Linux 101 for Windows People

Introduction

I come from a heavy Windows background, in fact I started my computer experience on an Amstrad however not long after I was using DOS and then Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. So, I’m a heavy Windows head, I’ve deployed all kinds of services and applications within business environments using common technologies such as:

CISCO/DELL/HP Networking switches and routers
ISA/TMG/UAG/Checkpoint firewalls
Palo Alto Firewalls
Microsoft Windows Client (Windows 3.11-Windows 11)
Microsoft Windows Server (NT4 – Windows Server 2022)
Vmware vSphere/ESXi
Random Linux Security appliances and VPN devices

One thing that I’ve noticed in my travels so far is that Linux deployments in enterprise environments in the back office/corp nets are often appliance based or “black boxes”. This creates a bit of a fun scenario whereby some system administrators and operations teams aren’t particularly comfortable with using UNIX/Linus systems. So, I thought I’d try and write some content to show how to do common tasks using the command line interface (CLI). This isn’t designed as an indepth guide, this is really just to try and give people a view of some of the things that you will need to be aware of. This isn’t mean’t to be “academic” or replace manuals and technical docs so it’s brief and to the point (as far as that is possible). Read more “Linux 101 for Windows People” →

Defense

Creating a honeypot for CVE-2021-41773 (Path Traversal and RCE)

A path traversal vulnerability and exploit just dropped in the wild for a specific version of Apache (Apache/2.4.49). This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute a path traversal attack (and now shown RCE if MOD_CGI is enabled) to read files outside of the virtual directory path bounds. This only affects a single version of Apache, there’s a fair few of these online, however it’s very unlikely all are vulnerable. The vulnerability requires specific permissions to be configured.

Guides

Reporting an email as phishing in Office 365 with…

Did you ever just ignore or delete a phishing email? I mean that’s great in one sense that you won’t have any negative impact. But if the email did get past the mail security filters, you can report it using the “Mark as phishing” option.

What if as well you wanted to not only enable users to report but also pass the intelligence onto the NCSC Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS)? How cool would that be! Well, have no fear people, we are going to show you how easy this stuff is to deploy and configure. Read more “Reporting an email as phishing in Office 365 with NCSC SERS” →

Leadership

The Art of Cyber

Cyber Security is an intersection of different activities, processes and capabilities. It uses skills from multiple traditional roles. As such the definition of it, often seems to lie in the reader. I did a poll the other day on twitter where ~30% of people thought a scenario I described wasn’t cyber because basically an “IT” person did the activity or they made assumptions that the IT person was told to do it (they were not). This led me to try and describe what Cyber means to me:

Guides

mRr3b00ts Pentest Plus Study Notebook

I created a PDF notebook a while ago when I decided on a whim to to the Pentest+. I have quite a few people ask me about getting into cyber security and well, you know when I was younger this stuff was just called IT mainly (IT + Infosec) so I thought let’s go test out the Pentest+. I did the course and exam in a week (whilst writing the notebook) (don’t think that’s a good idea but my objectives were more to make sure if I think it’s any good or not). Pleased to say I thought the course was good (I used pluralsight at 1.x speed) and the exam was fun (for an exam).

Hopefully this helps people explore the some of the world of offensive security and appsec. Read more “mRr3b00ts Pentest Plus Study Notebook” →

Defense

Can Cyber Deception be used as a force for…

Scams, Disinformation & Supply Chain Compromise

Now this might come to a shock to some of you but I’m not actually (as my LinkedIn profile currently says) Tony Stark! I know, shocking but it’s true. Why I’m experimenting with this will hopefully be apparent after reading this post (although this isn’t an explanation specifically). What I’m looking at is how deception is used from a range of perspectives from marketing, cybercrime and how we can use deception in a positive way, to actively defend ourselves from the cyber criminals! Read more “Can Cyber Deception be used as a force for good?” →

Defense

Defending against authentication attacks

Ok so my most popular blog on pwndefend is about using Hydra… so I guess that’s all the goodies using it for good things, right? Probably not but it does help people understand the weaknesses of single factor authentication systems without supplementary controls.

So, let’s look at authentication defences, but let’s do this from an attacker perspective! (The opposite of what helps an attacker usually helps defend). Crazy madness right, let’s get to it!

Foundations of Sand

Ok so authentication is a key security control in computer systems. To understand the challenge around authentication and think it’s all a technical problem is to error.

See most modern computer systems require at least two things to authenticate:

A Username
A Password

Defense

Cyber Security Tips – Keeping your digital self, safe!

Not even most of my digital life is in the enterprise security space, whilst this is great if you have access to technology budgets, security specialists and modern business class solutions, this doesn’t really fit into the general populations landscape of technology. I thought I’d take a high-level exploration of what digital security looks for people who aren’t security nerds! This is a bit of an experiment for me as it’s a journey into a world where although some things apply to me (obviously I’m human), some of this from a thinking/blogging point of view aren’t my comfort space. So, let’s see what a world outside of being a nerd look like!

Commons Risks

I’m thinking the risk landscape is still broad however when we think about risks, I reckon a general view model may look at some of the following scenarios:

Fraud/Scams
Sextortion
Phishing
Social Media Account Takeover
Device Theft
Device Loss
Equipment Failure/Data Loss
Threat from known individuals with physical access
Human Error

Leadership

Cyber Security Architecture

I remember (now it was a long time ago) when I worked in a support role and my dream job was being a technical architect, back in the warm and fuzzy days of no host-based firewalls, IPsec being something only MCPs knew about other than the networking team and when cybercrime was a shadow of how it is today.

It wasn’t until I had a few more notches under my belt when I realised that architecture in technology has different viewpoints, not only that but even the industry can’t agree on what things are or are not. That aside the reality is, is that architecture has different domains, specialisms, views, and viewpoints. I often find myself working across a whole range of areas, that is driven largely by specific customer requirements and scenarios (this is why I have a cool lab and lots of kit!)

When we consider a business technology system it has risk and by nature cyber security in that view. To think of this not being the case would be odd because ultimately “business” is the highest abstraction, and let’s think about what makes up a business: Read more “Cyber Security Architecture” →

Defense

Exposed VMWARE vCenter Servers around the world (CVE-2021-22005)

There’s a new CVE in town but don’t think it’s the only problem you get when you expose administrative interfaces to the wild west of the internet (yeeha or something). Let’s go on a quick exploration of what the world looks like with the help of our friends at Shodan and then let’s see the ramblings of Dan when looking at how benign enumeration and exploration of services can work. Let’s get started looking at the world, a quick face analysis on Shodan with vmware as a product shows a hit or two, what we are going to focus on is vCenter but you know.. you might want to review your attack surfaces so any exposed services (damn people expose some risky stuff!) Read more “Exposed VMWARE vCenter Servers around the world (CVE-2021-22005)” →

Tag: Hacking

Introduction

Scams, Disinformation & Supply Chain Compromise

Foundations of Sand

Commons Risks