle

Ingredienti:

• 250g di farina di ceci
• 1lt di acqua
• sale e pepe

Avrete bisogno di una ciotola, di una frusta da cucina, di una pentola e una forma da plum cake. La forma di plum cake non deve essere troppo larga, diciamo tra gli 8cm e i 10cm, altrimenti la fetta non viene della forma giusta.
NOTA BENE: fate questa operazione PRIMA di qualsiasi altra cosa, perche’ la farina di ceci tende a raffreddare velocemente e -a meno di avere un aiutante- non avrete tempo dopo. Cospargete la forma di plum cake di olio di oliva e tenetela a portata di mano.
Mettete la farina in una ciotola e piano piano aggiungete l’acqua e iniziate a mescolare con la frusta. Durante questa fase, fate in modo che non si formino grumi. Riversate il composto nella pentola e cominciate a farla cuocere a fuoco medio/basso mentre continuate a mescolarla con la frusta. Aggiungete sale e pepe (se desiderate). Alcuni mettono il prezzemolo tagliato finemente, ma io odio il prezzemolo. Praticamente risultera’ una “polentina” di farina di ceci. Quando e’ pronta, riversate immediatamente il contenuto nella forma di plum cake, livellando la “polentina”: state bene attenti perche’ si raffreddera’ velocemente. Coprite con della pellicola e lasciate riposare per circa 24 ore.

Fase 2: preparazione del pane “mafalda”

Ingredienti:

• 350 gr di farina di grano duro
• 150 gr di farina 00
• 300-400 gr di acqua
• 20 gr di lievito di birra
• 2 cucchiaini di sale
• 2 cucchiai di olio d’oliva
• 1 cucchiaino di miele
• semi di sesamo

Far sciogliere il lievito in una parte d’acqua. Versare nell’impastatrice le farine,l’olio,il miele e il lievito pian piano. Aggiungere la restante acqua ed infine il sale. Far andare per 10 min.Rovesciare sul tagliere e battere la pasta per alcuni minuti.Mettere in una ciotola unta d’olio e far lievitare 1 ora.
Lavorarlo nuovamente e fare due palle. Formare due filoni, fare una serpentina,arrivare fino alla fine e sollevare l’ultimo tratto, passare sulla serpentina stessa e fissare l’estremità. Pennellare con acqua e spargere sopra i semi di sesamo.
Disporli in teglia e far lievitare per 1 ora e mezzo.Infornare a 210° per 15 minuti, poi abbassare la temperatura a 190-200° per altri 10 min. Infine appoggiare il pane sulla griglia e far cuocere ancora una quindicina di minuti

Fase 3: frittura delle panelle

Passate 24 ore, la polentina di ceci si sara’ solidificata. Girate la forma di plum cake al contrario e fate scivolare delicatamente il composto su di un tagliere. Con una lama ben affilata, tagliatele in fette di 3-4mm e appoggiatele delicatamente su di uno strofinaccio, in modo da far assorbire l’umidita’.

Mettete sul fuoco 2-3lt circa di olio di semi di girasole in una pentola per fritti. Prima di iniziare a friggere, aspettate che l’olio di semi sia ben caldo….  cominciate a friggere le panelle e fate in modo che abbiano la classica doratura. Le panelle sono da mangiare calde, quindi tagliate il panino e mettete almeno due strati di panelle dentro. Mettete sale e pepe. Alcuni mettono anche il limone.

Alcuni “golosoni” come me possono friggere anche delle crocchette di patate, in modo da fare la tradizionale “pane, panelle e crocche’”.

Il risultato finale e’ nella foto …. Buon appetito!

But the world of IT has changed, and this is a fact. Laptops first, netbooks and consumer devices later (iphone/ipad in primis) impacted also the traditional corporate environment, that is more and more roaming; the concept of office itself is now just a place where you can get Internet access and meet with colleagues.
Large companies will surely benefit from this change, but I think that the small and medium companies can benefit more, especially on cost saving of workplaces and IT itself: IT for them is just a cost and nothing more.

