SCP – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Thu, 14 Apr 2022 13:05:31 +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 SCP – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Linux Action News 236 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/148212/linux-action-news-236/ Thu, 14 Apr 2022 04:30:00 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=148212 Show Notes: linuxactionnews.com/236

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Show Notes: linuxactionnews.com/236

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EPYC Server Battle | BSD Now 281 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/128846/epyc-server-battle-bsd-now-281/ Thu, 17 Jan 2019 08:04:47 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=128846 ##Headlines ###scp client multiple vulnerabilities Overview SCP clients from multiple vendors are susceptible to a malicious scp server performing unauthorized changes to target directory and/or client output manipulation. Description Many scp clients fail to verify if the objects returned by the scp server match those it asked for. This issue dates back to 1983 and […]

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##Headlines
###scp client multiple vulnerabilities

  • Overview
  • SCP clients from multiple vendors are susceptible to a malicious scp server performing
    unauthorized changes to target directory and/or client output manipulation.
  • Description
  • Many scp clients fail to verify if the objects returned by the scp server match those
    it asked for. This issue dates back to 1983 and rcp, on which scp is based. A separate
    flaw in the client allows the target directory attributes to be changed arbitrarily.
    Finally, two vulnerabilities in clients may allow server to spoof the client output.
  • Impact
  • Malicious scp server can write arbitrary files to scp target directory, change the
    target directory permissions and to spoof the client output.
  • Details

The discovered vulnerabilities, described in more detail below, enables the attack
described here in brief.

    1. The attacker controlled server or Man-in-the-Middle(*) attack drops .bash_aliases file to victim’s home directory when the victim performs scp operation from the server. The transfer of extra files is hidden by sending ANSI control sequences via stderr. For example:

user@local:~$ scp user@remote:readme.txt .
readme.txt 100% 494 1.6KB/s 00:00
user@local:~$

    1. Once the victim launches a new shell, the malicious commands in .bash_aliases get executed.
  • *) Man-in-the-Middle attack does require the victim to accept the wrong host fingerprint.

###FreeBSD 12.0 vs. DragonFlyBSD 5.4 vs. TrueOS 18.12 vs. Linux On A Tyan EPYC Server

Last month when running FreeBSD 12.0 benchmarks on a 2P EPYC server I wasn’t able to run any side-by-side benchmarks with the new DragonFlyBSD 5.4 as this BSD was crashing during the boot process on that board. But fortunately on another AMD EPYC server available, the EPYC 1P TYAN Transport SX TN70A-B8026, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 runs fine. So for this first round of BSD benchmarking in 2019 are tests of FreeBSD 11.2, FreeBSD 12.0, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1, the new TrueOS 18.12, and a few Linux distributions (CentOS 7, Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, and Clear Linux) on this EPYC 7601 server in a variety of workloads.

DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 ran fine on this Tyan server and could boot fine unlike the issue encountered on the Dell PowerEdge R7425 for this particular BSD. But on the Tyan server, DragonFlyBSD 5.2.2 wouldn’t boot so only this latest DragonFlyBSD release series was used as part of the comparison.

  • A summary of the operating systems tested for this EPYC 7601 OS benchmark comparison included:

  • DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 – The latest release of Matthew Dillon’s operating system while using the HAMMER2 file-system and GCC 8.1 compiler that is now the default system compiler for this BSD.

  • FreeBSD 11.2 – The previous stable release of FreeBSD. Installed with a ZFS file-system.

  • FreeBSD 12.0 – The latest stable release of FreeBSD and installed with its ZFS option.

  • TrueOS 18.12 – The latest release of the iX systems’ FreeBSD derivative. TrueOS 18.12 is based on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT and uses ZFS by default and was using the Clang 7.0.1 compiler compared to Clang 6.0.1 on FreeBSD 12.0.

  • CentOS Linux 7 – The latest EL7 operating system performance.

  • Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS – The latest Ubuntu Long Term Support release.

  • Clear Linux 27120 – The latest rolling release as of testing out of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center. Clear Linux often reflects as close to the gold standard for performance as possible with its insanely tuned software stack for offering optimal performance on x86_64 performance for generally showing best what the hardware is capable of.

Throughout all of this testing, the Tyan 2U server was kept to its same configuration of an AMD EPYC 7601 (32 cores / 64 threads) at stock speeds, 8 x 16GB DDR4-2666 ECC memory, and 280GB Intel Optane 900p SSD benchmarks.


