san – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Fri, 15 Apr 2016 02:34:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png san – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 rm -rf $ALLTHETHINGS/ | TechSNAP 262 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/98886/rm-rf-allthethings-techsnap-262/ Thu, 14 Apr 2016 18:34:12 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=98886 Find out why everyone’s just a little disappointed in Badlock, the bad security that could be connected to the Panama Papers leak & the story of a simple delete command that took out an entire hosting provider. Plus your batch of networking questions, our answers & a packed round up! Thanks to: Get Paid to […]

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Find out why everyone’s just a little disappointed in Badlock, the bad security that could be connected to the Panama Papers leak & the story of a simple delete command that took out an entire hosting provider.

Plus your batch of networking questions, our answers & a packed round up!

Thanks to:


DigitalOcean


Ting


iXsystems

Direct Download:

HD Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube | HD Torrent | Mobile Torrent

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Show Notes:

Badlock vulnerability disclosed

  • The badlock vulnerability was finally disclosed on Tuesday after 3 weeks of hype
  • It turns out to not have been as big a deal as we were lead to believe
  • The flaw was not in the SMB protocol itself, but in the related SAM and LSAD protocols
  • The flaw itself is identified as https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-2118
  • It affects all versions of Samba clear back to 3.0
  • “Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11 Security Releases are available”
  • “Please be aware that Samba 4.1 and below are therefore out of support, even for security fixes. There will be no official security releases for Samba 4.1 and below published by the Samba Team or SerNet (for EnterpriseSAMBA). We strongly advise users to upgrade to a supported release.”
  • See the Samba Release Planning page for more details about support lifetime for each branch
  • Microsoft releases MS16-047 but rated it only “Important”, not “Critical”
  • The patch fixes an “elevation of privilege bug in both SAM and LSAD that could be exploited in a man-in-the-middle attack, forcing a downgrade of the authentication level of both channels. An attacker could then impersonate an authenticated user”
  • Microsoft was also careful to note: “Only applications and products that use the SAM or LSAD remote protocols are affected by this issue. The SMB protocol is not vulnerable.”
  • It seems most of the “badlock” bugs were actually in Samba itself, rather than the protocol as we were lead to believe
  • “There are several MITM attacks that can be performed against a variety of protocols used by Samba. These would permit execution of arbitrary Samba network calls using the context of the intercepted user. Impact examples of intercepting administrator network traffic:”
  • Samba AD server – view or modify secrets within an AD database, including user password hashes, or shutdown critical services.
  • standard Samba server – modify user permissions on files or directories.
  • There were also a number of related CVEs that are also fixed:
    • CVE-2015-5370 3.6.0 to 4.4.0: Errors in Samba DCE-RPC code can lead to denial of service (crashes and high cpu consumption) and man in the middle attacks. It is unlikely but not impossible to trigger remote code execution, which may result in an impersonation on the client side.
    • CVE-2016-2110 3.0.0 to 4.4.0: The feature negotiation of NTLMSSP is not downgrade protected. A man in the middle is able to clear even required flags, especially NTLMSSP_NEGOTIATE_SIGN and NTLMSSP_NEGOTIATE_SEAL. Which has implications on encrypted LDAP traffic.
    • CVE-2016-2111 3.0.0 to 4.4.0: When Samba is configured as Domain Controller it allows remote attackers to spoof the computer name of a secure channel’s endpoints, and obtain sensitive session information, by running a crafted application and leveraging the ability to sniff network traffic.
    • CVE-2016-2112 3.0.0 to 4.4.0: A man in the middle is able to downgrade LDAP connections to no integrity protection. It’s possible to attack client and server with this.
    • CVE-2016-2113 4.0.0 to 4.4.0: Man in the middle attacks are possible for client triggered LDAP connections (with ldaps://) and ncacn_http connections (with https://).
    • CVE-2016-2114 4.0.0 to 4.4.0: Due to a bug Samba doesn’t enforce required smb signing, even if explicitly configured. In addition the default for the active directory domain controller case was wrong.
    • CVE-2016-2115 3.0.0 to 4.4.0: The protection of DCERPC communication over ncacn_np (which is the default for most the file server related protocols) is inherited from the underlying SMB connection. Samba doesn’t enforce SMB signing for this kind of SMB connections by default, which makes man in the middle attacks possible.
  • Additional Coverage: Threadpost – Badlock vulnerability falls flat against its type
  • “As it turns out, Badlock was hardly the remote code execution monster many anticipated. Instead, it’s a man-in-the-middle and denial-of-service bug, allowing an attacker to elevate privileges or crash a Windows machine running Samba services.”
  • “Red Hat security strategist Josh Bressers said Badlock could have been much worse, especially if it had turned out to be a memory corruption issue in SMB as some had surmised. Such a scenario would have cleared a path for remote code execution, for example.”
  • Additional Coverage: sadlock.org

Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca

  • Eleven million documents were leaked from one of the world’s most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
  • They show how Mossack Fonseca has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and avoid tax.
  • The documents show 12 current or former heads of state and at least 60 people linked to current or former world leaders in the data.
  • Eleven million documents held by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca have been passed to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which then shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. BBC Panorama is among 107 media organisations – including UK newspaper the Guardian – in 76 countries which have been analysing the documents.
  • There are many conspiracy theories about the source of the Panama Papers leak. One of the more prominent theories today blames the CIA.
  • Bradley Birkenfeld is “the most significant financial whistleblower of all time,” and he has opinions about who’s responsible for leaking the Panama Papers rattling financial and political power centers around the world.
  • Wikileaks is also getting attention today for blaming USAID and George Soros for the leaks.
  • What little is known about the source of the leak comes from details published by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. Communicating via encrypted chat in late 2014, the source warned his or her life was “in danger” but that they had data from law firm Mossack Fonseca that they wanted to share. When asked how much data they had, the source replied “more than you have ever seen,” according to the newspaper.
  • Regardless, the front-end computer systems of Mossack Fonseca are outdated and riddled with security flaws, analysis has revealed.
  • Mossack Fonseca’s client portal is also vulnerable to the DROWN attack, a security exploit that targets servers supporting the obsolete and insecure SSL v2 protocol. The portal, which runs on the Drupal open source CMS, was last updated in August 2013, according to the site’s changelog.
  • On its main website Mossack Fonseca claims its Client Information Portal provides a “secure online account” allowing customers to access “corporate information anywhere and everywhere”. The version of Drupal used by the portal has at least 25 vulnerabilities, including a high-risk SQL injection vulnerability that allows anyone to remotely execute arbitrary commands. Areas of the portal’s backend can also be accessed by guessing the URL structure, a security researcher noted.
  • Mossack Fonseca’s webmail system, which runs on Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access, was last updated in 2009, while its main site runs a version of WordPress that is three months out of date. A further vulnerability makes it possible to easily access files uploaded to the backend of Mossack Fonseca’s site simply by guessing the URL.
  • Mossack Fonseca’s emails were also not transport encrypted, according to privacy expert Christopher Soghoian who noted the company did not use the TLS security protocol.
  • Who leaked the Panama Papers? A famous financial whistleblower says: CIA. / Boing Boing
  • Wikileaks Accuses US Of Funding Panama Papers Putin Expose | The Daily Caller
  • Panama Papers: The security flaws at the heart of Mossack Fonseca (Wired UK)
  • Additional Coverage: The Register – Mossack Fonseca website found vulnerable to SQL injection
  • Additional Coverage: Forbes
  • Additional Coverage: WordFence
  • Additional Coverage: Slashdot
  • In general, it seems there were so many flaws in the website we may never know which one was used to compromise the server

