today's howtos

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 03, 2026

• Linux.org ☛ Using Multiple Mice Simultaneously on GNU/Linux with xinput

  In some situations, there may be a need for multiple mice on a system. For example, at a conference when using a system to discuss details relating to the company. The speaker may need a mouse to point things out, while others can use another mouse to point out other things.

  There is also a way to include the keyboard as well, but this is not part of the BASH script I wrote. You can always add in a keyboard if needed.

• SANS ☛ Debugging DNS response times with tshark

  But aside from the obvious issues, there was a more subtle and rather annoying one: Sometimes a website would take a long time to load. This was, in particular, the first time of the day I loaded the particular side, and it happened across a wide range of sites (pretty much any site). I ruled out ad filters and other security tools by temporarily disabling them. So I figured, it may be time to blame DNS...

  Luckily, tshark has some great tools to inspect and summarize DNS. To get started, I collected about an hour of DNS traffic on my firewall, and next, loaded it into tshark.

• Spaceraccoon ☛ Reverse Engineering the Tapo C260 and Tapo Discovery Protocol v2

  Earlier in 2025, I participated in the SPIRITCYBER IoT hardware hacking contest organised by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore with YesWeHack. Among several devices, I found several RCEs and other interesting vulnerabilities that are still pending patches and CVE assignment.

  One of the devices was TP-Link’s latest Tapo C260 camera, and while I do not plan to share any details of vulnerabilities yet (if there were any 😉), I want to share about the process of reverse engineering the firmware.

  In addition, as part of my research I reverse-engineered the Tapo Discovery Protocol version 2. Version 1 has been thoroughly research and exploited by others before including at Pwn2Own, but since I couldn’t find any resources on the new version I thought it might be interesting to share.

• Jari Komppa ☛ Convolution

  As far as I recall - and I may be totally wrong with this - back in school convolution was considered a "black box" being too complex math to get into. Granted, this was an engineering school, not a science one, so if a black box solves your problem, black box is what you'll use. In any case, the result was that I filed convolution under "stuff I don't need to care about".

  Turns out, at least on discrete side (as in, dealing with samples, not continous signals), convolution is stupid simple, if computationally expensive (at least in a naive way).

• [Old] Tim Chase ☛ Assorted less(1) tips

  In a recent discussion [sic] on Reddit I shared a number of tips about the common utility less(1) that others found helpful so I figured I'd aggregate some of those tips here.

• idroot

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Fonts on Debian 13

    If you’ve recently switched to Debian 13 or work across backdoored Windows and GNU/Linux platforms, you’ve likely encountered font compatibility issues. Opening a Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Word document in LibreOffice only to find Arial replaced with Liberation Sans can disrupt your workflow and formatting.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install 3X-UI VPN on Debian 13

    Running your own VPN server has become essential for privacy-conscious individuals and organizations seeking full control over their internet traffic. The 3X-UI panel offers a powerful, user-friendly solution for managing VPN connections on Debian 13 (Trixie), supporting multiple protocols including VLESS, VMess, Trojan, ShadowSocks, and Wireguard.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install MERN Stack on Debian 13

    The MERN stack has become the cornerstone technology for building modern full-stack JavaScript applications. Developers worldwide choose this powerful combination of MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.js to create scalable, responsive web applications.