[ISN] Linux Security Week - May 5th 2003

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Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 22:21:32 PDT

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    +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
    |  LinuxSecurity.com                            Weekly Newsletter     |
    |  May 5th, 2003                                Volume 4, Number 18n  |
    |                                                                     |
    |  Editorial Team:  Dave Wreski             daveat_private    |
    |                   Benjamin Thomas         benat_private     |
    +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
    
    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, perhaps the most interesting articles include "Linux Security:
    Kinds of Encryption," "Introduction to Simple Oracle Auditing," "Linux
    Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO," and "Honeypots: Simple,
    Cost-Effective Detection."
    
    LINUX ADVISORY WATCH:
    This week, advisories were released for apcupsd, sendmail, apache, balsa,
    pptp, kdebase, snort, tcpdump, monkeyd, mgetty, ethereal, squirrelmail,
    lprng, micq, zlib, man, and xinetd.  The distributors include Caldera,
    Conectiva, Debian, EnGarde, Gentoo, Mandrake, Red Hat, and Turbo Linux.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-7199.html
    
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    * Comprehensive SPAM Protection! - Guardian Digital's Secure Mail Suite is
    unparalleled in security, ease of management, and features. Open source
    technology constantly adapts to new threats. Email firewall, simplified
    administration, automatically updated.
    
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    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Days of the Honeynet: Attacks, Tools, Incidents - Among other benefits,
    running a honeynet makes one acutely aware about "what is going on" out
    there. While placing a network IDS outside one's firewall might also
    provide a similar flood of alerts, a honeypot provides a unique
    prospective on what will be going on when a related server is compromised
    used by the intruders.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-141.html
    
    
    
     #### Concerned about the next threat?  ####
     #### EnGarde is the undisputed winner! ####
    
     Hardened Linux Puts Hackers EnGarde! Winner of the Network Computing
     Editor's Choice Award, EnGarde "walked away with our Editor's Choice
     award thanks to the depth of its security strategy..." Find out what the
     other Linux vendors are not telling you.
    
    
    http://store.guardiandigital.com/html/eng/products/software/esp_overview.shtml
    
    
    +---------------------+
    | Host Security News: | <<-----[ Articles This Week ]-------------
    +---------------------+
    
    
    Host Security News:
    -------------------
    * What's the difference between a viral attack and a scan?
    May 2nd, 2003
    
    Infosec exhibitors were yesterday urged to check their systems for a virus
    after the performance of the security conference's network took a severe
    hit. Exhibitors received an advisory from eForce, which is responsible for
    the networking and security of Olympia, Infosec's venue, that warned of an
    attack linked to a Trojan called Deloader.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/general_article-7200.html
    
    
    * Linux Security: Kinds of Encryption
    May 2nd, 2003
    
    Security is a major part of the foundation of any system that is not
    totally cut off from other machines and users. Some aspects of security
    have a place even on isolated machines. Examples are periodic system
    backups, BIOS or power-on passwords, and self-locking screensavers.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-7201.html
    
    
    * Introduction to Simple Oracle Auditing
    April 29th, 2003
    
    This article will introduce the reader to the basics of auditing an Oracle
    database. Oracle's RDBMS is a functionally rich product and there are a
    number of auditing alternatives available to the reader.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/documentation_article-7175.html
    
    
    * Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO
    April 28th, 2003
    
    Imagine your disk drive has just become a very expensive hockey puck.
    Imagine you have had a fire, and your computer case now looks like
    something Salvador Dali would like to paint. Now what?
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/documentation_article-7170.html
    
    
    
    +------------------------+
    | Network Security News: |
    +------------------------+
    
    * Viva Liberacion: A Guide to Nuking Spammers, Part 2
    May 1st, 2003
    
    In part one we looked at the fundamental problem of spam, which is theft
    of services, and put forth the radical notion that we are not put on this
    Earth merely for the convenience of marketers, but have exclusive rights
    to our personal property. In part two we'll look at going beyond filtering
    and blocking by attacking spam at its source.
    