I accidently rm -rf /’d, and destroyed my entire company

  • “I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers. Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line.”
  • “All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too because the remote storage was mounted just before by the same script (that is a backup maintenance script).
    How I can recover from a rm -rf / now in a timely manner?”
  • There is not usually any easy way to recover from something like this
  • That is why you need backups. Backups are not just a single copy of your files in another location, you need time series data, in case you need to go back more than the most recent backup
  • It is usually best to not have your backups mounted directly, for exactly this reason
  • Even if you will never rm -rf /, an attacker might run rm -rf /backup/*
  • While cleaning up after an attacker attempted to use a Linux kernel exploit against my FreeBSD machine in 2003, I accidently rm -rf /’d in a roundabout way, Trying to remove a symlink to / that had a very funky name (part of the exploit iirc), i used tab complete, and instead of: rm -rf badname, it did rm -rf badname/, which deletes the target of the symlink, which was /.
  • Obviously this was my fault for using -r for a symlink, since I only wanted to delete one thing
  • When the command took too long, I got worried, and when I saw ‘can’t delete /sbin/init’, I panicked and aborted it with control+c
  • Luckily, I had twice daily backups with bacula, to another server. 30 minutes later, everything was restored, and the server didn’t even require a reboot. The 100+ customers on the machine never noticed, since I stopped the rm before it hit /usr/home
  • There are plenty of other examples of this same problem though
  • Steam accidently deletes ALL of your files
  • Bryan Cantrill tells a similiar story from the old SunOS days
  • Discussion continues and talks about why rm -rf / is blocked by on SunOS and FreeBSD
  • Additional Coverage: ServerFault
  • When told to dd the drive to a file, to use testdisk to try to recover files, the user reports accidentally swapping if= and of=, which likely would just error out if the input file didn’t exist, but it might also mean that this entire thing is just a troll. Further evidence: rm -rf / usually doesn’t work on modern linux, without the –no-preserve-root flag

Feedback:


Round Up:


The post rm -rf $ALLTHETHINGS/ | TechSNAP 262 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Internet of Problems | TechSNAP 199 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/76517/internet-of-problems-techsnap-199/ Thu, 29 Jan 2015 18:32:54 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=76517 The internet of dangerous things is arriving but what about taking care of the devices we already have? We’ll discuss! Plus details on critical updates from Adobe, the surprising number of Gas Stations vulnerable to exploitation via the internet, your questions, our answers & much, much more! Thanks to: Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean […]

The post Internet of Problems | TechSNAP 199 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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The internet of dangerous things is arriving but what about taking care of the devices we already have? We’ll discuss!

Plus details on critical updates from Adobe, the surprising number of Gas Stations vulnerable to exploitation via the internet, your questions, our answers & much, much more!

Thanks to:


DigitalOcean


Ting


iXsystems

Direct Download:

HD Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube | HD Torrent | Mobile Torrent

RSS Feeds:

HD Video Feed | Mobile Video Feed | MP3 Audio Feed | Ogg Audio Feed | iTunes Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Foo

— Show Notes: —

Flash Updates


Gas Stations vulnerable to exploitation via the internet

  • “An attacker with access to the serial port interface of an ATG may be able to shut down the station by spoofing the reported fuel level, generating false alarms, and locking the monitoring service out of the system,” said HD Moore, the chief research officer at security firm Rapid7
  • “Tank gauge malfunctions are considered a serious issue due to the regulatory and safety issues that may apply.”
  • While doing research, HD Moore found that more than 5000 gas gauge devices are connected to the internet with no authentication. The automated tank gauges generally only have a serial port.
  • “Approximately 5,800 ATGs (Automated Tank Gauge) were found to be exposed to the Internet without a password,” Moore said. “Over 5,300 of these ATGs are located in the United States, which works out to about 3 percent of the approximately 150,000 fueling stations in the country.”
  • Some of the devices have TCP/IP interfaces, and those that do not can be connected to a serial server, a common device in the IT industry, then be connected to the internet. Most serial servers do offer the ability to require a password to access the port, however this feature is often not enabled, and is not very secure
  • “Operators should consider using a VPN [virtual private network] gateway or other dedicated hardware interface to connect their ATGs with their monitoring service,” the researcher said. “Less-secure alternatives include applying source IP address filters or setting a password on each serial port.”
  • Another example of taking devices that were not meant to be put on the internet, and then doing so, without taking into account the security implications. Even with a password and source IP filtering, these devices should not be directly connected to the Internet. That is what VPNs are for
  • Additional Coverage – ITWorld

