Linux Security Week: October 2nd 2006

Mark Osborne doesn't like auditors. In fact, after reading this book, one gets the feeling he despises them. Perhaps he should have titled this book 'How I learned to stop worrying and hate auditors'. Of course, that is not the main theme of How to Cheat at Managing Information Security, but Osborne never hides his feeling about auditors, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the auditor jokes start in the preface, and continue throughout the book.

The subtitle of the book is 'Straight talk from the loud-fat-bloke who protected Buckingham Palace and ran KPMG's security practice'. Essentially, the book is Osborne's reminiscence of his years in information security; including the good, the bad, and more often then not, the ugly.

The Metasploit Project is one of the most popular penetration testing suites available. If you're responsible for the security of networked systems, you'll want to become familiar with Metasploit Framework, so you can test your client PCs before someone with malicious intent does it for you. I'll walk you through an example exploit of a Windows XP system to show you how effortlessly Metasploit can penetrate remote systems. I used the version 2.6, the current stable version. Grab the stable tarball for Linux, unpack it, enter the just created framework-2.6 subdirectory, and take a look around.

This is the ninth in a series of tips on how to use Nmap in an enterprise network environment. For a security tool to be useful you have to be able to understand what it's telling you about the setup, security, or weak points of your system or network. With Nmap you can run very comprehensive tests. To analyze the results it is often best to have the output recorded in XML format so that it can be easily imported into a database or converted into HTML for analysis and human consumption.

news/network-security/nmap-parsers-and-interfaces

SSL-Explorer is the world's first open-source, browser-based SSL VPN solution. This unique remote access solution provides users and businesses alike with a means of securely accessing network resources from outside the network perimeter using only a standard web browser.

Users can now be granted access to their files, intranet applications and email from virtually any location with an internet connection. Using SSL-Explorer you can quickly and simply provide full extranet access to key strategic business partners and external consultants. Similarly, your network support staff are also now free to remotely manage servers, routers and other network hardware securely using industry standard encryption technologies to protect key information assets.

news/network-security/ssl-explorer-community-edition

ATA over Ethernet (AoE) is an open standards based protocol which allows direct network access to disk drives by client hosts. AoE has been incorporated into the mainstream Linux kernel, recently been the subject of a Slashdot article, and it appears that it is a SAN technology which is here to stay. This paper investigates the insecurities present in the AoE protocol and suggests how you can deploy AoE infrastructure without worrying about a wide scale compromise.

news/network-security/access-over-ethernet-insecurities-in-aoe

For those who are not experts in computer security, here are the top 5 tips to a safer online experience (in addition to having firewalls, anti-virus, and patching diligently).

news/server-security/top-5-tips-to-not-get-hacked-online

SQL injection is a technique used by a malicious user to gain illegal access on the remote machines through the web applications vulnerability. The basic idea behind this technique is to run the sql query which was not intended to run by a programmer. This technique is heavily relay on the logical operations like AND, OR.UNION etc. if this technique is used properly a malicious user can get complete access on a web server. If the application is creating SQL strings naively on the fly (dynamic queries) and then running them, it can create some real surprises as we see later on.

news/server-security/understanding-sql-injection

If you are developing a password-protected web site, you have to make a decision about how to store user password information securely. What is "secure," anyway? Realize that the data in your database is not safe. What if the password to the database is compromised? Then your entire user password database will be compromised as well. Even if you are quite certain of the security of your database, your users' passwords are still accessible to all administrators who work at the Web hosting company where your database is hosted. Scrambling the passwords using some home-brewed algorithm may add some obscurity but not true "security." Another approach would be to encrypt all passwords in your database using some industry-standard cipher, such as the Message-Digest Algorithm 5 (MD5).

news/server-security/how-to-encrypt-passwords-in-the-database

There are many web applications which are designed to permit the input of html tags for displaying the html formatted data. these tags can be used by malicious users to attack other users by inserting scripts or malicious applets etc.this called cross site scripting or XSS. such attacks are result of poor input validations. it uses the combination of html and scripting languages. with the proper combination of html and java script a intruder can misguide the client and perform various attack from DOS(by opening enormous amount of window on client side) or By embedding malicious FORM tags at the right place, an mailicious user may be able to trick users into revealing sensitive information by modifying the behavior of an existing form or by embedding scripts, an intruder can cause various problems. This is by no means a complete list of problems, but hopefully this is enough to convince you that this is a serious problem.

news/server-security/understanding-cross-site-scripting-53618

It must say something about our times that Bruce Schneier, a geeky computer encryption expert turned all-purpose security guru, occasionally gets recognized in public. "My life is just plain surreal," he says. Schneier, 43, has made it so by popping up whenever technology and regular life intersect, weighing in on everything from the uselessness of post-Sept. 11 airport security measures to the perils of electronic voting machines and new passports with radio chips.

He does it by writing books, essays, a frequently updated Web log and an e-mail newsletter with 125,000 subscribers. It helps that he has never met a reporter whose phone calls he will not return. "I'm a media slut," he admits.

Biometrics has long been one of the solutions touted by security vendors to meet multi-factor authentication objectives. However, user acceptance and cost issues often prevent organizations from adopting biometrics as a solution. This isn