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Sun, 31 Jul 2005

New record 31 Jul
Wi-Fi Toys has a post about the new unamplified Wi-Fi distance record being set.

joat: 15:45:00 31 Jul 2005


Weasel-wording 31 Jul
Short version: I think that Cisco is overreacting and is being a bully. Long version follows...

Cisco has a press release about the permanent injunction against M. Lynn. Most of it reads like the usual PC fluff. However, I take exception to the following:

Cisco's actions with Mr. Lynn and Black Hat were not based on the fact that a flaw was identified, rather that they chose to address the issue outside of established industry practices and procedures for responsible disclosure.

Based on available information, I feel that those words are entirely bullshit and ask that someone (at Cisco hopefully) point me to those "established industry practices and procedures" (the phrase implies that they're written down somewhere). Supposedly Cisco patched the flaw last April, which means that it was known (or made known) to them before that. If "established industry procedures" indicates the "Full Disclosure Policy" that was drafted by Rain Forest Puppy, then M.L. was well outside of the 5-day waiting period. Or even the 30-day standard that Microsoft pushed for when that company last trotted out responsible disclosure. Or how about eEye's RDP where specific information is withheld until the patch is realeased? Coincidentally, eEye's reported process is similar to those of the OIS (Organization for Internet Safety) (read their PDF for the actual written practices and procedures) in that specific information is withheld until the patch is released.

So which "established industry practice and procedure" did M. Lynn violate? Or did Cisco just not like someone airing their dirty laundry?

Just so that there's no confusion about my "overreacting" opinion, I used that term in referring to the injunction requirement put forth by Cisco, where M. Lynn never speak at Blackhat or Defcon again, on any topic. I'd understand if the requirement was limited to this specific vulnerability. In my opinion, anything extra is malicious and over-the-top.

Neither side has acted with logical consideration to their actions, both are trying to appear to be "the victim", and all involved should "get over it".

joat: 12:00:00 31 Jul 2005


Sat, 30 Jul 2005

Shmoo Redo 30 Jul
Errr... I missed the announcement of this one too: ShmooCon 2006. Current price $75. For those that don't know: the price goes up as it gets closer to con time.

joat: 16:00:00 30 Jul 2005


OMG! 30 Jul
Read this (from the Register).

My first thought: this will add a whole new side to the phrase "when hackers attack".

My second thought: Johnny Long is going to need a new category on his site.

joat: 12:00:00 30 Jul 2005


Fri, 29 Jul 2005

Michael Lynn 29 Jul
Tom's Networking has a good piece going on the Cisco flop-and-twitch. I consider the whole incident to be yet another go-round in the religious war called "responsible disclosure". You've heard the arguments from both sides. You'll hear 'em again.

My personal view (at least of this incident) is that this isn't something that M. Lynn "invented", it's something that he heard of elsewhere which caused him to do a bit of research. Some of "the bad guys" already have the info. It's nice to know that some of "the good guys" now also have it. However, M. Lynn is probably going to suffer in multiple ways and this incident has a strong possibility to set a very nasty precedent. Watch for the legal pendulum to very quickly to one side or the other.

joat: 12:00:00 29 Jul 2005


Thu, 28 Jul 2005

Hands-on Honeypot slides 28 Jul
Maximillian Dornself has posted links to the BlackHat Hands-on Honeypot class, that he and Thorsten Holz presented, here.

joat: 21:30:00 28 Jul 2005


BH Schedule 28 Jul
Just in case you don't have it, here's the schedule for the presentations at BH.

(Yeah, I know. This is fluff, but it won't survive the transition to the other box.)

joat: 12:00:00 28 Jul 2005


Uhoh 28 Jul
The blog will be offline for a few days while the server gods pick up all of the 757 bloggers by their ears and move 'em to the new box.

joat: 01:42:08 28 Jul 2005


Wed, 27 Jul 2005

RSS Malware 27 Jul
I'm tired of hearing every tech journalist pontificating about how the flavor of the hour could be used as a channel for worms/viruses/hacking. Here's a good example.

Yes, RSS could be a vector for malware but it's not a likely one. It's not like we constantly wander the Internet in search of new feeds. For the majority of people, their feed sources remain constant. Barring a web server compromise at one of those sites or the author does something really boneheaded, there isn't much risk of worms or spyware sneaking in via the RSS feed.

Of course, if the author embeds crap like advertising in his/her feed, then it's another story.

joat: 12:00:00 27 Jul 2005


Tue, 26 Jul 2005

New TaoFeed 26 Jul
If you subscribe to Richard's feed at TaoSecurity, do him a favor and move your subscription to http://feeds.feedburner.com/Taosecurity, especially if you've seen the "site owner reaching his/her limit" warning.

joat: 21:30:00 26 Jul 2005


TV over IP 26 Jul
Personally, I think that, while there's probably a legitimate argument in there somewhere, this fight is extremely silly. Someone is pissed off that someone else wants to push television over IP. I think it's silly because I "get my IP" over the same pipe that I get my TV.