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/privacy_article-7193.html
    
    
    * A Technique for Counting NATted Hosts
    April 30th, 2003
    
    Steven M. Bellovin (co-author of the classic and recently re-published
    Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker) has an
    interesting paper on detecting NATs (Network Address Translation setups)
    and counting the hosts behind the NAT box.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/firewalls_article-7191.html
    
    
    * Honeypots: Simple, Cost-Effective Detection
    April 30th, 2003
    
    This is the fourth article in an ongoing series examining honeypots. In
    previous installments, we have covered two different honeypot solutions:
    Honeyd and Specter. Both honeypots are low-interaction production
    solutions; their purpose is to help protect organizations, as opposed to
    research honeypots, which are used to gather information.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-7188.html
    
    
    * Locking Down The Airwaves
    April 30th, 2003
    
    Wireless LANs are a blessing and a curse. They offer tremendous relief to
    large organizations whose employees need greater flexibility and mobility.
    But a wireless access point is also a radio station broadcasting your
    company's private information.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-7186.html
    
    
    * Securing Your Network
    April 29th, 2003
    
    I just recently finished yet another security review on the network at my
    place of employment. I designed the different security features from
    scratch and I am using a variety of devices and software (firewalls, IDS,
    DMZs, and so on). I like to look at network security with the same
    attitude as I look on the stock market: diversify.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-7173.html
    
    
    * Port Scan Attack Detector
    April 29th, 2003
    
    psad (the Port Scan Attack Detector) is a collection of four lightweight
    system daemons written in Perl and C that are designed to work with Linux
    firewalling code (iptables in the 2.4.x kernels, and ipchains in the 2.2.x
    kernels) to detect port scans. It features a set of highly configurable
    danger thresholds (with sensible defaults provided), verbose alert
    messages that include the source, destination, scanned port range, begin
    and end times, TCP flags and corresponding nmap options (Linux 2.4.x
    kernels only), email alerting, and automatic blocking of offending IP
    addresses via dynamic configuration of ipchains/iptables firewall
    rulesets.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/projects_article-7179.html
    
    
    * Cryptography Guru Paul Kocher Speaks Out
    April 28th, 2003
    
    Paul Kocher, [Cryptography Research] president, is considered one of the
    rising stars in the world of cryptography, thanks to his design for the
    SSL v3.0 protocol and development of a timing attack on the RSA algorithm.
    Senior Editor Dennis Fisher sat down with Kocher and Benjamin Jun, the
    company's vice president, at the RSA Conference last week to discuss the
    new technology and why the current argument over mandated copy protection
    is moot.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-7171.html
    
    
    * VPNs Made Easy (Using SSL)
    April 28th, 2003
    
    [They] deployed a VPN based on the IPsec protocol. That provided session
    encryption and authentication and enabled network-level access to
    resources, but it also proved problematic.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-7169.html
    
    
    
    +------------------------+
    | General Security News: |
    +------------------------+
    
    * Open-source leaders pitch Linux policy
    May 2nd, 2003
    
    Leaders of several major open-source projects have joined George
    Washington University's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute to
    push for greater government use of the Linux operating system.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/organizations_events_article-7202.html
    
    
    * Security Patches and Negative ROI Equal Corporate Stupidity
    May 2nd, 2003
    
    ROI (return on investment) is a key concept in IT spending today. The
    board is much more likely to spend money on IT, if ROI can be demonstrated
    in a reasonable period of time. It's a very sensible, sound business idea.
    Yet, many companies are actually practicing what could be called negative
    ROI - they choose IT products which cost them more money the longer they
    have them. In the current business environment, this could be described as
    corporate stupidity.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-7203.html
    
    
    * Web-Based Attacks Could Create Chaos In The Physical World
    May 1st, 2003
    
    Most experts on computer crime focus on attacks against Web servers, bank
    account tampering and other mischief confined to the digital world. But by
    using little more than a Web search engine and some simple software, a
    computer-savvy criminal or terrorist could easily leap beyond the
    boundaries of cyberspace to wreak havoc in the physical world, a team of
    Internet security researchers has concluded.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-7198.html
    
    
    * EnGarde Secure Linux Community Edition released
    April 28th, 2003
    
    Guardian Digital announced the next generation of the award-winning
    EnGarde Secure Linux Community Edition. Leveraging the best open source
    applications available, combined with the security expertise from Guardian
    Digital, EnGarde is a comprehensive platform for developing a secure
    Internet presence.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/server_security_article-7167.html
    
    
    
    * EnGarde Secure Linux: New Community Edition Features Improved
    Security, Ease of Management
    April 28th, 2003
    
    Today at the RealWorld Linux Expo in Toronto, Guardian Digital launched
    the next generation of the Community edition of EnGarde Secure Linux.
    EnGarde features secure web-based management of all functions, including
    Internet edge services, integrated intrusion detection, cryptography,
    improved authentication and access control, as well as protection from
    many forms of intrusion such as buffer overruns and denial of service
    attacks.
    
    http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/vendors_products_article-7163.html
    
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