More Issues With ATI Drivers And Fedora 10
The fglrx (OpenGL) drivers on a Fedora 10 64-bit system broke following a Feb. 25 update to Xorg-x11 and installation of the latest ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 9.2 drivers.
System specs:
Kernel: 2.6.27.15-170.2.24.fc10.x86_64
CPU: Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
Xorg-x11 packages updated:
Feb 25 01:56:58 Updated: xorg-x11-server-common-1.5.3-13.fc10.x86_64
Feb 25 01:57:15 Updated: xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.5.3-13.fc10.x86_64
Use ATI's fglrx uninstall script:
Download the latest official ATI Radeon 9.2 driver.
Grant executable permissions on the installer package (this post assumes you are in the directory where your downloaded ATI driver is):
Run the installer:
Select "Install Driver 8.582 on X.org 7.4 64-bit."
Select "Automatic" installation.
Restart your system following installation. If you don't restart your system and attempt a fglrxinfo, you'll most likely receive a segmentation fault.
If your fglrx (OpenGL) driver works fine after installing ATI's Radeon 9.2 driver, congrats. You can find out if your fglrx drivers are broken by attempting some of the below.
Wine programs that require 3D support will throw the alert:
If you attempt to get fglrxinfo or glxinfo:
Uninstalling the 9.2 drivers and rolling back to the 9.1 (or even 8.12) drivers solved the problems on my test system.
What the output of fglrxinfo should look like:
Unless you are a sadomasochist and enjoy running through hoops to figure out why your video card isn't working every few months in Linux, go with a Nvidia card. Some of the issues are not AMD's fault -- I'm guessing a large percentage of Linux developers are working with Nvidia cards, but ATI's official drivers are notoriously buggy.
Your mileage and aggravation with the combination of Linux and ATI may vary.
Obama Administration To Begin 60-Day Cyber Policy Review
Most of these cyber attacks come from rival nations, which raises serious red flags. The level of sophistication and amount of brazen attacks requires considerable knowledge/funds. Cyber warfare isn't just a good science fiction plot, it's reality.
Finding and prosecuting cyber attackers is a joke. Anyone with open source tools can steal someone else's wireless connection, then SSH server hop around the world and perform attacks. Then they can cover their tracks (if they even care to do so) without fear of being identified.
There are so many attack vectors to consider, how can you realistically mitigate compromises internally and externally for a government workforce of millions?
SSLstrip: Padlocks and https:// Can Be Forged
Security researcher Moxie Marlinspike presented "SSLstrip" at Black Hat DC 2009. SSLstrip allows attackers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks that can be carried out from WiFI networks, local area networks with a single internet access point, and onion routing networks like Tor. SSLstrip includes a proxy mode, where connections between the user and SSLstrip are displayed as being secure with a bogus padlock.
Websites that use SSL encryption would have to "encrypt everything" according to Marlinspike -- to protect against this man-in-the-middle attack. Most websites will be reluctant to do such a thing, as encrypting all content over SSL requires more powerful hardware.
I'd have to say SSLstrip will be downright scary in the hands of the wrong people. Most of today's badware is geared towards financial theft, and SSLstrip will be an effective weapon.
BackTrack 4 Beta Networking
After successfully installing and booting into BackTrack 4 Beta, you can load up other packages such as Nessus -- however, BackTrack 4 Beta comes configured with just the local loopback.
Running "dhcpcd eth0" won't work -- dhcpcd isn't installed, and you can't install online packages until networking is configured correctly. Also, KNetworkManager refused to startup in KDE on my test system.
The easiest way for me to get online was to edit /etc/network/interfaces and set a static ip:
Change the bottom line -- iface eth0 inet dhcp to:
Update DNS name servers:
Restart networking:
Verify that eth0's settings are correct:
Download to your heart's content.
USB Drive Setup For BackTrack 4 Beta
If you already have a formatted USB drive, that loads BackTrack 3 Final or 4 Beta, you can skip this article.
If your drive isn't formatted correctly:
Follow Sanjat Kabi's "Install Linux to a USB flash drive" steps 4-11.
Changes I used for BackTrack 4 Beta DVD:
Replace +750M with +1000M.
type c to select W95 FAT32 (LBA) where Sanjat says to type 6 for FAT16
After running UNetbootin, you should have a working boot of Backtrack 4 Beta. However, if you see the message "Boot Error" during startup:
1. Plug your USB drive into a MS Windows system.
2. Right-click the Windows Start button and select "Explore."
3. Go to your USB drive and right-click the drive letter, then select "Format." (Be sure you are on the correct drive and not your C: windows drive.) Select FAT32 and do not check "Quick Format."
