Category Archives: Generator Labs

Generator Labs: Now with DNSSEC and TLSA

The Generator Labs domain is now signed with DNSSEC, and we’ve published the website certificate fingerprint via a TLSA record (also known as DANE), so that you can be 100% sure you’re interacting with the Generator Labs servers. 

This can be validated through the Verisign Labs Test Tool.

What is DNSSEC, and why do I care?

The point of DNSSEC is to provide a way for DNS records to be trusted by whoever receives them. The key innovation of DNSSEC is the use of public key cryptography to ensure that DNS records are authentic.

DNSSEC not only allows a DNS server to prove the authenticity of the records it returns. It also allows the assertion of “non-existence of records”.

What about DANE, what’s that all about?

DANE, or “DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities”, is a way for domain and website owners to publish SSL certificate fingerprints, so that visitors can validate that the certificate being used on a website is valid for that site.

Over the last few years, there have been several security breaches with Certificate Signing Authorities (CA’s)- companies that sign certificates that you use for your secure website- allowing the issuance of certificates for domains, not owned by the domain owners.

Using DANE, you can define exactly which certificate or CA is valid for your website, restricting the ability for a would-be hacker to masquerade as your website, by gaining access to your CA.

This obviously only makes sense in tandem with DNSSEC, as you need to validate that the DNS information providing the certificate fingerprint is valid, and not modified along the way.

How can I tell if a site is using DNSSEC/DANE?

Until there is more mainstream support for DNSSEC/DANE- for example, building support for it directly in the OS layer and in web browsers- there is a great browser plugin by cz.nic, that will show you when a site is protected with DNSSEC and DANE.

Generator Labs: Two-factor Authentication using Clef

You can now log in to your Generator Labs account using secure, two-factor authentication using Clef.

Clef is secure two-factor authentication using your mobile device, with no passwords or tokens, and no personal data is shared between Generator Labs and Clef.

Simply download the Clef Mobile App, and then register your Generator Labs account with Clef from the Profile page of your Generator Labs account.

Once registered, you can log in and log out of the Generator Labs interface using your mobile device- it’s that easy! If you have any questions or comments about using Clef, please let us know @ info@generatorlabs.com

Two-factor authentication is available to all Generator Labs accounts. Sign up Today!

PagerDuty Support and Expanded API Functionality

In today’s ever-connected world, integrations are key to realizing the full value of any product. At Generator Labs, we know that organizations have established support, alerting, escalation, and provisioning procedures already in place, and we want to work directly with these processes- not against them.

The newest release of Generator Labs includes two new features, which make integrating Generator Labs into your existing processes, that much easier:

PagerDuty Support

PagerDuty provides alerting, on-call scheduling, escalation policies, and incident tracking to increase up time of your apps, servers, websites, and databases.

Customers using the PagerDuty service can now integrate Generator Labs directly into their existing escalation process, by following this simple integration guide.

PagerDuty support is available to all paid Generator Labs accounts. Sign up Today!

Expanded API Functionality

Previous releases of the Generator Labs service provided a limited, read-only API, which let customers integrate Generator Labs into their existing monitoring systems. Today’s release expands that functionality, to allow both read and write functionality, giving customers the ability to manage both Hosts and Contacts, through a simple web-based API.

This functionality allows customers to integrate Generator Labs into existing provisioning processes, to ensure that all hosts that should be monitored- are.

When a new IP address is allocated to a customer in your system, make a simple API call to Generator Labs to enable monitoring:

# wget --post-data="type=rbl&name=Test&host=10.10.10.10" -qO- https://portal.generatorlabs.com/api/host/add.json?api_token=x

{
    "status_code": 200,
    "status_message": "Hosts added successfully.",
    "data": [
        {
            "id": "37c46a725dd8adab28d35b9f200c198d",
            "host": "10.10.10.10",
            "name": "Test"
        }
    ],
    "version": "2.0"
}

When an IP address is reclaimed, remove it from our system:

# wget --post-data="id=37c46a725dd8adab28d35b9f200c198d" -qO- https://portal.generatorlabs.com/api/host/delete.json?api_token=x

{
    "status_code": 200,
    "status_message": "Host deleted successfully.",
    "version": "2.0"
}

It’s that simple. Only pay for hosts that need to be monitored, and nothing more.

Write functionality is automatically enabled for all customers that currently have access to the Generator Labs API service.

Generator Labs: Pushover Notifications and Temporary Manual Hosts

The Generator Labs service was upgraded to v1.13 today, which includes the following new features:

Pushover Notifications

Pushover makes it easy to get real-time notifications on your Android device, iPhone, iPad, and Desktop. Once you have your Pushover client installed, simply copy and paste your user key into the contacts section of the Generator Labs portal.

Many companies are already using Pushover for system event notifications; this lets you consolidate all your notifications in one simple application.

Temporary Manual Hosts

Customers on the Ultimate package can now add temporary hosts from the Manual Check section of the web portal.

 

These temporary hosts will persist for the life of your session, and will disappear as soon as you log out. This feature is handy for customers that would like to do a quick check on a host not currently listed in your host list.

Generator Labs: Custom Check Frequency, API Changes, and Twitter Support

The Generator Labs service was upgraded to version 1.12 today, which includes the following new features:

Custom Check Frequency

Customers subscribed to the Ultimate package can now adjust the frequency of their host checks, using a simple drop-down list from the Profile -> Settings section:

 

At the moment, customers can select from a 6 hour window, to a 48 hour window. Finer grained controls will likely be added in future releases.

API Updates

We’ve made some very basic changes to the API service:

  • Replaced all instances of the term “blocked” with “listed”. The “blocked” terminology is still available, but customers should migrate to the new terminology as soon as possible, as it will be deprecated in future releases.
  • The matched RBLs have been added to the response data. This includes the RBL matched, the RBL website, and the RBL output from DNS.
  • The API version number is now included in the response object.

An updated API document is available from the API Access section of the Generator Labs portal.

Twitter Notifications

Customers can now add their Twitter screen name to their account as notification contacts. Generator Labs will send a direct message to your Twitter account anytime a host matches (or based on your scheduling settings:

 

Customers must follow the @generator_labs Twitter account with the same Twitter handle in order to received direct messages. We also cannot send URLs in direct messages, due to limitations on the Twitter platform- hopefully this is something they will correct in the future.

If you have any questions or comments about any of these new features, please let us know @ info@generatorlabs.com