DEV Community: Adithya Krishna

Infrastructure as Code - Red Hat Ansible

Adithya Krishna — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 14:15:31 +0000

What is Red Hat Ansible?

Ansible is a tool for automating the provisioning and configuration of infrastructure, including both physical servers and virtual machines. It uses a simple, declarative language that is easy to learn and can be used to manage complex deployments. It is an open source project, Ansible GitHub with a large community of users and contributors. It integrates with other tools and technologies, making it a versatile tool for DevOps engineers.

For example, Ansible can be used to automate many common tasks, such as software deployments, infrastructure deployments, configuration management, and more.

Why is it interesting/exciting?

Infrastructure as code is an exciting way to manage your infrastructure. With it, you can easily automate and improve the management of your infrastructure using code.

Red Hat Ansible is a powerful tool that makes it easy to automate your infrastructure. With it, you can quickly and easily manage your entire infrastructure from a single place.
Using Ansible, you can also easily manage changes in your infrastructure - adding or removing machines or services without any hassle.

It uses OpenSSH for transport (with other transports and pull modes as alternatives), and uses a human-readable language that is designed for getting started quickly without a lot of training

Lastly, Red Hat Ansible is scalable so you can easily add more machines or services as needed.

Ansible Architecture

Both editions of Ansible, Community and Ansible Automation Platform have two concepts and they are,

Control node - It is where Ansible is executed from, for example where a user runs the ansible-playbook command
Managed node - They are the devices being automated, for example a Microsoft Windows server

For automating Linux and Windows, Ansible works by connecting to managed nodes and pushing out small programs, called "Ansible modules," to them. These programs are written to be resource models of the desired state of the system. Ansible then executes these modules (over SSH by default), and removes them when finished. These modules are designed to be idempotent when possible, so that they only make changes to a system when necessary.

Let's say you want to automate your public clouds or any web service providers, Ansible will also run modules locally and talk directly to their APIs. Here are some guides,

Getting started with Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Adithya Krishna — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 16:05:13 +0000

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools allow you to manage your infrastructure using configuration files rather than through a graphical user interface. IaC allows you to build, modify, and manage your infrastructure in a secure, consistent, and repeatable way by defining resource configurations that you can version, reuse, and share.

Currently, in the tech world, there are many IaC tools and These are a few popular choices:

Chef
Otter
Puppet
Ansible
Pulumi
Terraform

There are 2 different approaches for Infrastructure as Code tools,

A declarative approach defines the desired state of the system, including what resources you need and any properties they should have, and an IaC tool will configure it for you.
An imperative approach instead defines the specific commands needed to achieve the desired configuration, and those commands then need to be executed in the correct order.

Along with the approaches, there are 2 methods

Push: The control server sends the configuration to the target system
Pull: The configured server pulls its configuration from the control server

The advantages of IaC tools are,

Reduce expenses and other related costs
Faster deployment speeds
Error Reduction
Consistent Infrastructures
Eliminate configuration drift
Allows infrastructure to be easily integrated into version control systems
Provides the ability to introduce extensive automation for infrastructure management
Eliminates the need for manual infrastructure provisioning and management

IaC vs IaaS

IaC is not a derivative of infrastructure as a service (IaaS). These are two completely different concepts.

Infrastructure as a Service is one of the core cloud services: virtualised computing resources—servers, networking infrastructure, storage, etc.—are provided via the cloud service.

Infrastructure as Code is a tool that can be used to provision and manage infrastructure. It is not limited to only cloud-based resources. In fact, you apply IaC to a wide variety of environments, including on-premises.

References:

Joker Malware Returns - An Antagonist in Your Android Devices

Adithya Krishna — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 14:38:14 +0000

The Joker malware is a “Fleeceware” that infects popular apps and enters the user's phone when the apps are downloaded. This malware simply subscribes users to paid services online without taking their permission. It can also click on online ads automatically

For example, It steals money from users by subscribing them to paid subscriptions without the user's consent. It first simulates interaction with ads without users' knowledge and then steals the victim’s SMS messages including OTP to authenticate payments.

The user may not know that they have been signed up for a paid subscription service and that their money has been deducted from their account unless they receive a message or notification stating their account statements etc...

According to Check Point, “Joker keeps finding its way into Google’s official application market as a result of small changes to its code, which enables it to get past the Play store’s security and vetting barriers.”

Now there are two new variants of the Joker Malware,

a. Dropper.
b. Premium Dialer.

