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Linux Security Week, January 8th 2001
From: newsletter-admins () linuxsecurity com
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 11:03:17 -0500
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | LinuxSecurity.com Weekly Newsletter | | January 8, 2001 Volume 2, Number 2n | | | | Editorial Team: Dave Wreski dave () linuxsecurity com | | Benjamin Thomas ben () linuxsecurity com | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ 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 headlines. This week, a few interesting papers were released. Among them were, "IDS Evasion with Unicode," "FreeBSD IPsec mini-HOWTO," and "Linux Intrusion Detection." Each article provides information that could be helpful. If you have not yet set up an IDS on your network, it would be a great time to get started. Attacks are increasing, and it is something that simply cannot be ignored. This week, advisories were released for slocate, gnupg, procfs, bitchx, gpm, piranha, ircii, openldap, and emacs. The vendors include Conectiva, FreeBSD, LinuxPPC, and Mandrake. It was a big week for LinuxPPC advisories. If you are maintaining any PPC servers we recommend that you update or remove any vulnerable packages. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-2237.html ================================================================= FREE Apache SSL Guide from Thawte Are you planning your Web Server Security? Click here to get a FREE Thawte Apache SSL guide and find the answers to all your Apache SSL security issues: <http://www.thawte.com/ucgi/gothawte.cgi?a=n074917540018000> ================================================================= HTML Version available: <http://www.linuxsecurity.com/newsletter.html> +---------------------+ | Host Security News: | <<-----[ Articles This Week ]-----------------+ +---------------------+ * Using ssh January 7th, 2001 While this is a good article on using ssh, OpenSSH is really the version of choice these days. "Ssh (Secure Shell) is a program for logging into a remote machine and executing commands in a remote machine. It is intended to replace rlogin and rsh, and provide secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2248.html * Introduction to Digital Signatures in Java January 4th, 2001 To set up a digital signature in Java, you first need to set up a private key, usually by using keytool or the security API methods. Programmers often use the Java Certificate feature to securely verify public key authenticity. After you have a public key, you generate a digital signature using the jarsigner tool or the API methods. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2228.html * FreeBSD IPsec mini-HOWTO January 4th, 2001 This document is intended to be a primer on how to get IPsec on FreeBSD up and running, interoperating both with another FreeBSD (or NetBSD or any other KAME-derived stack) machine, and a Windows 2000 machine. IPsec is a means to secure IP layer communications between hosts, and can secure both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. Only IPsec over IPv4 will be discussed here. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2232.html +------------------------+ | Network Security News: | +------------------------+ * DDoS: Internet Weapons of Mass Destruction January 5th, 2001 EBay. Amazon. CNN. None of these Internet heavy hitters was adequately prepared to withstand a series of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks that made headlines and disrupted operations early last year. What makes you think you're in any better position? http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2236.html * IDS Evasion with Unicode January 4th, 2001 A thief obtains his prize by bypassing alarms and security systems that are in place. IDS evasion is no different. An attacker knows that the IDS will alarm on certain attack signatures and, therefore, will try to evade the IDS by disguising the attack. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/intrusion_detection_article-2231.html * Intrusion Detection: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid January 4th, 2001 If you're not afraid about the state of your company's security, you should be. Hackers are scanning ports en masse, coordinated attacks are gaining popularity, and network users who appear to be valid are often impostors. And that's just outside attacks. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/intrusion_detection_article-2234.html * Linux Intrusion Detection January 3rd, 2001 One key to intrusion detection is understanding the most common security exploits. This knowledge will allow you to set up a checklist for periodic security checks of your system. If you're running a DNS server, BIND is a favorite target for attack. BIND has a number of security issues and should be disabled if not needed. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/intrusion_detection_article-2222.html +------------------------+ | Cryptography News: | +------------------------+ * Crypto-Politics: Decoding the New Encryption Standard January 2nd, 2001 An interview with Sun Labs' Whit Diffie and Susan Landau on the subject of the new AES encryption standard. Whit is one of the industry's "encryption gurus" and recently received the Marconi award (with Martin Hellman) for developing Public Key encryption. He is also often called to speak before Congress and the White House as an encryption expert. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2213.html * Secure Communication with GnuPG on Linux January 1st, 2001 GnuPG is a tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures. GnuPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP. Because it does not use the patented IDEA algorithm, it can be used without any restrictions. GnuPG uses public-key cryptography so that users may communicate securely. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2209.html +-------------------------+ | Vendors/Tools/Products: | +-------------------------+ * A Roundtable on BSD, Security, and Quality January 7th, 2001 Contributing Editor Jack Woehr moderated a roundtable at the recent USENIX Security Symposium 2000. The participants, Theo deRaadt, Todd Miller, Angelos Keromytis, and Werner Losh, discussed several topics, including the evolving distinction between Linux and BSD and the notion that reliability and security are achieved through simplicity. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-2249.html * Snort 1.7 Released January 6th, 2001 Snort 1.7 has finally been released! Snort is an open source network intrusion detection system, capable of performing real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. It can perform protocol analysis, content searching/matching and can be used to detect a variety of attacks and probes, such as buffer overflows, stealth port scans, CGI attacks, SMB probes, OS fingerprinting attempts, and much more. Snort uses a flexible rules language to describe traffic that it should collect or pass, as well as a detection engine that utilizes a modular plugin architecture. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/intrusion_detection_article-2245.html * Updated Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO January 3rd, 2001 David Wheeler has made major modifications to his HOWTO. "Version 2.70 released, adding a significant amount of additional material, such as a significant expansion of the discussion of cross-site malicious content, HTML/URI filtering, and handling temporary files. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/documentation_article-2226.html * Security Statement from GTK+ Team January 3rd, 2001 Below is a statement from Ownen Taylor of the GTK+ development team in regards to the recent GTK_MODULES security issue raised on BUGTRAQ. "In the opinion of the GTK+ team, the only correct way to write a setuid program with a graphical user interface is to have a setuid backend that communicates with the non-setuid graphical user interface via a mechanism such as a pipe and that considers the input it receives to be untrusted." http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/projects_article-2224.html +------------------------+ | General News: | +------------------------+ * When to say "no access" January 5th, 2001 In the rush to adopt e-commerce, businesses are looking at network security from a perspective that requires both technology and an intuitive sense of how and where to allow access to information. Network security is no longer a matter of putting in the best firewalls, or having the most up-to-date anti-virus software, intrusion detectors or encryption http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2242.html * How to cover your shopping footprints January 5th, 2001 Shopping on the Internet is like signing up for a supermarket saver card or getting that extra 10 percent discount when you sign up for a retail store's credit card. You get some immediate savings, but you are also involuntarily subscribing to junk mail. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/privacy_article-2241.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Distributed by: Guardian Digital, Inc. 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