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-
buzzword translations:
"cloud" -> someones computer
"big data" -> lots of somewhat irrelevant data
"ai" -> if if if if if if if if if if if if if else
"algorithm" -> something that works but you don't know why
"secure" -> https://
"cyber security" -> kali linux + black hoodie
"innovation" -> adding something completely irrelevant such as making a poop emoji talk
"blockchain" -> we make lots of backups
"privacy" -> we store your data, we just don't tell you about it40 -
Received "emergency update" code from internal enterprise security team. Wasn't given time to do code review; was assured code was reviewed and solid.
Pushed code to over 6k lower-level servers before finding this gem buried deep within:
...
cd /foo; rm -rf *; cd /
...
(This ran as root, and yes, the cwd was / from earlier in the code).
/foo, of course, did not exist on some servers.
Now, it is those servers which do not exist.
FML15 -
Dear DEVS,
chmod -R 777 /
is not the right way to fix your application permissions issues!!!!!!
Yours truly,
sys ad who is not fixing your production server.23 -
My face when a developer suggests to use Windows server instead of Linux for speed and security reasons
30 -
An incident which made a Security Researcher cry
--------------------------------------------------------
I was working on my laptop finishing up my code while waiting for the flight which was late . Meanwhile two guys (I'm gonna call them Fellas) in black suit and shades came to me
Fella : Sir you have to come with us .
Me : *goes along with them*
Fella : Sir please proceed *points towards the door . The room has a round table with some guys discussing something *
Fella 1 : Your passport please
Me : *Hands over the passport*
Fella 1 : Where are you traveling to sir?
Me : India
Fella 1 : Put your laptop in the desk sir.
Me : Sure thing
Fella 2 : What were you doing there? *Taps the power button*
Me : Just finishing up my work .
Fella 1 : Or hacking our systems?
Me : Seriously?
Fella 2 : The password please .
Me : Here you go
*5 minutes have passed and he still can't figure out how to use the machine*
Fella 2 : Which Windows is this?
Me : It's Linux
Fella 1 : So you are a hacker .
Me : Nope
Fella 1 : You are using Linux
Me : Does it matters?
Fella 1 : Where do you work?
Me : *I won't mention here but I told him*
Fella 2 : So what do you do there?
Me : I'm a Security Researcher
Fella 1 : What's your work?
Me : I find security holes in their systems .
Fella 1 : That means you are a hacker .
Me : Not at all .
Fella 2 : But they do the same and they use Linux .
Me : You can call me one .
*After 15 minutes of doo-laa-baa-dee-doo-ra-ba-doo amongst them I dunno what they were talking , they shutdown the computer and handed over it to me*
Fella 2 - So you are somewhat like a hacker .
Me - *A bit frustrated* Yes.
##And now the glorious question appeared like an angel from river ##
Can you hack Facebook?
Me - 😭😭😭28 -
So I got the job. Here's a story, never let anyone stop you from accomplishing your dreams!
It all started in 2010. Windows just crashed unrecoverably for the 3rd time in two years. Back then I wasn't good with computers yet so we got our tech guy to look at it and he said: "either pay for a windows license again (we nearly spend 1K on licenses already) or try another operating system which is free: Ubuntu. If you don't like it anyways, we can always switch back to Windows!"
Oh well, fair enough, not much to lose, right! So we went with Ubuntu. Within about 2 hours I could find everything. From the software installer to OpenOffice, browsers, email things and so on. Also I already got the basics of the Linux terminal (bash in this case) like ls, cd, mkdir and a few more.
My parents found it very easy to work with as well so we decided to stick with it.
I already started to experiment with some html/css code because the thought of being able to write my own websites was awesome! Within about a week or so I figured out a simple html site.
Then I started to experiment more and more.
After about a year of trial and error (repeat about 1000+ times) I finally got my first Apache server setup on a VirtualBox running Ubuntu server. Damn, it felt awesome to see my own shit working!
From that moment on I continued to try everything I could with Linux because I found the principle that I basically could do everything I wanted (possible with software solutions) without any limitations (like with Windows/Mac) very fucking awesome. I owned the fucking system.
Then, after some years, I got my first shared hosting plan! It was awesome to see my own (with subdomain) website online, functioning very well!
I started to learn stuff like FTP, SSH and so on.
Went on with trial and error for a while and then the thought occured to me: what if I'd have a little server ONLINE which I could use myself to experiment around?
First rented VPS was there! Couldn't get enough of it and kept experimenting with server thingies, linux in general aaand so on.
Started learning about rsa key based login, firewalls (iptables), brute force prevention (fail2ban), vhosts (apache2 still), SSL (damn this was an interesting one, how the fuck do you do this yourself?!), PHP and many other things.
Then, after a while, the thought came to mind: what if I'd have a dedicated server!?!?!?!
I ordered my first fucking dedicated server. Damn, this was awesome! Already knew some stuff about defending myself from brute force bots and so on so it went pretty well.
Finally made the jump to NginX and CentOS!
Made multiple VPS's for shitloads of purposes and just to learn. Started working with reverse proxies (nginx), proxy servers, SSL for everything (because fuck basic http WITHOUT SSL), vhosts and so on.
Started with simple, one screen linux setup with ubuntu 10.04.
Running a five monitor setup now with many distro's, running about 20 servers with proxies/nginx/apache2/multiple db engines, as much security as I can integrate and this fucking passion just got me my first Linux job!
It's not just an operating system for me, it's a way of life. And with that I don't just mean the operating system, but also the idea behind it :).20 -
Happened a few weeks ago but still awesome.
Me and a good friend have a website together but we don't monitor it too much.
He studied with me in the same class but went towards frontend/apps where I chose backend/servers/security. He knows how to do basic Linux stuff but that's about it.
We were at a party when he noticed that our site was offline. Walked over to me (because I manage the server) to notify me so I could look into it said I'd look into it (phone):
*visits site: nothing*
*online dig tool: got the server ip*
*remembered this one didn't have pubkey authentication - after three passwords attempts I'm in*
"service apache2 status"
*service doesn't exist*
*right, migrated this one from Apache to nginx....*
"history"
*ah, an nginx restart probably suffices...*
"service nginx restart"
BAM, site is reachable again.
*god damnit, lets encrypt cert expired...*
"history"
*sees command with certbot and our domain both in one*
"!892"
*20 seconds later: success message*
*service nginx reload*
BAM, site works securely again.
"Yo mate, check the site again"
Mate: 😶 w-w-what? *checks site and his watch* you started less than two minutes ago...?
Me: yeah..?
Mate: 😶 now this is why YOU manage our server and I don't 😐
His face was fucking gold. It wasn't that difficult for me (I do this daily) but to him, I was a God at that moment.
Awesome moment 😊25 -
Got caught using linux terminal by school security. They took my laptop away and drove me across campus in their security carts to take me to the office.
It took a long time to explain that I wasn't maliciously hacking the school.
This is the third time I've been in trouble for tech-related activity.
On the bright side, one of the security guards said, "I'm done dealing with teenagers. Next time I won't work for a high school."
I think he's going to quit. :)13 -
Hacking/attack experiences...
I'm, for obvious reasons, only going to talk about the attacks I went through and the *legal* ones I did 😅 😜
Let's first get some things clear/funny facts:
I've been doing offensive security since I was 14-15. Defensive since the age of 16-17. I'm getting close to 23 now, for the record.
First system ever hacked (metasploit exploit): Windows XP.
(To be clear, at home through a pentesting environment, all legal)
Easiest system ever hacked: Windows XP yet again.
Time it took me to crack/hack into today's OS's (remote + local exploits, don't remember which ones I used by the way):
Windows: XP - five seconds (damn, those metasploit exploits are powerful)
Windows Vista: Few minutes.
Windows 7: Few minutes.
Windows 10: Few minutes.
OSX (in general): 1 Hour (finding a good exploit took some time, got to root level easily aftewards. No, I do not remember how/what exactly, it's years and years ago)
Linux (Ubuntu): A month approx. Ended up using a Java applet through Firefox when that was still a thing. Literally had to click it manually xD
Linux: (RHEL based systems): Still not exploited, SELinux is powerful, motherfucker.
Keep in mind that I had a great pentesting setup back then 😊. I don't have nor do that anymore since I love defensive security more nowadays and simply don't have the time anymore.
Dealing with attacks and getting hacked.
Keep in mind that I manage around 20 servers (including vps's and dedi's) so I get the usual amount of ssh brute force attacks (thanks for keeping me safe, CSF!) which is about 40-50K every hour. Those ip's automatically get blocked after three failed attempts within 5 minutes. No root login allowed + rsa key login with freaking strong passwords/passphrases.
linu.xxx/much-security.nl - All kinds of attacks, application attacks, brute force, DDoS sometimes but that is also mostly mitigated at provider level, to name a few. So, except for my own tests and a few ddos's on both those domains, nothing really threatening. (as in, nothing seems to have fucked anything up yet)
How did I discover that two of my servers were hacked through brute forcers while no brute force protection was in place yet? installed a barebones ubuntu server onto both. They only come with system-default applications. Tried installing Nginx next day, port 80 was already in use. I always run 'pidof apache2' to make sure it isn't running and thought I'd run that for fun while I knew I didn't install it and it didn't come with the distro. It was actually running. Checked the auth logs and saw succesful root logins - fuck me - reinstalled the servers and installed Fail2Ban. It bans any ip address which had three failed ssh logins within 5 minutes:
Enabled Fail2Ban -> checked iptables (iptables -L) literally two seconds later: 100+ banned ip addresses - holy fuck, no wonder I got hacked!
One other kind/type of attack I get regularly but if it doesn't get much worse, I'll deal with that :)
Dealing with different kinds of attacks:
Web app attacks: extensively testing everything for security vulns before releasing it into the open.
Network attacks: Nginx rate limiting/CSF rate limiting against SYN DDoS attacks for example.
System attacks: Anti brute force software (Fail2Ban or CSF), anti rootkit software, AppArmor or (which I prefer) SELinux which actually catches quite some web app attacks as well and REGULARLY UPDATING THE SERVERS/SOFTWARE.
So yah, hereby :P39 -
My mentor/guider at my last internship.
He was great at guiding, only 1-2 years older than me, brought criticism in a constructive way (only had a very tiny thing once in half a year though) and although they were forced to use windows in a few production environments, when it came to handling very sensitive data and they asked me for an opinion before him and I answered that closed source software wasn't a good idea and they'd all go against me, this guy quit his nice-guy mode and went straight to dead-serious backing me up.
I remember a specific occurrence:
Programmers in room (under him technically): so linuxxx, why not just use windows servers for this data storage?
Me: because it's closed source, you know why I'd say that that's bad for handling sensitive data
Programmers: oh come on not that again...
Me: no but really look at it from my si.....
Programmers: no stop it. You're only an intern, don't act like you know a lot about thi....
Mentor: no you shut the fuck up. We. Are. Not. Using. Proprietary. Bullshit. For. Storing. Sensitive. Data.
Linuxxx seems to know a lot more about security and privacy than you guys so you fucking listen to what he has to say.
Windows is out of the fucking question here, am I clear?
Yeah that felt awesome.
Also that time when a mysql db in prod went bad and they didn't really know what to do. Didn't have much experience but knew how to run a repair.
He called me in and asked me to have a look.
Me: *fixed it in a few minutes* so how many visitors does this thing get, few hundred a day?
Him: few million.
Me: 😵 I'm only an intern! Why did you let me access this?!
Him: because you're the one with the most Linux knowledge here and I trust you to fix it or give a shout when you simply can't.
Lastly he asked me to help out with iptables rules. I wasn't of much help but it was fun to sit there debugging iptables shit with two seniors 😊
He always gave good feedback, knew my qualities and put them to good use and kept my motivation high.
Awesome guy!4 -
A fellow intern recommended the use of windows server for security and speed reasons.
Few details about the situation: windows server got hacked due to a vulnerability which had no patch released yet and this had happened multiple times that year. Also, the company was migrating everything to Linux (servers).
The senior/lead programmer literally gave him a GTFO face and pointed at the door.
Everyone was giving him the GTFO face by the way, he didn't know how fast he had to get out 🤣8 -
Guy: dot net dev (C#) on windows. (desktop + server)
Team(not his team, he just happened to sit next to us): php/frontend devs and Linux (server) people.
Team: starting a new project! We'll have to see what framework to use and what server :D
Guy: i know it's none of my business...... but I'd recommend dot net and windows server!
Me: respectfully, that hardly makes sense, you know our skillset/field... i understand that it works for you but it doesn't really for us :).
Next to that we'd rather not use windows for security reasons.
It's fine if that happens once.
When it happened for the 1748472823'th time, I had a real hard time controlling myself.10 -
Ranted about him before but this just came to my mind again.
The fucking windows (to the max) fanboy I had to deal with for too long.
Every time I mentioned something about what programming language to use in a project he was NOT part of:
"I know it's none of my business, BUT I think you should use .net"
(All backend JavaScript and php guys).
Every time I mentioned something about what server system to use:
"I know it's none of my business but I think you should use Windows server"
(All Linux guys)
Every time I'd say something positive about Linux he'd search as long as needed to prove that that was also a windows thing (didn't even come close sometimes)
Every time I told the devs there about a windows security issue (as in "guys they found this thing, install the next update to stay safe :)" - "ahhh will do, thanks for letting know man!") he'd search as long as needed to prove that Linux also had had security issues like that.