The internet of dangerous things

  • Krebs talks about the trends in Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
  • Krebs cites data from Arbor networks, and their subsidiary Prolexic, which Krebs uses to protect his site, which was under constant attack from various sources throughout December
  • The point needs to be raised that a growing number of these attacks are sources from ‘Internet of Things’ type devices, small consumer devices with an embedded operating system that receives no updates after it ships
  • The attacks against Sony and Microsoft over Christmas used exploited routers, but a growing number of other devices could be vulnerable, especially in light of things like the new Linux Ghost vulnerability
  • We have seen viruses attacking NAS and other types of storage devices, and I am sure it will not be long before the first attack against set-top boxes like the Boxee and Roku.
  • “As Arbor notes, some of the biggest attacks take advantage of Internet-based hardware — everything from gaming consoles to routers and modems — that ships with networking features that can easily be abused for attacks and that are turned on by default. Perhaps fittingly, the largest attacks that hit my site in the past four months are known as SSDP assaults because they take advantage of the Simple Service Discovery Protocol — a component of the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) standard that lets networked devices (such as gaming consoles) seamlessly connect with each other.”
  • “Arbor also found that attackers continue to use reflection/amplification techniques to create gigantic attacks.”
  • It has been over a year since these amplification vulnerabilities were patches, but there are still many systems being exploited to perform these attacks
  • “According to the Open Resolver Project, a site that tracks devices which can be abused to help launch attacks online, there are currently more than 28 million Internet-connected devices that attackers can abuse for use in completely anonymous attacks.”
  • “According to Arbor, the top three motivations behind attacks remain nihilism vandalism, online gaming and ideological hacktivism— all of which the company said have been in the top three for the past few years.”
  • While analyzing the data from the dump of the Lizard Stresser database, Krebs found that one of the most popular targets for attack were small personal minecraft servers
  • Krebs: “Tech pundits and Cassandras of the world like to wring their hands and opine about the coming threat from the so-called “Internet of Things” — the possible security issues introduced by the proliferation of network-aware devices — from fitness trackers to Internet-connected appliances. But from where I sit, the real threat is from The Internet of Things We Already Have That Need Fixing Today.”

Feedback:


Round Up:


The post Internet of Problems | TechSNAP 199 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Patch and Notify | TechSNAP 197 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/75657/patch-and-notify-techsnap-197/ Thu, 15 Jan 2015 22:21:43 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=75657 Been putting off that patch? This week we’ll cover how an out of date Joomla install led to a massive breach, Microsoft and Google spar over patch disclosures & picking the right security question… Plus a great batch of your feedback, a rocking round up & much, much more! Thanks to: Get Paid to Write […]

The post Patch and Notify | TechSNAP 197 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Been putting off that patch? This week we’ll cover how an out of date Joomla install led to a massive breach, Microsoft and Google spar over patch disclosures & picking the right security question…

Plus a great batch of your feedback, a rocking round up & much, much more!

Thanks to:


DigitalOcean


Ting


iXsystems

Direct Download:

HD Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube | HD Torrent | Mobile Torrent

RSS Feeds:

HD Video Feed | Mobile Video Feed | MP3 Audio Feed | Ogg Audio Feed | iTunes Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Foo

— Show Notes: —

Data thieves target parking lots

  • “Late last year, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that two huge swaths of credit card numbers put up for sale in the cybercrime underground had likely been stolen from Park ‘N Fly and from OneStopParking.com, competing airport parking services that lets customers reserve spots in advance of travel via Internet reservation systems. This week, both companies confirmed that they had indeed suffered a breach.”
  • “When contacted by Krebs on Dec. 15, Atlanta-based Park ‘N Fly said while it had recently engaged multiple security firms to investigate breach claims, it had not found any proof of an intrusion. In a statement released Tuesday, however, the company acknowledged that its site was hacked and leaking credit card data, but stopped short of saying how long the breach persisted or how many customers may have been affected”
  • “OneStopParking.com reached via phone this morning, the site’s manager Amer Ghanem said the company recently determined that hackers had broken in to its systems via a vulnerability in Joomla for which patches were made available in Sept. 2014. Unfortunately for OneStopParking.com and its customers, the company put off applying that Joomla update because it broke portions of the site.”
  • “Unlike card data stolen from main street retailers — which can be encoded onto new plastic and used to buy stolen goods in physical retail stores — cards stolen from online transactions can only be used by thieves for fraudulent online purchases. However, most online carding shops that sell stolen card data in underground stores market both types of cards, known in thief-speak as “dumps” and “CVVs,” respectively.”
  • “Interestingly, the disclosure timeline for both of these companies would have been consistent with a new data breach notification law that President Obama called for earlier this week. That proposal would require companies to notify consumers about a breach within 30 days of discovering their information has been hacked.”
  • Krebs also appears to be having fun with the LizzardSquad