The fight is actually an industry trying to "protect" their income stream and resisting the economic force created by technological innovation. The situation is not one that it easily resolved either. "Convergence" involves the television, telephone, cell phone, wireless ISP, and even the power companies. Future involvement will probably include the entertainment industries, various hardware manufacturers and various governments.

With the move to wireless and IPv6, expect those industries to spend more and more money on legal support and advertisements. The industry or industries that come out on top will probably be the one that offers the most to the customer for the cost. (This usually translates to the company with the deepest pockets.)

The problem in the logic in the article is that Verizon and SBC assume that consumers will want their IP-over-TV from a local "central office". What they're currently missing is fledging Internet-based TV shows that already exist and even have an existing distribution infrastructure (BitTorrent). However, I skeptical enough that I expect at least one attempt to Napsterize BitTorrent.

So call me a pessimist.

joat: 12:00:00 26 Jul 2005


Mon, 25 Jul 2005

Eddy-current detector 25 Jul
Alex Perry has an interesting use for Linux. He built his own probe to use as an eddy-current detector.

joat: 12:00:00 25 Jul 2005


Sun, 24 Jul 2005

Proxies 24 Jul
Back to the basics: How Proxies Work.

joat: 12:00:00 24 Jul 2005


Sat, 23 Jul 2005

No op 23 Jul
Please excuse the look of the blog while I monkey with the templates (time for a change).

joat: 14:30:00 23 Jul 2005


SpamAssassin Wiki 23 Jul
About 5 minutes ago, I discovered the SpamAssassin Wiki. (via Dan Kohn's post about training SA via an IMAP folder.

joat: 12:00:00 23 Jul 2005


Fri, 22 Jul 2005

DNS root servers 22 Jul

joat: 21:30:00 22 Jul 2005


Thu, 21 Jul 2005

Spammers 21 Jul
I must be on someone's list again (yet another spammer that can Google-hack?) because the garbage is showing up in the comments que again. This one appears to be using someone else's box on a Verizon DSL connection.

joat: 21:30:00 21 Jul 2005


no op 21 Jul
Apologies for the pause in posting. The last two weeks have been very busy. The good news is that I've back filled the missing days. The bad news is that the breaks in posting will probably occur again in the coming month. I've got a new cert coming up and I have to requalify on an old one.

joat: 12:10:00 21 Jul 2005


Galleon III 21 Jul
I wonder if the recent foobar was the reason why I couldn't get Galleon to work properly. I'll have to try it again this weekend.

joat: 12:00:00 21 Jul 2005


Wed, 20 Jul 2005

Say what? 20 Jul
This is just silly! Try scrolling into the highest resolution.

joat: 12:00:00 20 Jul 2005


Tue, 19 Jul 2005

Book 19 Jul
Silence on the Wire looks pretty interesting.

joat: 12:00:00 19 Jul 2005


Mon, 18 Jul 2005

IBM Freebie 18 Jul
IBM is offering a SDK delvelopment toolkit containing DB2, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli and Websphere in the hopes that you develop something for the community. Note: Windows or Linux versions.

joat: 12:00:00 18 Jul 2005


Sun, 17 Jul 2005

Get out your tinfoil hats 17 Jul
I'm a bit behind on my work so here's a quick bit of entertainment for you "conspiracy theorists": take a look at the backgrounds of the people that make up the managing board for the .XXX domain and answer the following questions:
  1. Who's worked with each other at a previous comany
  2. Who's worked at other registrar's and what did they do?
  3. Who managed a .XXX domain in a previous light?
  4. How does the old registrar feel about this?
  5. Who left under "undisclosed" reasons?
  6. Who's also participated in ICANN?

joat: 22:30:00 17 Jul 2005


Galleon II 17 Jul
I managed to make some headway into getting Galleon up and running. My notes are posted here. I've got it to the point where the software runs but my TiVO still doesn't "see" it. Also, it doesn't use the same ports as my previous install of JavaHMO did. Anyone have any ideas?

joat: 12:00:00 17 Jul 2005


Paper Enigma 17 Jul
It's a commercial product but it's interesting and you can print your own: here's the paper version of the Enigma machine.

joat: 12:00:00 17 Jul 2005


Sat, 16 Jul 2005

Galleon 16 Jul
Has anyone successfully installed Galleon (not the browser) under Linux or any other *nix? I have a working version of the older JavaHMO but cannot get the newer Galleon installed properly.