(Okay?!? I know?!? I'm just trying to notify people so their systems stay secure and they're genuinely happy with that so STFU)
MOTHERFUCKER.17 -
My first day in a Linux admin and security course. I went all confident and cocky waiting for some bullshit like "type in your term: ls, cd, pwd, see you tomorrow"
Suddenly the teacher starts to configure lampp, then jumps to bind, and thirty minutes leater , when everyone has their ssl keys under control, I was still struggling to correctly forward my mate. The rest of the day was smooth and easy for those who finished their servers, and there I was, unable to find my own ass in the middle of that mess made of bad assigned permissions and wrong placed addresses. Even worse, he came to me when I asked for help, took my chair and fixed everything in one beautiful single bash line. I started to ask "what's this? Where is that? Is it a config file or a directory?" And with all his patience he keep telling me the obvious answers that where right there at the screen but I couldn't see. Took me two weeks to catch his pace, and another two weeks to understand fully his classes. He never said a word about my terrible first day (first couple weeks). When course finished, I saw he was going to teach a really hard security module, and I signed up without hesitate.6 -
A conversation with our network/system admin.
Me : Can I install linux on my computer, windows is slow and terrible.
Him : No, if you use anything but Windows in this company, you will be fired for bypassing our security protocols. Its written in your contract.
Me : *boots up my Macbook*
10 -
!rant
So it turns out that my dad accidentally took my spare laptop on a work trip. He's about as non-tech as you can get, and that laptop runs...Arch Linux. Yeah.
(call from dad)
M: hi dad
D: what's your desktop password?
M: (confused) {Password}
D: okay.
(cuts the call)
M: *shrug*
(call from dad)
M: hi dad
D: so where is PowerPoint?! where's the Windows button?! I've been at this for half an hour now and I have to edit a presentation for tomorrow!!
M: (realizes what's happened) oh...uh...dad...that's.. Linux...
D: don't you people do anything the way it's supposed to be done?
M: uh...
D: ugh! So you can't edit PPTs on this?
M: (processing...LibreOffice isn't installed on the laptop, and he will have to use the command line to connect to the internet to use Office Online or Google Slides since the Deepin WiFi module keeps fucking up for some reason)
D: well?
M: (internal sigh) No, you can't edit PPTs on that.
D: wow.
(cuts the call)
He either thinks we're all useless or that we have godlike computer skills to be able to edit PPTs on Linux. Oh well.
(He managed to use the hotel's "workstation" to get it done, so all is well. I should tell him to change his password though, hotel computers have rubbish security.)14 -
So I had my exams recently and I thought I'd post some of the most hacky shit I've done there over here. One thing to keep in mind, I'm a backender so I always have to hack my way around frontend!
- Had a user level authentication library which fucked up for some reason so I literally made an array with all pages and user levels allowed so I pretty much had a hardcoded user level authentication feature/function. Hey, it worked!
- CSS. Gave every page a hight of 110 percent because that made sure that you couldn't see part of the white background under the 'background' picture. Used !important about everywhere but it worked :P.
- Completey forgot (stress, time pressure etc) to make the user ID's auto incremented. 'Fixed' that by randomly generating a user id and really hoping during every registration that that user ID did not exist in the database already. Was dirty as fuck but hey it worked!
- My 'client' insisted on using Windows server.Although I wouldn't even mind using it for once, I'd never worked with it before so that would have been fucked for me. Next to that fact, you could hear swearing from about everyone who had to use Windows server in that room, even the die hard windows users rather had linux servers. So, I just told a lot of stuff about security, stability etc and actually making half of all that shit up and my client was like 'good idea, let's go for linux server then!'. Saved myself there big time.
- CHMOD'd everything 777. It just worked that way and I was in too much time pressure to spend time on that!
- Had to use VMWare instead of VirtulBox which always fucks up for me and this time it did again. Windows 10 enjoyed corrupting the virtual network adapters after every reboot of my host so I had to re-create the whole adapter about 20 times again (and removing it again) in order to get it to work. Even the administrator had no fucking clue why that was happening.
- Used project_1.0.zip etc for version control :P.
Yup, fun times!6 -
Another incident which made a Security Researcher cry 😭😭😭
[ NOTE : Check my profile for older incident ]
-----------------------------------------------------------
I was invited by a fellow friend to a newly built Cyber Security firm , I didn't asked for any work issues as it was my friend who asked me to go there . Let's call it X for now . It was a good day , overcast weather , cloudy sky , everything was nice before I entered the company . And the conversation is as follows :
Fella - Hey! Nice to see you with us .
Me - Thanks! Where to? *Asking for my work area*
Fella - Right behind me .
Me - Good thing :)
Fella - So , the set-up is good to go I suppose .
Me - Yeah :)
*I'm in my cabin and what I can see is a Windows VM inside Ubuntu 12.4*
*Fast forward to 1 hour and now I'm at the cafeteria with the Fella*
Fella - Hey! Sup? How was the day?
Me - Fine *in a bit confused voice*
Fella - What happened mate , you good with the work?
Me - Yeah but why you've got Windows inside Ubuntu , I mean what's the use of Ubuntu when I have to work on Windows?
Fella - Do you know Linux is safe from Malwares?
Me - Yeah
Fella - That's why we are using Windows on VM inside Linux .
Me - For what?
Fella - To keep Windows safe from Malwares as in our company , we can't afford any data loss!
Me - 😵 *A big face palm which went through my head and hit another guy , made me a bit unconscious*
I ran for my life as soon as possible , in future I'm never gonna work for anyone before asking their preferences .7 -
This happened at my last internship. There was this other intern and he was a TO THE FUCKING MAX windows fanboy and whenever someone said something bad about windows he'd go full rage. Also, he'd sometimes spend half an hour at my desk explaining why windows was the best and Linux sucked.
This one time, I read about a newly discovered windows vulnerability and told the employees so they'd update quickly and they were like ' thanks for the notification mate!' And then that guy came up to me telling that 'Linux also has severe vulnerabilities sometimes'. YES I FUCKING KNOW THAT I'M JUST TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO UPDATE FOR THEIR SECURITY YOU FUCKING ASSHAT. I got really mad. Still, fuck that guy.9 -
Awesome teacher number two: another Linux teacher!
Didn't have many classes from him but damn he could interact with the students!
He was very open (it just autocorrected that to porn O.o) minded, very passionate about Linux and new shitloads about security. You'd expect him to be like 50 as for his knowledge amounts but he was around 27 I think.
He could go into discussions with students on the windows vs Linux subject, made it look like they were winning and then completely burn them in just a few sentences.
I think he liked me a lot because we would talk all kinds of Linux stuff.
He'd also help people with windows sometimes but windows servers where a very fucking no-go for him.
Man, I miss that guy 😞10 -
Well, here's the OS rant I promised. Also apologies for no blog posts the past few weeks, working on one but I want to have all the information correct and time isn't my best friend right now :/
Anyways, let's talk about operating systems. They serve a purpose which is the goal which the user has.
So, as everyone says (or, loads of people), every system is good for a purpose and you can't call the mainstream systems shit because they all have their use.
Last part is true (that they all have their use) but defining a good system is up to an individual. So, a system which I'd be able to call good, had at least the following 'features':
- it gives the user freedom. If someone just wants to use it for emailing and webbrowsing, fair enough. If someone wants to produce music on it, fair enough. If someone wants to rebuild the entire system to suit their needs, fair enough. If someone wants to check the source code to see what's actually running on their hardware, fair enough. It should be up to the user to decide what they want to/can do and not up to the maker of that system.
- it tries it's best to keep the security/privacy of its users protected. Meaning, by default, no calling home, no integrating users within mass surveillance programs and no unnecessary data collection.
- Open. Especially in an age of mass surveillance, it's very important that one has the option to check the underlying code for vulnerabilities/backdoors. Can everyone do that, nope. But that doesn't mean that the option shouldn't be there because it's also about transparency so you don't HAVE to trust a software vendor on their blue eyes.
- stability. A system should be stable enough for home users to use. For people who like to tweak around? Also, but tweaking *can* lead to instability and crashes, that's not the systems' responsibility.
Especially the security and privacy AND open parts are why I wouldn't ever voluntarily (if my job would depend on it, sure, I kinda need money to stay alive so I'll take that) use windows or macos. Sure, apple seems to care about user privacy way more than other vendors but as long as nobody can verify that through source code, no offense, I won't believe a thing they say about that because no one can technically verify it anyways.
Some people have told me that Linux is hard to use for new/(highly) a-technical people but looking at my own family and friends who adapted fast as hell and don't want to go back to windows now (and mac, for that matter), I highly doubt that. Sure, they'll have to learn something new. But that was also the case when they started to use any other system for the first time. Possibly try a different distro if one doesn't fit?
Problems - sometimes hard to solve on Linux, no doubt about that. But, at least its open. Meaning that someone can dive in as deep as possible/necessary to solve the problem. That's something which is very difficult with closed systems.
The best example in this case for me (don't remember how I did it by the way) was when I mounted a network drive at boot on windows and Linux (two systems using the same webDav drive). I changed the authentication and both systems weren't in for booting anymore. Hours of searching how to unfuck this on windows - I ended up reinstalling it because I just couldn't find a solution.
On linux, i found some article quite quickly telling to remove the entry for the webdav thingy from fstab. Booted into a root recovery shell, chrooted to the harddrive, removed the entry in fstab and rebooted. BAM. Everything worked again.
So yeah, that's my view on this, I guess ;P31 -
I'm a week into my new job right now. What do I love the most about it?
Learning things all day long and getting paid for it!
I'm learning about hosting things, DNS, cyber security, configurations, Linux (although my current skill set with Linux has been enough for now) and so on!
Hell, easy day today (not that many tickets) so decided to start learning Ansible! Next to that I've gotta learn vim (it just autocorrected that to cum.... O.o), work with hosting panels, mail stuffs (dns, debugging etc etc) and so fucking on.
The boss hasn't been at location yet which will happen tomorrow but he seemed like a very chill guy.
I love this!23 -
Got a call from a recruiter today. (Keep in mind that using WhatsApp is about a requirement over here.)
R: so can I app you (I hate that word to the fucking point) with further details?
Me: *oh fuck this is gonna get me fucked again* uhm I don't use it so yah...
R: ohhh okay, security reasons?
Me: *slight relief* yes indeed, sir
R: oh fair enough, you can always just text and call me!
*very relieved feeling*
It's for either a cyber security or linux job by the way.29 -
So I've been looking for a Linux sysadmin job for a while now. I get a lot of rejections daily and I don't mind that because they can give me feedback as for what I am doing wrong. But do you know what really FUCKING grinds my FUCKING gears?
BEING REJECTED BASED ON LEVEL OF EDUCATION/NOT HAVING CERTIFICATIONS FOR CERTAIN STUFF. Yes, I get that you can't blindly hire anyone and that you have to filter people out but at least LOOK AT THEIR FUCKING SKILLSET.
I did MBO level (the highest sub level though) as study which is considered to be the lowest education level in my country. lowest education level meaning that it's mostly focused on learning through doing things rather than just learning theory.
Why the actual FUCK is that, for some fucking reason, supposed to be a 'lower level' than HBO or Uni? (low to high in my country: MBO, HBO, Uni). Just because I learn better by doing shit instead of solely focusing on the theory and not doing much else does NOT FUCKING MEAN THAT I AM DUMBER OR LESS EDUCATED ON A SUBJECT.
So in the last couple of months, I've literally had rejections with reasons like
- 'Sorry but we require HBO level as people with this level can analyze stuff better in general which is required for this job.'. - Well then go fuck yourself. Just because I have a lower level of education doesn't FUCKING mean that I can't analyze shit at a 'lower level' than people who've done HBO.
- 'You don't seem to have a certificate for linux server management so it's a no go, sorry!' - Kindly go FUCK yourself. Give me a couple of barebones Debian servers and let me install a whole setup including load balancers, proxies if fucking neccesary, firewalls, web servers, FUCKING Samba servers, YOU FUCKING NAME IT. YES, I CAN DO THAT BUT SOLELY BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THAT FUCKING CERTIFICATE APPEARANTLY MEANS THAT I AM TOO INCOMPETENT TO DO THAT?! Yes. I get that you have to filter shit but GUESS WHAT. IT'S RIGHT THERE IN MY FUCKING RESUME.
- 'Sorry but due to this role being related to cyber security, we can't hire anyone lower than HBO.' - OH SO YOUR LEVEL OF EDUCATION DEFINES HOW GOOD YOU ARE/CAN BE AT CYBER SECURITY RELATED STUFF? ARE YOU MOTHERFUCKING RETARDED? I HAVE BEEN DOING SHIT RELATED TO CYBER SECURITY SINCE I WAS 14-15 FUCKiNG YEARS OLD. I AM FAMILIAR WITH LOADS OF TOOLS/HACKING TECHNIQUES/PENTESTING/DEFENSIVE/OFFENSIVE SECURITY AND SO ON AND YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT I NEED A HIGHER LEVEL OF FUCKING EDUCATION?!?!? GO FUCKING FUCK YOURSELF.
And I can go on like this for a while. I wish some companies I come across would actually look at skills instead of (only) study levels and certifications. Those other companies can go FUCK THEMSELVES.39 -
So, continuing the story, in reverse order, on the warship and its domain setup...
One day, the CO told me that we needed to set up a proper "network". Until now, the "network" was just an old Telcom switch, and an online HDD. No DHCP, no nothing. The computers dropped to the default 169.254.0.0/16 link local block of addresses, the HDD was open to all, cute stuff. I do some research and present to him a few options. To start things off, and to show them that a proper setup is better and more functional, I set up a linux server on one old PC.
