10 easy steps to secure your Linux machine

Whether you use a single desktop or manage a lab full of servers, with the various threats we all face from hackers these days you simply have to make sure you’re running a secure ship.

Running Linux gives you some inherent protection from attack, but you still need to take adequate steps to thwart any attempts that people might make to compromise your system.

Here are 10 of the best courses of action that you can take.

(Summary from original article)
1. Create a firewall
2. Disable network servers
3. Use secure alternatives
4. Revoke non-root access
5. Copy your logs
6. Enable password aging
7. Restrict root logins
8. Physically secure your machine
9. Don’t ignore security updates
10. Keep an eye on open files

Source and full details for each step:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/10-easy-steps-to-secure-your-linux-machine-644742

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Facebook Password Spam Conceals Malware Attack

Researchers at several security firms have tied the Bredolab Trojan to a spam campaign targeting Facebook users.

The malware is being blasted out by spammers in e-mails claiming to come from “The Facebook Team.” Inside the e-mails is a message that the recipient’s Facebook password has been changed. In order to get the new one, recipients are told to open the accompanying attachment containing the malware.

Researchers at Websense told eWEEK Oct. 27 that they have observed more than 350,000 of the messages. On the company’s blog, researchers explained that the malware connects to two servers to download additional malicious files. Among them is Pushdo, also known as Cutwail.

“One of the first things we saw this Trojan horse download was the Pushdo bot which began spamming out more of these Facebook password reset emails,” according to M86 Security.

Source:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Facebook-Password-Spam-Conceals-Malware-Attack-635899/?kc=rss

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Scrawlr – Tool for finding SQL Injection

Scrawlr, developed by the HP Web Security Research Group in coordination with the MSRC, is short for SQL Injector and Crawler. Scrawlr will crawl a website while simultaneously analyzing the parameters of each individual web page for SQL Injection vulnerabilities. Scrawlr is lightning fast and uses our intelligent engine technology to dynamically craft SQL Injection attacks on the fly. It can even provide proof positive results by displaying the type of backend database in use and a list of available table names.

Features of Scrawlr

- Identify Verbose SQL Injection vulnerabilities in URL parameters
- Can be configured to use a Proxy to access the web site
- Will identify the type of SQL server in use
- Will extract table names (verbose only) to guarantee no false positives

And well there is also list of limitations

- Will only crawl up to 1500 pages
- Does not support sites requiring authentication
- Does not perform Blind SQL injection
- Cannot retrieve database contents
- Does not support JavaScript or flash parsing
- Will not test forms for SQL Injection (POST Parameters)

Source:
http://pentestit.com/2009/10/28/scrawlr-tool-finding-sql-injection/

Download:
https://h30406.www3.hp.com/campaigns/2008/wwcampaign/1-57C4K/index.php?

Posted in Coding, Internet, Security, Software | No Comments

Mozilla fixes 16 flaws with Firefox 3.5.4

Mozilla today patched 16 vulnerabilities in Firefox, 11 of them critical, as it updated the open-source browser to version 3.5.4.

The 11 critical Firefox 3.5 vulnerabilities were located in a variety of components, including Web worker calls, the GIF color map parser, the string-to-number converter, a trio of third-party media libraries, and both the JavaScript and browser engines.

“Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code,” Mozilla said in some of the advisories outlining the most serious flaws.

Firefox 3.0, which was first released in the summer of 2008 and will be retired from security support in January 2010, was also updated today with the release of version 3.0.15. The older browser received nine patches, four marked critical.

Source:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/102809-mozilla-fixes-16-flaws-with.html

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Reverse Hash Calculator

This page doesn’t use rainbow tables (yet), but a similar, simpler approach. It uses a database of a couple million pre-compiled hash values. The strings used come from various password databases, and should have a pretty good chance of “hitting” your value. There is an intentional delay in the response to limit the load on our database.

http://isc.sans.org/tools/reversehash.html

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