##News Roundup
###National Inventors Hall of Fame honors creators of Unix

Dennis Ritchie (Posthumous) and Ken Thompson: UNIX Operating System
Thompson and Ritchie’s creation of the UNIX operating system and the C programming language were pivotal developments in the progress of computer science. Today, 50 years after its beginnings, UNIX and UNIX-like systems continue to run machinery from supercomputers to smartphones. The UNIX operating system remains the basis of much of the world’s computing infrastructure, and C language – written to simplify the development of UNIX – is one of the most widely used languages today.


###Die IPV4, Die

Imagine, it is 2019. Easy, ha? Imagine, it is 2019 and you want to turn off IPv4. Like, off off. Really off. Not disabling IPv6, but disabling IPv4.

  • Two steps back

You might be coming here wondering, why would anybody want to do what we are asking to be done. Well, it is dead simple: We are running data centers (like Data Center Light) with a lot of IPv6 only equipment. There simply is no need for IPv4. So why would we want to have it enabled?
Also, here at ungleich, we defined 2019 as the year to move away from IPv4.

  • The challenge

Do you like puzzles? Competitions? Challenges? Hacking? Well. If ANY of this is of your interest, here is a real challenge for you:
We offer a 100 CHF (roughly 100 USD) for anyone who can give us a detailed description of how to turn IPv4 completely off in an operating system and allowing it to communicate with IPv6 only. This should obviously include a tiny proof that your operating system is really unable to use IPv4 at all. Just flushing IPv4 addresses and keeping the IPv4 stack loaded, does not count.


###GhostBSD 18.12 released

GhostBSD 18.12 is an updated iso of GhostBSD 18.10 with some little changes to the live DVD/USB and with updated packages.

  • What has changed since 18.10
  • removed default call of kernel modules for AMD and Intel
  • replaced octopkg by software-station
  • added back gop hacks to the live system
  • added ghostbsd-drivers and ghostbsd-utils
  • we updated the packages to the latest build

###And Now for a laugh : #unixinpictures


##Beastie Bits


##Feedback/Questions


  • Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

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SSH: Heaven or Shell | LINUX Unplugged 157 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/101821/ssh-heaven-or-shell-lup-157/ Tue, 09 Aug 2016 19:14:45 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=101821 Our favorite tricks & hacks for SSH, debunking the Linux botnet rampage myth, the new challenges Solus is taking on & the inside track on how FOSS Talk Live went. Plus getting Ubuntu MATE on the BQ Tablet, benchmarking Ubuntu on Windows & our quick takes on using Zim Wiki and TagSpaces to manage your […]

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Our favorite tricks & hacks for SSH, debunking the Linux botnet rampage myth, the new challenges Solus is taking on & the inside track on how FOSS Talk Live went.

Plus getting Ubuntu MATE on the BQ Tablet, benchmarking Ubuntu on Windows & our quick takes on using Zim Wiki and TagSpaces to manage your local, secure notes.


Ting


DigitalOcean


Linux Academy

Direct Download:

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

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | WebM Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Patreon

Show Notes:

Pre-Show

Omega2: $5 Linux Computer with Wi-Fi, Made for IoT by Onion — Kickstarter

Follow Up / Catch Up

Linux Botnets on a Rampage

“That makes them prime targets for hackers, especially those that leverage C&C servers to centrally manage and carry out DDoS attacks,” he told LinuxInsider. “Deploying leading security solutions, as well as utilizing and updating established Linux distros, can go a long way to protecting against these issues.”

Solus Upgraded to the GNOME 3.20 Stack, Now Powered by Linux Kernel 4.7

Humble Survive This Bundle (pay what you want and help charity)

  • 3 Linux games

TING

Ubuntu on Windows! How Fast Is It? n

We’ll first run each test in Ubuntu running natively on the hardware, and then reboot, and run the same benchmarks on the same machine running Ubuntu on Windows.

We’ll use the utilities sysbench, dd and iperf, as well as compile the Linux kernel to do our benchmarking.

Snapcraft 2.13 and Snapd 2.11 Land with Support for Downgrading Installed Snaps

Canonical Plans to Unify and Clean Up Networking Configuration in Ubuntu Linux

Currently supported versions of the Ubuntu OS for desktop and server automatically generate ifupdown /etc/network/interfaces during installation. On the other hand, Ubuntu Cloud uses a YAML-based format.

DigitalOcean

SSH Hacks and Tricks

OpenSSH 7.3 released

Add a ProxyJump option and corresponding -J command-line
flag to allow simplified indirection through a one or more SSH
bastions or “jump hosts”.

Jumphosts are used as intermediate hops between your actual SSH target and yourself. Instead of using something like “unsecure” SSH agent forwarding, you can use ProxyCommand to proxy all your commands through your jumphost

Cowrie is a medium interaction SSH honeypot designed to log brute force attacks and the shell interaction performed by the attacker.