The CO is reluctant to approve of the money needed (as I have written before, budget constraints in the military is the stuff of nightmares, people there expect proper setups with two toothpicks and a rubber band). So, I employ the very principles I learned from the holy book Bastard Operator From Hell: terrorizing with intimidating-looking things. I show him the linux server, green letters over black font, ngrep -x running (it spooks many people to be shown that). After some techno-babble I got approval for a proper rack server and new PCs. Then came the hard part: convincing him to ditch the old Telcom switch in favour of a new CISCO Catalyst one.
Three hours of non-stop barrage. Long papers of NATO specifications on security standards. Subliminal threats on security compromises. God, I never knew I would have to stoop so low. How little did I know that after that...
Came the horrors of user support.
Moral of the story: an old greek saying says "even a saint needs terrorizing". Keep that in mind.4 -
!(short rant)
Look I understand online privacy is a concern and we should really be very much aware about what data we are giving to whom. But when does it turn from being aware to just being paranoid and a maniac about it.? I mean okay, I know facebook has access to your data including your whatsapp chat (presumably), google listens to your conversations and snoops on your mail and shit, amazon advertises that you must have their spy system (read alexa) install in your homes and numerous other cases. But in the end it really boils down to "everyone wants your data but who do you trust your data with?"
For me, facebook and the so-called social media sites are a strict no-no but I use whatsapp as my primary chating application. I like to use google for my searches because yaa it gives me more accurate search results as compared to ddg because it has my search history. I use gmail as my primary as well as work email because it is convinient and an adv here and there doesnt bother me. Their spam filters, the easy accessibility options, the storage they offer everything is much more convinient for me. I use linux for my work related stuff (obviously) but I play my games on windows. Alexa and such type of products are again a big no-no for me but I regularly shop from amazon and unless I am searching for some weird ass shit (which if you want to, do it in some incognito mode) I am fine with coming across some advs about things I searched for. Sometimes it reminds me of things I need to buy which I might have put off and later on forgot. I have an amazon prime account because prime video has some good shows in there. My primary web browser is chrome because I simply love its developer tools and I now have gotten used to it. So unless chrome is very much hogging on my ram, in which case I switch over to firefox for some of my tabs, I am okay with using chrome. I have a motorola phone with stock android which means all google apps pre-installed. I use hangouts, google keep, google map(cannot live without it now), heck even google photos, but I also deny certain accesses to apps which I find fishy like if you are a game, you should not have access to my gps. I live in India where we have aadhar cards(like the social securtiy number in the USA) where the government has our fingerprints and all our data because every damn thing now needs to be linked with your aadhar otherwise your service will be terminated. Like your mobile number, your investment policies, your income tax, heck even your marraige certificates need to be linked with your aadhar card. Here, I dont have any option but to give in because somehow "its in the interest of the nation". Not surprisingly, this thing recently came to light where you can get your hands on anyone's aadhar details including their fingerprints for just ₹50($1). Fuck that shit.
tl;dr
There are and should be always exceptions when it comes to privacy because when you give the other person your data, it sometimes makes your life much easier. On the other hand, people/services asking for your data with the sole purpose of infilterating into your private life and not providing any usefulness should just be boycotted. It all boils down to till what extent you wish to share your data(ranging from literally installing a spying device in your house to them knowing that I want to understand how spring security works) and how much do you trust the service with your data. Example being, I just shared most of my private data in this rant with a group of unknown people and I am okay with it, because I know I can trust dev rant with my posts(unlike facebook).29 -
It's quite awesome how some people can make you realize how much you actually know about some stuff and how skilled you are on a certain subject.
Shoutout to @404response for making me realize that i actually know quite some stuff about security/privacy and also a shoutout to @devisionbyzero for making me realize that I'm actually quite good with linux/linux servers :).
Thanks guys!13 -
So I said I'd rant this yesterday but a long night of server management came in the way!
Yesterday @trogus mentioned in a comment that he thinks everyone deserves a place where they feel like home and this is that place for me along with some sub-places which derived from here.
So in this linux/foss chat yesterday I was trying to get into an IRC chatroom (all people there (or at least a lot) are also like minded on privacy/security). I don't want to use email signup if not absolutely neccesary (don't judge me, everyone there own thing) and I found out very late (after 20 minutes of instructions from a fellow devRanter) that this thing required email signup. I didn't wanna do that so I said that and started typing a whole essay of why I'd rather not do that and what my reasons are (privacy partly) but then the guy said: "haha you got it man".
For one second I forgot that I don't have to explain myself over there on stuff regarding privacy that a lot of people would find paranoid. Man, that feels like being home :).6 -
Working with a client...the resident """sysadmin""" hasn't actually been a sysadmin since the early 90s, the last OS he _actually_ managed was SunOS 5 or something. I can't remember what he said. He hasn't kept up AT ALL with modern technologies/terminologies. He's convinced SELinux is a security hardened kernel. We've explained to him several times that it's not but he sees Linux and thinks Linux 1.0 from the 90s. It's downright embarrassing.
Now this would all be well if I didn't have to interface with him often, but the client WILL NOT give me access to their systems. So I have to go through him to get anything done. Which is over webex. So I get to watch this guy type (and mess up) basic commands over and over (he isn't aware of tab completion of any of the bash features that are super useful). So I'm telling him what to type and the delay is always just enough for him to get too far in the command to back out, so its like SSH-over-incompetence with a 500ms ping. It's truly infuriating.
Every once in a while he'll get frustrated enough to hand me control of his webex session, which isn't as painful but once again the delay is bad enough it's still a pain.
Best part is that he looks EXACTLY like Milton from Office Space. So thats one plus to this whole situation!3 -
Some of you might have seen it already, those who didn't just have to.
One of the best rants I've read lately.
"Our security auditor is an idiot. How do I give him the information he wants?"
https://serverfault.com/questions/...4 -
Resurrect happypenguin.org
This particular site appeared in the year 1998 with the goal to make gaming on Linux easier and more fun.
Unfortunately, 2013 the site went down due to lack of funding and time for the creator Bob Zimbinski. He released the database to the public but removed the code itself because it was created in the 90's and was a big security risk.
I want to resurrect happypenguin.org and I want some brave souls who want to participate with this. I am not a coder (I can only sysadmin) so It would be awesome if someone wanted to help out with this.
Would be awesome if you could make if look like the classic site, or make it very similar to it or https://distrowatch.com/ that also has a very retro style to it. It would also be great if the site was ad-free.
I will take care of the hosting part (servers, DNS, domain).
51 -
Not sure if this would be true since I find it very hard to judge this one myself but I hope that some people on here see me as some kind of mentorish person when it comes to either Linux, privacy of security.
Parenthesis on "hope"😅23 -
3 rants for the price of 1, isn't that a great deal!
1. HP, you braindead fucking morons!!!
So recently I disassembled this HP laptop of mine to unfuck it at the hardware level. Some issues with the hinge that I had to solve. So I had to disassemble not only the bottom of the laptop but also the display panel itself. Turns out that HP - being the certified enganeers they are - made the following fuckups, with probably many more that I didn't even notice yet.
- They used fucking glue to ensure that the bottom of the display frame stays connected to the panel. Cheap solution to what should've been "MAKE A FUCKING DECENT FRAME?!" but a royal pain in the ass to disassemble. Luckily I was careful and didn't damage the panel, but the chance of that happening was most certainly nonzero.
- They connected the ribbon cables for the keyboard in such a way that you have to reach all the way into the spacing between the keyboard and the motherboard to connect the bloody things. And some extra spacing on the ribbon cables to enable servicing with some room for actually connecting the bloody things easily.. as Carlos Mantos would say it - M-m-M, nonoNO!!!
- Oh and let's not forget an old flaw that I noticed ages ago in this turd. The CPU goes straight to 70°C during boot-up but turning on the fan.. again, M-m-M, nonoNO!!! Let's just get the bloody thing to overheat, freeze completely and force the user to power cycle the machine, right? That's gonna be a great way to make them satisfied, RIGHT?! NO MOTHERFUCKERS, AND I WILL DISCONNECT THE DATA LINES OF THIS FUCKING THING TO MAKE IT SPIN ALL THE TIME, AS IT SHOULD!!! Certified fucking braindead abominations of engineers!!!
Oh and not only that, this laptop is outperformed by a Raspberry Pi 3B in performance, thermals, price and product quality.. A FUCKING SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER!!! Isn't that a great joke. Someone here mentioned earlier that HP and Acer seem to have been competing for a long time to make the shittiest products possible, and boy they fucking do. If there's anything that makes both of those shitcompanies remarkable, that'd be it.
2. If I want to conduct a pentest, I don't want to have to relearn the bloody tool!
Recently I did a Burp Suite test to see how the devRant web app logs in, but due to my Burp Suite being the community edition, I couldn't save it. Fucking amazing, thanks PortSwigger! And I couldn't recreate the results anymore due to what I think is a change in the web app. But I'll get back to that later.
So I fired up bettercap (which works at lower network layers and can conduct ARP poisoning and DNS cache poisoning) with the intent to ARP poison my phone and get the results straight from the devRant Android app. I haven't used this tool since around 2017 due to the fact that I kinda lost interest in offensive security. When I fired it up again a few days ago in my PTbox (which is a VM somewhere else on the network) and today again in my newly recovered HP laptop, I noticed that both hosts now have an updated version of bettercap, in which the options completely changed. It's now got different command-line switches and some interactive mode. Needless to say, I have no idea how to use this bloody thing anymore and don't feel like learning it all over again for a single test. Maybe this is why users often dislike changes to the UI, and why some sysadmins refrain from updating their servers? When you have users of any kind, you should at all times honor their installations, give them time to change their individual configurations - tell them that they should! - in other words give them a grace time, and allow for backwards compatibility for as long as feasible.
3. devRant web app!!
As mentioned earlier I tried to scrape the web app's login flow with Burp Suite but every time that I try to log in with its proxy enabled, it doesn't open the login form but instead just makes a GET request to /feed/top/month?login=1 without ever allowing me to actually log in. This happens in both Chromium and Firefox, in Windows and Arch Linux. Clearly this is a change to the web app, and a very undesirable one. Especially considering that the login flow for the API isn't documented anywhere as far as I know.
So, can this update to the web app be rolled back, merged back to an older version of that login flow or can I at least know how I'm supposed to log in to this API in order to be able to start developing my own client?6 -
I haven't met many people through programming but I've met many friends through devRant but certainly also through being a Linux (server) enthusiast.
At study I found some good Linux guys and now through devRant I've gotten some awesome linuxers and privacy/security like minded people who I definitely see as great friends!
Also I find it awesome that I can actually teach people stuffs that I love researching about/ doing myself!9 -
What I'm posting here is my 'manifesto'/the things I stand for. You may like it, you may hate it, you may comment but this is what I stand for.
What are the basic principles of life? one of them is sharing, so why stop at software/computers?
I think we should share our software, make it better together and don't put restrictions onto it. Everyone should be able to contribute their part and we should make it better together. Of course, we have to make money but I think that there is a very good way in making money through OSS.
Next to that, since the Snowden releases from 2013, it has come clear that the NSA (and other intelligence agencies) will try everything to get into anyone's messages, devices, systems and so on. That's simply NOT okay.
Our devices should be OUR devices. No agency should be allowed to warrantless bypass our systems/messages security/encryptions for the sake of whatever 'national security' bullshit. Even a former NSA semi-director traveled to the UK to oppose mass surveillance/mass govt. hacking because he, himself, said that it doesn't work.
We should be able to communicate freely without spying. Without the feeling that we are being watched. Too badly, the intelligence agencies of today do not want us to do this and this is why mass surveillance/gag orders (companies having to reveal their users' information without being allowed to alert their users about this) are in place but I think that this is absolutely wrong. When we use end to end encrypted communications, we simply defend ourselves against this non-ethical form of spying.
I'm a heavy Signal (and since a few days also Riot.IM (matrix protocol) (Riot.IM with end to end crypto enabled)), Tutanota (encrypted email) and Linux user because I believe that only those measures (open source, reliable crypto) will protect against all the mass spying we face today.
The applications/services I strongly oppose are stuff like WhatsApp (yes, encryted messages but the metadata is readily available and it's closed source), skype, gmail, outlook and so on and on and on.
I think that we should OWN our OWN data, communications, browsing stuffs, operating systems, softwares and so on.
This was my rant.17 -
It's enough. I have to quit my job.
December last year I've started working for a company doing finance. Since it was a serious-sounding field, I tought I'd be better off than with my previous employer. Which was kinda the family-agency where you can do pretty much anything you want without any real concequences, nor structures. I liked it, but the professionalism was missing.
Turns out, they do operate more professionally, but the intern mood and commitment is awful. They all pretty much bash on eachother. And the root cause of this and why it will stay like this is simply the Project Lead.
The plan was that I was positioned as glue between Design/UX and Backend to then make the best Frontend for the situation. Since that is somewhat new and has the most potential to get better. Beside, this is what the customer sees everyday.
After just two months, an retrospective and a hell lot of communication with co-workers, I've decided that there is no other way other than to leave.
I had a weekly productivity of 60h+ (work and private, sometimes up to 80h). I had no problems with that, I was happy to work, but since working in this company, my weekly productivity dropped to 25~30h. Not only can I not work for a whole proper work-week, this time still includes private projects. So in hindsight, I efficiently work less than 20h for my actual job.
