September 11th, 2009
Green Nectar
The "new drink" in Uganda. Sweet green bottled nectar. My blood flows again.
The "new drink" in Uganda. Sweet green bottled nectar. My blood flows again.
Airdrop-ng A python based wireless deauth tool supporting a full rule base and kicks based on OUI.
After enjoying MDK3 but finding it way to blunt for many uses I decided to write my own python deauth tool using lorcon.
The advantage to airdrop-ng is the rule parser. It is smart enough to know that if you wish to allow a client on an AP but want to kick the others not to send a broadcast packet. This allows airdrop to act as a wifi nuke but also as a scalpel for very targeted work.
Another fun feature is the kick based on OUI. Using OUI lookups its possible to kick on device type. So say if you wanted to ensure that no Macs in the area have access to wifi while all other devices work fine. It really is quite fun.
Sadly this tool has not gotten as much testing as I would have liked so if you do manage to blow it up please double check your rules and make sure they are to the format of the example config file. Also ensure that you have read the readme. If those two items fail to clear up your issue email me the airodump csv file and the rule config file you are using and I will do my best to clear up the issue for you. I can be reached at thex1le a t gmail DOT com.
This tool will most likely be working its way into the aircrack-ng suite at a later date.
The code can be downloaded here
!!!!! UPDATE
I found two serious bugs and have sinced fixed them. One was that if you tired to just kick a single client off an ap all clients would be kicked. The second was that if you had a rule for a client airodump couldnt see or just did not exist the program would die. Both have been fixed. Please use this new link
http://seattleit.net/airdrop-ng-9-22-1730.tar.bz2
Special thanks to SWC666 and http://seattleit.net/ for hosting the code base.
After a solid year of trying to figure out a way to get gear to Africa, I’m excited to say we finally have a shipping process ironed out! That means that your excess gear can be re-used here in Africa in our training centers to help some of the world’s most desperate people learn skills to lift them out of poverty.
We’ve already gotten two large shipments already, but our window of opportunity is closing really fast. In January 2010, a moratorium is being placed on all used equipment coming into Uganda. We only have a few short months to get gear over here, so I’m asking for your help.
The classrooms we build cost between $225 and $300 per student depending on the monitor options we use. This is a five-headed CPU (five monitors, keyboards, mice and remote desktop sessions on one PC) running Windows XP, built almost entirely out of locally purchased equipment which I can not import for less. This is a decent price, considering that we’re installing new, locally serviceable, waranteed equipment, but we need to offer a solution to schools and charities that can not afford this price tag. That’s where used equipment comes in.
We installed used, donated, P4 laptops in our latest school. After cargo shipping, handling, taxes, accessories, power, etc our price per student dropped to JUST UNDER $50!
Here’s what we REALLY need:
And some other things we’d like to have:
So consider helping us out. Your used gear can go a long way! Send me an email (johnny .at. hackersforcharity .dot. org) with what you have, and I’ll let you know what we’re interested in. I’ll supply a US mailing address for our shipping team and ask that you pay shipping to that address.
Spread the word, and thanks for your continued support! These shipments have really breathed new life into our work in Africa!
Johnny
I want to build more computer labs in schools and ultimately an HFC technical community center. Just like a traditional community center in the states, the HFC center will provide a complete modern computing center for those that wouldn’t normally be able to afford access to technology. We plan to offer a reading room stocked with tech books, workbenches for computer repair, training courses (CBT’s, DVD’s), a computer lab for general use and training and of course a killer Internet connection. The idea is to provide a place that many schools could share (reducing the need for multiple, redundant classrooms in one geographical area) and that the community could use to learn computer skills necessary to get a good job and break the vicious cycle of poverty.
This of course takes a lot of money, but thanks in no small part to Dean and Keith for their donations and Chris at Navis Shipping, we now realize that in some cases, money is better spent on shipping used equipment than on buying new equipment here.
To that end, we’re going to start collecting used gear (list coming soon) and shipping it over here.