Linux Academy

TagSpaces – Your Hackable File Organizer

TagSpaces is an open source personal data manager.
It helps you organize and browse your files on every platform.

Evernote alternative for note taking and management

  • You can create and edit notes in plain text, MARKDOWN and HTML file formats.
  • You can organize webpages saved in for example MHT or MHTML format.
  • You use TagSpaces to organize you e-book library, containing for example PDF or EPUB books.
  • You can create a personal “wiki” for tracking of your projects, ideas or memories.

Zim – a desktop wiki

Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.

Wikitten

Wikitten is a small, fast, PHP wiki that I made because I really needed a place to store my notes, snippets, ideas, and so on. I’ve tried a lot of personal wikis and note-taking applications in the past, but since I have peculiar needs, none of them really suited me, so I rolled my own.

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Apple Pretend Filesystem | TechSNAP 271 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/100526/apple-pretend-filesystem-techsnap-271/ Thu, 16 Jun 2016 18:49:23 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=100526 Why didn’t Apple choose ZFS for its new filesystem? We journey through the long history of ZFS at Apple. Plus how the BadTunnel bug can hijack traffic from all versions of Windows & should we worry about Intel’s management tech? Plus great questions, a huge round up & much more! Thanks to: Get Paid to […]

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Why didn’t Apple choose ZFS for its new filesystem? We journey through the long history of ZFS at Apple. Plus how the BadTunnel bug can hijack traffic from all versions of Windows & should we worry about Intel’s management tech?

Plus great questions, a huge round up & 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:

Patreon

Show Notes:

BadTunnel bug can hijack traffic from all versions of Windows

  • “Microsoft has patched a severe security issue in its implementation of the NetBIOS protocol that affected all Windows versions ever released”
  • “Among the more than three dozen vulnerabilities Microsoft patched on Tuesday was a fix for a bug that the researcher who found it said has “probably the widest impact in the history of Windows.””
  • “An attacker could leverage this vulnerability to pass as a WPAD or ISATAP server and redirect all the victim’s network traffic through a point controlled by the attacker.”
  • “The flaw, which he’s called BadTunnel, exposes local area networks to cross-network NetBIOS Name Service spoofing. An attacker can remotely attack a firewall- or NAT-protected LAN and steal network traffic or spoof a network print or file server.”
  • “The flaw is particularly serious because it affects every version of Windows, including long-unsupported versions of the OS going back to Windows 95.”
  • “To successfully implement a BadTunnel attack, [you] just need the victim to open a URL (with Internet Explorer or Edge), or open a file (an Office document), or plug in a USB memory stick. [You] even may not need the victim to do anything when the victim is a web server.”
  • “For example, if a file URI or UNC path is embedded into a shortcut link file (Microsoft’s LNK), the BadTunnel attack can be triggered at the moment the user views the file in the Windows Explorer. It therefore can be exploited via webpage, email, flash drive and many other medias. It can even be effective against servers.”
  • “Exploitation points remain open for non-supported Windows operating systems such as XP, Windows Server 2003, and others, for which patches have not been released. For these operating systems, and for those that can’t be updated just yet, system administrators should disable NetBIOS.”
  • Additional Coverage: Threat Post
  • Official Microsoft Bulletin MS16-077 CVE-2016-3213