The Product lead just wants feature on top of feature, our customers don't want to pay concepts, but also won't give us exact specifications on what they want.
Refactoring is forbidden since we get to many issues/bugs on a daily basis so we won't get time.
An re-design is forbidden because that would mean that all Screens have to be re-designed.
The product should be responsive, but none of the components feel finished on Desktop - don't talk about mobile, it doesn't exist.
The Designer next to me has to make 200+ Screens for Desktop and Mobile JUST so we can change the primary colors for an potential new customer, nothing more. Remember that we don't have responsiveness? Guess what, that should be purposely included on the Designs (and it looks awful).
I may hate PHP, but I can still work with it. But not here, this is worse then any ecommerce. I have to fix legacy backend code that has no test coverage. But I haven't touched php for 4 years, letalone wrote sql (I hate it). There should be no reason whatsoever to let me do this kind of work, as FRONTEND ARCHITECT.
After an (short) analysis of the Frontend, I conclude that it is required to be rewritten to 90%. There have been no performance checks for the Client/UI, therefor not only the components behave badly, but the whole system is slow as FUCK! Back in my days I wrote jQuery, but even that shit was faster than the architecuture of this React Multi-instance app. Nothing is shared, most of the AppState correlate to other instances.
The Backend. Oh boy. Not only do we use an shitty outated open-source project with tons of XSS possibillities as base, no we clone that shit and COPY OUR SOURCES ON TOP. But since these people also don't want to write SQL, they tought using Symfony as base on top of the base would be an good idea.
Generally speaking (and done right), this is true. but not then there will be no time and not properly checked. As I said I'm working on Legacy code. And the more I look into it, the more Bugs I find. Nothing too bad, but it's still a bad sign why the webservices are buggy in general. And therefor, the buggyness has to travel into the frontend.
And now the last goodies:
- Composer itself is commited to the repo (the fucking .phar!)
- Deployments never work and every release is done manually
- We commit an "_TRASH" folder
- There is an secret ongoing refactoring in the root of the Project called "_REFACTORING" (right, no branches)
- I cannot test locally, nor have just the Frontend locally connected to the Staging webservices
- I am required to upload my sources I write to an in-house server that get's shared with the other coworkers
- This is the only Linux server here and all of the permissions are fucked up
- We don't have versions, nor builds, we use the current Date as build number, but nothing simple to read, nonono. It's has to be an german Date, with only numbers and has always to end with "00"
- They take security "super serious" but disable the abillity to unlock your device with your fingerprint sensor ON PURPOSE
My brain hurts, maybe I'll post more on this shit fucking cuntfuck company. Sorry to be rude, but this triggers me sooo much!2 -
A friend called ITIS guys about some network issue on his system.
Frnd : Hi, I'm facing some security policy issues on my system. Could you help me connect?
ITIS guy: Ok. Please run 'gpupdate /force' cmd from cmdpromt.
Frnd: Well actually I'm on Linux.
ITIS guy: Well, at least give it a try and tell me how it goes.
*Facepalm*? *Bodypalm*? Murder?4 -
The school I went to...
Grade 1:
*GTA and minecraft to let student familiarize with cheating command and console
*Student should find and read the damn documentation him/herself about items, mobs and quests in every game. Be self motivated!
Grade 2:
*Contribute to community for myth hunting, map creation and glitch
*Solve personal networking, graphics problem and understanding hardware limitation.
*Solving game compability problem after Windows update
*Introduction to cracking and hacking
Grade 3:
*Motivation to host a game server
*Custom server scripting => start To really code the first time, Perl, python, etc
*Introduction to Linux server and Debian
Grade 4:
*From DDoS to server security
*Server maintenance and GitHub
*Game Server web development
*Motivation into non-gaming discipline by a random YouTube geek
*Set up mincraft with raspberry pi and Arduino
*Switch to Linux or Mac and just dual boot for gaming
Prepared for the real world.
Congratz for the graduation in the Pre-school of Developers (11-14 yrs old) :)5 -
I've got a confession to make.
A while ago I refurbished this old laptop for someone, and ended up installing Bodhi on it. While I was installing it however, I did have some wicked thoughts..
What if I could ensure that the system remains up-to-date by running an updater script in a daily cron job? That may cause the system to go unstable, but at least it'd be up-to-date. Windows Update for Linux.
What if I could ensure that the system remains protected from malware by periodically logging into it and checking up, and siphoning out potential malware code? The network proximity that's required for direct communication could be achieved by offering them free access to one of my VPN servers, in the name of security or something like that. Permanent remote access, in the name of security. I'm not sure if Windows has this.
What if I could ensure that the system remains in good integrity by disabling the user from accessing root privileges, and having them ask me when they want to install a piece of software? That'd make the system quite secure, with the only penetration surface now being kernel exploits. But it'd significantly limit what my target user could do with their own machine.
At the end I ended up discarding all of these thoughts, because it'd be too much work to implement and maintain, and it'd be really non-ethical. I felt filthy from even thinking about these things. But the advantages of something like this - especially automated updates, which are a real issue on my servers where I tend to forget to apply them within a couple of weeks - can't just be disregarded. Perhaps Microsoft is on to something?11 -
Thank you Arch Linux community for saying that caring about security (i.e. expressing concerns about NSA's Speck being included as a module in Arch's distribution kernel) means that you're a tinfoil hat. Much trust, very wow! Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.. right?16
-
"For those that don't know: Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busy box. The latest version of Alpine Linux v3.3 weighs in at a whopping 5MB. Not bad for a full blown Linux OS considering 5MB is same size as the Windows Start button."
That last sentence made me laugh so badly :D4 -
Hello devRanters! A little while ago some ranters and I who are all passionate about FOSS/Linux decided to get together in a chatroom. Slowly more people are coming in but just wanted to post this in case any foss/linux liking people would like to join! I am not even sure if this is allowed on devRant (posting something like this) so if not, my apologies and I will remove the rant!
Keep in mind that the chat exists for people who are very keen on FOSS/Linux/security/privacy so no offense but it probably isn't the best place for people who don't like/care about that stuff :).53 -
Long rant ahead.. so feel free to refill your cup of coffee and have a seat 🙂
It's completely useless. At least in the school I went to, the teachers were worse than useless. It's a bit of an old story that I've told quite a few times already, but I had a dispute with said teachers at some point after which I wasn't able nor willing to fully do the classes anymore.
So, just to set the stage.. le me, die-hard Linux user, and reasonably initiated in networking and security already, to the point that I really only needed half an ear to follow along with the classes, while most of the time I was just working on my own servers to pass the time instead. I noticed that the Moodle website that the school was using to do a big chunk of the course material with, wasn't TLS-secured. So whenever the class begins and everyone logs in to the Moodle website..? Yeah.. it wouldn't be hard for anyone in that class to steal everyone else's credentials, including the teacher's (as they were using the same network).
So I brought it up a few times in the first year, teacher was like "yeah yeah we'll do it at some point". Shortly before summer break I took the security teacher aside after class and mentioned it another time - please please take the opportunity to do it during summer break.
Coming back in September.. nothing happened. Maybe I needed to bring in more evidence that this is a serious issue, so I asked the security teacher: can I make a proper PoC using my machines in my home network to steal the credentials of my own Moodle account and mail a screencast to you as a private disclosure? She said "yeah sure, that's fine".
Pro tip: make the people involved sign a written contract for this!!! It'll cover your ass when they decide to be dicks.. which spoiler alert, these teachers decided they wanted to be.
So I made the PoC, mailed it to them, yada yada yada... Soon after, next class, and I noticed that my VPN server was blocked. Now I used my personal VPN server at the time mostly to access a file server at home to securely fetch documents I needed in class, without having to carry an external hard drive with me all the time. However it was also used for gateway redirection (i.e. the main purpose of commercial VPN's, le new IP for "le onenumity"). I mean for example, if some douche in that class would've decided to ARP poison the network and steal credentials, my VPN connection would've prevented that.. it was a decent workaround. But now it's for some reason causing Moodle to throw some type of 403.
Asked the teacher for routers and switches I had a class from at the time.. why is my VPN server blocked? He replied with the statement that "yeah we blocked it because you can bypass the firewall with that and watch porn in class".
Alright, fair enough. I can indeed bypass the firewall with that. But watch porn.. in class? I mean I'm a bit of an exhibitionist too, but in a fucking class!? And why right after that PoC, while I've been using that VPN connection for over a year?
Not too long after that, I prematurely left that class out of sheer frustration (I remember browsing devRant with the intent to write about it while the teacher was watching 😂), and left while looking that teacher dead in the eyes.. and never have I been that cold to someone while calling them a fucking idiot.
Shortly after I've also received an email from them in which they stated that they wanted compensation for "the disruption of good service". They actually thought that I had hacked into their servers. Security teachers, ostensibly technical people, if I may add. Never seen anyone more incompetent than those 3 motherfuckers that plotted against me to save their own asses for making such a shitty infrastructure. Regarding that mail, I not so friendly replied to them that they could settle it in court if they wanted to.. but that I already knew who would win that case. Haven't heard of them since.
So yeah. That's why I regard those expensive shitty pieces of paper as such. The only thing they prove is that someone somewhere with some unknown degree of competence confirms that you know something. I think there's far too many unknowns in there.
Nowadays I'm putting my bets on a certification from the Linux Professional Institute - a renowned and well-regarded certification body in sysadmin. Last February at FOSDEM I did half of the LPIC-1 certification exam, next year I'll do the other half. With the amount of reputation the LPI has behind it, I believe that's a far better route to go with than some random school somewhere.25 -
Someone should write a really infectious virus for Linux to make all the fanboys shut the fuck up about security.11
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Paranoid Developers - It's a long one
Backstory: I was a freelance web developer when I managed to land a place on a cyber security program with who I consider to be the world leaders in the field (details deliberately withheld; who's paranoid now?). Other than the basic security practices of web dev, my experience with Cyber was limited to the OU introduction course, so I was wholly unprepared for the level of, occasionally hysterical, paranoia that my fellow cohort seemed to perpetually live in. The following is a collection of stories from several of these people, because if I only wrote about one they would accuse me of providing too much data allowing an attacker to aggregate and steal their identity. They do use devrant so if you're reading this, know that I love you and that something is wrong with you.
That time when...
He wrote a social media network with end-to-end encryption before it was cool.
He wrote custom 64kb encryption for his academic HDD.
He removed the 3 HDD from his desktop and stored them in a safe, whenever he left the house.
He set up a pfsense virtualbox with a firewall policy to block the port the student monitoring software used (effectively rendering it useless and definitely in breach of the IT policy).
He used only hashes of passwords as passwords (which isn't actually good).
He kept a drill on the desk ready to destroy his HDD at a moments notice.
He started developing a device to drill through his HDD when he pushed a button. May or may not have finished it.
He set up a new email account for each individual online service.
He hosted a website from his own home server so he didn't have to host the files elsewhere (which is just awful for home network security).
He unplugged the home router and began scanning his devices and manually searching through the process list when his music stopped playing on the laptop several times (turns out he had a wobbly spacebar and the shaking washing machine provided enough jittering for a button press).
He brought his own privacy screen to work (remember, this is a security place, with like background checks and all sorts).
He gave his C programming coursework (a simple messaging program) 2048 bit encryption, which was not required.
He wrote a custom encryption for his other C programming coursework as well as writing out the enigma encryption because there was no library, again not required.
He bought a burner phone to visit the capital city.
He bought a burner phone whenever he left his hometown come to think of it.
He bought a smartphone online, wiped it and installed new firmware (it was Chinese; I'm not saying anything about the Chinese, you're the one thinking it).
He bought a smartphone and installed Kali Linux NetHunter so he could test WiFi networks he connected to before using them on his personal device.
(You might be noticing it's all he's. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't).
He ate a sim card.
He brought a balaclava to pentesting training (it was pretty meme).
He printed out his source code as a manual read-only method.
He made a rule on his academic email to block incoming mail from the academic body (to be fair this is a good spam policy).
He withdraws money from a different cashpoint everytime to avoid patterns in his behaviour (the irony).
He reported someone for hacking the centre's network when they built their own website for practice using XAMMP.
I'm going to stop there. I could tell you so many more stories about these guys, some about them being paranoid and some about the stupid antics Cyber Security and Information Assurance students get up to. Well done for making it this far. Hope you enjoyed it.
26 -
Remember Apple's initiative to scan photos on user's devices to find child pornography?
Today I finally decided to research this.
The evidence is conflicting.
For context, the database of prohibited material is called CSAM (child sexual abuse material).
“If it finds any CSAM, it will report the user to law enforcement.”
— Futurism
“Apple said neither feature would compromise the security of private communications or notify police.”
— NPR
CSAM initiative is dead. It won't scan photos in iCloud. It won't scan photos on your device. It will be a feature that only works in some countries, only on children's devices, and it will be opt-in. It will only work for iMessage attachments.
This is what Apple actually said at https://www.apple.com/child-safety:
- “Features available in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, and U.S.”
- “The Messages app includes tools to warn children when receiving or sending photos that contain nudity. These features are not enabled by default. If parents opt in, these warnings will be turned on for the child accounts in their Family Sharing plan.”
News outlets telling people they will be automatically reported to authorities, and then telling there can be false-positives is a classic example of fearmongering. I hate this. Remember, anger and fear are the most marketable emotions. They make you click. News are and will always be worded to cause these emotions — it brings in money.
