What www.hak5.org started was quite commendable and I’m really not sure what the status of the Community Rainbow Tables project is at hak5.
They are generating the rainbow tables with the following configuration:

* NTLM
* mixalpha-numeric-all-space
* [abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789!@#$%^&*()-_+=~`[]{}|\:;"'<>,.?/ ]
* 26 indexes, 22 files/index
* 572 tables total
* 340.93GB
* 96.07% probability of successful crack

I’m currently generating index 13 and index 26 on this configuration. It would be cool to have multiple people generate it and upload it. I know many people are already doing that as we speak. We should also have SHA1, MD5 project for mixalpha-numberic-all-space configurations.

Long time since I posted anything here …. but it’s just been those times been busy as a bee. So securing Cisco routers is a big deal especially since the routers (especially the edge routers) can be critical to any organizations infrastructure. I am not a Cisco guru but am only a student. However, I thought I should create a list that could help me perform security reviews of routers.
Security of routers is important as attackers could add static routes, advertise bad BGP neighbours on edge routers, create inbound tunnel into the intranets and such. Therefore, it’s imperative that adequate efforts be put in to secure Cisco routers.

I thought I’ll put in my first attempt at creating a small checklist:

1. Use SSH for non-console access (“line vty” command should not have telnet in it)
2. Use class 5 passwords, do *not* use class 7 passwords as they’re easily reversed (“enable secret”) alongwith the use of strong passez
3. Limit virtual terminal access by using an ACL
      access-list 100 permit 10.10.10.10 log
      access-list 100 permit 10.10.10.11 log
      access-list deny any log
      line vty 0 4
       access-class 100 in
4. Disable Proxy ARP on each interface (“no ip proxy arp”)
5. Disable CDP as it can be used for information disclosures (“no cdp run”)
6. Use AAA (TACACS+ or RADIUS) (“aaa new-model”, “aaa authentication”, etc.)
7. Use “access-list ACL_NAME deny ip any any log” at the end of each ACL
8. Disable http server (“no ip http server”)
9. Keep the IOS versions updated
10. Set centralized logging using a syslog (“logging internal_ip_address”)
11. Configure NTP to keep the time synchronization (“ntp server 129.6.15.28”)
12. Disable TCP and UDP small services e.g., echo, chargen, discard, etc. (“no service tcp-small-servers” and “no service udp-small-servers”)
13. Put RFC 1918 (ingress filtering) protections using ACLs
       access-list 100 deny ip 127.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 any log
       access-list 100 deny ip 10.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 any log
       access-list 100 deny ip 192.168.0.0 0.0.255.255 any log
       access-list 100 deny ip 172.16.0.0 0.15.255.255 any log
14. Put some more filtering for common IPs
       access-list 100 deny ip 169.254.0.0 0.0.255.255 any log
15. Use SNMPv3 with ACLs if you must (“snmp-server v3 auth priv”)
16. Use SSHv2 (“ip ssh version 2”)
17. Try to use EIGRP instead of RIP/OSPF (“ip authentication mode eigrp N md5”)
18. Use MD5 authentication for RIP/OSPF if you must use these protocols (RIPv2/OSPF)
    (“ip rip authentication mode md5”)
19. For edge routers using BGP authentication (if possible)
       router bgp 10
        neighbor 10.10.10.10 password Cr4zY$%^
20. Configure BGP route flap dampening that prevents BGP oscillations (“bgp dampening”)
21. Use warning banners that could be used for legal purposes for prosecuting hackers

This has been a weird one, finding version information on the operating systems.
On Ubuntu, the following gets the version information
  cat /etc/issue
  cat /etc/lsb-release

On Linux, finding the kernel version
  uname -a
  cat /proc/version

On Windows, from Start-> Run -> cmd.exe
  winver
OR
  systeminfo

This is very simple but still there are a few times when memory fails and we’re not able to do the obvious.

