Security

Security

YADM (Yet Another Dotfiles Manager) & Keybase

I use multiple Mac workstations to manage all my systems and services (AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes)  so it is a challenge to manage the keys and credentials needed to access those systems. YADM (Yet Another Dotfiles Manager) \<https://thelocehiliosan.github.io/yadm/\>__ does a great job of managing this files and storing them in a git repository but I wasn't comfortable hosting that repository on a public facing service (Github or Gitlab) so I took advantage of Keybase's private encrypted git repo feature.

2 min read
Security

GoLang Exercism

Not like the spitting up green pea soup exorcism but Exercism.io, one of many great resources for learning programming languages by solving actual problems. Similar to Ruby Koans, you are given a programming problem to solve and a set of unit tests. Your challenge is to make all the tests pass by writing code (ala TDD). As you write your code and run your tests you may be given hints leading towards a solution or you may have to just figure it out on your own. Once all your tests are passing, you publish your code to the Exercism site where others can review and you can see other people's solutions for the same problems. I've learned more by reviewing other people's code than all the books and blog posts I've read.

1 min read
Security

Circuit Simulator Applet - falstad.com

This is a very cool little app that I found after listening to Security Now Episode 233: Let's Design a Computer. Some of the basic circuits were hard to visualize and this app kind of brings them to life with animated current flow and some interactivity. For the podcast you'll want to look in the Circuits menu for the Logic Families/RTL for the circuits being discussed.

This java applet is an electronic circuit simulator. When the applet starts up you will see an animated schematic of a simple LRC circuit. The green color indicates positive voltage. The gray color indicates ground. A red color indicates negative voltage. The moving yellow dots indicate current.

1 min read
Security

Easy Automated Web Application Testing with Hudson and Selenium » Vitamin Features »

| Vitamin Features » Easy Automated Web Application Testing with Hudson and Selenium | What will you get out of this article? Our set-up achieves the following:

  • It checks our Subversion repository every hour to see if anyone has committed any changes.
  • If they have, it updates the project from Subversion and builds it.
  • It then creates a clean version of our application database, loads in reference data and deploys the application on our app server.
  • A job is triggered that runs through a series of tests in a remotely-controlled web browser on the fresh application.
  • Anything that deviates from the accepted norm is logged and screenshots of the web browser are taken.
  • Screenshots of the browser are also taken for key pages of the site for later checking by a human.
  • If any of the tests fail, the developers responsible for the changes are notified by email of the problems.
  • Our issue tracker is updated with any issues that were fixed in the build.

1 min read
Security

Mac OS X Security Configuration Guides -Apple.com

| Apple - Support - Security Configuration Guides | The Security Configuration Guides provide an overview of features in Mac OS X that can be used to enhance security, known as hardening your computer.

The guides are designed to give instructions and recommendations for securing Mac OS X and for maintaining a secure computer.

To use these guides, you should be an experienced Mac OS X user, be familiar with the Mac OS X user interface, and have at least some experience using the Terminal application’s command-line interface. You should also be familiar with basic networking concepts.

1 min read
Security

Wfuzz - A Tool for Bruteforcing/Fuzzing Web Applications | Darknet - The Darkside

| Wfuzz - A Tool for Bruteforcing/Fuzzing Web Applications | Darknet - The Darkside | Wfuzz is a tool designed for bruteforcing Web Applications, it can be used for finding resources not linked directories, servlets, scripts, etc, bruteforce GET and POST parameters for checking different kind of injections SQL, XSS, LDAP,etc, bruteforce Forms parameters User/Password, Fuzzing,etc.

As heard on the pauldotcom.com podcast.

1 min read
Security

Maltego - Paterva: A new train of thought

| Maltego - Paterva: A new train of thought | Maltego is a program that can be used to determine the relationships and real world links between:

| People | Groups of people (social networks) | Companies | Organizations | Web sites | Internet infrastructure such as:

| Domains | DNS names | Netblocks | IP addresses

| Phrases | Affiliations | Documents and files

These entities are linked using open source intelligence.

1 min read
Security

Apache .htaccess tweaking tutorial at Vortexmind

| Apache .htaccess tweaking tutorial at Vortexmind: free your mind | In this tutorial we are going to improve our website by tweaking out the .htaccess file. Why I wrote this article? Because on the net I have found many articles about this little beast, but every one of them dealt with a specific issue and not look at the overall usage of these files, or they are just too big when you need to do a thing in little time. So I’m trying to collect all the useful bits of data in a monolithic but slim tutorial, which will be updated as I collect more information. But first, let’s see what .htaccess file is…

1 min read
Security

SANS Technology Institute: Interview with Charles Edge

| SANS Technology Institute: Interview with Charles Edge | How did you first get interested in information security?