When presented with good news, people think they're not being told the truth. When presented with bad news, even when they're made up, people think it's the truth that's being hidden from them. This is how news works.
Now, a HUGE but:
Apple is a multi-billion dollar corporation. There is no such thing as good billionaires. Corporations will always wait for chances to invade privacy. It's like boiling the frog — one tiny measure here, one there, and just like this, step by step, they will eliminate the privacy completely. It's in their interest to have all the data about you. It brings control.
This is not the first time Apple tries to do shit like this, and it definitely won't be the last. You have to keep an eye on your privacy. If you want your privacy in the digital age, it's necessary to fight back. If you live in Europe, take the action and vote for initiatives that oppose corporate tyranny and privacy invasions.
Privacy on the internet is one thing, but scanning people's devices is a whole another thing. This is unacceptable no matter the rationale behind it. Expect more measures like that in the near future.
Research Linux. Find a distro that suits you. The notion that you can't switch because of apps/UI/etc. may be dictated by our brain's tendency to conserve energy and avoid the change.
Take a look at mobile distros like Graphene OS and LineageOS. The former only supports Pixel devices, the latter supports a wide range of devices including OnePlus and Xiaomi. They'll have FAR better privacy than iPhones.
Consider switching. It's easier than you think. Yes, it's me who's saying this. I do and will always protect people/companies from unjust criticism, and I consider myself an Apple fangirl for personal reasons related to my childhood, yet I won't fight blindly. CSAM initiative is a valid criticism, and there's nothing preventing me from saying this is unacceptable, and Apple deserves the backlash they got.11 -
Devrant has a big security hole... Just post "Which is better, Linux, Windows or Mac os?"
The internet will crash13 -
I've just been given a beautiful turd of a PC with only 512MB RAM to get ready for someone in the residence. Way too small for any modern Windows or even Linux with a halfway decent GUI. And the user doesn't have any technical background so I highly doubt that they'll be able to maintain a Linux system. Windows XP is full of security issues but it might just be able to run on that craptop. Due to me knowing that it's a vulnerable system though, I've got an ethical issue with that. Windows XP is insecure but at least the user would be able to use it.. and Linux is secure but it'd never get updated, and I really don't want that guy to come knock on my door every time he wants to install a piece of software.. the guy fucking stinks! What would you do in a situation like that?30
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Since I moved from pure dev to Code Forensics, and studying with Forensic Computing students (who do one module on security), the amount of Kali Linux wallpapers on a Windows machine is overwhelming.
It's like the entire class watched three episodes of Mr Robot and now thinks they can change the world with a goddamn semester of teaching!4 -
While I fucking hate front end and app development, I also hate that I'm so fucking dependant on them for the development of services and such.
Right now I'm developing a suite of services with a mate and while the backend and security (+linux servers) are something I'm good at, I find it hard sometimes to continue without being able to see my API's in action through apps and good looking interfaces.
My mate is currently handling that part but he has way less time than I do and thus I sometimes have to create interfaces to even just be able to see how my shit would work irl.
I can't fucking stand this and it sometimes entirely drains my motivation but there's also no fucking way in hell that I'll dive into frontend and/or app development.
Fucking hell.14 -
I love it when a fellow "dev" asks about some interesting security topic (full disk encryption) and I'm like "yeah I use LUKS pretty much everywhere".. and then takes an entire arm when given a hand.
Performance in LUKS? Yeah sure you can benchmark it within cryptsetup. Here's how to do it and choose a good cipher for your CPU.
D: Oh also how do I check my battery life?
M (thinking): you lazy fucking piece of shit.
M: FUCKING GOOGLE IT
D: Obviously that means that you don't know it.
M (thinking): so not only lazy but also disgustingly ungrateful, fucking twat.
M: acpi. Next time fucking Google it.
D: You know what? Never mind.
As if I'm the one that's fucking wrong now!! But you know what, never mind indeed. Because you've successfully wasted my fucking time instead of fucking googling "check battery life Linux" like a sensible dev would.
Fellow "dev", if you're on devRant I hope you read this. You can seriously go fuck yourself.4 -
Putting SSH on another port and using fail2ban on the default one to ban everyone else trying to get in is a nice thing until you ban your own static ip by forgetting the new port...4
-
Dream OS :
Software and Hardware support windows level.
Updation and security Linux level
Any opinion?21 -
Long rant ahead.. 5k characters pretty much completely used. So feel free to have another cup of coffee and have a seat 🙂
So.. a while back this flash drive was stolen from me, right. Well it turns out that other than me, the other guy in that incident also got to the police 😃
Now, let me explain the smiley face. At the time of the incident I was completely at fault. I had no real reason to throw a punch at this guy and my only "excuse" would be that I was drunk as fuck - I've never drank so much as I did that day. Needless to say, not a very good excuse and I don't treat it as such.
But that guy and whoever else it was that he was with, that was the guy (or at least part of the group that did) that stole that flash drive from me.
Context: https://devrant.com/rants/2049733 and https://devrant.com/rants/2088970
So that's great! I thought that I'd lost this flash drive and most importantly the data on it forever. But just this Friday evening as I was meeting with my friend to buy some illicit electronics (high voltage, low frequency arc generators if you catch my drift), a policeman came along and told me about that other guy filing a report as well, with apparently much of the blame now lying on his side due to him having punched me right into the hospital.
So I told the cop, well most of the blame is on me really, I shouldn't have started that fight to begin with, and for that matter not have drunk that much, yada yada yada.. anyway he walked away (good grief, as I was having that friend on visit to purchase those electronics at that exact time!) and he said that this case could just be classified then. Maybe just come along next week to the police office to file a proper explanation but maybe even that won't be needed.
So yeah, great. But for me there's more in it of course - that other guy knows more about that flash drive and the data on it that I care about. So I figured, let's go to the police office and arrange an appointment with this guy. And I got thinking about the technicalities for if I see that drive back and want to recover its data.
So I've got 2 phones, 1 rooted but reliant on the other one that's unrooted for a data connection to my home (because Android Q, and no bootable TWRP available for it yet). And theoretically a laptop that I can put Arch on it no problem but its display backlight is cooked. So if I want to bring that one I'd have to rely on a display from them. Good luck getting that done. No option. And then there's a flash drive that I can bake up with a portable Arch install that I can sideload from one of their machines but on that.. even more so - good luck getting that done. So my phones are my only option.
Just to be clear, the technical challenge is to read that flash drive and get as much data off of it as possible. The drive is 32GB large and has about 16GB used. So I'll need at least that much on whatever I decide to store a copy on, assuming unchanged contents (unlikely). My Nexus 6P with a VPN profile to connect to my home network has 32GB of storage. So theoretically I could use dd and pipe it to gzip to compress the zeroes. That'd give me a resulting file that's close to the actual usage on the flash drive in size. But just in case.. my OnePlus 6T has 256GB of storage but it's got no root access.. so I don't have block access to an attached flash drive from it. Worst case I'd have to open a WiFi hotspot to it and get an sshd going for the Nexus to connect to.
And there we have it! A large storage device, no root access, that nonetheless can make use of something else that doesn't have the storage but satisfies the other requirements.
And then we have things like parted to read out the partition table (and if unchanged, cryptsetup to read out LUKS). Now, I don't know if Termux has these and frankly I don't care. What I need for that is a chroot. But I can't just install Arch x86_64 on a flash drive and plug it into my phone. Linux Deploy to the rescue! 😁
It can make chrooted installations of common distributions on arm64, and it comes extremely close to actual Linux. With some Linux magic I could make that able to read the block device from Android and do all the required sorcery with it. Just a USB-C to 3x USB-A hub required (which I have), with the target flash drive and one to store my chroot on, connected to my Nexus. And fixed!
Let's see if I can get that flash drive back!
P.S.: if you're into electronics and worried about getting stuff like this stolen, customize it. I happen to know one particular property of that flash drive that I can use for verification, although it wasn't explicitly customized. But for instance in that flash drive there was a decorative LED. Those are current limited by a resistor. Factory default can be say 200 ohm - replace it with one with a higher value. That way you can without any doubt verify it to be yours. Along with other extra security additions, this is one of the things I'll be adding to my "keychain v2".11 -
Today I learned that in Unix/Linux or most command lines, when user is asked to choose an option as [Y/n], the uppercase one signifies the default.
I thought they made it a little harder as a security feature to prevent accidental keypress, and I’m shift+Y ing this for the last eight freaking years!!!!! Every time!17 -
"Linux is more secure." Put on your tin-foil hats. As you can:
>Root over 50% of linux servers you encounter in the wild with two easy scripts,
Linux_Exploit_Suggester [0], and unix-privesc-check [1].
(sauce: Phineas Phisher - http://pastebin.com/raw/cRYvK4jb)17 -
github security flaw affects mac os and linux... no windows, and no MS didn't take over github yet
https://neowin.net/news/...11 -
What a new years start..
"Kernel memory leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign"
"Crucially, these updates to both Linux and Windows will incur a performance hit on Intel products. The effects are still being benchmarked, however we're looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down"
"It is understood the bug is present in modern Intel processors produced in the past decade. It allows normal user programs – from database applications to JavaScript in web browsers – to discern to some extent the layout or contents of protected kernel memory areas."
"The fix is to separate the kernel's memory completely from user processes using what's called Kernel Page Table Isolation, or KPTI. At one point, Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, aka FUCKWIT, was mulled by the Linux kernel team, giving you an idea of how annoying this has been for the developers."
>How can this security hole be abused?
"At worst, the hole could be abused by programs and logged-in users to read the contents of the kernel's memory."
https://theregister.co.uk/2018/01/...
22 -
!rant but help?
I currently have Kali (for labs I'm working on to teach myself the things I didn't learn in school), Ubuntu (downloaded for school), and Fedora (downloaded for my database class)... other than Kali already having Metasploit in it, I don't see a difference between these and I know there are more versions of Linux.
What would be a good starting place for every day use, that'll support Citrix receiver (required for work no idea what its requirements are but I can find out, if i can't use it in Linux, I'll dual boot) and virtual box (or other virtual software, don't mind learning new systems), and that i can also have room to grow for security learning?18 -
WARNING: There is a dangerous malware out in the wild, and chances are, you have it installed on your computer.
It's called Windows Update, and it is marketed as a software that "delivers security patches to your PC". Wrong. What it actually does is hard-reboot your computer at randomly picked time intervals without asking for your consent, or even showing any type of warning, basically deleting all unsaved progress that you've made in your programs or games. It also deletes/undoes all registry tweaks that you might have made (e.g. to the context menu), it deletes your nvidia display configurations, uninstalls any custom themes that you might have installed, possibly even downloads another malware disguised as "Microsoft Edge" and shoves it in your face on next boot without giving a possibility to close it. Oh and it might also make your computer unbootable so you have to go to the advanced recovery settings to fix it manually.
Yes, everything I just mentioned above happened to me about an hour ago. This LITERALLY classifies the software as a malware (Google: "software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system"). If we throw in all the data collection that happens without your consent, Microsoft actually manages to check not only one, but all three boxes in the "malware" definition.
Pleas, stop using microshit, and switch to linux as soon as possible if you can.24 -
So my story has some little backstory.
I got into computers and technology because of my dad. He was very enthusiastic when I was little and when I grew older and started my apprenticeship as a software developer he was really proud. Note that he never learned anything like that. He just loved computers and games.
Now to the story itself.
I learned more and more, also about networking and came to the conclusion that our slow internet and rare internet problems probably come from stock/weird configurations. But my dads proud probably told him thats a thing he still has to do as the dad. But it annoyed me so much that I booted into kali linux, loaded an exploit to get the web admin passwort and cracked it within a minute. 😎
Finally I was able to configure everything correctly ( channels were spammed from neighbours so I switched to very unused and the disturbions got less ).
TL;DR: Dad didnt want me to configure our router and didnt give me the admin password, so I booted Kali Linux and used an exploit to get it myself 😎😎3 -
While building a Java net sniffer app, I finally write the code to run a Linux binary in a separate process after three days. It works perfectly!
Then I export my app to a runnable jar file.
About nine exceptions are thrown, including a security exception. So much for being done. 😐5 -
tldr; Windows security sucks. You as a org-admin cant do anything about it. Encrypt your device. Disable USB Live boot in the bios and protect it with a STRONG password.
First of i just want to say that i DO NOT want to start the good ol' Linux VS Windows debate. I'm just ranting about Windows Security here...
Second, here's why i did all of this. I did all of this mainly becuase i wanted to install some programs on my laptop but also to prove that you can't lock down a Windows pc. I don't recomend doing this since this is against the contract i signed.
So when i got my Laptop from my school i wanted to install some programs on it, sush as VS Code and Spotify. They were not avalible in the 'Software Center' so i had to find another way. Since this was when we still used Windows 7 it was quite easy to turn sticky keys in to a command prompt. I did it this way (https://github.com/olback/...). I decided to write a tutorial while i was at it becuase i didn't find any online using this exact method. I couldn't boot from a USB cause it's disabled in the bios wich is protected by a password. Okey, Sticky keys are now CMD. So let's spam SHIFT 5 times before i log in? Yeah, thanks for the command promt. Running 'whoami' returned 'NT SYSTEM'. Apparantly NT System has domain administator rights wich allowed me to make me an Administrator on the machine. So i installed Everything i wanted, Everything was fine untill it was time to migrate to a new domain. It failed of course. So i handed my Laptop to the IT retards (No offense to people working in IT and managing orgs) and got it back the day after, With Windows 10. Windows 10 is not really a problem, i don't mind it. The thing is, i can't use any of the usual Sticky keys to CMD methods since they're all fixed in W10. So what did i do? Moved the Laptop disk to my main PC and copied cmd.exe to sethc.exe. And there we go again. CMD running as NT System on Windows 10. Made myself admin again, installed Everything i needed. Then i wanted to change my wallpaper and lockscreen, had to turn to PowerShell for this since ALL settings are managed by my School. After some messing arround everything is as i want it now.