The report stated that this time the malicious actor behind Joker “adopted an old technique from the conventional PC threat landscape and used it in the mobile app world to avoid detection by Google.”

The Joker malware uses two components –

a. Notification Listener service that is part of the original application

b. A Dynamic DEX file (A Dalvik Executable File is an executable file saved in a format that contains compiled code written for Android) loaded from the C&C server (Command and Control) to perform the registration of the user to the services.

During an attempt to minimise Joker’s fingerprint, the person behind it hid the dynamically loaded DEX file from plain sight while still ensuring it is able to load – a commonly used and a well-known way of malware for Windows PCs. This new variant now hides the malicious DEX file inside the application as Base-64 encoded strings, ready to be decoded and loaded.

Apps which were affected/causing it in 2022 Attack

Universal PDF Scanner
Private Message
Premium SMS
Smart Messages
Text Emoji SMS
Blood Pressure Checker
Funny Keyboard
Memory Silent Camera
Custom-Themed Keyboard
Light Messages
Themes Photo Keyboard
Send SMS
Themes Chat Messenger
Instant Messenger
Cool Keyboard
Font Emoji Keyboard
Mini PDF Scanner
Smart SMS Messages
Creative Emoji Keyboard
Fancy SMS
Fonts Emoji Keyboard
Personal Message
Funny Emoji Message
Magic Photo Editor
Professional Messages
All Photo Translators
Chat SMS
Smile Emoji
Wow Translator
All Language Translator
Cool Messages
Blood Pressure Diary
Chat Text SMS
Hi Text SMS
Emoji Theme Keyboard
iMessager
Text SMS
Camera Translator
Come Messages
Painting Photo Editor
Rich Theme Message
Quick Talk Message
Advanced SMS
Professional Messenger
Classic Game Messenger
Style Message
Private Game Messages
Timestamp Camera
Social Message
Simple Note Scanner

Apps which were affected/causing it in 2021

Easy PDF Scanner
Now QRCode Scan
Super-Click VPN
Volume Booster Louder Sound Equalizer
Battery Charging Animation Bubble Effects
Smart TV Remote
Volume Boosting Hearing Aid
Flashlight Flash Alert on Call
Halloween Coloring
Classic Emoji Keyboard
Super Hero-Effect
Dazzling Keyboard
EmojiOne Keyboard
Battery Charging Animation Wallpaper
Blender Photo Editor-Easy Photo Background Editor

Apps which were affected/causing it in 2020

com.imagecompress.android
com.contact.withme.texts
com.hmvoice.friendsms
com.relax.relaxation.androidsms
com.cheery.message.sendsms
com.cheery.message.sendsms
com.peason.lovinglovemessage
com.file.recovefiles
com.LPlocker.lockapps
com.remindme.alram
com.training.memorygame

Configuring Alias in macOS

Adithya Krishna — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 09:08:00 +0000

An alias helps you to produce a route name for a command, file name, or any shell text. By victimisation of aliases, you save heaps of your time once doing tasks that you were doing frequently.

What is an alias? 🤔

The alias Korn shell integrated command to outline a phrase as an alias/shortcut for a few command. You can use aliases to redefine integrated or complex instructions except not to redefine reserved words.

Syntax:
alias [ -t ] [ -x ] [ AliasName [ =String ] ] ...

Flags:

-t - Sets or displays all existing tracked aliases
-x - Displays all existing exported alias definitions

Exit Status:

0 - Success
>0 - An error occurred

Example 🙌🏻
alias gs='git status'

How to configure alias in macOS? 🧑🏻‍💻

Open terminal
Type code ~/.zshrc which opens the zsh config file in VSCode
Configure your alias by following the above syntax and flags

Examples of my aliases:

alias gc='git commit -s -m'
alias gs='git status'
alias ga='git add'
alias gfu='git fetch upstream'
alias grum='git rebase upstream/master'
alias gpom='git push origin master'
alias gul='git fetch upstream && git rebase upstream/master && git push origin master'
alias gpo='git push origin'

Save the file by clicking cmd + s
Now in your terminal, type source ~/.zshrc, which you applies the content of the file to the currently running Zsh process.

You are good to go 🎉

You can test your alias if its working by entering a repo in your machine and running gs

If you want to learn more about alias and its configuration, you can refer to, https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/alias.1p.html#:~:text=An%20alias%20definition%20provides%20a,subshells%20of%20the%20current%20shell.