ZFS: Apple’s New Filesystem That Wasn’t

  • Adam Leventhal, a ZFS developer who designed features such as RAID-Z3, and also worked on DTrace, writes a post about Apple’s recent announcement of its new file system, APFS.
  • This story is mostly about how ZFS was almost the Apple file system, and what happened.
  • To learn more about Adam and what he has done, check out our BSDNow #122 Interview with him
  • “I attended my first WWDC in 2006 to participate in Apple’s launch of their DTrace port to the next version of Mac OS X (Leopard). Apple completed all but the fiddliest finishing touches without help from the DTrace team. Even when they did meet with us we had no idea that they were mere weeks away from the finished product being announced to the world. It was a testament both to Apple’s engineering acumen as well as their storied secrecy.”
  • “At that same WWDC Apple announced Time Machine, a product that would record file system versions through time for backup and recovery. How were they doing this? We were energized by the idea that there might be another piece of adopted Solaris technology. When we launched Solaris 10, DTrace shared the marquee with ZFS, a new filesystem that was to become the standard against which other filesystems are compared. Key among the many features of ZFS were snapshots that made it simple to capture the state of a filesystem, send the changes around, recover data, etc. Time Machine looked for all the world like a GUI on ZFS (indeed the GUI that we had imagined but knew to be well beyond the capabilities of Sun).”
  • “Of course Time Machine had nothing to do with ZFS. After the keynote we rushed to an Apple engineer we knew. With shame in his voice he admitted that it was really just a bunch of hard links to directories. For those who don’t know a symlink from a symtab this is the moral equivalent of using newspaper as insulation: it’s fine until the completely anticipated calamity destroys everything you hold dear. So there was no ZFS in Mac OS X, at least not yet.”
  • “A few weeks before WWDC 2007 nerds like me started to lose their minds: Apple really was going to port ZFS to Mac OS X. It was actually going to happen! Beyond the snapshots that would make backing up a cinch, ZFS would dramatically advance the state of data storage for Apple users. HFS was introduced in System 2.1. HFS improved upon the Macintosh File System by adding—wait for it—hierarchy! No longer would files accumulate in a single pile; you could organize them in folders. And that filesystem has limped along for more than 30 years, nudged forward, rewritten to avoid in-kernel Pascal code, but never reimagined or reinvented.”
  • “ZFS was to bring to Mac OS X data integrity, compression, checksums, redundancy, snapshots, etc, etc etc. But while energizing Mac/ZFS fans, Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, had clumsily disrupted the momentum that ZFS had been gathering in Apple’s walled garden. Apple had been working on a port of ZFS to Mac OS X. They were planning on mentioning it at the upcoming WWDC. Jonathan, brought into the loop either out of courtesy or legal necessity, violated the cardinal rule of the Steve Jobs-era Apple. Only one person at Steve Job’s company announces new products: Steve Jobs.”
  • “In fact, this week you’ll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10,” mused Jonathan at a press event, apparently to bolster Sun’s own credibility. Less than a week later, Apple spoke about ZFS only when it became clear that a port was indeed present in a developer version of Leopard albeit in a nascent form. Yes, ZFS would be there, sort of, but it would be read-only and no one should get their hopes up.
  • “By the next WWDC (2008) it seemed that Sun had been forgiven. ZFS was featured in the keynotes, it was on the developer disc handed out to attendees, and it was even mentioned on the Mac OS X Server website. Apple had been working on their port since 2006 and now it was functional enough to be put on full display. I took it for a spin myself; it was really real. The feature that everyone wanted (but most couldn’t say why) was coming!”
  • “By the time Snow Leopard shipped (2009) only a careful examination of the Apple web site would turn up the odd reference to ZFS left unscrubbed. Whatever momentum ZFS had enjoyed within the Mac OS X product team was gone. I’ve heard a couple of theories and anecdotes from people familiar with the situation”
  • The uncertainty created by Oracle acquiring Sun, and the fact that it took over a year to close the deal, may not have helped
  • “In the meantime Sun and NetApp had been locked in a lawsuit over ZFS and other storage technologies since mid-2007”, that certainly didn’t help
  • “Finally, and perhaps most significantly, personal egos and NIH (not invented here) syndrome certainly played a part. I’m told by folks in Apple at the time that certain leads and managers preferred to build their own rather adopting external technology—even technology that was best of breed. They pitched their own project, an Apple project, that would bring modern filesystem technologies to Mac OS X”
  • “The design center for ZFS was servers, not laptops—and certainly not phones, tablets, and watches—his argument was likely that it would be better to start from scratch than adapt ZFS.”
  • “Licensing FUD was thrown into the mix; even today folks at Apple see the ZFS license as nefarious and toxic in some way whereas the DTrace license works just fine for them. Note that both use the same license with the same grants and same restrictions.”
  • By 2010, “Amazingly that wasn’t quite the end for ZFS at Apple. The architect for ZFS at Apple had left, the project had been shelved, but there were high-level conversations between Sun and Apple about reviving the port. Apple would get indemnification and support for their use of ZFS”
  • “The Apple-ZFS deal was brought for Larry Ellison’s approval, the first born child of the conquered land brought to be blessed by the new king. “I’ll tell you about doing business with my best friend Steve Jobs,” he apparently said, “I don’t do business with my best friend Steve Jobs.””
  • “Amusingly the version of the story told quietly at WWDC 2016 had the friends reversed with Steve saying that he wouldn’t do business with Larry. Still another version I’ve heard calls into question the veracity of their purported friendship, and has Steve instead suggesting that Larry go f*ck himself.”
  • “In the 7 years since ZFS development halted at Apple, they’ve worked on a variety of improvements in HFS and Core Storage, and hacked at at least two replacements for HFS that didn’t make it out the door. This week Apple announced their new filesystem, APFS, after 2 years in development. It’s not done; some features are still in development, and they’ve announced the ambitious goal of rolling it out to laptop, phone, watch, and tv within the next 18 months. At Sun we started ZFS in 2001. It shipped in 2005 and that was really the starting line, not the finish line. Since then I’ve shipped the ZFS Storage Appliance in 2008 and Delphix in 2010 and each has required investment in ZFS / OpenZFS to make them ready for prime time. A broadly featured, highly functional filesystem takes a long time.”
  • “APFS has merits (more in my next post), but it will always disappoint me that Apple didn’t adopt ZFS irrespective of how and why that decision was made. Dedicated members of the OpenZFS community have built and maintain a port. It’s not quite the same as having Apple as a member of that community, embracing and extending ZFS rather than building their own incipient alternative.”
  • Additional Coverage
  • Apple’s APFS guide

