Electric Sector Security Observations from Distributech 2013

The show is over for me as I'm up in LA for some IBM training, but it was a very good 2 days. Here's a few of the highlights I took away:

• Saw a great new product with immediate applicability to AMI (and other wireless network) security with crossover applications in restoration, routing and reliability
• Patrica Hoffman, DOE's Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE), following great, largely renewable-energy oriented keynotes from senior executives at SDG&E and Cal ISO, gave her perspective on the world and beat a drum loudly for improved cybersecurity awareness and action towards the end of her talk
• Speaking of DOE, after visiting several security vendor booths found a remote outpost DOE cybersecurity booth in the far corner of the big hall. Those folks seemed glad to have any human contact :)
• One industry security guru whose knowledge I implicitly trust said he would like to see a greater emphasis on security architectures this year. Too many point products are being bought and strung together with little consideration for the bigger, enterprise protection picture. And that's a recipe for weakness and inefficiency, and for the folks recommending or doing the buying, a formula for losing credibility and trust
• I couldn't make the conference's security focus panel but if someone did and has some impressions to share, please do and I'll post them here.
• Lastly, from my extended family at IBM flown in from all over the world, definitely detecting heightened security awareness and interest from utilities that until recently weren't all that active.

For those still in town and/or next time you're in town, highly recommend the new Blind Burro restaurant ... ate their twice and it's fantastic. So far, scores a ridiculously high 4.5 our of 5 stars on Yelp. Mmmm tasty.

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Error HPDIA0100E When logging in TAM via pdadmin

Error: HPDIA0100E An internal error has occurred.
If you are facing the above error when logging in TAM using pdadmin utility.
Check whether your LDAP server is up or not, this error is commonly seen when Policy Server is up but LDAP server is down.
Further checks can be followed if still not able to log in via pdadmin which includes checking host-name and ports for LDAP service, configured in TAM configuration (ldap.conf ) which usually resides in following directory.

/opt/PolicyDirector/etc/

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Reset IBM HTTP Server Password

IHS (IBM HTTP Server) password is really very needy string when we think about remote administration of IHS, and what if you forgot that very string. So here I am gonna tell you how to reset IHS admin password.

From the command prompt, browse to following directory

<http_root>\bin

Now we will use the command htpasswd.exe and we will pass admin password file named admin.passwd which is located at  <http_root>\conf\

and username for admin.

so the whole command will turn out to be

htpasswd.exe <http_root>\conf\admin.passwd ihsadmin

<now type new password>

<re-type new password>

wholla!! your admin password has been reset.

[ihsadmin is admin username in this case]

.

Admin password for IHS is stored in admin.passwd file in the form of md5 encryption. but while resetting if we use attribute -p, which tells 'plain text', with the command then password will not be stored as md5 encrypted form anymore. Test and check the admin.passwd file. Thanks

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Recovering Password From WAS 6.1

Whenever you forgot your password for WAS login, don't get upset, WAS stores password in encoded form in its configuration file named security.xml which is located at 

<was_root>\AppServer\profiles\<default_profile>\config\cells\<nodename>\security.xml

From that security.xml note down the encoded form of your password which will be in the form {xor}LD08LTor 

now from command prompt browse to the following directory 

<was_root>\AppServer\bin\ProfileManagement\plugins\com.ibm.websphere.v61_6.1.0<something>\

after reaching in that directory run the following command

>c:\..\..\was_root\AppServer\java\bin\java.exe -cp ws_runtime.jar com.ibm.ws.security.util.PasswordDecoder <encodedPasswordFromSecurity.xml>

We can also use this ws_runtime.jar from different location mentioned as follows
<was_root>\AppServer\deploytool\itp\plugins\com.ibm.websphere.v61_6.1\

Same procedure can be repeated for producing a new encoded password with which you can alter the security.xml but in this case at the end of command we'll use PasswordEncoder <password>

so the command becomes

>c:\..\..\was_root\AppServer\java\bin\java.exe -cp ws_runtime.jar com.ibm.ws.security.util.PasswordEncoder wasadmin

[wasadmin is the password to be encoded here]

Note: This procedure applies to WAS v6.1. Method varies for other versions.

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Verify Installation of IBM WAS by Snoop Servlet

After installation of the default application on IBM Websphere Application Server, we can verify our installation by the default configuration whether the installed properly and running properly or not.
For this we can use Snoop servlet. We generally end up with installation having server1 and one enterprise application named Default application, which includes a Snoop servlet which helps us in retrieving servlet request.
We can access the snoop servlet at following url

http://localhost:9080/snoop

We can also use other methods to verify installation with following urls

http://localhost:9080/HelloHTML.jsp
http://localhost:9080/HitCount.jsp

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How To : Delete a profile (Websphere Application Server 6.1)

While practicing on WAS (Websphere Application Server 6.1), my mind stroked at a point that " How will I delete the profile I created earlier during practice". After sticking to this and getting into it I found that it can be done through command prompt, but results doesn't clean all mess. Few steps to follow for this clean profile deletion act.

Step A:
The command we are going to use is manageprofiles.bat
which is located at <root>\AppServer\bin\
and we will be using delete attribute for this. so the complete command turns out to be:
*be careful command are case sensitive

 manageprofiles.bat -delete -profileName <profilename>

Step B:
Now the profile has been deleted but logs have been left undeleted in profile directory, therefore now delete the profile directory itself

 <root>AppServer\profiles\<profilename>

Step C:
Now validate registry by following command

 manageprofiles -validateAndUpdateRegistry

Note: If while creation you have selected profile to act as window service then after first step you can check that service will be disabled and after step c, you should run a command to delete that service which is as follows

 WASService.exe -remove <servicename>

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