'Oh this isnt a problem bla bla bla'. Yes, this is a problem. If someone gets physical access your PC/Laptop they can gain access to Everything on it. They can change your password on it since the command promt is running as NT SYSTEM. So please, protect your data and other private information you have on your pc. Encypt your machine and disable USB Live boot.
Have a good wekend!
*With exceptions for spelling errors and horrible grammar.4 -
I want a os, that has:
The software support of windows, the speed of macOS and the stability and security of Linux...why dont we have this?9 -
We literally have Ph.D's here who dont know how to use a Linux CLI... I'm baffled as to how you get into the security industry without understanding actual security. The only thing your Ph.D. counts for is understanding the rules that allow you to ball-bust people into paying your salary.7
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Ya'll know what... If humans weren't such annoying vulnerability-searching little shits then we wouldn't have had to implement any protection against them and think of all the performance that would be saved on that. Take branch prediction vulnerability mitigation in the Linux kernel for example, that's got to make a performance hit of least 10% on basically everything.
Alas, I do get why security is important and why we keep such vulnerability mitigation running despite the performance hit. I get why safe code is necessary but still... if these people weren't such annoying little bastards.
Yeah, I was just kind of set off by the above. So much would be faster and easier if only the programmers wouldn't have to plan for people exploiting their software. Software would be written much faster and humans would progress to stuff that actually matters like innovation.8 -
Why so much hate for Windows? I can do all the scripting that I do on Linux on Windows as well. AutoHotKey for the win! In fact, the hacks that I can do on Windows directly cannot be done on Linux unless I have the terminal open. I'm still learning, yeah, so I'll learn how to do that in due time, but I've never had any issues with drivers, software issues, or security threats while using Windows.
And Windows Defender is so good now! I don't need an antivirus. Well, good browsing habits and common sense is enough of an antivirus so it's a moot point anyway.
Either way, I like embracing the power of AND. Why choose? I love both Windows and Linux!26 -
People are talking about Windows VS Linux about security, meanwhile: https://wikileaks.org/vault7/...5
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I'm a geek. I love programming alot and I post programming memes and educational posts daily in my Instagram stories. There were many people in my profile who don't even know what programming is and when they see someone coding or sharing something related to coding, they call him/her hacker. That's what I used to be called in my Instagram account. I don't even know how to use Kali Linux, neither do I have any backend experience or experience in making exploits nor I shared any post related to hacking. Though I do post about cyber security things but the people are so dumb that everyday I get a new message in which the person asks me 'Bro can you teach me how to hack?', 'Bro let's hack a bank and we'll divide the funds' or 'Can you please hack my GF's account' and shits like that 😂 I'm like 'WTF is this!? What do you think I'm man!?' 😂😂 They all are really way too silly.
Please ++ this if ever happened with you 😂3 -
Windows decides to finish faulty programs whenever it likes. İt's so annoying, I did just one small mistake in c++. I wrote "new char(length);" instead of "new char[length];" and I have been dealing with this shit for three days. Then I run the program on Linux and boom it failed in the same spot, which I fixed. But in Windows it sometimes runs, sometimes fails or sometimes even fails on unrelated places. Wtf windows? How about security and shit. There was literally a buffer overflow and you still keep running the program. And why GCC didn't even popped a warning. I hate developing c :(8
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*follow-up to https://devrant.com/rants/1887422*
The burnt remnants of my ID card's authentication information, waiting for the wind to come pick it up. It's stored in my password database now and committed to my git server, as it should be. Storing PIN and PUK codes on paper, whatever government cunt thought thought that that was a good idea...
If you've got identification papers containing authentication information like PIN and PUK codes, by all means add them to your password manager (if you're using Linux, I'd like to recommend GNU Pass) at once and burn the physical version. There's no reason why you'd want those on paper, unless you store your passwords on a post-it too.
At least that's as much as me and possibly you as citizens can do. Our governments are doomed anyway, given the shitty security policy they have, and likely the many COBOL mainframes still in use today. Honestly, the meddlings of Russia with the US elections doesn't seem too far-fetched, given this status quo. It actually surprises me that this kind of stuff doesn't happen more often, given that certain governments hire private pentesters yet can't secure their own infrastructure.
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Don't you just love it when an official Docker image suddenly switches from one base image to another, and they automatically update all existing tags? Oh you've had it locked to v1.2.3, guess what, v1.2.3 now behaves slightly differently because it's been compiled with OpenSSL 3. Yeah, we updated a legacy version of the software just to recompile it with the latest version of OpenSSL, even though the previous version of OpenSSL is still receiving security fixes.
I don't think it's the image maintainers or Docker's fault though. Docker images are expected to be self-contained, and updating the base image is necessary to get the latest security fixes. They had two options: to keep the old base image which has many outdated and vulnerable libraries, or to update the base image and recompile it with OpenSSL 3.
What really bothers me about the whole thing is that this is the exact fucking problem containers were supposed to solve. But even with all the work that goes into developing and maintaining container images, it still isn't possible to do anything about the fact that the entire Linux ecosystem gives exactly zero fucks about backwards compatibility or the ability to run legacy software.15 -
A bit long read but worth it for every dev to become a better dev.
No no, not from me.
From Linus Torvalds himself.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/... -
I don't know the current total number of daily active users and rants counts on devRant. But maybe it would be nice to have a group tagged/mentioned feature. Or something similar. Or subscription to a tag?
Like for example, when it comes to security and privacy and google-free-life all of us usually mentioned linuxxx and the gang. When it comes to server, if I'm not wrong Linux and electrical hardwares for Condor, etc.
But there might be (should be) other who should be mentioned and who would want to get mentioned as well.
Might be fun as well. All those Raven and clans can communicate easily with such feature.
Thoughts anyone? If I got positive responses here, I'll open a feature request on GitHub 🤔31 -
What's a good password manager for Linux?
A few (optional) conditions (in order of preference):
1. It's free
2. It supports ssh, gpg, etc.
3. It has a GUI (a nice one with gtk/qt support)
4. It's (properly) secure
5. It has FIDO U2FA support (i.e. supports physical security keys like Yubikey or Solo)
6. It has a browser extension
7. It's compatible/non-conflicting with gnome-keyring17 -
It's been a year since I first entered the world of development.
Let's see what I have accomplished so far:
Learned:
Java, J2EE, Node.js, Python, Django, Android, Angular, html/css, Rxjs, RxJava, Linux, MySQL, Mongodb, Docker, Heroku, AWS
Projects:
All unfinished.
Job:
Still working in IT security goddammit.
Fucking hell. Why am I so good at learning but shit at working?6 -
How bad is it for a fortune 500 company to open port 22 over the internet for all its linux servers?? Today, I reported this to my boss and he said "it won't be a problem, no one can login without a password".8
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Why is it that security (hacking) distros went so popular?
I see more and more posts pictures even on devrant featuring them. Even I see people at my uni that are on kali. I can't believe all of them are that into security. I even know two linux noob friends that wont listen to advice and went to kali as first distro.
I'd never use kali/parrot/whatever vs my current manjaro setup... I'd rather go back to arch.7 -
Because I am very interested in cyber security and plan on doing my masters in it security I always try to stay up to date with the latest news and tools. However sometimes its a good idea to ask similar-minded people on how they approach these things, - and maybe I can learn a couple of things. So maybe people like @linuxxx have some advice :D Let's discuss :D
1) What's your goto OS? I currently use Antergos x64 and a Win10 Dualboot. Most likely you guys will recommend Linux, but if so what ditro, and why? I know that people like Snowden use QubesOS. What makes it much better then other distro? Would you use it for everyday tasks or is it overkill? What about Kali or Parrot-OS?
2) Your go-to privacy/security tools? Personally, I am always conencted to a VPN with openvpn (Killswitch on). In my browser (Firefox) I use UBlock and HttpsEverywhere. Used NoScript for a while but had more trouble then actual use with it (blocked too much). Search engine is DDG. All of my data is stored in VeraCrypt containers, so even if the system is compromised nobody is able to access any private data. Passwords are stored in KeePass. What other tools would you recommend?
3) What websites are you browsing for competent news reports in the it security scene? What websites can you recommend to find academic writeups/white papers about certain topics?
4) Google. Yeah a hate-love relationship, but its hard to completely avoid it. I do actually have a Google-Home device (dont kill me), which I use for calender entries, timers, alarms, reminders, and weather updates as well as IOT stuff such as turning my LED lights on and off. I wouldn"t mind switching to an open source solution which is equally good, however so far I couldnt find anything that would a good option. Suggestions?
5) What actions do you take to secure your phone and prevent things such as being tracked/spyed? Personally so far I havent really done much except for installing AdAway on my rooted device aswell as the same Firefox plugins I use on my desktop PC.
6) Are there ways to create mirror images of my entire linux system? Every now and then stuff breaks, that is tedious to fix and reinstalling the system takes a couple of hours. I remember from Windows that software such as Acronis or Paragon can create a full image of your system that you can backup and restore at any point to get a stable, healthy system back (without the need to install everything by hand).
7) Would you encrypt the boot partition of your system, even tho all data is already stored in encrypted containers?
8) Any other advice you can give :P ?12 -
I'm currently planning to set myselv up with some vps/dedicated server's for a project. What i plan to do to secure these servers is.
*Use centos 7
* Setup Wireguard and join all of the servers +1 client (my pc) to that network
*Disable SSH Access from outside that VPN
*Only allow RSA Key login to the Servers
*Install Cockpit for monitoring
*Intall docker/kubernetes for the applications i plan to run
What do you guys think of that as a baseline? Im not sure if my lower powered VPS (VPS M SSD from Contabo) will work as Kubernetes Nodes, does anyone have experience with that?
In general these Servers will be used for my projects and other fooling around.
If you guys have other suggestions for Securing/monitoring or other software i could put on to have more control without eating up to much of the Servers power, let me know :D13 -
Hello everyone :)
So, I've recently switched from Windows 8 to Debian on my work (or study, rather) laptop, and so far it's been pretty intuitive and practical! But I'd like to explore the world ofr Linux a bit more in-depth, especially considering the fact that I'll "soon" head off to study Security in university. So, here's my question for y'all: does anybody happen to have good resources to share about linux system administration?
Thanks in advance! ^^17 -
A Rant that took my attention on MacRhumors forum.
.
I pre-calculated projected actual overall cost of owning my i5/5/256 Haswell Air, which I got for $1500.
After calculations, this machine would cost me about $3000 for 3 years of use.
(Apple Care, MS Office Business, Parallels, Thunderbolt adapter to HDMI, Case... and so on).
Yea... A lot of people think it's all about the laptop with Apple. nah... not at all. There's a reason Apple is gradually dropping the price of their laptops.
They are slowly moving to a razor and blade business model... which basically is exactly what it sounds like - you buy the razor which isn't too expensive, but you've got no choice but to buy expensive additional blades.
I doubt Apple is making much money from laptop sales alone... well definitely not as much as they were making 5 years or so ago (remember the original air was about $1800 for base model, and if i remember correctly - $1000 additional dollars to upgrade to 64GB SSD from the base HDD.
Yes, ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR 64GB SSD!
Well, anyways, the point is that Apple no longer makes them BIG bucks from the laptop alone, but they still make good profits from upgrades. $300 to go to 512GB SSD from 256, $100 for 4GB extra ram, and $150 for a small bump in processor. They make good profits from these as well.
But that's not where they make mo money. It's once you buy the Macbook, they've got you trapped in their walled garden for life. Every single apple accessory is ridiculously overpriced (compared to market standards of similar-same products).
And Apple makes their own cables and ports. So you have to buy exclusively for Apple products. Every now and then they will change even their own ports and cables, so you have to buy more.
Software is exclusive. You have no choice but to buy what apple offers... or run windows/linux on your Mac.
This is a douche level move comparable to say Mircrosoft kept changing the usb port every 2-3 years, and have exclusive rights to sell the devices that plug in.
No, instead, Intel-Microsoft and them guys make ports and cables as universal as possible.
Can you imagine if USB3.0 was thinner and not backwards compatible with usb2.0 devices?
Well, if it belonged to Apple that's how it would be.
This is why I held out so long before buying an apple laptop. Sure, I had the ipod classic, ipod touch, and more recently iPad Retina... but never a laptop.
I was always against apple.
But I factored in the pros and cons, and I realized I needed to go OS X. I've been fudged by one virus or another during my years of Windows usage. Trojans, spywares. meh.
I needed a top-notch device that I can carry with me around the world and use for any task which is work related. I figured $3000 was a fair price to pay for it.
No, not $1500... but $3000. Also I 'm dead happy I don't have to worry about heat issues anymore. This is a masterpiece. $3000 for 3 years equals $1000 a year, fair price to pay for security, comfort, and most importantly - reliability. (of course awesome battery is superawesome).
Okay I'm going to stop ranting. I just wish people factored in additional costs from owning an a mac. Expenses don't end when you bring the machine home.