4. After formatting is done, run UNetbootin from Windows.
5. Click on the "Diskimage" option.
5. Select your BackTrack 4 Beta DVD iso (I'm assuming you have already downloaded and verified the md5sum of the iso).
6. After UNetbootin installs and configures BackTrack 4, just restart and hopefully you don't get that "Boot Error" message.
Depending on your USB drive, you may or may not have to do the above steps. I had to do these steps for a Super Talent 4GB USB 2.0 drive.
NOTE: FAT16 and FAT32 both worked for me.
BackTrack 4 Beta: Now Uses Debian Packages and Ubuntu Repos
The BackTrack team over at remote-exploit.org has released BackTrack 4 Beta with new features and considerable changes.
Download a copy of BackTrack 4 Beta from http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html .
Softpedia has highlights of BackTrack 4 Beta, if you care to read about some of the changes.
If you want to load BackTrack 4 Beta to a USB drive with persistent changes, Infosec Ramblings has a well-written guide. Unetbootin makes transfering .iso images so easy - compared to the runaround of the past to get BackTrack installed to a USB drive.
Shmoocon 2009: Stop Using Mangled Dictionary Words In Your Passwords
Matt Weir, a PhD student at Florida State, presented "Enough with the Insanity: Dictionary Based Rainbow Tables" at Shmoocon 2009. The dictionary based rainbow table password cracker program is called drcrack, and it's based off rcrack.
Description and download for drcrack can be found at http://reusablesec.googlepages.com/drcrack
Anyone using dictionary words or mangled variants of dictionary words should consider moving to a better password algorithm method. I personally use the first letters of multiple phrases (that are significant to me) mixed with numbers and special characters
I'm guessing the next step is to have a table of common/hot phrases, first letters of phrases and texting lingo to mangle for brute force cracking.
Sadly, I didn't attend Shmoocon 2009 - there's always next year.
Study: Data Theft And Other Cybercrime Could Cost Businesses Over $1 Trillion
Important points from the linked article:
1. Malware increased by 400 percent during 2008.
2. 80 percent of 800 companies believed the malware was for financial purposes.
3. 42 percent of companies believe laid-off employees posed the greatest risk to their data.
"This was a very insidious type of malware that was designed either to steal your data, steal your identity, steal your money, and in many cases the scale as well as the sophistication was very alarming," said McAfee CEO David DeWalt at the World Economic Forum.
The worsening economy coupled with laid-off employees (possibly disgruntled) is the scariest bit of news for CIOs. Not only do you have shrinking budgets, but now you have to worry if Joe Blow planted malware, stole source code, or made off with copies of sensitive data.
USB flash drives currently hold up to 64GB with 128GB coming by 2010. There could be a lot of pilfered data (in someone's pocket or purse) walking out the door of your business. How would you know?
Starting a VMware Machine Hangs At 95%
Seen on multiple machines running Fedora 10 and CentOS 5.2 with VMware Server 2.0.0 installed.
Symptoms: The Virtual Machine hangs at 95% during startup.
Rerunning VMware's configuration tool seems to resolve this issue, at least for me.
Reason: Whenever a kernel update occurs, VMware's pre-compiled modules error out in the currently running kernel. Reconfiguring isn't always needed, but if your Virtual Machine hangs at 95% -- it's worth a try.
Reading For The Paranoid
Most people spend their time on social networking sites during "lunch breaks." Then there are the paranoid who can't get enough computer security news and knowledge. There's so many sites out there to choose from, but these are what I read on a regular basis.
1. NetworkWorld - Constantly updated with excellent features and news articles including security. Alexa Ranking: 16,198
2. SecurityFocus - Not as much content as NetworkWorld, but a worthy #2. Alexa Ranking: 35,464
3. Dark Reading - Information for security pros with news and analysis. Alexa Ranking: 91,639
4. LiquidMatrix Security Digest - Dave Lewis and The Intern consistently post links and articles that security pros should be aware of. Alexa Ranking: 597,139
5. McAfee Avert Labs Blog - Numerous researchers blog about security.
6. SearchSecurity - Security specific information and insightful videos.
7. CGISecurity.com - Security news related to web applications.
8. Security Fix - The Washington Post's Computer Security blog with Brian Krebs.
9. Linux Security - News, advisories, and How-Tos for the Linux security community.
10. IT Security - Features, guides and whitepapers geared towards security. Alexa Ranking: 108,428
11. darknet.org.uk - In-depth ethical hacking and computer security blog.
12. Rational Survivablity - Excellent blog and pretty diagrams.
13. DataLoss db - Documents known and reported data loss incidents from around the world.
