TCP Wrappers - It’s Not So Hard
By Ian Scott
Back in the “olden days,” before TCP Wrappers were ever thought of, the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands was experiencing some major instrusion problems on their systems. Somehow, a cracker was gaining access to their systems and for whatever reason, deleting the entire file system of the servers they managed to access. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Computer Security |
Counter Hack - Book Review
By Ian Scott
So you want to learn more about computer security but don’t know where to start? Even though Ed Skoudis’ book, Counter Hack - A Step-by Step Guide to Computer Attacks and Effective Defences was published in 2002, this book should be on top of your reading list. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Computer Security |
4 Minutes And Counting
By Ian Scott
An interesting report from TechWeb, regarding a test by AvanteGarde, a marketing-communications firm. Seems AvanteGarde wanted to test the security of “out of the box” operating systems to see how soon they would be compromised. Included in the test were machines “equipped with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft Windows XP SP1 with the free ZoneAlarm personal firewall, Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Macintosh OS X 10.3.5, and Linspire’s distribution of Linux.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Computer Security |
Excellent Security Tip With A Twist
By Ian Scott
I’m not sure who to credit this to exactly, but I discovered this tip on the Hsphere Control Panel message board. The person who posted the tip goes by the nickname of “WebDude.”
It was one of those, “Why didn’t I think of that?!?” moments when I read this tip, involving the command ‘chattr’ that comes with Linux.
Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Computer Security |
Hunting Out Rootkits
By Ian Scott
For a long time, I have been using a tool called
Recently I was made aware of another similar tool that I like even better, called Rootkit Hunter. According to the description on the Rootkit Hunter website,
“Rootkit scanner is scanning tool to ensure you for about 99.9% you’re clean of nasty tools.
Read the rest of this entry »Topics: Computer Security |
Protect Your Ports
By Ian Scott
Port scanners are great little tools for an administrator to have. I regularly port scan my boxes to see what ports are listening for connections. There shouldn’t be anything open that I don’t know about - if there is, then I’d be doing some really quick checking to see what was going on, and I’d suspect an intrusion with a root kit installation.
My favorite portscanner is nmap, available from http://www.insecure.org/nmap/. Portscanners were created for utilization by network security people and like much other software, nmap is open source and readily available to anyone. That means even the bad guys can get a hold of it. Which means they can portscan your machines to see what services are running and accepting connections. This is one good reason to run services that you only absolutely need to be available. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Computer Security |
« Previous Entries Next Entries »