Amazon HoneyCode - A Worthy No-Code App Builder?

Adithya Krishna — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 13:43:00 +0000

Amazon through their Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a tool/software/application known as Amazon Honeycode (still in beta stages), which is a fully managed platform to develop mobile apps or web apps without code.

The platform offers a visual builder which can be accessed through Signing In. In the visual builder, the user can choose to import the data through CSV file into a plain workbook or use one of the pre-existing templates or completely start from scratch.

When selecting a pre-existing template in the visual builder, the data models, logic, and applications are pre-existing and ready-to-use out of the box as it is. With the underlying database data can be linked, changed, sorted to our preference and can also be filtered easily using the visual builder and the structure is similar to typical spreadsheets.

Moreover, the user can also add notifications, reminders, approvals and other actions as required through the visual builder.

You can find more about Amazon's honeycode platform Here

But there are more platforms existing similar to this in the market like,

DraftBit - Beta and Invite Based

Appgyver

Microsoft's Power Platform

My First Major OSS Contribution - Journey to the World of Service Mesh

Adithya Krishna — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 10:29:12 +0000

What is Service Mesh? 🤔

A service mesh is a type of layer which is both dedicated one as well as a configurable infrastrucutre to facilitate S2S (service-to-service) communications between services or microservices through the use of a proxy,

A service mesh is a relatively simple concept, consisting of a bunch of network proxies paired with each service in an application, plus a set of task management processes. The proxies are called the data plane and the management processes are called the control plane in the Service Mesh. The data plane intercepts calls between different services and processes them, he control plane is the brain of the mesh that coordinates the behavior of proxies and provides APIs for operations and maintenance personnel to manipulate and observe the entire network.

About Layer5 😮

Layer5 is the service mesh company. Creator and maintainer of service mesh standards. Maker of Meshery, the service mesh management plane.

We build projects to provide learning environments, deployment and operational best practices, performance benchmarks, create documentation, share networking opportunities, and more. Our shared commitment to the open source spirit pushes Layer5 projects forward.

My Journey 🚶‍♂️

It all started during the month of March '21 when Google Summer of Code was announced. So I had a keen interest towards Cloud Native and Cloud Native Projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus. I joined CNCF's Slack Channel and gave my introduction. Then I started to search for Project Ideas, with this I also made sure to be in touch with the community.

Randomly after a few days, on 22 March 2021, I got a DM from Abishek Kumar regarding Meshery & Layer5's Projects whether I would join the community and contribute to the projects through CNCF slack channel. Ofc, I said Yes! and I guess the rest is history :)

So, I started going through the projects and I wanted to start with issues labeled good first issue , area/ux , component/ui. One new thing to me was Signing off the commits i.e DCO check for every Commit or PR.

My first issue was This which was regarding the improper margins on the management page, a component/ui and framework/react issue :)
Tbh, it wasn't a huge amount of work, I just had to fix the padding values of the component as shown below and I was good to go

paneSection: {
    backgroundColor: "#fff",
    padding: theme.spacing(3),
    borderRadius: 4,
  },

My first PR This I have to say, when this was merged, the Happiness couldn't be explained 🎉

From My PR being merged, working on UI, Upgrading Gatsby v2 to v3 for which I had to learn a bit about GraphQL, how Gatsby Plugins work (PR) to me shifting to CI/CD Issues, writing blogs, learning golang(for mesheryctl issues) to having the most amazing as well as exciting 1-1 call with Lee Calcote, Founder & CEO of Layer5 to discuss about my interests/aims and some future ideas/goals of the projects, the journey has been amazing and I hope it will be the same or much more exciting in the future 💯
Also, I have to thank Nikhil Ladha as well as other members of the community for constantly guiding and mentoring me 🍻

I also make sure to attend at least 2 of the weekly calls to discuss about my contribution and also learn about other's contributions to Layer5 Projects.

We have weekly community meet regarding the mesheryctl, websites or discussing & welcoming newcomers to our community.

Come be a part of the warmest and most welcoming community at,

Join Our Slack at Layer5 Community
Discover Our Projects at Meshery

After I made some major contributions and became a regular contributor. I was invited to the organization

Also, I got my very own profile as a community member, contributor at Layer5's site, https://layer5.io/community/members/adithya-krishna

Lastly, I have to thank Kunal Kushwaha , for inspiring me to start with Open Source and Contribute to OSS.