Intel ME/AMT: The other processor inside your computer

  • Recent Intel x86 processors implement a rarely discussed powerful control mechanism that runs on a separate chip that no one is allowed to audit or examine.
  • Many (all?) vPro chipsets (MCHs) have:
  • An Independent CPU (not IA32!)
  • Access to dedicated DRAM memory
  • Special interface to the Network Card (NIC)
  • Execution environment called Management Engine (ME)
  • The Intel Management Engine (ME) is a subsystem composed of a special 32-bit ARC microprocessor that’s physically located inside the chipset. It is an extra general purpose computer running a firmware blob that is sold as a management system for big enterprise deployments.
  • On some chipsets, the firmware running on the ME implements a system called Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT). This is entirely transparent to the operating system, which means that this extra computer can do its job regardless of which operating system is installed and running on the main CPU.
  • The purpose of AMT is to provide a way to manage computers remotely.
  • This is similar to an older system called “Intelligent Platform Management Interface” or IPMI, but more powerful).
  • It can offer VNC access to the screen (optionally prompting the local user for permission), IDE redirection (Virtual Media, to boot from a remote device), Serial redirection, etc
  • To achieve this task, the ME is capable of accessing any memory region without the main x86 CPU knowing about the existence of these accesses. It also runs a TCP/IP server on your network interface and packets entering and leaving your machine addresses to the second MAC address bypass any firewall running on your system.
  • ME is classified by security researchers as “Ring -3”.
  • Rings of security can be defined as layers of security that affect particular parts of a system, with a smaller ring number corresponding to an area closer to the hardware.
  • For example, Ring 3 threats are defined as security threats that manifest in “userspace” mode. Ring 0 threats occur in “kernel” level,
  • Ring -1 threats occur in a “hypervisor” level, one level lower than the kernel
  • Ring -2 threats occur in a special CPU mode called “SMM” mode. SMM stands for System-Management-Mode, a special mode that Intel CPUs can be put into that runs a separately defined chunk of code. If attackers can modify the SMM code and trigger the mode, they can get arbitrary execution of code on a CPU.
  • Although the ME firmware is cryptographically protected with RSA 2048, researchers have been able to exploit weaknesses in the ME firmware and take partial control of the ME on early models. This makes ME a huge security loophole, and it has been called a very powerful rootkit mechanism.
  • On systems newer than the Core2 series, the ME cannot be disabled.
  • Intel systems that are designed to have ME but lack ME firmware (or whose ME firmware is corrupted) will refuse to boot, or will shut-down shortly after booting.
  • There is no way for the x86 firmware or operating system to disable ME permanently. Intel keeps most details about ME absolutely secret. There is absolutely no way for the main CPU to tell if the ME on a system has been compromised.
  • “We also discovered that the critical parts of the ME firmware are stored in a non-standard compressed format, which gets decompressed by a special hardware decompressor. My initial attempts to brute-force the decompression scheme failed miserably. Another group had better success and they have now completed a working decompression routine for all versions of ME up to but not including version 11.”
  • There are only a few methods to enable AMT, which is disabled by default.
  • Most require physical presence during the BIOS boot
  • ME hardware – ME
  • Intel ME huffman dictionaries – Unhuffme v2.4
  • Introducing Ring -3 Rootkits PDF

