Linux Network Security - Page 15

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Breaking the Botnet Code

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Networks of compromised computers controlled by a central server, better known as botnets, are a Swiss Army knife of tools for online criminals. Hackers can use these co-opted systems to churn out spam, host malicious code, hide their tracks on the Internet, or flood a corporate network to cut off its access to the Web.

Alex
Nov 13, 2009

64 percent of websites contain serious flaws

Cross-site scripting and SQL injection remain the top methods of attack. Vulnerabilities in web applications remain the primary avenue of attack for cybercriminals, according to a WhiteHat Website Security Statistics Report released this week.

Anthony Pell
Nov 13, 2009

Seven keyholders for the DNS root zone

Preparations for securing the domain name system root zone using the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC ) protocol are entering a key phase. At the 76th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Hiroshima, the design team from VeriSign, the internet administration authority ICANN and the US NTIA presented the strict security conditions under which the various keys required will be generated, held and renewed. IETF developers expressed concern about the lack of channels for both explaining the DNSSEC rollout, scheduled to commence in January, to ISPs and for collecting reports of anything untoward from the ISPs.

Anthony Pell
Nov 12, 2009

How a Botnet Gets Its Name

There is a new kid in town in the world of botnets - isn't there always? A heavyweight spamming botnet known as Festi has only been tracked by researchers with Message Labs Intelligence since August, but is already responsible for approximately 5 percent of all global spam (around 2.5 billion spam emails per day), according to Paul Wood, senior analyst with Messagelabs, which keeps tabs on spam and botnet activity.

Anthony Pell
Nov 11, 2009

Pricing Scheme for a DDoS Extortion Attack

With the average price for a DDoS attack on demand decreasing due to the evident over-supply of malware infected hosts, it should be fairly logical to assume that the "on demand DDoS" business model run by the cybercriminals performing such services is blossoming.

Anthony Pell
Nov 09, 2009

Turning clouds into crackers: $45 a password

Security experts recommend long, complex passwords because they require a super computer

Alex
Nov 06, 2009

Vendors scrambling to fix bug in Net's security

Software makers around the world are scrambling to fix a serious bug in the technology used to transfer information securely on the Internet. The flaw lies in the SSL protocol, best known as the technology used for secure browsing on Web sites beginning with HTTPS, and lets attackers intercept secure SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) communications between computers using what's known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

Alex
Nov 05, 2009

GPLd Wireshark for Windows 7

The Wireshark development team, led by Gerald Combs, has released three new versions of the Wireshark network protocol analyser. The big change in the stable main version 1.2.3 is that it now contains WinPcap 4.1.1, making it fully Windows 7 friendly. It also fixes a few bugs, some of which could cause Wireshark to crash and were therefore categorised as security-related.

Anthony Pell
Oct 28, 2009

Dave Dittrich on Botnets, Conficker and the Evolution of Malware

Dave Dittrich is a security researcher with the University of Washington, and has often appeared on linuxsecurity.com on issues involving denial-of-service attacks, honeynets, and other distributed network-related security. Great interview with him on ThreatPost.In this episode, Dennis Fisher talks with Dave Dittrich of the University of Washington, one of the top botnet and malware researchers in the industry, about the evolution of botnets and malware, the innovations of the Nugache botnet and the monetization of large-scale botnets.

Anthony Pell
Oct 21, 2009

Malware torrent delivered over Google, Yahoo! ad services

Some of the web's bigger websites were flooded with a torrent of malicious banner ads after cyber crooks managed to sneak them onto syndication services operated by Google, Yahoo, and a third company, according to a security firm.

Anthony Pell
Oct 06, 2009

DDoS attack rains down on Amazon cloud

Web-based code hosting service Bitbucket experienced more than 19 hours of downtime over the weekend after an apparent DDoS attack on the sky-high compute infrastructure it rents from Amazon.com.

Anthony Pell
Oct 06, 2009

5 Mistakes a Security Vendor Made in the Cloud

When security experts sound the alarm about enterprises embracing cloud computing with little understanding of the risks, it's usually a case where the expert -- working for a vendor -- is making a pitch for their employer's products. That's all well and good, but here's the problem -- some of them have trouble keeping their own side of the cloud clean.

Anthony Pell
Oct 01, 2009

Network Monitoring Appliance

My ambition was to implement a small (better tiny) appliance for monitoring network health and network resources, short and longtime trends, running under VMware Server or VMware ESX. So I had an eye upon all components which are implemented on the system, to be as leightweight as possible. This was also the reason why no SQL DBMS based software was used.

Anthony Pell
Sep 29, 2009

DNS Cloud Security Services Arrive

One of the first cloud-based secure DNS services was launched today amid intensified concerns about locking down vulnerable Domain Name Service servers. OpenDNS, which provides a free DNS service for consumers and schools, is offering a subscription-based commercial service for enterprises. Other vendors, such as Nominum, are considering offering secure DNS cloud services, as well.

Anthony Pell
Sep 15, 2009

Use Wireshark to track your network behavior

Any time I need network analysis I turn to Wireshark. Wireshark is, in my opinion, the defacto standard for network protocol analyzers . Not only is it incredibly powerful, useful, and user-friendly it is also FREE! But what exactly is Wireshark? Simple: Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that watches and logs all incoming and outgoing traffic as defined by your needs. This tool can not only read traffic live, it can read traffic from a previous dump. And it can read files from other applications such as tcpdump and Microsoft Network Analyzer.

Anthony Pell
Aug 11, 2009

Twitter DOS Attack Targeted Georgian Blogger

Great coverage on the Twitter/FB DDoS on CIO. CNET also has several articlesThe denial of service (DOS) attacks which knocked Twitter offline and slowed down Facebook response times yesterday may have been designed to target just one individual.

Anthony Pell
Aug 07, 2009

Facebook, Twitter, Others Down in Possible DDoS?

Twitter & Facebook, among others, appear to all be down or having access problems. It doesn't appear to be an infrastructure problem, but something more widespread, such as an ISP problem or distributed denial of attack.Twitter was inaccessible for at least a half hour on Thursday morning, followed by a period of slowness and sporadic timeouts (and more outright downtime). It's not clear what has caused this. My theory is that it was the millions of people tweeting complaints about why it can't be Friday yet.

Dave Wreski
Aug 06, 2009

Report: Spam and malware at all-time highs

Spam and botnets have hit their highest levels ever, according to McAfee's second-quarter Threats Report, released Wednesday. McAfee's Avert Labs says spam recorded in the second quarter shot up 80 percent compared with the first quarter of the year.

Anthony Pell
Jul 29, 2009

Latest DDoS attacks extremely unsophisticated, experts say

The latest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that have wrangled some U.S. and South Korean government websites appear to be the work of a relatively unsophisticated attacker and not the actions of a state sponsored professional, according to experts analyzing the traffic from the botnet behind the attacks.

Anthony Pell
Jul 16, 2009

Five of the biggest IPv6-based threats facing CIOs

The IETF has identified many security threats related to IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol. Security concerns around IPv6 deployment are real, although the number of IPv6-based attacks remains small.

Anthony Pell
Jul 13, 2009

Linux Network Security - Page 15

Harnessing Proxies for Enhanced Threat Intelligence: A Guide with Open Source Tools

Understanding HTTP Proxy Servers: A Vital Linux Network Security Tool

Exploring Vulnerability Scanners: Tools & Strategies for a Secure Network