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Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Part I
By: Erica R. Thomas
Looking at the integrity and accountability of financial reporting has become headline news. Widely publicized financial scandals have caused damage to investor, employee, and customer confidence. Government and regulatory agencies have enacted and are starting to enforce new regulations for corporate governance to restore confidence and trust. The response from the United States government regarding the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco accounting scandals of the late 1990's was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (The Act) of 2002. It establishes standards for maintaining and preserving electronic and paper records in addition to the accountability of corporate executives, employees, and auditors. The Act contains11 titles and also established new standards for corporate accountability and penalties of fines and imprisonment. Under the act, companies must validate financial statements, maintain auditing practices, report on the effectiveness of the internal controls, and assure integrity and timeliness of data.
The main purpose of the legislation is to make organizations and their executives be held responsible for the validity of corporate reporting. The reporting requires all companies with public interests to require executives to attest to the accuracy of the financial conditions and disclosure of internal weaknesses. An article written by Guardian Digital Inc. says that, "As mandated by SOX (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act), corporations can accommodate these regulations through the design, implementation, and maintenance of efficient and effective internal controls."
There are many sections to the SOA that President Bush signed. According to Mathew Bender in the book, "The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 with Analysis", SOA contains two provisions requiring CEOs and CFOs to certify certain SEC filings. The first section requires them to certify that annual and quarterly reports have been reviewed by themselves, does not contain any untrue statement or omit to state a material fact, information fairly represents the situation, and they must disclose any deficiencies or changes to the internal controls. The second section requires that when a report is filed, the CEO or CFO must have a written statement saying that fully complies with the requirements and that it fairly represents the financial and operational results. If they certify the report knowing that it is false, they can face criminal penalties.
Part II, May 6th 2003
LinuxSecurity.com Feature Extras:
Getting to Know Linux Security: File Permissions - Welcome to the first tutorial in the 'Getting to Know Linux Security' series. The topic explored is Linux file permissions. It offers an easy to follow explanation of how to read permissions, and how to set them using chmod. This guide is intended for users new to Linux security, therefore very simple. If the feedback is good, I'll consider creating more complex guides for advanced users. Please let us know what you think and how these can be improved.
The Tao of Network Security Monitoring: Beyond Intrusion Detection - To be honest, this was one of the best books that I've read on network security. Others books often dive so deeply into technical discussions, they fail to provide any relevance to network engineers/administrators working in a corporate environment. Budgets, deadlines, and flexibility are issues that we must all address. The Tao of Network Security Monitoring is presented in such a way that all of these are still relevant.
Encrypting Shell Scripts - Do you have scripts that contain sensitive information like passwords and you pretty much depend on file permissions to keep it secure? If so, then that type of security is good provided you keep your system secure and some user doesn't have a "ps -ef" loop running in an attempt to capture that sensitive info (though some applications mask passwords in "ps" output).
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Thank you for reading the LinuxSecurity.com weekly security newsletter. The purpose of this document is to provide our readers with a quick summary of each week's most relevant Linux security headline.
| Conectiva | ||
| Conectiva: squid Fixes for multiple squid vulnerabilities | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Squid[1] is a full-featured web proxy cache. This announcement upgrades Squid from 2.5STABLE5 to 2.5STABLE9 in order to fix bug #13718[2] and also fixes the two following vulnerabilities. |
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| Conectiva: gaim Fixes for gaim's vulnerabilities | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Gaim[1] is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client. This announcement fixes three denial of service vulnerabilities that were encountered in Gaim. |
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| Conectiva: evolution Fix for Evolution vulnerability | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Evolution[1] is the GNOME mailer, calendar, contact manager and communications tool. This announcement fixes an issue[2] in Evolution which caused it to crash when displaying certain message types. |
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| Debian | ||
| Debian: New junkbuster packages fix several vulnerabilities | ||
| 21st, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/debian/debian-new-junkbuster-packages-fix-several-vulnerabilities |
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| Debian: New samba packages fix correct sporadic crash | ||
| 21st, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/debian/debian-new-samba-packages-fix-correct-sporadic-crash |
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| Debian: New cvs packages fix unauthorised repository access | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/debian/debian-new-cvs-packages-fix-unauthorised-repository-access |
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| Debian: New kdelibs packages fix arbitrary code execution | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/debian/debian-new-kdelibs-packages-fix-arbitrary-code-execution |
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| Debian: New gaim packages fix denial of service | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/debian/debian-new-gaim-packages-fix-denial-of-service-52162 |
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| Debian: New lsh packages fix several vulnerabilities | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/debian/debian-new-lsh-packages-fix-several-vulnerabilities |
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| Fedora | ||
| Fedora Core 3 Update: libtiff-3.6.1-10.fc3 | ||
| 21st, April, 2005
The tools shipped in the libtiff package were missing the JPEG support, even though the library was compiled with JPEG support turned on. advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-libtiff-361-10fc3-15-10-00-118948 |
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| Fedora Core 3 Update: mc-4.6.1-0.14.FC3 | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