I'm not even going to mention how they utilize technology-push to get you to buy a Thunderbolt display, or now with the new Air - to get a time capsule (AC compatible).
It's all about the blades, with Apple. And once you go Mac, you likely won't go back... hence all the student discounts and benefits. They're baiting you to be a Mac user for life!
Apple Marketing is the ultimate.
source: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...3 -
Stupid fucking client force us to deploy our nodejs codebase on windows server fucking 2016 because that the only version their security team has audited, and in their word: "open source oses like linux are more vulnerable because anyone can contribute????"
I fucking hate digital transformation projects with a passion because of stupid fucking client with their stupid fucking red tape problems7 -
Working at a local seo sweat-shop as "whatever the lead dev does't feel like doing" guy.
Inherit their linux "server".
- Over 500 security updates
- Everything in /var/www is chmod to 777
- Everything in /var/www is owned by a random user that isn't apache
- Every single database is owned by root sql user
- Password for sudo user and mysql root user same as wifi password given to everyone at company.
- Custom spaghetti code dashboard with over 400 files in one directory, db/ api logins spread throughout these files, passwords in plain text.
- Dashboard doesn't have passwords, just usernames to login
- Dashboard database has all customer information including credit card stored in plain text
- Company wifi is shared by other businesses in the area
I suggest that I should try to fix some of these things.
Lead Developer / Tech Director : We're an SEO company, not a security company . . .7 -
About two weeks ago I had a cyber security competition. I spent a week or so working on a bash script so I didn't have two spend hours and hours on end doing tedious tasks to get points.
So here comes competition day and I have about 12 or so scripts that I predicted to get 60 or so of the 100 points. I open the competition image, grab my scripts, and run my call script (script that calls all the other scripts). Maybe 15 minutes later, the script is done...
ZERO FUCKING POINTS. I double checked all the files that the scripts configured and all of them worked. But NONE the vulnerabilities that my script fixed were vulnerabilities that the scoring report counted. Instead of me taking 20 to 30 minutes on the image it took my and 1:07... doesn't sound like much but the highly competitive people finished in around 1 hour and the people who just didn't give a shit about Linux took 3 hours...
Luckily... I was put onto the highly competitive team after that and it all worked out... I'll hopefully add more to this script before next competition. -
TL;DR: Microsoft updates break drivers, make unbootable. Hours wasted. Such rage.
Lol. I come home, try booting my windows desktop. Need desperately to play some videogames. Power is on. Monitor lights up. Bios splash. Windows startup spinner.
Suddenly, windows startup spinner gone, monitor shuts off. Wait 5 minutes, no change. Force power off and reboot, same behavior.
Google says it's probably a bad video driver. I don't remember installing any in the last month, but heck I don't use this computer for shit outside of games, so may as well do a full OS reinstall and hope the problem drivers are gone.
Reboot and force power off halfway through boot to let windows know something's wrong next boot. Literally no other way to get to alternate boot methods.
Run the reset. First time, percent-counter starts. I leave the room at 30% to go get a sandwich. Come back and it says it's "undoing changes". Something went wrong and I have no way of knowing what.
Oh well, I'll just try again and see what the problem was. NOPE! Completes windows reinstall without a hitch on the second attempt.
Okay, now let's get my stuff back on here. First things first, Microsoft updates for my processor, graphics card, "security". Halfway through the updates, monitor shuts off and I'm back to square one. IT WAS THE MICROSOFT DRIVER, NOT THE ONE FROM NVIDIA GEFORCE EXPERIENCE!!!!
Fucking Microsoft. To all ye who rail against Linux as a gaming platform because of its unstable drivers, observe here the stupidity of Microsoft and weep.3 -
Ugh, I hate having to port data from windows to Mac. I myself use Linux and windows. My mom got her first Mac for her birthday, but she needed her 200gb of pictures on I cloud. So I thought it would be like Dropbox, put them in a folder or start an upload and then it processes and is on the cloud. NO. It’s a hellscape as Apples windows programs are awful and I’m ashamed they exist. There is no indication of when they have successfully uploaded, you just have to figure it out. It also doesn’t help when macOS Is oversimplified. Ugh. I ended up taking my terabyte external and having to wait 3 hours for files to transfer and put those on the MacBook. I hate I cloud more than comic sans. I know Dropbox isn’t great or even good for security reasons, but it’s a hell of a lot better than I cloud BULLSHIT.
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Just needing to vent a bit...
We start off with classic asp.net & Xamarin. K.
Then we run into the shitshow that's lackluster documentation and heavy push for asp.net core.
Whatever, will just handroll things.
K. Azure is quickly turning expensive..
Well let's find alternatives.
Yeah, no Linux ain't gonna work.
Wanna shell out for a windows server? Nah.
K. Well, let's rewrite in asp.net core then.
Nginx proxy passthrough to kestrel. Ez.
Now.. wtf is the deal with mssql behaving like a turd on Linux?
Oh now some security jibber about telemetry and adding Microsoft keys to root.
Whatever. I can do PHP & MariaDB then.
1001 things wrong about Xamarin now.
Mostly performance related.
Especially cuz custom renderers for everything.
& Abused onPropertyChanged.
Uh la la, look at that sexy thing called react native.
Hippytyhop new tool for the job.
Ugh wee, what's this ? Customer impatient & deadline for months worth in Xamarin => 1 week.
Whelp I be fudge..6 -
School decided to shut down their WiFi for "security" reasons (Everyone used a VPN and they were dumb fucks at networking, blocking sites like Google for having an invalid SSL certificate).
Now I'm forced to use my mobile data to keep using my Arch Linux laptop D:3 -
The contractor/developer sitting next to me asked for a power adapter for the MacBook the company issued him (it's an older MacBook that currently connects to his monitor with one of those 2-in-1 power and display port cables).
They told him it was not company policy to provide power adapters to contractors.
They also wouldn't give him a license for a Windows VM for some Windows specific stuff he needed to work on for an outside vendor, stating it was a "security risk"
They've also talked about taking Linux off my laptop (which I run natively outside a VM cause fuck MacOS).
I hate our IT department. They're the least competent and least helpful bunch I've ever met. -
TLDR; WINE+me=system binaries gone. (HOWTHEFUCKDIDIDOTHAT) Kernel panic. Core program files gone. I'll never have it fixed right. Will backup, then install fedora tomorrow.
I really like games and I'm sure there are many of you who can relate. Imagine my perpetual pain, being on the job hunt, no money, and only my Linux laptop for games. (It's only Linux because of a stupid accident and a missing windows installation disk, partly explained in a previous rant). My stack of games my dad and I have played over the years, going back to populous and before, looked light enough for my laptop to run them smoothly. I wanted to see if I could get one to work. My eyes settled on simcity 4 and Sid Meier's railroad tycoon, 13 and 10 years old, respectively. Simcity didn't work as many times as I tried following online instructions. Disk 1 went fine. Disk 2 showed up as Disk 1. Didn't think much of it, so long as the computer could read the contents. I downloaded playonlinux as that could apparently do the complex stuff for me. Didn't work. I gave up with it after an hour and a half.
Next was railroads. Put the disk in aaaand it says SimCity disk 1 is in the tray. Fuck right off, thank you very much. Eject, put back, reject, eject, fiddle in wineconfig, eject, more of this, and voilà it read as railroads :) Ran autoplay.exe with wine, followed instructions, installed it, and it worked! Chose single player, then the map and setting, pressed play, and all the models of the buildings and track were floating in the air over a green plane, the UI is weird and the map doesn't represent anything but trains. All the fkin land is gone, laying track is gonna be a ballache.
I quit it and decided bedtime.
Ctrl+alt+t
sudo shutdown -h now
shutdown not found.
sudo reboot
reboot not found
Que?
Nope, I don't like this.
Force choked my laptop by the power button. Turned it on again.
Lines of text appear.
Saw a phrase I've only ever seen on Mr Robot.
Kernel panic.
Nooooo thanks, not today, this is fiction.
I turned it off and on. Same thing. I read the logs and some init files couldn't be found. I got the memory stick I used to install mint in the first place and booted from that. I checked the difference between my stick's bin and sbin and the laptop's, and it was indeed missing binaries. Fuck knows what else has happened, I only wanted to play games but now I don't know what is or isn't in my computer. How can I trust what's on it now?
I go downstairs and tell my dad. He says something about rpm, but this is Linux so it won't work. I learn that binaries can be copied over, so maybe I can fix it.
Go upstairs again, decide not to fix it. Fedora is light, has a good rep for security, and is even more difficult to get games on, which is my vice. There are more reasons, but the overriding one is that I'm spooked by the fact that something I did went into and removed system binaries, maybe even altered others, so I want something I'm less likely to do that with. Also my fellow cs students used to hate on it but my dad uses and recommended it so I want to try it.
Also, seriously, fuck wine/PlayOnLinux/my inability to follow instructions(?)/whatever demons haunt me. Take your pick, at least one if not more is to blame and I can't tell which, but it's prooooobably the third one.
It's going to be 16 hours before I touch my laptop again, comments before I backup then install fedora are welcome, especially if they persuade me to do differently.
P.S thanks for reading this mind dump of a post, I'm writing while it's fresh but I'm tired AF.6 -
Wtf is happening to tech security... Last 4 months
All WiFi is now crackable. .. in short amount of time
Windows . . Annihilated with this new bug might not be fixable... and work back on all of them
iPhones cracked ...
Linux dirty cow ...
Android been suffering.
And everyone knows Mac's security is joke ...
Finger prints ... Made pointless on everything.
Literally all going to shit .. 😐
And I know how to do all this... It's all out in the open not even hard to find8 -
So I went for a "special" interview to a company whose slogan is "experience certainty" (fresher, was hoping to get a role in cyber security/Linux sysadmin). Got shown what the "real" hiring process of an indian consultancy company is...
We were called because we cleared a rank of the coding competition which the company holds on a yearly basis, so its understood that we know how to code.
3 rounds; technical, managerial and HR...
Technical is where I knew that I was signing up for complete bullshit. The interviewer asks me to write and algo to generate a "number pyramid". Finished it in 7 minutes, 6-ish lines of (pseudo) code (which resembled python). As I explained the logic to the guy, he kept giving me this bewildered look, so I asked him what happened. He asks me about the simplest part of the logic, and proceeds to ask even dumber questions...
Ultimately I managed to get through his thick skull and answer some other nontechnical questions. He then asks if I have anything to ask him...
I ask him about what he does.
Him - " I am currently working on a project wherein the client is a big American bank as the technical lead "
Me (interest is cybersec) - "oh, then you must be knowing about the data protection and other security mechanisms (encryption, SSL, etc.)"
Him (bewildered look on face) - "no, I mostly handle the connectivity between the portal and data and the interface."
Me (disappointed) - "so, mostly DB, stuff?"
Him (smug and proud) - "yeup"
Gave him a link to my Github repo. Left the cabin. Proceeded to managerial interview (the stereotypical PM asshats)
Never did I think I'd be happy to not get a job offer...1 -
Is there a good, free software only, security and privacy focused Linux distro out there? I am basically searching for an OpenBSD but as GNU/Linux.9
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Aside from simple programs I wrote by hand-transcribing code from the "Basic Training" section of 3-2-1 Contact magazine when I was a kid in the '80s, I would say the first project I ever undertook on my own that had a meaningful impact on others was when I joined a code migration team when I was 25. It was 2003.
We had a simple migration log that we would need to fill out when we performed any work. It was a spreadsheet, and because Excel is a festering chunk of infected cat shit, the network-shared file would more often than not be locked by the last person to have the file open. One night after getting prompted to open the document read-only again, I decided I'd had it.
I went to a used computer store and paid $75 out of pocket for an old beater, brought it back to the office, hooked it to the network, installed Lunar Linux on it, and built a simple web-based logging application that used a bash-generated flat file backend. Two days later, I had it working well enough to show it to the team, and they unanimously agreed to switch to it, rather than continue to shove Excel's jagged metal dick up our asses.
My boss asked me where I was hosting it, as such an application in company space would have certainly required his approval to procure. I showed him the completely unauthorized Linux machine(remember, this was 2003, when fortune 500 corporations, such as my employer, believed Ballmer's FUD-spew about Linux being a "virus" was real and not nonsense at all), and he didn't even hesitate to back me up and promise to tell the network security gestapo to fuck off if they ever came knocking. They never did.
I was later informed that the team continued to use the application for about five years after I left. -
Reading all these hacking stories has made me nervous that my server isn't protected enough.
I've disabled password login and setup SSH keys which as far as I know is a big step in the right direction.
Is it enough? What more should I do?
In case you can't tell, I'm no expert in server adminy stuff 😛9 -
I want to switch over to Linux again, Windows just annoys me a lot lately. Thing is, I don't know what distro I wanna use yet.
I want one that is:
0. Security focused, so encryption, VPN and so on. (I know software could do the job, but would be nice if it comes with the OS)
1. Not hard to configure, but I should be able to configure it more when I want to.
2. Not too ulgy looking.
I have a little bit of experience with Linux, but I'm not even close a professional.
Looking forward to your suggestions!12 -
Our Networks manager just send a mass email to the rest of it stating that some of our Linux servers need to have an antivirus installed.
He mentioned cisco AMP for Linux. Just saw the email like 2 mins ago so i have not researched anything.
Is that a thing that some of you that are more on the networking side and security side would recommend?