Microsoft pushes emergency fixes, blames Google

  • Microsoft and Adobe both released critical patches this week
  • “Leading the batch of Microsoft patches for 2015 is a drama-laden update to fix a vulnerability in Windows 8.1 that Google researchers disclosed just two days ago. Google has a relatively new policy of publicly disclosing flaws 90 days after they are reported to the responsible software vendor — whether or not that vendor has fixed the bug yet. That 90-day period elapsed over the weekend, causing Google to spill the beans and potentially help attackers develop an exploit in advance of Patch Tuesday.”
  • Yahoo recently announced a similar new policy, to disclose all bugs after 90 days
  • This is the result of too many vendors take far too long to resolve bugs after they are notified
  • Researchers have found that need to straddle the line between responsible disclosure, and full disclosure, as it is irresponsible to not notify the public when it doesn’t appear as if the vendor is taking the vulnerability seriously.
  • Microsoft also patched a critical telnet vulnerability
  • “For its part, Microsoft issued a strongly-worded blog post chiding Google for what it called a “gotcha” policy that leaves Microsoft users in the lurch”
  • There is also a new Adobe flash to address multiple issues
  • Krebs notes: “Windows users who browse the Web with anything other than Internet Explorer may need to apply this patch twice, once with IE and again using the alternative browser (Firefox, Opera, e.g.).” because of the way Microsoft bundles flash
  • Infact, if you use Chrome and Firefox on windows, you’ll need to make sure all 3 have properly updated.

What makes a good security question?

  • Safe: cannot be guessed or researched
  • Stable: does not change over time
  • Memorable: you can remember it
  • Simple: is precise, simple, consistent
  • Many: has many possible answers
  • It is important that the answer not be something that could easily be learned by friending you on facebook or twitter
  • Some examples:
  • What is the name of the first beach you visited?
  • What is the last name of the teacher who gave you your first failing grade?
  • What is the first name of the person you first kissed?
  • What was the name of your first stuffed animal or doll or action figure?
  • Too many of the more popular questions are too easy to research now
  • Some examples of ones that might not be so good:
    • In what town was your first job? (Resume, LinkedIn, Facebook)
    • What school did you attend for sixth grade?
    • What is your oldest sibling’s birthday month and year? (e.g., January 1900) (Now it isn’t your facebook, but theirs that might be the leak, you can’t control what information other people expose)
  • Sample question scoring

Feedback:


Round Up:


The post Patch and Notify | TechSNAP 197 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Ethically Hacked | TechSNAP 120 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/40802/ethically-hacked-techsnap-120/ Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:17:35 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=40802 A huge amount of SIM cards are susceptible to an Over the Air attack, Apple’s hacker outs himself, and the trouble with the Ubuntu forums!

The post Ethically Hacked | TechSNAP 120 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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A huge amount of SIM cards are susceptible to an Over the Air attack, Allan’s got the details, Apple’s hacker outs himself, and the trouble with the Ubuntu forums!

Plus a batch of your questions, and much much more!

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Security Researcher Claims Apple Developer Website Hack

  • Apple\’s Developer Center first went offline last Thursday, and on Sunday, Apple revealed that it had been taken down as a precaution after a security breach. It is unclear who was responsible for the hacking, but a security researcher, Ibrahim Balic has suggested that he might be to blame for the outage.
  • The company added that critical developer data had not been compromised and that they were working day n’ night to fix the vulnerability and bring the site back online.
  • According to 9 to 5 Mac adds that, “In an email… Balic … is persistent in stating he did this for security research purposes and does not plan to use the information in any malicious manner.”
  • The comment comes from independent security researcher Ibrahim Balic, who claims that his effort was not intended to be malicious and that he reported his findings to Apple just hours before the developer site was taken down by the company.
  • Balic, who has reported 13 different bugs to Apple, originally discovered an iAd Workbench vulnerability on June 18 that allowed a request sent to the server to be manipulated. This security hole could be used to acquire the names and email addresses of iTunes users (even non-developers).
  • After finding the loophole, Balic wrote a Python script to harvest data from the vulnerability and then displayed it in a YouTube video, which may have put him on Apple\’s radar.
  • In addition to the iAd Workbench bug, Balic also discovered and submitted a report on a bug that caused the Dev Center site to be vulnerable to a stored XSS attack. While Balic says that it was possible to access user data by exploiting the Dev Center issue, he claims that he did not do so.
  • New Details Emerge on Security Researcher Potentially Responsible for Dev Center Outage s
  • Apple Outlines Plan for Bringing Developer Center Back Online
    Additional Coverage

