Linux Security Week - January 22nd 2001

[newsletter-admins () linuxsecurity com]

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  LinuxSecurity.com                          Weekly Newsletter       |
|  January 22, 2001                           Volume 2, Number 4n     |
|                                                                     |
|  Editorial Team:  Dave Wreski             dave () linuxsecurity com    |
|                   Benjamin Thomas         ben () linuxsecurity com     |
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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, many articles were released.  Much of the news was
surrounding the Ramen worm.  A few of the good papers included
"Securing DNS with Transaction Signatures,"  "Web Site Security
and Denial of Service Protection," and "Initial Cryptanalysis
of the RSA SecurID Algorithm."  If you have not yet educated
yourself about the Linux Ramen worm then you may want to read
"Ramen Linux Worm Propagation"

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2335.html

This week, advisories were released for php4, inn, dhcpd, zope,
stunnel, joe, bash, syslog-ng, openssh, linuxconf, wu-ftpd, glibc,
and diffutils/squid.  The vendors include Conectiva, Caldera,
FreeBSD, Mandrake, and Trustix.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-2338.html


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server, DNS, mail, and database server.  Please see Guardian
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http://www.guardiandigital.com/visoroffer.html


** OpenDoc Publishing **

Our sponsor this week is OpenDoc Publishing. Their 480-page
comprehensive security book, Securing and Optimizing Linux, takes a
hands-on approach to installing, optimizing, configuring, and
securing Red Hat Linux. Topics include sendmail 8.10.1, OpenSSL,
ApacheSSL, OpenSSH and much more! Includes Red Hat 6.2 and Red Hat
6.2 PowerTools edition.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/sponsors/opendocs.html



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| Host Security News: | <<-----[ Articles This Week ]-----------------+
+---------------------+


* Securing DNS with Transaction Signatures
January 20th, 2001

The DNS works on a question-answer model. If a client needs
information from the DNS it sends a question to a DNS server and the
server returns an answer. Until recently it was only possible for a
server to examine a question and determine whether or not to answer
it based on the IP address the question originated from.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/host_security_article-2341.html


* Ramen and the Danger of Default Linux Configurations
January 18th, 2001

If there's one area where Linux distributions miserably fail, it's in
how services are  configured right out of the box upon installation.
Experienced users know enough to  plug the many security holes
present in a default Linux installation, but many Linux  newbies --
and those experienced system administrators coming from the UNIX and
NT worlds -- don't.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/host_security_article-2332.html


* Advanced Host Detection - Techniques To Validate Host-Connectivity
January 18th, 2001

This paper will attempt to describe techniques used to discover
heavily filtered and firewalled hosts, that will not answer to
standard PING responses. It is assumed that the reader has a firm
knowledge of the major internet protocols (TCP,IP,UDP,ICMP). Most
other protocols will not be discussed but techniques described here
can be applied to many protocols.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2327.html

* Securing Linux: Part 2
January 15th, 2001

This second article in the series takes you through TCP wrappers,
OpenSSH,  disabling unnecessary services and better monitoring of
system activity by  using unique log files to monitor specific
information."

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/server_security_article-2305.html


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| Network Security News: |
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* Web Site Security and Denial of Service Protection
January 21st, 2001

The challenge for successful public Web sites is to encourage access
to the site, while  eliminating undesirable or malicious traffic, and
providing the necessary levels of sufficient  security without
creating constraining site limitations in performance or scalability.
Disruption of  service caused by denial of service (DoS) attacks is
the "kiss of death" for Web-driven  enterprises such as portals and
e-commerce sites. The "1999 Computer Crime and Security  Survey"
found system penetration by outsiders increased for the third year in
a row with 30% of  respondents reporting intrusions. Those reporting
their Internet connection as a frequent point of  attack rose for the
third straight year, from 37% of respondents in 1996 to 57% in 1999