Never heard of installing an anti virus on linux which is why i ask and i don't know shit about cisco.10 -
Why is everyone into big data? I like mostly all kind of technology (programming, Linux, security...) But I can't get myself to like big data /ML /AI. I get that it's usefulness is abundant, but how is it fascinating?6
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When I thought things couldn't get crazier that my vmware to win chrome mess.....
Doing an upgrade today when I have to VPN in from my mac to access a Web based secret server to get onto another VPN so I can RDP onto a Windows bastion host to then RDP to client windows servers within the RDP and from those hosts need to use putty to ssh into Linux servers to do the admin activities......
Now I'm obviously all for security but seriously VPN to RDP to RDP to ssh is just a bit mental......
But all of the SSL certs between each env is self signed anyhow......2 -
I'm founding a company on machine learning with two others where one of them is an economics guy who decided his work was boring so he did his PhD in Engineering.
He started about three months ago to also invest some time in computer and dev stuff.
As a free software and Linux guy I wanted to get clear about stuff like open sour...
Economics guy: "We should definitely make all of that stuff open source to give back to the community."
Me: I love you. I truely do.
The same thing happened with security, svn etc.
I mean... Well... So unexpected! o.O2 -
I just got a call from Satya. He informed me that Microsoft has successfully acquired the Linux kernel and all future development will be closed sourced.
Here's a sneak peek of the official announcement:
There will be a newer version released tomorrow that will include the Windows desktop environment as well as patch a critical 0-day security flaw that was recently discovered in all versions of Linux.
To prevent exploitation, we will activate a kill switch which will disable all systems running any flavor of Linux next week.
Thus we advise you upgrade ASAP, existing users can get the latest version online for $500.8 -
but but linux, open source, google, are secure, are faster to patch security issues ...meanwhile MS already patched windows and edge
https://neowin.net/news/...
https://neowin.net/news/...3 -
I'm studying computer security and learning Linux on my free time, yet at my work I spend most my time in MS Excel and PowerPoint... what even is my life1
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Attempted to install MetaTrader 5 with wine on linux, loving the irony of "... please install using Window 7 ... trading requires maximum security" bahaha4
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I've been running Linux on my laptop natively for five months (since the 2nd week I got here). My boss and everyone on my team is okay with this. I've used Linux at the last three companies I've been at since 2012.
All I asked for was a Windows VM so I could use WebEx (which I did at my last job; used Win10 in Virtual box just to share my screen via x11vnc and reset my password occasionally). At my last job, they said Linux users were on their own, but they at least gave us a Windows ISO, license and ability to connect it to the domain. It was a west coast company, with 500 people in IT and several Linux users. The IT team at my current shop has known I've been running Linux for months.
Now the word has come down that I can't have Linux on my laptop and I need to put macos back on it (it's actually on there; just dual booting) for security or some shit. We have a massive deadline and project due in like two months and it would throw me off for several days if I needed to bring in and setup a personal laptop.
Fuck asking our worthless IT department for anything. I told the lead engineer I'd bring in my personal laptop before going back to Mac.2 -
Urgh.. the amount of things you have to know as a developer.. it can get stressful and frustrating sometimes when (in-depth) technology knowledge is demanded from you (for instance, for a job position)..
It's like being a doctor, being a lifelong student.
A few examples of what I had to know during my career:
Java, .NET, Python, PHP, JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3, Sass/Less, Node.js, ReactJS, AngularJS, Vue.js, Cordova, Ionic, Android, design patterns, SOLID, databases (design, implementation, administration, both NoSQL and relational,..), deployment tools (Octopus, Jenkins,..), VCS, CI/CD, HTTP, networking, security (OAuth2, CORS, XSS, CSRF,..), algebra, algorithms, software testing, profiling, Linux, Unix, Windows, MS Office (advanced mail filtering,..), ITIL, IT Law (licensing and its implications when choosing a product, distribution right,..), server architecture,..
Sure yeah, I know, I've studied all that at university but.. it's been too long (almost a decade now). I have to revisit that knowledge.5 -
My mind is not stable.
Office work requires - Linux Internals (knowledge on kernel, Device Drivers, Yocto etc) & Networking ( security ) -> CR on C/C++
Office work also requires - Python for tool development
My personal project requires - NodeJs, React
And I also want to appear for Interviews so also require DS & Algorithm
I hope you don't judge me3 -
What. Setproctitle actually changes /proc/PID/cmdline? Who thought that was a good idea? Now a bunch of people at my "security" company think that makes the command line a safe way to pass secrets.1
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Ok, so I'm a daily Linux user, recently I've been using Antergos, but there are certain things that haven't been working for me. I'm looking for a Linux distro with sane defaults and with which I can have peace of mind in the security aspect (Fuck Canonical and Redhat), any recommendations?4
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I've been wondering about renting a new VPS to get all my websites sorted out again. I am tired of shared hosting and I am able to manage it as I've been in the past.
With so many great people here, I was trying to put together some of the best practices and resources on how to handle the setup and configuration of a new machine, and I hope this post may help someone while trying to gather the best know-how in the comments. Don't be scared by the lengthy post, please.
The following tips are mainly from @Condor, @Noob, @Linuxxx and some other were gathered in the webz. Thanks for @Linux for recommending me Vultr VPS. I would appreciate further feedback from the community on how to improve this and/or change anything that may seem incorrect or should be done in better way.
1. Clean install CentOS 7 or Ubuntu (I am used to both, do you recommend more? Why?)
2. Install existing updates
3. Disable root login
4. Disable password for ssh
5. RSA key login with strong passwords/passphrases
6. Set correct locale and correct timezone (if different from default)
7. Close all ports
8. Disable and delete unneeded services
9. Install CSF
10. Install knockd (is it worth it at all? Isn't it security through obscurity?)
11. Install Fail2Ban (worth to install side by side with CSF? If not, why?)
12. Install ufw firewall (or keep with CSF/Fail2Ban? Why?)
13. Install rkhunter
14. Install anti-rootkit software (side by side with rkhunter?) (SELinux or AppArmor? Why?)
15. Enable Nginx/CSF rate limiting against SYN attacks
16. For a server to be public, is an IDS / IPS recommended? If so, which and why?
17. Log Injection Attacks in Application Layer - I should keep an eye on them. Is there any tool to help scanning?
If I want to have a server that serves multiple websites, would you add/change anything to the following?
18. Install Docker and manage separate instances with a Dockerfile powered base image with the following? Or should I keep all the servers in one main installation?
19. Install Nginx
20. Install PHP-FPM
21. Install PHP7
22. Install Memcached
23. Install MariaDB
24. Install phpMyAdmin (On specific port? Any recommendations here?)
I am sorry if this is somewhat lengthy, but I hope it may get better and be a good starting guide for a new server setup (eventually become a repo). Feel free to contribute in the comments.24 -
What tools do you have access to at work?
I don't work a tech company, far from it. I love it but both the hardware and software at my disposal are so shitty I'm starting to lose it.
Running Windows locally, I'm not allowed any Linux distro because "security." Indeed, I don't even have admin rights on my machine. It was rejected. The excuse being that I am sudoer on a server, which (and can only be) physically located in our headquarters.
Today I found out this server's CPU from the dark ages does not support tensorflow, so here I will be building that shit from source tomorrow (no GPU of course).
And thanks for 4G of RAM on what you refer to as a "power" machine.3 -
Anyone have any recommendations on an open source security/malware scanner to run at server level for the OS and web server files on Linux?2
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I think the thing that sucks about high school (or school in general, really) is that they don't really have many opportunities for the people that like to program or do anything with computers.
The only classes that have to do with computers at all (In my high school) is Intro to Programming (Which is what I'm taking, which has HTML, CSS and JavaScript), some computer science classes and finally the Cyber-patriot team. (Which is for Navy ROTC and it consists of Cyber Security, competitions and actual Linux computers).
The only few of eight classes I find actually interesting is Intro to Programming, NJROTC, and Plant Science. (Because not only the subjects, but the teachers (and Sergeant) actually make it fun, interesting and easy to understand, while the rest don't feel like they're doing a good job.)4 -
Update:
I've been trying to leave DoD for a couple of months now. Translating my 10 year's experience with complex Intelligence enterprise level systems to something relatable to the civilian IT world. Grabbed a few certs to help out A+, network+ and security+ with Linux+ as my next target. Photos of me working on unclassified systems, radios, cell towers and servers. I'm a teacher for military UAS so this shouldn't be to hard to get even a basic job in IT right.
No one will hire...
Linux admin: Nope
Network admin: Nope
Assistant Network admin: Nope
IT call service: Nope
Pool cleaner fucking nope
Many interviews and nothing
I'm broke and sold all of my personal valuables. I can't hold out much longer and really looking at becoming homeless. But I'm kinda ok with it, one last payment on my apartment and car is all I can do now. My parents think I'm in Afghanistan working a six figure job lol
DoD: we see you're trying to leave we'll pay you alot to teach A+, Network+ and Security+ traveling all across the country and staying at hotels with all expenses paid.
FU FU FU I want out please tell me someone has a job, I'll be a janitor of a server room Idc I just want out. Fuck the pay
I start Tuesday...4 -
What RSS feeds are you guys subscribed to? My reader is so damn empty all the time. Preferrably CyberSec and Linux related (English or German).
I'm currently subscribed to Heise Security (German), Hacker News, NixCraft and Linux Journal2 -
Good arch based security/privacy distros? I only know about BlackArch. Are there any good alternatives that are also pretty userfriendly for everyday work/development tasks?3
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I'm a python guy, and although I've worked with bash, there's always a discussion on which one is best for Linux automation.
When it comes to best security practices and clients being really concerned about it, is python that bad of a choice?27 -
My uncle is interestes in security, but personal security, he wants to be more peivate. So he told me he had installed Kali linux and got a course it, so I tried to explain him that this is more of a professional thing... that he needs something else.. and so he asked me: "What do I need, which book can I buy?"
I didn't really know. For me it's common sense to get a NAS, maybe have a laptop that is never connected to the internet, or maybe encrypt trafic encrypt hard disks.
But is there a book for that? You have 30 seconds to shine, how would u respond?6 -
Client's IT department is fine about giving me a laptop for exclusive access to their VPN, security reasons, etc. Ok, fine I get it.
But they do not want to give me a Linux machine - only Windows!
How am I supposed to get shit done.11 -
I was thinking about linux and it's security.
Many are sayin that do not require an antivirus. BUT
What if you install wine (3.0) .
And after that install a software (.exe) that contains malware. What about that!
I was thinking today, it would get inffected?2 -
So I have hitman pro alert, malwarebytes, spybot anti Beacon and,shut up windows 10. Yet I feel so vulnerable using my pc, I know Linux is better, but it's a gaming/school rig. I'm also forced to use Google for school. I dunno what to do, maybe I'm just too worried. While just those stupid security nut things I guess. Lol.3
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So I'm trying to port forward my PS4. But the problem is, I'm on boingo wireless. You can't access router settings because of "security reasons". I do have Linux and wondering if there's a way to do it using the terminal. Maybe ssh? Already tried iptables, but also could have just done it wrong. I'm not sure how I could do this considering we're not supposed to be able to.6
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So... I got a simple task of choosing the best fitting NIDS/MIDS, as well as deploying it, configuring to fit a specific use case and monitor its outputs for one client at work today...
I'm a little... Anxious. At a first glance, setting up like... Snort... Doesn't seem all that difficult, but I have no idea where this takes me and if what I come up with will ultimately be useful or not... Until now I did simple service configuration changes like apache, nginx, php... And a bit of database management with things like mariadb, mysql, postgresql, mongo or elastic... I feel so... Out of my usual waters.
Do you guys thing a person without a title in network security (or... Any title for that matter) can even manage this?...1 -
Any recommendations for a terminal app for iPad? I only need it to ssh into Linux servers and run stuff/vim/htop/etc., don't really care about fancy features or local device access. Good performance and security would be pluses. I don't mind paying if it's worth it. Coming from Termux on Android the ones I've tried so far (Termius, Shelly, LibTerm) have felt pretty crap so far, though I guess Shelly is the best one out of them.1
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I had a pretty good day.
I had my first pay raise as a dev;) not huge but i wasnt expecting one for another 4months ;)
And i was working on a security scrip for after effect plugins. The thing is called Extendscript and is built on top of ecma3. Yeah javascript version from 1999. Hashing stuff gave me different results. Took me about a week to realise that the string buffer were different and i had to parse in latin something to have the same matching buffers. What a hassle man. Let alone trying to make it work with Windows terminal which after starting with Linux then mac， windows seems sooo sucky.
But yeah its my first security scripts so 2 main achievements for me today! Ive waited 4 years to reach a level where i now feel like a real professional dev. ;) sry not a rant ;) -
I'm looking for a project idea in cyber-security...
Any ideas?
I'm good with x86 assembly, c, c++, python and shell scripting.
I'm very well versed with Linux operating systems and basic networking stuff.
I'm willing to learn new concepts11 -
According to a report from ZDNet: IBM's new toolkit give developers easier access to Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) which is a technology with promise for a number of security use cases. In case you do not know about FHE, you can take a look at My Quora Answer (https://qr.ae/pNKR2p).
"While the technology holds great potential, it does require a significant shift in the security paradigm," the report adds. "Typically, inside the business logic of an application, data remains decrypted, [Flavio Bergamaschi, FHE pioneer and IBM Researcher] explained. But with the implementation of FHE, that's no longer the case -- meaning some functions and operations will change."
The toolkit is available on GitHub for MacOS and iOS and it will soon be available for Linux and Android.
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