Ubuntu Forums compromised

  • The forums were defaced and the database compromised
  • There were approximately 1.82 million registered accounts in the forum database
  • Attackers have access to each of these user\’s username, password and email address
  • The passwords were salted hashes, but by which algorithm was not made clear. Where these cryptographic hashes, or just md5(salt+md5(password)) or similar like some forum software?
  • If you were a registered user, and reused that password anywhere else, you are likely going to have a bad time
  • “Ubuntu One, Launchpad and other Ubuntu/Canonical services are NOT affected by the breach”
  • Timeline:
  • 2013-07-20 2011 UTC: Reports of defacement
  • 2013-07-20 2015 UTC: Site taken down, this splash page put in place while investigation continues.
  • 2013-07-21: we believe the root cause of the breach has been identified. We are currently reinstalling the forums software from scratch. No data (posts, private messages etc.) will be lost as part of this process.
  • 2013-07-22: work on reinstalling the forums continues.

Feedback:

TechSNAP Bitmessage: BM-GuGEaEtsqQjqgHRAfag5FW33Dy2KHUmZ

The enterprise-class Open Source LDAP server for Linux. It is hardened by real-world use, is full-featured, supports multi-master replication, and already handles many of the largest LDAP deployments in the world. The 389 Directory Server can be downloaded for free and set up in less than an hour using the graphical console.

Round Up:


The post Ethically Hacked | TechSNAP 120 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Encryption Best Practices | TechSNAP 10 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/9441/encryption-best-practices/ Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:00:03 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=9441 We launch into your questions, and cover encryption best practices to keep your data safe! Plus a followup to last week's bitcoin coverage!

The post Encryption Best Practices | TechSNAP 10 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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Coming up on this episode of TechSNAP:

We follow up on last week’s bitcoin coverage with scandal that has a $500k price tag.

Then – We launch into your questions, and cover encryption best practices to keep your data safe!

Plus – We take our first live war story call, all that and more on this week’s TechSNAP!


Direct Download Links:

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Show Notes:

TechSNAP has a new Sub-Reddit, submit links and questions for the show, and vote away!


Topic: Bitcoin wallet stolen (25,000 coins worth ~$500,000 USD)

  • Bitcoin wallets work by using public/private key pairs
  • Each wallet, by default, has 100 keys, and you allocate them as needed, and then new ones are generated so that you always have 100 ready for use
  • If someone manages to steal your wallet.dat file, they have the private keys for your addresses that contain the coins, and they can cryptographically sign a transaction using that private key, and therefore transfer the coins
  • User who had their coins stolen admits that they found spyware/malware on their computer. Possibly also a trojan
  • The attack also accessed the users account at a mining pool, and changed the destination address for payouts (some pools off the option to lock this address so that i can never be changed)
  • Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and there is no central authority to settle disputes or forcibly undo a transaction (This is both a feature and a flaw, it is a trade off to allows BTC transactions to avoid many forms of interference)

How to protect your wallet file:

  • Use separate wallet files, and don’t keep all of your money in one place.
  • Backup your wallet file regularly. The wallet file contains the private keys that actually control the coins, without them, you cannot transfer the coins. If you totally lose your wallet file without a backup, those coins are lost to everyone forever.
  • Your backups of your wallet file must be recent, because of the ‘100 key buffer’, that your wallet file has, if your backup is more than 100 transactions old, it will not contain the keys used for the newer transactions, and you will not be able to control those coins. Make sure you backup your wallet file on a regular basis. You can also adjust the configuration of your client to created a larger key buffer.
  • Your wallet file is the same as your GPG key ring, protect it as best you can. It should be stored in an encrypted volume (like a TrueCrypt mount or a GBDE file system) . It might also be advisable to run the bitcoin client as a dedicated user with much more locked down permissions on your machine.
  • As we learned from this incident, and the banking trojan news last week, it is imperative that you ensure that no one is logging your keystrokes, sniffing your traffic, or remotely controlling your machine (a remote control trojan such as the ZeuS banking worm, would be able to access your truecrypt partition when you mount it to use your bitcoin wallet)

mybitcoin.com – The bitcoin bank Chris is “trying”.

BITCOIN BLASTER:

– Our current Mining efforts –

Allan:
It all started with the dual GPUs in my gaming machine and the spare cycles on some of my servers, but CPUs and older nVidia cards were just not worth the power and effort with the higher difficulty.

So, a two friends and I have built a dedicated mining rig (2×5870, 1×6950) that is doing over 1100 Mh/s with a bit of overclocking. Sadly, the difficulty jump came only a few hours after we got the machine online, and it cut the profitability down. We are looking at another more expensive machine, but this will mean a longer wait for ROI.

Chris:
I’m pushing about 500 – 600 Mh/s during the day, nearing 810 MH/s at night. I plan to add two more moderately powerful ATI cards in the next week.

I bought my first physical good, a video card to mine some more. Using a “service” to convert bitcoins to Amazon gift-cards: https://www.bitcoinredemption.com/


FEEDBACK:

Q: (Michal) Is there a way for me to tell if my machine has been compromised while I was asleep?
A: Yes, using an application such as Tripware, or the Verification system in some backup software (Bacula, etc), allows you to detect which files have been changed since the last time the tool was run (ie, you run it daily). This way, when an important system file is changed, you are notified, if you did not cause this change (OS or package update/install), then it is possible someone has successfully compromised your system and modified important system files.


Q: (Dale) Is continuing to use Dropbox safe if i use TrueCrypt to encrypt my files before uploading them?
A: While it is theoretically safe to store your encrypted files in dropbox, because of the way dropbox works (copy on write deduplication), you would have to reupload the entire TrueCrypt volume every time you changed a file (because of the nature of the encryption, the changes to the encrypted volume will also be bigger). Unless you only store some very small files, or are using separate TrueCrypt volumes for each file you are storing, this will quickly get unwieldy and slow.


Q: (Michal) How can I store my users’ files such that they are encrypted with the users’ password, but can still be recovered if the password is lost/forgotten
A: The short answer is that you cannot. Strong cryptography does not have any recovery method. If you want the files to be truly secure, then they need to be able to be accessed by only a single key, and if that key is lost, the files are lost. The only real option is to encrypt the files to two different keys, one of the user, and one of the ‘Recovery Agent’, the person responsible for decrypting the files if the user loses their key. This lowers the security of the encrypted files, because the Recovery Agent can decrypt the files without the users’ permission.


Q: (Justin) How secure is it to enable to ‘text a password reset token to your mobile phone’ in gmail?
A: Mostly that depends on how secure your phone is. Does it display part of the text message when it comes in? How quickly does your phone lock it self when it is inactive. Can your unlock code be reset? How many other people have your unlock code? How easily can the unlock code be defeated? It is really up to you to decide how secure you feel your phone is. I for one, just don’t lose my passwords :p


Q: (brotherlu) What is the difference between a NAS and a SAN. Also in which environments would you use each.
A: a NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a dedicated storage device that you connect to your network. a SAN (Storage Area Network) is a dedicated network for storage devices. Usually SANs are much higher performance and sometimes use technologies other than ethernet. Really, it depends how much performance you need, SANs are much more expensive.


Grab bag bonus links:
Senate Bill Requires Permission to Collect & Share Location Data
LulzSec’s busy week:
Senate website, CIA.gov hacked. LulzSec claims responsibility.
LulzSec opens hack request line
LulzSec takes Eve Online and Minecraft offline
Ex-Googler Calls Out Google Infrastructure as Obsolete
Sophisticated Cyberattack Is Reported by the I.M.F.

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