That’s where I’ll need some help. Chris is located in Greensboro, NC, and he has agreed to continue partnering with us for our shipping needs. What we need is a team to accept shipments of used gear somewhere near Greensboro. The team would need to accept incoming U.S. shipments, unpack the gear, inventory it, test it, assign a value (potential taxes) and take the “good stuff” to Chris, where he’ll send it to us. The remaining gear (impractical for us, 110v gear, etc) would need to be distributed to local charities that need it. This last bit may require a separate team.
It’s a tough gig, depending on how many donations we get, but we can streamline the process by asking for specific gear, and the benefit is huge–these shipments have breathed real life into our work here, and it’s making a HUGE difference in what we’re able to accomplish on a small budget.
If you’re interested, please see the forums here for the discussion or email me if you have any questions (johnny -at- ihackstuff -dot- com).
Thanks!
When Keith Parsons over at the Institute for Network Professionals (www.inpnet.org) emailed me asking if I’d be interested in a “bunch of Compaq M300 laptops” I was absolutely thrilled. Laptops here are WICKED expensive and even the “new” ones aren’t new. We have such a small budget as an organization that it’s nearly impossible for us to buy the equipment we need to outfit the schools and community centers we’re planning to stand up. Thirty laptops would go a REALLY long way, as long as they were capable of running XP (for the schools) or Linux (for the community center).
But I was skeptical of the whole thing. Not of Keith or the laptops, but of the shipping process. I liked the idea of 30 or so laptops showing up “on my doorstep” but the way was fraught with all sorts of variables and perils. First was the transport logistics: there was stateside shipping, then cargo shipping, then transport from the airport to our place. During any of these legs, the precious cargo could be damaged, stolen, pilfered, mugged, assaulted, absconded with or taunted. Then there were the fees. I know cargo shipping is expensive, but in addition to that there are import taxes (don’t know how that works) and handling fees (I know how that works thanks to our friend I affectionately call “Ronnieobert”, see http://www.hackersforcharity.org/344/the-eagle-has-landed/) and all the other mysterious fees that creep in. Would this shipment make it? Would it even be worth it after everything was paid? Was Keith just saying stuff or was he serious about testing, packing, shipping and everything else to even get it to our shipper? (I get lots of people saying lots of nice things, but then not much comes of it. I guess I have that kind of magnetic personality that makes people want to say nice things but never follow up. Either that or my SLOW email habits scare them away, or whatever, but I digress at least once every blog post.)
Chris Duke over at Navis Pack and Ship (http://www.gonavis.com) packed up our shipment, ran logistics and DONATED the shipping expenses so this shipment could get here.
And it did!
The shipment arrived at Entebbe,and we packed up the HFC truck and rolled out for the three-hour drive to Entebbe. We got in a fender bender (a taxi took off our bumper in town… an inevitability seeing how they drive… thank God it wasn’t worse) but we made good time.
Let me show you the result of a day’s labor:
See those GORGEOUS CASES? The black ones are honest to goodness Pelican cases!!! Super tough, padded, locking, wheeled Pelicans! And that blue case is some kind of rock band case. Super-tough padded, oh man… I must be a real geek, because I’m like giddy over the cases. Keith threw them in. But I didn’t open them at the airport, so I had no clue what was inside.
But at the airport I was met with a mountain of fees. The first was taxes, which we’ll eventually get waived. But because I didn’t know to tell Keith or Chris to write down the value of the used equipment, we were charged taxes on the peripherals, but not on the laptops, which are already tax exempt.
That’s right. Peripherals.
There’s peripherals in them cases! Are you ready for the money shot? Christmas in August in Africa. *drooool*
There’s enough wireless gear in here to give Roamer a chubby. Wireless cameras, hubs, routers, KVM’s, VOIP gear, training DVD’s, and a LEATHERMAN Skeletool CX. Remember that? See http://www.hackersforcharity.org/123/bike-leatherman This was so much more that 30 (very cool, working, clean, amazing) laptops. Keith went way overboard and launched our work over here in Uganda. We paid some money: $100 for taxes on peripherals, $45 cargo agent fee, $10 to the loaders, $20 to the guards at our rest stop, $100 in fuel, etc but the fees were minimal considering all we got in exchange.
