Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category

Xprobe2 - Active OS Fingerprinting Tool

Friday, May 16th, 2008

Sometimes I wonder to myself have I mentioned a certain tool on the site, usually one of my favourites…often I search the site to find I have never posted about it. It just goes to show how we often overlook some of the more ‘obvious’ choices, and to many people they ...

Admins warned of brute-force SSH attacks

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Over the weekend, a number of network administrators issued warnings over an order-of-magnitude increase in the number of attempts to guess the username and password of systems running secure shell (SSH), the encrypted access method that replaced the common telnet service. System administrators at universities and some companies have reported ...

Get More from Ubuntu’s Uncomplicated Firewall

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

The Ubuntu Unleashed blog has an excellent guide to the ins and outs of the Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw), a new feature in Ubuntu Linux 8.04, or Hardy Heron, that makes it easy to control the traffic into and out of your system. While turning on the firewall is as simple ...

New Tests Show Rootkits Still Evade AV

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Rootkits are still a security scanner’s worst nightmare: New rootkit detection tests recently conducted by AV-Test.org found that security suites and online Web scanners detected overall only a little more than half of rootkits. AV-Test.org, an indie security test organization based in Germany, ran two rootkit tests last month, one on ...

Ubuntu Linux: 5 Steps for resetting a forgotten password

Monday, May 12th, 2008

It happens to everyone. You have so many usernames and passwords that you can't remember them all. Fortunately, Facebook, Gmail, and about a billion other online services have a "forgot password" link. Just click it and the web service will either email your password to you or allow you to ...

Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

We tested openSUSE, Ubuntu 8.04, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Linux One, Fedora, SimplyMEPIS, and CentOS 5.1. All performed well, and each had at least one truly outstanding feature. In the last couple of years, desktop-friendly Linux distributions have taken enormous leaps -- they're easier to install, better maintained, and more powerful than ...

Securing Your Web Browser

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

This paper will help you configure your web browser for safer internet surfing. It is written for home computer users, students, small business workers, and any other person who works with limited Information Technology (IT) support and broadband (cable modem, DSL) or dial-up connectivity. Although the information in this document may ...

New versions of fgdump and pwdump released

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

The latest versions of fgdump and pwdump have been released by the foofus.net team. Looks like the most important change is that both tools support 64-bit targets. Here is the official announcement: "The foofus.net team is pleased to announce updates to both fgdump (2.0.0) and pwdump (1.7.1), which incorporate a number ...

Hackers Focus Efforts on Firefox, Safari

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Many people are switching from Internet Explorer to alternative browsers such as Firefox and Safari. Though that might make them feel more secure, the shift has also opened new doors for bad guys. Case in point: We have no IE bugs to report this month, but both Firefox and Safari have ...

Tactical Forensics Platform

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Earlier I wrote about my proposed Tactical Network Security Monitoring Platform. Today I finally sat down and installed the operating systems I need on this system to create a portable tactical forensics and investigation platform. I did not want to use my main work laptop for this sort of work ...