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2 June 2000
- Cracked! Series
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RootPrompt.org has been running a
series of articles
about one system administrator's dealing with someone who cracked his systems. It
is a good read on what crackers do and how widespread their effects can be felt in
little time.
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2 June 2000
- Top Ten Internet Security Threats
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The SANS Institute has put together an
interesting list of vulnerabilities many crackers use to break into systems. It
is an interesting read on what to look out for. Also watch the
Slashdot
thread for other bits of advice.
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9 May 2000
- Dual-headed action!
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After a lot of struggling, I have finally managed to get two video cards and
monitors to cooperate with XFree86 4.0. I accomplished
it with Matrox G200 AGP and Voodoo3 2000 PCI cards. For some reason, my
TNT2Ultra card just would not cooperate with the other PCI cards I have
lying around. If you look closely at that image, you can see Netscape
spanning the two monitors while running with Xinerama activated. It is
very nice being able to just drag programs back and forth at will. Kudos
have to go to Mandrake for all his work
with that. I may put together a brief HOWTO on the subject, when I get bored.
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8 May 2000
- Keep away from my box!
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Every day hundreds of crazy folks out there are looking to get to your files.
Anytime you go on networks like IRC, ICQ, Napster, Gnutella, etc where there
are thousands of other people, a small percentage of those people are looking to
get at your files. It's a fact. So what does one do to protect them self?
Continued
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8 May 2000
- The ILOVEYOU Solution
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Ah this is grand.
AltaVista
reports that in this week's Time magazine, Bill Gates writes an essay which
explains how viruses of the future will be impossible to detect if Microsoft
is broken up into separate operating system and software companies.
"The front line of defense against such sophisticated viruses
is a continually evolving computer operating system that attracts the efforts of
eager software developers, Gates said."
Well said, Mr. Gates. That is a perfect description of Linux and other open
operating systems and projects. Only when a model is completely open can its
security be scrutinized by everyone and determined "secure." Thus Windows will
never be as secure as Linux, BSDs, etc.
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8 May 2000
- The Orbiten Free Software Survey
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There is a survey up on Free Software,
the authors, who contributes the most, etc. The good news is I'm in
there
for my KSniff project. They credit me with 61,085 bytes of
code, which puts me at number 2,372 of 13,496 authors and 0.005% of the code they
analyzed. They plan on another survey, covering even more projects, this June.
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7 May 2000
- Apache.org gets rooted
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The Register reports
that a couple scoundrels cracked into the FreeBSD machine hosting the
Apache.org web site. They give the details
on how they accomplished it
here. In
short, it was due to errors and shortcuts taken by the administrators of that
site, and certainly not any inherent flaw in Apache, FreeBSD, or any Open Source
program.
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6 May 2000
- Finally updated this place
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I finally got around to fixin up my little corner of the web, touch up the
design a bit and added some items under Projects there on the left.
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5 May 2000
- ILOVEYOU and such crap
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Every time I see another one of these stories, it gives me a tingly feeling down
there. From the folks at Microsoft themselves, they do not have any plans to
issue a patch or security warning[1]. Fact is the consumer Windows line will
always be suceptible to these simple attacks. The primary cause is people are
trained to do what the computer says. So when an email says, "Click this,"
they do. There is such little education about computers, the Internet, email,
etc. put into the product, so people click on these attachments blindly and
*poof* virii are slapped on documents, it is spread to network drives, email
addressbooks, etc.
Why do we who use Linux laugh heartily at the latest security problem with
Windows? Because we have nothing to fear. Here a series of stories on the
subject, what Windows users have to fear and what us Linux folk chuckle over.
[1] - ZDNet, ILOVEYOU Microsoft
[2] - The Standard, First Comes 'Love,' Then Comes 'Joke'
[3] - Linux World, From Redmond with love
[4] - Linux World, Linux Goes Unloved
[5] - Linux Today, VNU Net: Microsoft lambasted over Love Bug
[6] - Linux Planet, There but for the Grace of Bill...
[7] - Linux Today, Playing in the Sandbox: How Linux can continue to avoid ILOVEYOU-type attacks
[8] - ZDNet UK, Experts call on firms to embrace bug free Linux
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