How to Write Service Status Updates

  • “The lowly incident status update happens to be one of the most essential pieces of communication a company gets to write”
  • Your company is having a bad time, your customers are hurting. Everyone is busy, scrambling to fix things, but it is still important to communicate clearly, and regularly, with your customers.
  • “When users navigate to a status page, they’re driven by a heightened sense of urgency (compared to, say, a website, a blog, or a newsletter). Not many words get as dissected, discussed and forwarded as the ones we place on our status page.”
  • Often times, very little is written, possibly because very little is known. Everything is read with a slant, because you know the company write it to try to minimize how bad they look.
  • “Now let’s state the obvious. Customers couldn’t care less about a string of words posted on a status update. What they care about is, “am I in good hands?” Every time we publish (or fail to publish) a service status update we are ultimately answering that question.”
  • Goals:
    1. Write frequent status updates — This can mean postly updates hourly, or even more often. It depends how rapidly the situation is developing. There is nothing worse than an acknowledgement that there is a problem from hours ago, with no further updates. Ideally, indicate when to expect the number post at the end of each update.
    2. Well written status updates — Write authoritatively and honestly. Avoid “weasel phrases”.
    3. Productive Updates — “What we learned early on was that regular and well-written status updates reduce the amount of incoming support requests. Investing the time to get incident updates right was paying productivity dividends for the rest of the team”
  • “When faced with service interruptions, we drop everything in our hands and perform operational backflips 24×7 until the service is restored for all customers. During this time, over-communication is a good thing. As is transparency, i.e. acknowledging problems and throwing the public light of accountability on all remaining issues until they’re resolved.”
  • “While the crisis is unfolding we publish short status updates at regular intervals. We stick to the facts, including scope of impact and possible workarounds. We update the status page even if it’s just to say “we’re still looking into it.””
  • “Once service is resolved, it’s time to turn our focus on the less urgent, but equally important piece of writing: the post mortem. It demonstrates that someone is investing time on their product. That they care enough to sit down and think things through. Most crucially, it also creates the space for our team to learn and grow as a company”
  • They link to a second post: How to Write a Post Morten
  • Or you can just not: Apple offers no explanation for 7 hour outage

Feedback:


Round Up:


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Ultimate File Server | TechSNAP 25 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/12458/ultimate-file-server-techsnap-25/ Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:35:26 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=12458 We share our insights are setting up the ultimate network file server, plus have you ever been curious how hackers pull off massive security breaches?

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Coming up on this week’s on TechSNAP…

Have you ever been curious how hackers pull off massive security breaches? This week we’ve got the details on a breach that exposed private data of 35 millions customers.

Plus MySQL.com spreads custom malware tailored just for your system, and the details are amazing!

On top of all that, we’ll share our insights are setting up the ultimate network file server!

Direct Download Links:

HD Video | Large Video | Mobile Video | WebM | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube

Subscribe via RSS and iTunes:

[ad#shownotes]

Show Notes:

South Korea’s SK Telecom hacked, detailed forensics released

  • Between July 18th and 25th, SK Telecom’s systems were compromised, and all of their customer records (35 million customers) were compromised. The records included a wealth of information, including username, password, national ID number, name, address, mobile phone number and email address.
  • The attack was classified as an Advanced Persistent Threat, the attackers compromised 60 computers at SK Telecom in total, biding their time until they could compromise the database. Data was exchanged between the compromised computers at SK Telecom, and a server at a Taiwanese publishing company that had been compromised by the attackers at an earlier date.
  • The attack was very sophisticated, specifically targeted, and also seems to indicate a degree of knowledge about the the target. The well organized attackers managed to compromise the software updates server of another company (ESTsoft) who’s software (ALTools) was used by SK Telecom, then piggyback a trojan in to the secure systems that way. Only computers from SK Telecom received the malicious update.
  • The attackers send the compromised data through a number of way points before receiving it, masking the trail and the identities of the attackers. A similar pattern was seen with the RSA APT attack, the attackers uploaded the stolen data to a compromised web server, and once they had removed the data from there, destroyed the server and broke the trail back to them selves.
  • Proper code signing, or GPG signing could have prevented this
  • Original BBC Article about the attack

Mac OS X Lion may expose your hashed password

  • The Directory Services command allows users to search for data about other users on the machine. This is the intended function.
  • The problem is that the search results for the current user also include sensitive information, such as the users’ password hash. You are authorized to view this information, because you are the current user.
  • However, any application running as that user, could also gain that information, and send it back to an attacker.
  • Using the hash, an attacker could perform an offline brute force attack against the password. These attacks have gotten more common and less time consuming with the advent of better parallel computing, cloud computing and high performance GPGPUs.
  • My bitcoin mining rig could easily be converting to a password hash cracking rig, especially now that the current value of bitcoin is sagging. If there were a big enough market for cracking hashed passwords, there are now a huge number of highly specialized machines devoted to bitcoin that could be easily switched over.
  • The tool can also allow the current user to overwrite their own password hash with a new one, without the need to provide the current plain text password. This means that rather than spend time cracking the password, the attacker could just change the current users password, and then take over the account that way.
  • These attacks would require some kind of exploit that allowed the attack to perform the required actions, however we have seen a number of flash, java and general browsers exploits that could allow this.
  • The current recommended work around is to chmod the dscl command such that it can only be used by root
  • Additional Article

