Redhat has posted an interesting “Risk Report” outlining the security experiences with the first year of RedHat Enterprise Linux. A frank discussion of positives and negatives, with some good reminders on basic Best Practices. Worthy of a read.
Archive | Linux
A UNIX-like operating system.
LPI certification study guide new chapters
IBM continues its series documenting the knowledge you'll need to pass the Linux Professional Institutes certification exams. This month, they cover a portion of the second exam, LPI 102, “Linux Documentation.”
CentraLUG: 2 October 2006 7 PM: Demos, Q&A, future topics
The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central NH GNHLUG chapter, happens the first Monday of the month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. Directions and maps are available on the NHTI site at http://www.nhti.edu/welcome/directions.htm. This month, we'll be meeting in the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, marked as “I” on the map at the link above. The main meeting starts at 7 PM and we finish around 9 PM. Open to the public. Tell your friends.
At this meeting we'll cover a couple of quick demos, including a tour of the GNHLUG wiki and a demo of the NX remote desktop access tool. We'll review upcoming meetings for GNHLUG and discuss what presentations we'd like to see this fall and winter. Over the summer we had a couple of good meetings and talked about learning a bit about software development on Linux. I'd like to open up the discussion to what these “users” are that we are supposed to be a group of, and what sort of presentations these “users” might like to see. Over the summer, I attended two “Open Mike” meetings, one in Nashua and one in Peterborough, that were very interesting and highly interactive. We'll certainly include some Q&A in this meeting, and perhaps include it as a permanent part of the meeting. MonadLUG has also added a “man page of the month” to their meetings; let's consider this as well.
7:00 Welcome, Announcements
7:15 Questions
7:30 Demos
8:00 Answers
8:30 Discussion: Future meetings
There's lots more information about CentraLUG and its parent organization GNHLUG at http://www.gnhlug.org.
IBM Publishes Linux Client Migration Cookbook, v.2
From DesktopLinux.com: “IBM has published a final draft of its “Redbook” titled Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. The 376-page book, which targets enterprises needing to begin an evaluation of desktop Linux, is available for free download. “
Ohio LinuxFest
Linux.com has an article on an upcoming Ohio LinuxFest put on by their own corporation. There's a lot to be learned by reading what others have learned in putting on a conference…
Linux and open source software users in the Buckeye State who want to network with several hundred of their colleagues will get the chance when Ohio LinuxFest 2006 gets underway later this month. The one-day conference, to be held on Saturday, September 30, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, features presentations, exhibits, an after-conference party, and a special appearance by some live penguins.
MythTV links
SlashDot misses the mark completely with in inaccurately-titled and summarized pointer to a great Tom’s Hardware story on MythTV. There’s nearly nothing in the story about the Microsoft media device, nor does there have to be. The MM is a plug-in-and-work device that locks you into their choices, their protocols and few extensions. MythTV is for the do-it-yourself tinkerer who wants to do lots more. This one’s been on my to-do list for way too long.
The comments on the Slashdot article are much more worthwhile than the post. Set your threshhold high and you’ll see the moderated posts. A pointer to Jarod Wilson’s installation guide was worth the browsing. Jarod integrates the great documentation on the MythTV site with his own experiences.
BFD Brute Force Detection vs. script kiddies
Tired of the abuse I'm getting on one of the servers exposed to the Internet, I've installed APF, the Advanced Policy Firewall, and BFD, Brute Force Detection on the machine. Webhostgear.com has easy-to-follow installation instructions for APF and BFD respectively.
While plain vanilla iptables was enough to protect the machine from most routine attacks, incessant attempts at logging in to a couple of well-known services on well-known ports was filling the logs and consuming an extrodinary amount of the bandwidth. Now, a script kiddie attempting 13,000 logins will find the machine no longer responding on that IP address.
Interesting technology. BFD uses a script run as a timed job to parse logs, pick up repeats, and bans them by scriping a command line and submitting it to APF. APF also uses the excellent DShield.org list of known problemmatic machines and networks. Very cool. While BFD comes with a set of scripts to parse common exploits, it didn't have one for my ftp server. I'm not sure I've grokked what's needed to set up my own script of rules, but as I couldn't find one on Google, I'll give it a shot, and share my results back to the community once I've got it working.
DLSLUG, September 7th: Joomla! and AJAX
Bill McGonigle announces two great presentations for the September meeting of the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux Users Group: Joomla! and AJAX. Should be a great show.
And, remember, be careful out there!
I pointed out the article on NX Server on Ed Leafe's ProFox list, and member Tracy Pearson pointed to a great article on Informit.com on Mitigating the Security Risks of SSH. Remember, just because you sprinkle the magic pixie dust of ssh on a solution, it is not necessarily secure. Security is still a process, not a feature.
Desktop Linux Survey results posted
Linux-Watch.com reports on their totally non-scientific Desktop Linux Survey results analyzed. I was surprised by the results