Howto needed!

joat: 21:30:00 16 Jul 2005


Secure RSS 16 Jul
I found Joe Gergorio's article during a lecture that I wasn't paying attention to (I was playing with del.icio.us instead).

The article talks about a method for securing RSS feeds with encryption rather than password protecting the site. I like the idea but I believe that Joe did not take it far enough. The idea that should be on the end of his train of thought is "public key encryption".

joat: 16:00:00 16 Jul 2005


Fri, 15 Jul 2005

ICMP errors 15 Jul
If anyone asks you to list the problems in IPv4 that still need to be fixed for IPv6, you can say "ICMP". That link discusses Fernando Gont's proposed changes to the protocol to protect against long-known attacks (mostly DoS) with ICMP.

joat: 12:00:00 15 Jul 2005


Thu, 14 Jul 2005

Smurfing 14 Jul
Here's a long discussion on Smurfing, a denial of service attack that has lived much longer than it should have.

joat: 12:00:00 14 Jul 2005


Wed, 13 Jul 2005

Help wanted 13 Jul
More torrent users are needed so Mappinghacks.com users can get the free geodata quicker!

joat: 12:00:00 13 Jul 2005


Tue, 12 Jul 2005

Witty Worm analysis 12 Jul
Here's another analysis of the Witty worm.

joat: 12:00:00 12 Jul 2005


Mon, 11 Jul 2005

Malicous Insiders 11 Jul
Corporations don't only worry about attacks from the outside. Here's a paper entitled "Analysis and Detection of Malicious Insiders", with 14 authors?

joat: 12:00:00 11 Jul 2005


Sun, 10 Jul 2005

Bloom filters 10 Jul
Perl.com has a good Bloom filters, something I learned just this past week. In a nutshell, Bloom filters are useful in dealing with gawd-awfully-large databases. A Bloom filter will quickly tell you, accurately, if what you're looking for is not in the database or, less accurately, if what you're looking for might be in the database. Shorter version: it's a way to avoid having to search massive databases for every query that a user throws at a program.

joat: 12:00:00 10 Jul 2005


Sat, 09 Jul 2005

Google Earth 09 Jul
I appears that Google Earth downloads are available again. So many people went absolutely nuts with this free toy, when they first released it, that they had to block downloads of the software. I'm willing to bet that the total man-hours of productivity lost to Google Earth rivals opening day of one of the Star Wars films.

Of course, people have gotten organized so that they can spend even more time site-seeing vicariously. Some are even excited enough about it that they'll post Flickr photos about where they haven't been. What's that? A faux-moblog (fo-mo-blog)?

(heh)

joat: 14:30:00 9 Jul 2005


Wigle 09 Jul
I'm not in here but a neighbor, a block or so over, is. Are you?

joat: 14:00:00 9 Jul 2005


BBC podcast 09 Jul
The BBC is experimenting with podcasting.

joat: 13:45:00 9 Jul 2005


Recon 09 Jul
Here are some of the papers from the 2005 ReCon.

joat: 12:00:00 9 Jul 2005


Fri, 08 Jul 2005

Core Security stuff 08 Jul
Dig around in here (Core Security's Open Brainstormings). I'm willing to bet you find something interesting to read.

joat: 12:00:00 8 Jul 2005


Thu, 07 Jul 2005

DIY 07 Jul
You might find Jonathan's Westhues's circuit board grinder and/or his proximity card stuff interesting.

joat: 12:00:00 7 Jul 2005


Wed, 06 Jul 2005

More reason 06 Jul
Yet more reason to tie down your wireless networks, read your logs, and periodically test your own site(s): stuff like this gets taught at conferences. It's a presentation on "doing evil" involving wireless, search engines, and various tools (not necessarily together) entitled "Wizard searching: reversing the commercial web for fun and knowledge".

joat: 12:00:00 6 Jul 2005


Hand-off 06 Jul
I hereby donate my "Bonehead" sign (remember the one that I promised to wear all weekend) to the asshole that's DoS'ing my service provider.

joat: 02:00:00 6 Jul 2005


Tue, 05 Jul 2005

Driving backwards 05 Jul
Weirdness for my own benefit, embedding someone else's RSS feed in your wiki page:

joat: 12:00:00 5 Jul 2005


Mon, 04 Jul 2005

Dark Lord Cruise? 04 Jul
I still haven't seen the new Star Wars movie so I don't know who the Emporer actually is. After seeing this, could it be Tom Cruise?

Thanks to Ben Saunders via FurryGoat.

joat: 12:30:00 4 Jul 2005


Scapy 04 Jul
All the more reason to move away from WEP and start using WPA2 and 802.11i. It's a paper from Recon 2005 which discusses the current state of wireless injection attacks.

joat: 12:00:00 4 Jul 2005


Sun, 03 Jul 2005

DNS root 03 Jul
The following needs a bit of polish but you'll get the idea:

Me disagreeing with Paul Vixie?!? I guess so. There are justifiable reasons for implementing private DNS domains, the main one being "community". Or should I say "different community" or "private community". There are those that like the idea of not having to play by the rules imposed on them by others.