Updated package. advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-mc-461-014fc3-09-49-00-118957 |
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| Fedora Core 3 Update: evolution-2.0.4-4 | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
Updated packages. advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-evolution-204-4-21-07-00-118963 |
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| Fedora Core 3 Update: net-snmp-5.2.1-10.FC3 | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
New upstream version + several 64bit issues fixed advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-net-snmp-521-10fc3-09-07-00-118977 |
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| Fedora Core 3 Update: dia-0.94-5.fc3 | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
rebuild of dia to clear use of incompatible abi advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-dia-094-5fc3-09-08-00-118978 |
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| Fedora Core 3 Update: cyrus-imapd-2.2.12-1.1.fc3 | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Several buffer overflow bugs were found in cyrus-imapd. It is possible that an authenticated malicious user could cause the imap server to crash. Additionally, a peer news admin could potentially execute arbitrary code on the imap server when news is received using the fetchnews command. advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-cyrus-imapd-2212-11fc3-15-24-00-119000 |
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| Fedora Core 3 Update: ImageMagick-6.2.2.0-1.fc3 | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
The update fixes a possible heap corruption issue in the pnm decoder. It also includes a number of other bug fixes and improvements. advisories/fedora/fedora-core-3-update-imagemagick-6220-1fc3-22-51-00-119002 |
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| Gentoo | ||
| Gentoo: openMosixview Insecure temporary file creation | ||
| 21st, April, 2005
openMosixview and the openMosixcollector daemon are vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files. |
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| Gentoo: CVS Multiple vulnerabilities | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
The initial version did not fix several DoS vulnerabilities and one instance of arbitrary code execution. The arbitrary code execution was only possible under very specific circumstances. The updated sections appear below. |
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| Gentoo: gettext Insecure temporary file handling | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
gettext version 0.14.1 reintroduced an old vulnerability by failing to apply the proper patch. The updated sections appear below. |
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| Gentoo: RealPlayer, Helix Player Buffer overflow vulnerability | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
RealPlayer and Helix Player are vulnerable to a buffer overflow that could lead to remote execution of arbitrary code. |
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| Gentoo: KDE kimgio PCX handling buffer overflow | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
KDE fails to properly validate input when handling PCX images, potentially resulting in the execution of arbitrary code. |
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| Gentoo: Kommander Insecure remote script execution | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
Kommander executes remote scripts without confirmation, potentially resulting in the execution of arbitrary code. |
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| Gentoo: eGroupWare XSS and SQL injection vulnerabilities | ||
| 25th, April, 2005
eGroupWare is affected by several SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. |
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| Gentoo: Rootkit Hunter Insecure temporary file creation | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
Rootkit Hunter is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing a local user to overwrite arbitrary files. |
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| Gentoo: Convert-UUlib Buffer overflow | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
A buffer overflow has been reported in Convert-UUlib, potentially resulting in the execution of arbitrary code. |
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| Gentoo: xine-lib Two heap overflow vulnerabilities | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
Two vulnerabilities have been found in xine-lib which could lead to the remote execution of arbitrary code. |
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| Red Hat | ||
| RedHat: Important: firefox security update | ||
| 21st, April, 2005
Updated firefox packages that fix various security bugs are now available. This update has been rated as having Important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team. advisories/red-hat/redhat-important-firefox-security-update-89533 |
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| RedHat: Important: kernel security update | ||
| 22nd, April, 2005
Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 kernel are now available. This security advisory has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team. The Linux kernel handles the basic functions of the operating system. advisories/red-hat/redhat-important-kernel-security-update-85756 |
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| RedHat: Important: openoffice.org security update | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
Updated openoffice.org packages are now available. This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team. advisories/red-hat/redhat-important-openofficeorg-security-update-69768 |
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| RedHat: Moderate: cvs security update | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
An updated cvs package that fixes security bugs is now available. This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team. advisories/red-hat/redhat-moderate-cvs-security-update-RHSA-2005-387-01 |
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| RedHat: Low: sharutils security update | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
An updated sharutils package is now available. This update has been rated as having low security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team. advisories/red-hat/redhat-low-sharutils-security-update-RHSA-2005-377-01 |
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| RedHat: Important: Mozilla security update | ||
| 26th, April, 2005
Updated mozilla packages that fix various security bugs are now available. This update has been rated as having Important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team. advisories/red-hat/redhat-important-mozilla-security-update-5331 |
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| SuSE | ||
| SuSE: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla various | ||
| 27th, April, 2005
Several problems have been fixed with the security update releases of the Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 web browser and the Mozilla Suite 1.7.7. |
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