Premise

Case incorporates the JA-SIG Single Sign-On service as a way to offer convenient, cross-service authentication on services like the Case wiki, blog, and Blackboard. The basic idea is that a user connects to a service (let’s say blackboard.case.edu), which in turn forwards them to the login.case.edu SSO service. The SSO service issues the user a ticket for that service. On consecutive connections to blackboard.case.edu, the server checks the ticket submitted by the user against the SSO service to see if the user is still logged in. If yes, the session continues. If not, they are requested to log in.

Tracking Visitors

The SSO service provides a ‘user look-up function’ that allows web developers to take user-submitted tickets and see what Network IDs are registered to them. This is how Blackboard knows that you are abc123 when you log in. This also allows web developers the opportunity to track website visitors, even if their site doesn’t require authentication for anything. I set up a demo page here. You can click on the link at the bottom to see the other Network IDs I’ve recorded.

So What?

This feature allows visitors of the site to be tracked and targeted for advertising. Anyone with a computer on the Case network can use the SSO service to track visitors to their website. It would not be a stretch for people to use this information, combined with LDAP to match Network IDs to real names and the IP Subnet lookup page, to determine who accessed their site, and from where. Based on this information, you could determine plenty about your users and how they’re using your site. A simple JavaScript snippet could call the X and Y coordinates of the user’s mouse and asynchronously send them back to the server. Later, those coordinates could be played back to see the user’s mouse movements and gestures. Do some people highlight the text on your page with their cursor? Maybe that’s because your shoddy CSS makes the text look indistinguishable from the background.

By being smart about user tracking, you can glean a lot of information about your site’s visitors.

Prerequisites

For this how-to, you’ll need the following:

• Firefox
• The LiveHTTPheaders extension
• A basic understanding of HTML and how web browsers work (don’t let this scare you.)

Background

Youtube’s videos are shown in Macromedia’s Flash video format (FLV). FLV is based on MPEG-4, and can be decoded easily with VideoLAN player (VLC). A page loads with the video you want to see, and the embeded Flash video player requests the appropriate FLV file to play. All you need to do is eavesdrop on the video player’s request back to Youtube for the FLV and download it for yourself.

Instructions

1. Go to the page of whatever video you want to download. For this example, we’ll say it’s the ‘The completely Uncalled For’ video found at http://youtube.com/watch?v=bn1-M5Ze0p8.
2. Before you load the page, launch LiveHTTPheaders.
3. Once the video starts playing, look through LiveHTTPheaders’ output for something that says ‘http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=bn1-M5Ze0p8&t=[...]‘. This is the address we’re looking for. We want the entire address, including the part after ‘&t=’.  That part at the end is important because it’s randomly generated each time.
4. Right-click on that block and hit copy. Paste it in to your browser’s address bar.  This will start your download. I recommend you save it to your hard disk.
5. This video can be played with VLC, and probably Windows Media Player if you find the proper codec.

Ending Remarks

This is the easiest way I know to grab the videos. If you know of anything faster, please let me know. I’m interested in automating the process with small web app that takes the link to the video and downloads it for you. If you want to transcode the video in to some other format (iPod video perhaps), I recommend the SUPER video converter.

The Premise

Sometimes I’ll help someone do something on their computer via Windows XP’s Remote Assistance feature. This saves me the trouble of actually having to go to the computer to fix it. This is especially useful if all I need to do is a quick fix, but it’s something that’s faster for me to do myself than explain over the phone or (worse) type on instant messenger.

What’s Required?

There are ways around these limitations, but it take’s too long to explain. Basically, if you can’t accomplish these, you’re probably better off calling the help desk at 216-368-HELP (4357).

• You should be connected to the Case wired network or you should be on the VPN.
• If you’re running the Windows Firewall, everything should work automagically. If you’re running some other firewall like ZoneAlarm or Kerio or MacAfee, then it is probably best to disable your firewall for the time being.
• You need to either have administrator privileges on the computer, or at least have the privilege to send a Remote Assistance request.

How Does it Work?

(You can skip this part if you just want to go straight to the instructions.)

Basically, you are setting up a special remote desktop session that allows me to share your screen and collect some more information I might use to more quickly solve your problem.  We’ll be able to chat via an instant messaging program, and I’ll be able to control your keyboard and mouse, if you let me.
How Do I Do it?

1. Most of you will be able to go to Start -> All Programs -> Remote Assistance. If you can’t find it, go to Start -> Run and then type ‘rcimlby.exe -LaunchRA’ without the quotes.
2. Click on ‘Invite Someone to Help You.’
3. At the bottom of the screen, click on ‘Save Invitation as file (advanced)’
4. Click ‘Continue’
5. Type in some kind of password that you can tell me later and click “Save Invitation”
6. Send me the file you just saved. It’s probably in My Documents, unless you picked another location to which to save it.  You can send it to me via e-mail or over instant messenger.
7. The rest is up to me now.

That’s it!

So, you want to create a bunch of fake Facebook accounts (or you want to subscribe to something shady, where they might sell your e-mail address). You could use the mail aliases feature, but you’re limited to five aliases. However, what if you created an e-mail list where you were the only subscriber? This can be accomplished at lists.case.edu. Here’s how:

1. Go to lists.case.edu and log in if you need to.
2. Under the lists@case logo, click on create list.
3. For list name, type something simple, but unique. Most special characters are disallowed. Letters, numbers, and hyphens only!
4. Select administrative alias.
5. For title, type whatever you want.
6. For topics, select ‘other’.
7. You can leave the description blank if you choose.
8. Submit your request for creation. It will be created automatically and take you to a status page.
9. Under the list administration panel, click on subscribers.
10. Type in your e-mail address and click ‘Add’.

That’s it. It might look like an involved process, but it only take about 90 seconds or less.

So, if some website is spamming your list address ‘dontspammeyoujerks@case.edu’ you can just unsubscribe yourself from that list and the mail will just go in to the ether.

Enjoy!