Thank you Chris and Keith for your amazing support! I’m thrilled by your kindness and support! You’ve breathed life into our work here! THANK YOU!
P.S. We’re accepting more donations of used equipment, but the clock may be ticking for this luxury. The government has just passed a moratorium on used equipment. Beginning in January, 2010, all used equipment will be “heavily taxed”. I don’t know the details on this, and there may be loopholes… (educational equipment waived? Tax is based on value, can the declared value be lowered to lower taxes… finding items on ebay, company equipment at accounting end of life having LOW book value, etc?)
I’m waiting on Chris to see if he’s still willing to ship for us (if we pay him) and I’ll need a team of volunteers near Greensboro, NC to be the ship-to location and the staging team for shipments (including testing, prep, valuating, etc). Let me know if you’re interested!!!
Thanks everyone!
When we first started looking for a place to rent in Uganda, we looked in Jinja town because we wanted to be close to people (lots of Mzungu families around) and the shopping market. But one after another, the rental properties were pulled out from under us. We had several places that seemed OK, each one averaging $600-$700 a month but none of them worked out. Part of the problem was that all the Mzungus want to live in Jinja–the missionaries, the tourists and even the business people–and all of them were more than happy to shell out $700/month which is a good price for even an unfurnished place in Jinja.
Then our friend Sam mentioned a place in Njeru, a quiet area overlooking the Nile about 5km away from Jinja. He mentioned that it was “a bit small” but that “it was furnished” and was renting for about $750/month. He also mentioned that it was brand new, had a guesthouse and a very solid compound. Here are some of the pictures he sent us.
The pictures sealed the deal. The place looked great, even if it was $100 more than we planned on spending a month.We paid six months rent in advance, thankful that we found a house. The kids were excited and we were pretty excited too.
But I haven’t acted very excited about the house. I haven’t blogged about it and I haven’t posted any pictures. The fact is, I was too embarrassed by the place to post any pictures.
It was built by a group of Ugandans as an investment property, and it caught the eye of the Vice President of Salini, the huge construction company that’s building one of the dams on the Nile. The dam is the largest project for thousands of kilometers in every direction and this guy was a big dog in the company. He liked the place, and started furnishing it to his tastes for his family. Untold thousands of dollars later, he decided the work on the guesthouse was taking too long, so he bailed out of the property and stuck the Ugandans with the bill for the furniture.
It sat unrented for a year, because (in my opinion) it was way too overdone for local tastes. But because the rent was reasonable enough and it was in a nice laid back neighborhood, we jumped in and paid the requested six months in advance.
For a while, this place really bugged me to the point that I shopped around for another place. I thought about Bugembe, which is considered a slum by many Ugandans I talk to, but it’s where Sam and Nancy (family friends and founders of AOET) live and where we stayed during all of our short-term trips. Bugembe is where the magic happened.
Wanyama Road, Bugembe
That’s where we caught the bug to move here. It’s the place where throngs of children will swarm to greet you and it’s all but impossible to take even a short walk without five children escorting you, happy as a clam to be seen holding your hand.
But Bugembe is oppressive. The need is too close and the weight of the place can really only be taken in short doses. For us, it’s a place we frequent, but it’s not a place where it’s possible to decompress, it’s far too dangerous for our children, it’s impossible to control the mice and cockroaches and mosquitoes, and it’s certainly no place to stage thousands of dollars of computer gear. (Bugembe is where “dark road” happened). Besides, rent there isn’t cheap either. We heard of one place renting for $650 unfurnished, but it was tiny and vanished from the market almost instantly.
