Geek Pit

Azerblog mentions that Linux distros are insecure by default, specifically that you can boot into single user mode by editing the GRUB kernel line to get to a root shell. Actually, this doesn’t work without the existing root password on Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu (not sure about other Unices or Linux distros). Just before entering […]

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Debian Administration has an article up about the usefulness of firewalls. Are they really necessary? If you consider a firewall as just a non-stateful, layer-3 packet filter, then I would agree they are not very useful. However, modern firewalls can do all sorts of useful filtering that can protect a public application from compromise - […]

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There is an article up at InformIT by John Tränkenschuh
titled
href=”http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.asp?p=471099&rl=1″>SSH
Issues: Does Installing SSH Enable More Exploits Than it
Solves?. The basic premise of the article is that SSH usage is
enabling security holes, in most cases quietly, that otherwise would
not have been present. The specific example given is that of SSH agent
forwarding, and how compromise of the […]

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Note: Updated (twice) below

Here is a quick way to drastically improve the security of your
OpenSSH server
installations. Apart from past flaws in the OpenSSH daemon itself that
have allowed remote compromise (very rare), most break-ins result from
successful brute-force attacks. You can see them in your firewall,
system or auth logs, they are an extremely common form of attack. […]

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