Paul Vixie makes a good point for against his own argument when he says "So what? Everybody wants something. I want a pony. Get over it." I bet your initial response is to think: "Geez! What an asshole!"

To be fair, he said that to just make a point. (I hope.) But it's one of the major reasons that people set up their own communities and practices. An example of this: fanatical "don't top post" crusaders have caused mail list/forum splits more than once. Otherwise, there would be one Perl list (with Tom in it), one security site (with Richard in it), one political forum (dissenters will be shot!), one operating system (you'd not be able to add functions either), and one movie list (we'll tell you what you'll watch).

Yes, another is "money", but you don't have to play if you don't want to. In fact, those schemes are doomed to fail, either due to lack of participation or by actions of the-powers-that-be. (A local here managed the ".biz" domain two years before the powers that be declared the ".biz" domain to be theirs. She even went before Congress over the issue. The result: the "official" domain was assigned to an "official" registrar and the ensuing "switch" caused a lot of confusion, not to mention emotional responses.

I also take issue with the "coherency" and the "there can only be one" arguments. Coherency has never been a basic assumption in the design of the DNS system. "Trust", yes. "Coherency", no.

The "There can only be one" argument is fine for those sitting at the top. For those of us near the bottom, there are good reasons to modify "the rules". For 50K+ users and a small IT budget, filtering of porn, UCE or malicious code can only be performed via DNS poisoning (declaring your server as authoritative for those domains your users shouldn't be going)(or blocking spyware/malicious code sources).

There also may be a need to set up private communities. Corporations can (and do) practice "security by obscurity" by setting up private DNS roots and attaching vhosts to them. While "security by obscurity" by itself is not a good thing, as an added layer in "defense in depth", it increases overall security. (Think a vhost attached to a private domain where the default page responds with a 404 error. In other words, you have to know about the pseudo root page to join the community. With added configuration, you have to be part of the community to "see" the page.)

A non-corporate example of modifying DNS service for a private community is the UCE-fighting community's blacklists. As an example, a response to a look up on "40.30.20.10.relays.mail-abuse.org" means that it's listed as a problem source. While this service is run within the ".org" domain, it could just as easily be run under the ".bob" domain. As long as people know how to configure their DNS services to include ".bob", the service would be just as employable.

This technique is also used to distribute public encryption keys, host databases (think phone or address books), keep track of hardware/software/books, and just about anything else a private community might need. It's only when that community tries to "go global" that they run up against "you can't have it, get over it" crowd.

Paul's response is not necessarily a "bad thing" either. It's creates an environment for innovation. Invention is not done by "fat & happy". It's usually performed by someone hungry, curious, frustrated, seriously bored or even paranoid.

So Paul, with or without your approval (or help) it's being done. Get over it.

joat: 18:00:00 3 Jul 2005


Blogs 03 Jul
Added the following feeds to the Bloglines subscriptions:
  • http://cutlass.info/
  • http://www.synacklabs.net/
  • http://www.honeyclient.org/
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/brianjo/archive/category/2082.aspx

joat: 16:45:00 3 Jul 2005


Honeyclient 03 Jul
SynAckLabs has announced the first-ever honeyclient tool (presentation here). Basically, it's a tool to detect/monitor malicious sites (web, for now).

I think the author has a lot of interesting work ahead of him. I don't think it'll make him too popular amongst the spyware crowd either.

joat: 14:00:00 3 Jul 2005


Blacklight 03 Jul
F-Secure has another Beta for their Blacklight anti-rootkit software. This one runs until 01 October. If anyone uses it, please let the rest of us know what you think about it.

joat: 12:00:00 3 Jul 2005


Sat, 02 Jul 2005

Lazy 02 Jul
It's old news to those that pay attention to their blogrolls and keep their links up to date (I'm not in that group, though I occasionally try to be) but: Liudvikas Bukys has moved his blog to here. He sent me an email prompt over a week ago and I'm only now getting around to it.

joat: 13:30:00 2 Jul 2005


WPC54G 02 Jul
In a fit of very early morning experimentation, I tried out the ndiswrapper that's built into Mandrake 10.2. The WPC54G card worked the first time. I put the list of steps here.

Enjoy!

joat: 12:00:00 2 Jul 2005


Fri, 01 Jul 2005

Bash Tips 01 Jul
Here is Simon Myers' paper which discusses various valauble Bash tips and tricks. Worth reading if only for the history tip.

joat: 12:00:00 1 Jul 2005


robtex