opensource
BackTrack, a new Pen-Test LiveCD
Posted 2006-02-23 23:31 by Christopher
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I just happened to notice that BackTrack 3.0 Beta has been released. BackTrack is an amalgamation of two previous projects; WHAX and Auditor. This CD is full of useful tools for conducting penetration tests. New features include a python development environment, updatable exploit archives for milw0rm and Securityfocus, one-click setup for Nessus and Snort, and the inclusion of the free VMWare Player. I havn't had a lot of time to experiment with it, but I did find that the current beta seems to have poor WiFi support. They do mention WiFi scripts and drivers on their to-do list. |
Exploring httptunnel
Posted 2006-02-23 21:31 by Christopher
httptunnel is a GPL application for encapsulating network traffic within valid HTTP requests and responses. This tunnel can be used to bypass firewalls, including many application proxies. It is comprised of a server and client daemon written in C.
Installation couldn't be simpler. It resides in the Debian package repository, so on Debian Sarge I was able to use apt to fetch and install the binaries and man pages:
~$ sudo apt-get install httptunnel
If you prefer to use the source, compilation uses the *nix "standard" ./configure; make; make install process:
Nmap Version 4.00 Released
Posted 2006-01-31 14:24 by Christopher
Fyodor has announced a new major release of Nmap, what might just be the most popular security tool around. There is also a good interview with Fyodor at SecurityFocus which details many of the changes.
From Insecure.Org:
"Changes since version 3.50 include a rewritten (for speed and memory efficiency) port scanning engine, ARP scanning, a brand new man page and install guide, 'l33t ASCII art, runtime interaction, massive version detection improvements, MAC address spoofing, increased Windows performance, 500 new OS detection fingerprints, and completion time estimates."
Vulnerability stats for Microsoft and OSS
Posted 2005-12-26 20:07 by Christopher
[Note that I'm going to be revising this article in the near future, as it doesn't reflect the whole picture]
Inevitably when discussing the merits of Open Source Software (OSS) vs. propritary software, the (in)security of Microsoft products is brought up. I've gathered vulnerability numbers from Secunia, and did some non-scientific analysis on them.
I compared vulnerabilities in 2005 for operating systems (RedHat Advanced Server vs. Windows 2003), web browsers (Firefox 1.x vs. Internet Explorer 6), e-mail products (Thunderbird vs. Outlook 2003), databases (PostgreSQL 8 vs SQL Server 2000), and office products (OpenOffice.org 1.1 vs. Office 2003).