In this market segment, there’s still a need for a secure corporate intranet with the need to exchange private information and files. Collaborative places, such as wikis, are perfect solutions to quickly achieve this goal without spending a fortune. I found TikiWiki (http://www.tiki.org/) to suit best in these environments: while extremely easy to use for an end-user through WYSYWIG editor, the complex permission system allow you to set each page access or even show/hide part of the page to a given group of users, which is unique if compared to other solutions.

Choose a web hosting platform you trust is something core, because you don’t want your data to be stolen. But there’s also another key part to take into consideration, i.e. user access: you don’t want your identity to be stolen by someone else and access your confidential data. One Time Passwords are the perfect solutions, but are very costly for small and medium business; also OTPs need additional funding to set-up and maintain the whole environment, which can be huge cost for SMBs. SecurePass is an on-line solution that is both easy to setup and less expensive than traditional OTP architecture. SecurePass is a identity management system on the cloud and provided as a SaaS (Software as a Service), and therefore perfect to be adopted for these kind of applications and business.

The implementation was extremely fast and easy, so i decided to make this essential how-to to explain how it works.

We will use SecurePass’ CAS interface; although LDAP and PAM can be used to integrate with SecurePass, CAS will allow us to have a single sign-on experience through all our web applications.

1) If you don’t own already an account with SecurePass, open a free account by registering on-line:

http://www.secure-pass.net/open

use “misec2011” as a promo code, this will entitle you to 10 users for 2 years for free.

2) Install and configure a web server with PHP and required extensions for TikiWiki, more information on the pre-requisites on the following web site http://doc.tiki.org/Installation

3) Download the TikiWiki package from http://info.tiki.org/Download and install following the above “Installation” documentation as specified above. This article have been written when current release is 8.2

4) Once installed and logged in via the “admin” Let’s activate CAS authentication. From Admin home, select “Log In”. Then, in “General Preferences” tab, set Authentication method to “CAS (Central Authentication Service)” as for Figure “tikiwiki – general prefs.png”.

In the “CAS” tab, as for figure “tikiwiki – cas.png”, check the following options on:

• Create user if not in Tiki
• Use Tiki authentication for admin login
• Show Alternate Login Method in Header
• Force CAS log-out when the user logs out from Tiki

Then specify the following CAS parameters:

• CAS server version: 1.0
• CAS Server Name: login.secure-pass.net
• CAS server port: 443
• CAS Server Path: /cas

To apply changes, click on “Change Preferences”

Basically, this is all you need to set-up the whole environment. Easy, isn’t it? However, SecurePass’ CAS interface allows you to authenticate all SecurePass valid users, including those not belonging to our organization. As such, we have two options here:

1. limit access to each wiki page by the group who have rights. This is perfect if you want to use the same site also as an extranet, allowing external entities (such as partners) to share information with you
2. limit the access in the code and have the peace of mind that you don’t have to remember each time who can access your wiki pages. This option can be used only if the wiki is used internally and you know that your users are not really security conscious.

In order to implement option 2), we have to slightly modify the code to allow our SecurePass domain/realm into tikiwiki. Modify the library file “lib/userslib.php” at around line 470:

                       // if the user wasn't authenticated through CAS, just fail
                        elseif (!$userCAS) {
                                return array(false, $user, $result);
                        }

                        // --- BEGIN MODIFICATION ---
                        // If user is authenticated, but not belong to us, fails
                        elseif ( $userCAS && !preg_match("/(.*)@mycompany.com$/", $user) ) {
                                return array(false, $user, $result);
                        }
                        // --- END MODIFICATION ---

                        // if the user was authenticated by CAS but not found in Tiki
                        elseif ($userCAS && !$userTikiPresent) {

In the above example, we will allow access to all those users that belong to realm/domain “mycompany.com”. Adjust this code to your SecurePass domain.

