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Linux Security Week - January 22nd 2001
From: newsletter-admins () linuxsecurity com
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 00:10:02 -0500
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | LinuxSecurity.com Weekly Newsletter | | January 22, 2001 Volume 2, Number 4n | | | | 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, many articles were released. Much of the news was surrounding the Ramen worm. A few of the good papers included "Securing DNS with Transaction Signatures," "Web Site Security and Denial of Service Protection," and "Initial Cryptanalysis of the RSA SecurID Algorithm." If you have not yet educated yourself about the Linux Ramen worm then you may want to read "Ramen Linux Worm Propagation" http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2335.html This week, advisories were released for php4, inn, dhcpd, zope, stunnel, joe, bash, syslog-ng, openssh, linuxconf, wu-ftpd, glibc, and diffutils/squid. The vendors include Conectiva, Caldera, FreeBSD, Mandrake, and Trustix. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-2338.html # FREE VISOR with purchase of Guardian Digital's Linux Lockbox # Guardian Digital has just announced an offer for a free Handspring Visor with the purchase of any secure Linux Lockbox. The Lockbox is an Open Source network server appliance engineered to be a complete secure e-business solution. It can be used as a commerce server, web server, DNS, mail, and database server. Please see Guardian Digital's website for details. http://www.guardiandigital.com/visoroffer.html ** OpenDoc Publishing ** Our sponsor this week is OpenDoc Publishing. Their 480-page comprehensive security book, Securing and Optimizing Linux, takes a hands-on approach to installing, optimizing, configuring, and securing Red Hat Linux. Topics include sendmail 8.10.1, OpenSSL, ApacheSSL, OpenSSH and much more! Includes Red Hat 6.2 and Red Hat 6.2 PowerTools edition. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/sponsors/opendocs.html HTML Version available: <http://www.linuxsecurity.com/newsletter.html> +---------------------+ | Host Security News: | <<-----[ Articles This Week ]-----------------+ +---------------------+ * Securing DNS with Transaction Signatures January 20th, 2001 The DNS works on a question-answer model. If a client needs information from the DNS it sends a question to a DNS server and the server returns an answer. Until recently it was only possible for a server to examine a question and determine whether or not to answer it based on the IP address the question originated from. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/host_security_article-2341.html * Ramen and the Danger of Default Linux Configurations January 18th, 2001 If there's one area where Linux distributions miserably fail, it's in how services are configured right out of the box upon installation. Experienced users know enough to plug the many security holes present in a default Linux installation, but many Linux newbies -- and those experienced system administrators coming from the UNIX and NT worlds -- don't. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/host_security_article-2332.html * Advanced Host Detection - Techniques To Validate Host-Connectivity January 18th, 2001 This paper will attempt to describe techniques used to discover heavily filtered and firewalled hosts, that will not answer to standard PING responses. It is assumed that the reader has a firm knowledge of the major internet protocols (TCP,IP,UDP,ICMP). Most other protocols will not be discussed but techniques described here can be applied to many protocols. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2327.html * Securing Linux: Part 2 January 15th, 2001 This second article in the series takes you through TCP wrappers, OpenSSH, disabling unnecessary services and better monitoring of system activity by using unique log files to monitor specific information." http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/server_security_article-2305.html +------------------------+ | Network Security News: | +------------------------+ * Web Site Security and Denial of Service Protection January 21st, 2001 The challenge for successful public Web sites is to encourage access to the site, while eliminating undesirable or malicious traffic, and providing the necessary levels of sufficient security without creating constraining site limitations in performance or scalability. Disruption of service caused by denial of service (DoS) attacks is the "kiss of death" for Web-driven enterprises such as portals and e-commerce sites. The "1999 Computer Crime and Security Survey" found system penetration by outsiders increased for the third year in a row with 30% of respondents reporting intrusions. Those reporting their Internet connection as a frequent point of attack rose for the third straight year, from 37% of respondents in 1996 to 57% in 1999 http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2346.html * Defenses still weak against DDoS attacks January 19th, 2001 Mafiaboy, the Canadian teenager accused of launching a series of distributed denial of service attacks against a septet of the Internet's most popular sites last year, pleaded guilty Thursday to 56 of the 66 charges against him--just before his trial was set to start in a Montreal court. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2340.html * Running Snort on IIS Web Servers: Part I January 17th, 2001 Martin Roesch developed Snort in 1998 for Unix platforms. Dubbing it a "Lightweight Intrusion Detection System," Martin made the tool open source and the number of people using Snort has been growing ever since. In the summer of 2000, Mike Davis created the first Win32 port of Snort, bringing a great tool to a whole new world of Windows users and bringing a world of Windows users to a different understanding of security. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2320.html * Linux Firewall - the Traffic Shaper January 16th, 2001 This article will look at ways for users to get more out of that faithful but somewhat dull firewall. In particular, we will look at traffic shaping, a technique that prevents high-bandwidth traffic like Napster from making other Internet applications, such as Web browsing and gaming, unusable. By making some simple adjustments to the Linux kernel, users can implement an effective traffic shaping setup that ensures that the Web traffic can flow smoothly, even when a lot of outsiders are busy working with your Napster store. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/firewalls_article-2312.html +------------------------+ | Cryptography News: | +------------------------+ * Initial Cryptanalysis of the RSA SecurID Algorithm January 18th, 2001 This short paper will examine several discovered statistical irregularities in functions used within the SecurID algorithm: the time computation and final conversion routines. Where and how these irregularities can be mitigated by usage and policy are explored. We are planning for the release of a more thorough analysis in the near future. This paper does not present methods of determining the secret component by viewing previously generated or successive tokencodes. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2336.html * Crypto-Gram Jan 2001 January 16th, 2001 Crypto-Gram is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on computer security and cryptography. This month Bruce Schneier discusses a "Cyber UL", NIST, Code Signing in MS Windows, and how the FBI circumvented a persons privacy while using PGP. As always, Bruce offers a very well thought out summary of the current issues facing the crypto community. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2313.html +-------------------------+ | Vendors/Tools/Products: | +-------------------------+ * U.S. Post Office Unveils Secure Internet Service January 18th, 2001 The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a new service Tuesday that allows government agencies to send and receive sensitive documents such as birth certificates and medical records over the Internet in a secure manner. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/government_article-2329.html * Secure Linux Distributions: Three Approaches to Three Different Problems January 17th, 2001 If there is one question I hate, it's "Which Linux distribution is the most secure?" followed by "Which firewall is best?" People ask these questions in all innocence, and very few realize the complexity behind them. If I'm in a bad mood I'll usually say, "Whichever one works best for you with the fewest problems." While essentially a correct answer, it is mostly useless. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/vendors_products_article-2319.html +------------------------+ | General News: | +------------------------+ * Counterspy January 21st, 2001 Two hot new weapons are "honey pots" and tracers. A honey pot is a fake server set up to trap the unwitting intruder. Once inside, an alarm is tripped and the hacker's every keystroke, method of entry and manner of attack is covertly scrutinized. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/hackscracks_article-2344.html * Security breaches soar in US January 19th, 2001 Some 90 per cent of US companies reported some form of security breach last year, costing them $265m, according to FBI figures. Loss of customer goods accounts for 29 per cent of these costs, while loss of staff time accounts for 22 per cent, money loss 23 per cent and loss of revenue 18 per cent. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/general_article-2339.html * Ramen Linux Worm Propagation January 18th, 2001 By the time this article appears in print, the world will be about to enter - or will have just entered - the 21st Century. On January 1, 2001, humanity will still not have fulfilled some of the more flamboyant predictions of the 1960s and 1970s; for example, we won't all be flying around, Jetsons-style, in transparent-domed cars that emit tiny smoke rings. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2335.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Distributed by: Guardian Digital, Inc. 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