MySQL.com compromised, visitors subject to drive by infection

  • The MySQL.com front page was compromised and had malicious code injected in to it.
  • The code (usually an iframe) caused a java exploit to be executed against the visitor. The exploit required no interaction or confirmation from the user. This type of attack is know as a ‘drive by infection’, because the user does not have to take any action to become infected.
  • Two different trojans were detected being sent to users, Troj/WndRed-C and Troj/Agent-TNV
  • Because of the nature of the iframe attack, and the redirect chain the attackers could have easily varied the payload, or selected different payloads based on the platform the user was visiting the site on.
  • There are reports of Russian hackers offering to sell admin access to mysql.com for $3000
  • Detailed Analysis with malicious source code, video of the infection process
  • Article about previous compromise
  • When the previous compromise was reported, it was also reported that MySQL.com was subject to a XSS (Cross Site Scripting) attack, where content from another site could be injected in to the MySQL site, subverting the browsers usual ‘Same Origin’ policy. This vulnerability, if not repaired, could have been the source of this latest attack.

Feedback:

Continuing our Home Server Segment – This week we are covering file servers.
Some possible solutions:

  • Roll Your Own (UNIX)
  • Linux or FreeBSD Based
  • Install Samba for SMB Server (allow windows and other OS machines to see your shared files)
  • Setup FTP (unencrypted unless you do FTPS (ftp over ssl), high speed, doesn’t play well with NAT, not recommended)
  • Configure SSH (provides SCP and SFTP) (encrypted, slightly higher cpu usage, recommended for Internet access)
  • Install rsync (originally designed to keep mirrors of source code and websites up to date, allows you to transfer only the differences between files, rather than the entire file) (although it is recommended you do rsync over SSH not via the native protocol)
  • Configure NFS (default UNIX file sharing system)
  • Build your own iSCSI targets (allows you to mount a remote disk as if it were local, popular in virtualization as it removes a layer of abstraction. required for virtual machines that can be transferred from one host to another.
  • Roll Your Own (Windows)
  • Windows provides built in support for SMB
  • Install Filezilla Server for FTP/FTPs (Alternative: CyberDuck)
  • There are some NFS alternatives for windows, but not are not free
  • There is an rsync client for windows, or you could use cygwin, same goes for SSH. Similar tools like robocopy and synctoy
  • FreeNAS
  • FreeBSD Based. Provides: SMB, NFS, FTP, SFTP/SCP, iSCSI (and more)
  • Supports ZFS
  • Chris’ Previous Coverage of FreeNAS:
  • FreeNAS, IN DEPTH
  • FreeNAS Vs. HP MediaSmart WHS
  • FreeNAS vs Drobo

Round Up:

Bitcoin Blaster:

The post Ultimate File Server | TechSNAP 25 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Battery Malware | TechSNAP 16 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/10763/battery-malware-techsnap-16/ Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:52:47 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=10763 Attackers take aim at Apple with an exploit that could brick your Macbook, or perhaps worse. Plus you need to patch against a 9 year old SSL flaw.

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Attackers take aim at Apple with an exploit that could brick your Macbook, or perhaps worse. Plus you need to patch against a 9 year old SSL flaw.

Plus find out about a Google bug that could wipe a site from their Index, and a excellent batch of your feedback!

All that and more, on this week’s TechSNAP!

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Show Notes:

iPhones vulnerable to 9 year old SSL sniffing attack

  • A nine year old bug discovered and disclosed by Moxie Marlinspike in 2002 allows attackers to decrypt intercepted SSL sessions. Moxie Marlinspike released a newer, easier to use version of the tool on monday, to coincide with Apple finally patching the flaw on iPhone and other iOS devices.
  • Any unpatched iOS device can have all of it’s SSL traffic trivially intercepted and decrypted
  • This means anyone with this new easy to use tool sitting near a wifi hotspot, can intercept encrypted login information (gmail, facebook), banking credentials, e-commerce transactions, or anything else people do from their phone.
  • The bug was in the way iOS interpreted the certificate chain. Apple failed to respect the ‘basicConstraint’ parameter, allowing an attacker to sign a certificate for any domain with an existing valid certificate, a condition normally prevented by the constraint.
  • There are no known flaws in SSL it self, in this case, the attacker could perform a man-in-the-middle attack, by feeding the improperly signed certificate to the iPhone which would have accepted it, and used the attackers key to encrypt the data.
  • Patch is out with a support doc and direct download links