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2346.html


* Defenses still weak against DDoS attacks
January 19th, 2001

Mafiaboy, the Canadian teenager accused of  launching a series of
distributed denial of service  attacks against a septet of the
Internet's most popular  sites last year, pleaded guilty Thursday to
56 of the 66  charges against him--just before his trial was set to
start in a Montreal court.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2340.html


* Running Snort on IIS Web Servers: Part I
January 17th, 2001

Martin Roesch developed Snort in 1998 for Unix platforms. Dubbing it
a "Lightweight Intrusion Detection System," Martin made the tool open
source and the number of people using Snort has been growing ever
since. In the summer of 2000, Mike Davis created the first Win32 port
of Snort, bringing a great tool to a whole new world of Windows users
and bringing a world of Windows users to a different understanding of
security.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2320.html


* Linux Firewall - the Traffic Shaper
January 16th, 2001

This article will look at ways for users to get more out of that
faithful but somewhat dull firewall. In particular, we will look at
traffic shaping, a technique that prevents high-bandwidth traffic
like Napster from making other Internet applications, such as Web
browsing and gaming, unusable. By making some simple adjustments to
the Linux kernel, users can implement an effective traffic shaping
setup that ensures that the Web traffic can flow smoothly, even when
a lot of outsiders are busy working with your Napster store.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/firewalls_article-2312.html



+------------------------+
| Cryptography News:     |
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* Initial Cryptanalysis of the RSA SecurID Algorithm
January 18th, 2001

This short paper will examine several discovered statistical
irregularities in functions used within the SecurID algorithm: the
time computation and final conversion routines. Where and how these
irregularities can be mitigated by usage and policy are explored. We
are planning for the release of a more thorough analysis in the near
future. This paper does not present methods of determining the secret
component by viewing previously generated or successive tokencodes.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2336.html


* Crypto-Gram Jan 2001
January 16th, 2001

Crypto-Gram is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries,
analyses, insights, and commentaries on computer security and
cryptography. This month Bruce Schneier discusses a "Cyber UL", NIST,
Code Signing in MS Windows, and how the FBI circumvented a persons
privacy while using PGP.  As always, Bruce offers a very well thought
out summary of the current issues facing the crypto community.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-2313.html


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| Vendors/Tools/Products: |
+-------------------------+

* U.S. Post Office Unveils Secure Internet Service
January 18th, 2001

The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a new service Tuesday that allows
government agencies to send and receive sensitive documents such as
birth certificates and medical records over the Internet in a secure
manner.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/government_article-2329.html


* Secure Linux Distributions: Three Approaches to Three Different
Problems
January 17th, 2001

If there is one question I hate, it's "Which Linux distribution is
the most secure?" followed by "Which firewall is best?" People ask
these questions in all innocence, and very few realize the complexity
behind them. If I'm in a bad mood I'll usually say, "Whichever one
works best for you with the fewest problems." While essentially a
correct answer, it is mostly useless.


http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/vendors_products_article-2319.html


+------------------------+
| General News:          |
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* Counterspy
January 21st, 2001

Two hot new weapons are "honey pots" and tracers. A honey pot is a
fake server  set up to trap the unwitting intruder. Once inside, an
alarm is tripped and the  hacker's every keystroke, method of entry
and manner of attack is covertly  scrutinized.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/hackscracks_article-2344.html


* Security breaches soar in US
January 19th, 2001

Some 90 per cent of US companies reported some form of security
breach last year, costing them $265m, according to FBI figures. Loss
of customer goods accounts for 29 per cent of these costs, while loss
of staff time accounts for 22 per cent, money loss 23 per cent and
loss of revenue 18 per cent.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/general_article-2339.html


* Ramen Linux Worm Propagation
January 18th, 2001

By the time this article appears in print, the world will be about to
enter - or will have just entered - the 21st Century. On January 1,
2001, humanity will still not have fulfilled some of the more
flamboyant predictions of the 1960s and 1970s; for example, we won't
all be flying around, Jetsons-style, in transparent-domed cars that
emit tiny smoke rings.


http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/network_security_article-2335.html

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