Tag: Security

Logging in through Facial Recognition…

On reading about the new Asus N10J, it seems that it allows you to log in using your face:

Smart Technology – Quick Logons through Facial Recognition

Continuing with the tradition of breaking tradition, ASUS introduces a whole new way in which users logon to their computers—through facial recognition. The SmartLogon system detects the user’s face and logs on without any intervention from the user. This system is designed to learn the variations of the user’s facial features, and is capable of performing detection in different lighting conditions.

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I wonder what happens if you take a photo of the target user, print it out life-size and show it to the camera? It might even work with a high-res passport photo scan. Hmmmm, curious…

If you buy a Mac because you think they can’t be infected…

Think again:

Two pieces of malicious software affecting Apple’s Mac OS X appeared this week: a Trojan horse with the ability to download and install malicious code of an attacker’s choice, and a hacker tool for creating backdoors, according to security vendors.

The Trojan — called ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ by Intego, the Mac security specialist that discovered the threat — is a variant on an older piece of malicious code but with a new installer, Intego said.

Naturally, it targets users in a traditional way:

The Trojan is found on porn websites posing as a codec needed to play video files, a technique used to trick the user into downloading and installing it.

I find myself saying this a fair bit: Mac OS X is not necessarily more secure than any other OS. At the present time, given their lower market share, they’re just not as sweet a target as the Windows install base. As Macs reach a critical mass, they’ll become just as desirable to infect as any other computer.

Security: Why it pays to be proactive

Following on from my post yesterday about reacting to critical updates…

It seems that no more than a day after Microsoft released a Critical Security update, someone’s released a Trojan into the wild that exploits the vulnerability.

Given the “exploit potential”, this one sounds relatively tame. I suspect it’ll only be a matter of time before the exploit code is perfected and turned into a much more potent animal.

Putting a few hours in on Thursday night, has potentially saved us exponentially more hours in data and service recovery, as well as general IT support. It definitely pays to be proactive!

Reacting to Super-Critical Updates (MS08-67)

Yesterday evening, at 6pm BST, Microsoft released an ‘Emergency’ Security Update MS08-67, for Windows-based Operating Systems. The update plugs a hole in Windows that could allow a Virus/Worm to automatically infect a Windows PC without any user intervention.

I thought I’d document what actions I took, in case it helps out anyone in the future. I’d also be interested to hear how you handled the situation, particularly if you did something I missed, or if you think I could have done things better!

History repeating…

Although I remember the impact of Sasser and MyDoom, I’ve never been in the trenches when such a critical update has been launched for Windows.

No-one likes working late at night, but I didn’t fancy the chances that a 0-day exploit may be released and in the wild before we can patch our mission critical servers; so as soon as I found out, I started working on a plan.

The Plan

The plan was relatively simple: Get the update to as many PCs as possible, as soon as possible; with an emphasis on any Servers that provide business-critical services.

Simple enough, but what next?

WSUS

About a month back we setup an internal WSUS server to centralise Windows Updates – quite handy for this type of scenario! The main thing here is to ensure that WSUS has the updates downloaded and approved, ready for deployment. Fortunately it had, as it performs a sync every evening, and automatically approves Critical Updates.

Group Policy

To ensure PCs get the update as fast as possible, we needed to open up GPMC and re-configure all existing Group Policy Objects (GPOs) that address Windows Update configuration.

The Windows Updates settings are under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update.

Note that, if you don’t have WSUS, you can still make the changes outlined below in order to minimise Time-to-Patch. If you haven’t set “Specify intranet Microsoft update service location”, PCs will automatically ask Microsoft’s update servers on the internet.

What we’re looking to do is:

– Set all PCs to download and schedule updates. This is abnormal for us as we allow our Engineers to dictate when to install updates as it can interfere with Software development and testing.

– Make sure each PC checks for updates with our WSUS server every hour, as opposed to every 22 hours.

– Set PCs to install the updates at 11am. This gives time for people to turn on their PCs, for the PCs to update their Group Policy settings and pick up the new settings, and then to check in with the WSUS server for the new update.

– If the PC missed the 11am deadline (e.g. it wasn’t on) it’ll check whether or not it has updates, and then install the updates after 30 minutes.

Informing End-users

A notification email was crafted to all employees, informing them of the severity of the update, what was being done, and what actions they should take. I’ll include a copy of the email I sent out at the end of the post

Protecting the business

Last night, we couldn’t wait for WSUS to “offer” the update to our servers so I grabbed the Update and manually installed it on each business-critical server, rebooting them promptly.

This morning

That was last night out of the way. This morning and this afternoon I’ve been checking WSUS’s reports to see which PCs have the update installed. As of 1pm, at least 90% of PCs had installed and rebooted. I’ll be chasing the rest later 😉

The notification

As promised, here’s the Email notification sent out to employees:

 
Hi all,

Microsoft has just released a very serious critical security update for Windows operating systems.

To see how this affects you, please see below.

Cambridge Employees

Tomorrow we will be rolling out an essential security update to all Domain-connected Windows PCs. This update is mandatory. If you press Control+Alt+Delete to log in, you are on the domain. If you do not press Ctrl+Alt+Del to log in you should follow the advice for Non-Cambridge employees below.

Although we will be trying our best to force this update out. It’s advisable that if you see the “Yellow shield” in your Task Bar, you should click it and install all updates reboot as soon as possible.

Not doing so poses a serious risk to DisplayLink’s networks.

Non-Cambridge Employees 

If you are not based in Cambridge, you should visit Windows Update as soon as possible and install all updates, specifically this one.

DisplayLink Servers

Servers in the UK will have the update installed and be rebooted as soon as possible to ensure we’re protected.

Further information

Further information on this Critical update can be found on Microsoft’s KB article.

Thanks go to Dave Hill for spotting this one on The Register!

Cheers,
Phil Wiffen
IT Engineer

 

How did you handle it?

As I said earlier, I’d also be interested to hear how you handled the situation, particularly if you did something I missed, or if you think I could have done things better! Let me know in the comments 🙂

Install and run Wireshark on the command line (CentOS 5.2)

Using CentOS 5.2 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, install and run Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) over the command line.

Install Wireshark:

Run a capture:

This command will run Wireshark/Ethereal, capture on the eth1 interface and output the data to /yourhomedir/mycapture.pcap

Why would you want to do this? If you want to capture packets from a headless or remote Linux PC and analyse the data elsewhere.

Right now I’m at home, but I have a headless CentOS box at work that’s running ntop from a mirrored port, in order to look at network traffic flowing over the router. To increase the capability of the CentOS box, I want to use it to capture packets using Wireshark, then download the .pcap file over WinSCP and look at the data on my laptop using Wireshark for Windows.