Apple Notebook batteries vulnerable to firmware hack

  • After analyzing a battery firmware update that Apple pushed in 2009, researchers found that all patched batteries, and all batteries manufactured since, use the same password
  • With this password, it is possible to control the firmware on the battery
  • This means that an attacker can remotely brick your Macbook, or cause the battery to overheat and possibly even explode
  • The attacker can also falsify the data returned to the OS from the battery, causing odd system behaviour
  • The attacker could also completely replace the Apple firmware, with one designed to silently infect the machine with malware. Even if the malware is removed, the battery would be able to reinfect the machine, even after a complete OS wipe and reinstall.
  • Further research will be presented at this years Black Hat Security Conference
  • In the meantime, researchers have notified Apple of the vulnerability, and have created a utility that generates a completely random password for your Mac’s battery.
    Additional Link

Facebook fixes glitch that let you see private video information

  • A glitch in facebook allowed you to see the thumbnail preview and description of private videos posted by other users, even when they were not shared with you.
  • It was not possible to view the actual videos

Google was quick to shutdown Webmaster Tools after vulnerability found

  • Using the google webmaster tools, users were able to remove websites that did not belong to them from the Google Index
  • By simply modifying the query string of a valid request to remove your own site from the google index, and changing one of the two references to the target url, you were able to remove an arbitrary site from the google index
  • The issue was resolved within 7 hours of being reported to Google
  • Google restored sites that were improperly removed from its index.

Researchers find vulnerablity in Skype

  • Inproper input validation and output sanitation allowed attackers to inject code into their skype profile
  • By entering html and java script in to the ‘mobile phone’ section of your profile, anyone who had you on their friends list would execute the injected code.
  • This vulnerability could have allowed attackers to high your session, steal your account, capture your payment data, and change your password

Feedback


Q: (Sargoreth) I downloaded eclipse, and I didn’t bother to verify the md5 hash they publish on the download page, how big a security risk is this?
A: Downloadable software often has an MD5 hash published along with the downloadable file, as a measure to allow you to ensure that the file you downloaded is valid. Checking the downloaded file against this hash can ensure that the file was not corrupted during transfer. However it is not a strong enough indicator that the file has not been tampered with. If the file was modified, the MD5 hash could just as easily have been updated along with it. In order to be sure that the file has not been tampered with, you need a hash that is provided out of band, from a trusted source (The FreeBSD Ports tree comes with the SHA256 hashs of all files, which are then verified once they are downloaded). SHA256 is much more secure, as MD5 has been defeated a number of times, with attackers able to craft two files with matching hashes. SHA-1 is no longer considered secure enough for cryptographic purposes. It should also be noted that SHA-512 is actually faster to calculate than SHA256 on 64bit hardware, however it is not as widely supported yet. The ultimate solution for ensuring the integrity of downloadable files is a GPG signature, verified against a trusted public key. Many package managers (such as yum) take this approach, and some websites offer a .asc file for verification. A number of projects have stopped publishing the GPG signatures because the proportion of users who checked the signature was too low to justify the additional effort. Some open source projects have had backdoors injected in to their downloadable archives on official mirrors, such as the UnrealIRCd project.


Q: (Christoper) I have a windows 7 laptop, and a Ubuntu desktop, what would be a cheap and easy way to share files between them?
A: The easiest and most secure way, is to enable SSH on the ubuntu machine, and then use an SFTP client like FileZilla (For Windows, Mac and Linux), and then just login to your ubuntu machine using your ubuntu username/password. Alternatively, If you have shared a folder on your windows machine, you should be be able to browse to it from the Nautilus file browser in Ubuntu. Optionally, you can also install Samba, to allow your Ubuntu machine to share files with windows, it will appear as if it were another windows machine in your windows ‘network neighbourhood’.


Q: (Chad) I have a network of CentOS servers, and a central NFS/NIS server, however we are considering adding a FreeNAS box to provide ZFS. I need to be able to provide consistent centralized permissions control on this new file system. I don’t want to have to manually recreate the users on the FreeNAS box. Should I switch to LDAP?
A: FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD, so it has a native NIS client you can use (ypbind) to connect to your existing NIS system. This would allow the same users/groups to exist across your heterogeneous network. You may need to modify the /etc/nsswitch.conf file to configure the order local files and NIS are checked in, and set your NIS domain in /etc/rc.conf. Optionally, you could use LDAP, again, adding some additional parameters to nsswitch.conf and configuring LDAP. If you decide to use LDAP, I would recommend switching your CentOS machines to using LDAP as well, allowing you to again maintain a single system for both Linux and BSD, instead of maintaining separate account databases. If you are worried about performance, you might consider setting the BSD machine up as an NIS slave, so that it maintains a local copy of the NIS database. The FreeBSD NIS server is called ypserv. You can find out more about configuring NIS on FreeBSD here


Bitcoin Blaster

Roundup

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