It seems like Ive been interested in security since I started playing with computers. It was always about trying to push the limits of what could be done. As I moved through the various phases of an IT career my interest just grew. At the University of Georgia and then in enterprise environments that I worked at when I first got out of school there was a lot of infrastructure being built out, but not a lot of interest in security. This is about the time that I found Def Con, 2600 and Black Hat, and became part of that community. Once I got a little involved in those the interest seemed to grow exponentially. Then, when I got involved in networking Macs in the Entertainment Industry, these interests came together. Now I see the hacker community somewhat of a protector, finding flaws so they arent discovered by people with bad intentions and helping to make systems more secure for everyone.

3 min read
Security

macosxhints.com - OS X VPN client and Cisco ASA

| macosxhints.com - OS X VPN client and Cisco ASA | Summary: This hint is for Network Engineers who want their firewalls to accept VPN connections from standard OS X L2TP / IPSec clients (should also work for Windows and Linux clients). If you are not a network engineer, but are having trouble connecting to one of these devices, you can also forward this tip to your company's "firewall person," so that they can fix it.

1 min read
Security

Terminal Services Setup Guide (2003)

| Learn the best way to batten down the hatches on your servers without going too far. | by Kenton Gardinier for ftponline.com | Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services in terminal server mode can be run in either the Full Security or Relaxed Security compatibility mode to meet your organization's security policy and application requirements. Full Security mode was created to help lock down the terminal server environment to reduce the risk of users mistakenly installing software or inadvertently disabling the terminal server by moving directories or deleting Registry Keys. This mode can be used for most certified terminal server applications. | Read more.

1 min read
Security

Top 75 Security Tools

Top 75 Network Security Tools

Respondents were allowed to list open source or commercial tools on any platform. Commercial tools are noted as such in the list below. Many of the descriptions were taken from the application home page or the Debian or Freshmeat package descriptions. I removed marketing fluff like "revolutionary" and "next generation". No votes for the Nmap Security Scanner were counted because the survey was taken on an Nmap mailing list. This audience also means that the list is slightly biased toward "attack" tools rather than defensive ones.

1 min read
Security

Block SSH script attacks

| macosxhints - Modify Remote Login server to block scripted attacks | If you run a machine that is open to the public internet, and you open up SSH then you've seen these entries in your system logs.

eb 10 07:07:36 localhost sshd[1078]: Illegal user matt from 210.127.248.158 Feb 10 07:07:38 localhost sshd[1080]: Illegal user test from 210.127.248.158 Feb 10 07:07:40 sshd[1082]: Illegal user operator from 210.127.248.158 Feb 10 07:07:42 sshd[1084]: Illegal user wwwrun from 210.127.248.158 Feb 10 07:07:52 sshd[1096]: Illegal user apache from 210.127.248.158 Feb 10 07:07:59 sshd[1104]: Failed password for root from 210.127.248.158 port 58752 ssh2 Feb 10 07:08:01 sshd[1106]: Failed password for root from 210.127.248.158 port 59136 ssh2 Feb 10 07:08:03 sshd[1108]: Failed password for root from 210.127.248.158 port 59176 ssh2 Feb 10 07:08:15 sshd[1122]: Failed password for root from 210.127.248.158 port 60606 ssh2 .…

1 min read
Security

Email "Spamming" and Email "Spoofing"

Here is a snip of a great article explaining Virus Spoofing from www.lse.ac.uk:

Email-distributed viruses that use spoofing, such the Klez or Sobig virus, take a random name from somewhere on the infected personís hard disk and mail themselves out as if they were from that randomly chosen address. Recipients of these viruses are therefore misled as to the address from which they were sent, and may end up complaining to, or alerting the wrong person. As a result, users of uninfected computers may be wrongly informed that they have, and have been distributing a virus.†

2 min read
Security

Destroy Spyware

TechTV | Dark Tip: Destroy Spyware

I have yet to find an application that detects adware and spyware before it's installed on your PC, so my recommendation is not to pay for adware/spyware removal software at this time. Simply use a combination of Ad-aware (freeware version) and Spybot - Search & Destroy to remove the offending software. I believe Norton is on the right track by combining antivirus software with adware/spyware-detection. With automatic updates and real-time detection, Norton could prove to be the ultimate removal tool for viruses, adware, and spyware. Only time will tell, and I'm sure McAfee has something up its sleeve as well.

1 min read
Security

Mac OS X Security Advisory

| Mac OS X Security Advisory | Vulnerability: | Malicious DHCP response can grant root access

| Affected Software | Mac OS X 10.3 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003) | Mac OS X Server 10.3 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003) | Mac OS X 10.2 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003) | Mac OS X Server 10.2 (all versions through at least 26-Nov-2003) | Probably earlier versions of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server | Possibly developer seeded copies of future versions of Mac OS X

1 min read