All this to say that we’ve signed a one-year contract on this place in Njeru. It’s become a home to us, and we like the tranquility, the cool breeze coming off the Nile, the comfortable compound and the guesthouse that’s given us the opportunity to help out guys like Dennis and Fred. I like that we have plenty of room to safely work on rather large projects (like Rehaboth Primary, Rehaboth Integrated High School, St. John’s) and thanks to Team Whitewolf, I realized the value of being able to work without worrying about gear getting stolen or fried by bad power or eaten by cockroaches.
So we’re stuck here, locked into this amazing place. It’s the kind of place that will help us when things get really tough here, and it really helps us decompress and recharge our batteries. It helps us be a family, and provides just the right kind of distance from the crushing need we’re trying to help alleviate.
It’s taken me three days to write this post. Not because it’s long winded (it is) but because every time I get into this post it sounds like too much justification from a guy that’s living off of support money from donors (subtle plug). It sounds like I’m trying to explain why we live so lavishly, but I’m over it. There are in fact lots of places much more lavish than this one, even in Jinja, and way too many places better than this in Kampala. I’m glad we aren’t paying $100 less a month to live in the slums because if we were, we’d already be gone.
So now I just laugh at the place. I laugh at our ridiculous living room:
I laugh at the GrandFather clock and the silly rich-looking (but veneer) black, gray and glass cabinets and tables. I laugh at the flat-screen TV, which is much nicer than the 27″ tube I have back home, except for the fact that it doesn’t work (bad power blew it out and the landlord can’t afford to fix it). Like the veneer furniture thoughout the house, this whole place is filled with things that look nice in pictures, but when you get really close you realize that it’s all fake. Still, Mr. Vice President spent a fortune on it all, because it looks rich, and I guess that’s what rich people need to do.
The green (!) leather chairs and couches are real though.
VP spent $4000US on the set. But like most of the furniture in the house, we’re looking to replace it with local stuff, like a $300 “wicker” sofa and chair set which isn’t really wicker at all, but sticks. Why? For lots of reasons. The first of which is that the stuff is too pretentious and it’s rich for the sake of being rich. The reason we’re looking to replace the couches and chairs specifically is that they’re just dumb. This is Africa. Africa is HOT. Leather and hot don’t mix. Ten minutes in one of these chairs on a hot day is enough to steam your butt right off.
The dining room table is nice and seats twelve. Yes, we could host the last supper here.
But even if we did host the last supper here, the landlord still wouldn’t let us take the plastic off the seats. Yes, the seats are fabric wrapped in heavy plastic. Makes sense, because you want to protect your investment. BUT THIS IS AFRICA. AFRICA IS HOT. Ten minutes in these puppies will permanently sear your underpants to your butt. And yes, that’s the second time I mentioned buttockses in this post.
The last picture I’ll post today is of this fancy hutch, which came filled with no less than fifty alcohol glasses. We’ve got whisky, wine, beer champagne, brandy and glasses that I’m not even sure what kind of alcohol they’re for.
We don’t drink, but the internal lights light up when you open the door. When we had our friend OJ over with his family for a movie night he said it looked like they had captured the stars in the sky and put them in a box. Then he asked if they were “real” glass. That really puts it in perspective. To a Ugandan that’s lived in the village his whole life, this stuff is breathtaking. He had never seen that much shining glass in his life. He had never seen a jellyfish either which is why despite the fact that we’re still embarrassed by this place, we’re going to use it to the best of our ability to make a difference. That sentence makes no sense, but I’m tired of this post already. (We invited him and his family over to watch IMAX “Deep Sea” on DVD, thrown on a wall from a projector we brought for the classrooms, which now we don’t need thanks the NetSchool Support software). They were “thrilled” and “refreshed” and “blessed” by the evening out, saying it was the highlight of their entire year. And that makes up for a lot of the ridiculousness of this house.
And that’s the thing. Even though we’ve been given a real gift in this house, it’s not about the house. It’s not about the stuff. It’s about what we can do with the house and the stuff to make a difference.
