Blog O’ Matty

I came across the following vulnerability breakdowns while reading through Richard’s BLOG:

Top Vulnerabilities in Cross-Platform Applications

        * C1. Backup Software
        * C2. Anti-virus Software
        * C3. PHP-based Applications
        * C4. Database Software
        * C5. File Sharing Applications
        * C6. DNS Software
        * C7. Media Players
        * C8. Instant Messaging Applications
        * C9. Mozilla and Firefox Browsers
        * C10. Other Cross-platform Applications

Most hosts are equipped with backup and anti-virus solutions, so this list is amusing and at the same time extremely scarey. Yikes!

I read the article Is Your Printer Spying On You? in awe. While I have always known that government intelligence agencies were working back room deals in the sake of “protecting America,” it never dawned on me that they are using the printer companies to identify people through the material they print. This is some spooky stuff!

One unnerving thing about UNIX Operating Systems is the number of setuid and setgid root binaries. These binaries run with root privileges, and are often the first binaries examined by individuals wishing to escalate privileges on a system. To keep tabs on setuid and setgid files, the following find(1) statement can be run periodically:

$ find / -type f \( -perm -2000 -o -perm -4000 \) | sort

This will find and sort all binaries with the setuid or setgid bit set. The output can be stored in a secure location, and periodically compared (with a trusted kernel and version of find) with the current set of binaries on a server. While not foolproof, it is definitely better that nothing. :)

Over the years I have accumulated dozens of disk drives. To assist friends and various projects on the Internet, I have decided to donate my unused disk drives to help others. Having no idea what resides on each metal oxide platter, I wanted to make sure I sanitized each disk drive. After doing some research, I came across Darik’s boot and nuke (DBAN) data cleansing package.

DBAN is a bootable Linux CDROM image that wipes the hard drive contents with one of several available cleansing techniques (e.g., Gutmann vs DoD). To pick a technique, you simply boot from a CDROM with the DBAN ISO image, select the technique to wipe data, and watch as the data on all of the PCs disk drives are nuked! If you decided to use this technique, make sure to unplug all disk drives with valid data. If you forget and leave them plugged in, the data will be no more. ;)