To see the information about the hardware mapping :
  lshal

Finding your CPU Information
  cat /proc/cpuinfo

Finding memory information
  cat /proc/meminfo

Maximum number of SYN requests that the host will remember which did not receive an ACK from clients:
  cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_max_syn_backlog

Finding data bus-size or bit-size i.e., whether my CPU is 32-bit or 64-bit:
  sudo lshw -C cpu | grep width

In metasploit there’s a plugin admin/backupexec/dump. This plugin uses the default credentials to login to Veritas backupexec agent and download an arbitrary file. The catch is it downloads it in the MTF (Microsoft Tape Format) file. You need a utility called NTBackup to restore this file. Metasploit authors have conveniently made this available for us at http://metasploit.com/tools/msbksrc.tar.gz.
However, if you compile this file you get an error:
msqic.c:814: error: conflicting types for ‘bques’
This happens because the function prototype is missing.
Goto line 169 of msqic.c file in the source code and add the following line:
int bques(char);
Once you add this, you should be able to make the client and should be able to extract the file from the .mtf file.

Come end of semester and the project deadlines start impending! The situation I am in is one of great thrill and rush! For the CS558L I’m doing this project in which I have to implement an automated worm fingerprinting mechanism but not only that combining it with ITrace I want to make Worm attacks and DDoS attacks a thing of past!
The scheme in plain English is to detect automatically if your network is being attacked by looking at the traffic and if so communicate this information to whoever you are forwarding this packet to! The ICMP messages that will be forwarded will carry information about who sent this traffic and other such information (including the signature of attack traffic). The receiver with all this information could gather the source of attacks. If all the routers followed this scheme then we will be able to reconstruct the entire path of the attack so the entry point of the attack could also be sealed….(hopefully leading to a Worm and DDoS attack-free internet)!!!
Really hopeful…aren’t I??? 😉
But again this technique has the same single flaw as the other techniques in that it needs co-operation between ISPs.
I am currently coding this scheme in the Linux Kernel 2.6.11.7 and this is my first tryst with linux kernel programming…let’s see what future holds for me!

In the past few days, coincidentally I’ve been thrown into situations where packet forgery has been required. So I thought it’ll be a great moment to enumerate some good options that network or security professionals have. The basis for most of these tools lies in libnet and libpcap which are some of the most wonderfully functional libraries out there.

• Packetforge-ng – On the wireless side this utility allows you to capture wireless packets and create legitimate packets with a pre-determined payload that can then be replayed using tools such as aireplay-ng
• Scapy – This is a python based tool and can be extended to write custom Python scripts to custom create packets. This library has great functions to form packets layer-by-layer and other functions such as fuzz() that allow fuzzing of packets out of the box. The greatest utility comes by the use of python language to create custom tools. Imagine creating custom thick clients just by using simple python scripts. The capabilities with this library are endless!
• TCPReplay – Just convert your pcaps into traffic by replaying them. An excellent tool but be careful if you’ve sniffed some ARP packets. You could end up corrupting the ARP table entries (unless that’s exactly what your intentions is 😉
• file2air – An excellent tool by Joshua Wright to replay packet contents.
• Packit – A really easy to use and functional linux based packet injection tool.

An interesting incident happened this past week to a friend – he had his identity stolen. More specifically, someone got a hold of his social security number (SSN), his date of birth (apparently) and his address. What the scammers or their “mules” (a term used to describe criminals who act on behalf of the actual criminal at their behest) did was that they went to the bank and requested to wire a huge sum of money to an account. The neat trick they played was before actually going to the bank they called the Verizon helpdesk and suspended my friend’s phone service. When they reached the bank and showed the bank agent the ID (some sort of a non-standard / fake ID) and gave the SSN to the bank agent, he/she grew suspicious and tried to contact my friend. However, due to Verizon suspending his phone service, the bank agent couldn’t get a hold of my friend. Luckily, the bank agent also sent my friend an email to which he responded promptly. The culprits were arrested and the investigation is still on.
What was quite interesting was, the modus operandi where the criminals know that banks rely on calling the customers if they suspect fraud and they had this covered. Quite intelligent.
So, you know what you need to do if your phone suddenly stops working – check if ID thieves have had a run on you, change all your passwords including email, change your credit card accounts and bank accounts and PINs and place a hold on your credit history with the credit reporting agencies such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.