You are now ready to log in to your Intranet using the combination user and OTP Password, by simply browsing to your web site and click on “Login through CAS”.

OTP app for android and iPhone.

SecurePass is flexible for SMB, as OTP can be provided by a physical token or, like in this case, by the dedicated Android app, iPhone app or even BlackBerry without any additional cost. Check out the help page below:

• SecurePass for Android
• SecurePass for iPhone
• SecurePass for BlackBerry

Please, be aware that the slides are in italian. Download them here.

1. scalable enough to serve small businesses to large European carriers and ISPs
2. be channelled also through partners who can sell the service with their own product/brand
3. ensure high availability, maximum security and confidentiality of data
4. easy to integrate in customers’ environment
5. easy to use and to interact

The creation of an innovative service -combined with business needs- has had multiple impacts on the technological implementation: in fact there is no commercial or open source software capable of addressing the features that the service implements. This talk explores the challenges presented and how they were resolved.

Register yourself for a free ticket at SMAU at the following address: www.smau.it/invite/giuseppepaterno

SecurePass web site is www.secure-pass.net

Well, I started with perl something like 20 years ago and I found Ruby very similar to the perl approach in programming: I mean, I got the impression that it is flexible to write. I then learned rails over ruby and I felt confortable with it. I’m a lazy programmer and having a framework that do everything almost itself was great. A CRUD interface could be easily build with a “scaffold” and the validations are done on the model class. AJAX is easy to plug-in as well with few lines of code.

For a separate project, I had to learn python. What I admire the most about python is that when you look back at your sources, no matter if it was two days or two years ago, you can read it and feel confortable with it as if has passed only few hours. My impression is that is way faster than ruby at execution time and made python my choice to create a system network daemon. As I wrote the core APIs in python, it was natural that I had to write the admin web interface in python. And it was harder than expected: nothing impossible, but it reminded me the old days when everybody needs to code each single CGI page.

Django sounds promising and it does most of the things itself … but limited to the admin interface panel. If you want to do a CRUD as an application, well I have to do everything myself.

So in one side I got python: neat programming, lots of (stable) modules, fast to execute but IMHO poor web framework support.

On the other end Ruby: few modules available and most of them are unstable, code not always easy to read, but great Rails framework that let you code your web application in few hours (or even minutes).

Still I could not make my mind about Ruby and Python.

DISCLAIMER: this is not an official Canonical porting, it’s just my own effort to run this tablet.

1. Before installing Windows, make sure you create a small extra partition, let’s say 10GB to be safe
2. Install your Windows (XP/Vista/seven/…), drivers, windows patches, applications and whatever is needed for your friend(s)
3. Format the second partition as FAT32 (VFAT) and label it, say for example RECOVERY
4. Make sure the installation is clean, the drive is defragmented and … empty the Trash!
5. Download grub4dos and place it in a convenient directory, say C:\GRUB4DOS
6. Copy file grldr into the root of the boot disk, es: C:\grldr
7. Unhide the C:\boot.ini and modify it by adding a line such as: C:\grldr=”Recovery procedure”
8. Download Clonezilla Live for hard disk: basically it’s a zip file that has to be uncompressed into the root of the recovery partition as is
9. Create a “menu.lst” file in the C:\ partition and populate as suggested at point five of the clonezilla how-to. Be aware of that configuration is buggy and rename vmlinuz1 and initrd1.img with vmlinuz and initrd.img that are held in the /live directory of the recovery partition.

Once you select the “recovery procedure” menu at boot time, the Windows bootloader will chainload grub4dos that will load the kernel and the initrd of Clonezilla. As such, you will have a full functional Clonezilla Live from the recovery partition. At this stage, through the Clonezilla menu, you will be able to dump and recover the partition. Use the local_dev and mount the recovery partition to hold the actual image.

Enjoy