IT Blog There is a feeling in the infosec community that Conficker may change its behavior April 1 and wreak havoc. Headlines have included: ComputerWorld: Conficker's next move a mystery to researchers Computer Reseller News: Conficker Worm to Strike April 1 USA Today: PC security forces face April 1 sh...
IT Blog Hi folks, more often than not I see people deploying new network equipment or servers without firmware updates. What's up with that? As a good best practice it only makes sense to update the firmware on devices. These firmware updates usually patch lots of security holes and other bugs. People tend...
network equipment, switch, router IT Blog Unless you have a dedicated IT administrator--or preferably a dedicated information security administrator--who performs the role of testing and analyzing new patches and updates prior to implementation, your patches and updates should be automated. Large organizations have different needs, but hom...
Windows 7, Automatic Updates, Windows Update IT Blog For certain malware infection follow these steps: 1. Do not apply operating system patches. 2. Do not apply application patches. 3. Do open emails from unknown sources. 4. Do open attachments on emails from unknown sources. 5. Do open unexpected attachments appearing to be from known sources. "...
IT Blog Just a quick Samba update to mark my return from the beaches of North Carolina: Major bug fixes included in Samba 3.0.25a are: Missing supplementary Unix group membership when using "force group". Premature expiration of domain user passwords when using a Samba domain controller. Failure to ope...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog We just put a Samba tip up the other day regarding bugs and bug fixes, so it's kind of ironic that Jerry Carter, release manager for the Samba team, sent out a few bug updates today to the mailing list. The first, complete with patch availability: =========== Description =========== The idmap_ad.s...
Security, Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog Yesterday was Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday, but it was also Adobe's quarterly patch release day. While Microsoft buried IT admins with 12 new security bulletins, Adobe piled on with a slew of its own patches and updates. A recent report from McAfee found that the number of attacks against Adobe...
IT Blog There are some records that are good to achieve--most copies of Windows sold in a month, or most profitable quarter in company history, etc. Then, there are less desirable records, like say....the highest number of security bulletins, or the most vulnerabilities patched in a single Patch Tuesday. A...
Microsoft, security bulletins, Patch Tuesday IT Blog For the better part of two years now, I've been looking at various flavors of Linux, trying to see which one(s) are right for my needs. For servers, I stopped after finding Arch Linux, as it gave me the freedom to use as much of my resources as possible, without the overhead of a GUI and such. D...
security, review, distribution IT Blog Sir Winston Churchill once said, Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those are wise words, and a sentiment that applies nicely to information security. As we begin 2012, it is a great time to reflect on the significant security events that occurred over the last year,...
IT Blog Microsoft released the annual Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) progress reporttoday. This paper provides a behind-the-scenes look into some of the work the MSRCteam has done over the past year. Specifically, the report highlights: Data from the Microsoft Exploitab...
Microsoft, Microsoft Security Response Center, MSRC IT Blog With Linux 3.0 coming up around the corner, I thought it would be good to discuss some (possible) future improvements and additions to the kernel. While this is already in the 2.8 branch (which was created before the official 3.0 was announced), it'll be interesting to see what is carried over. ...
security, ipset, network IT Blog Not too long ago, Arch Linux released an update on their distribution, stating that they are removing support for tcp_wrappers. For the most part, this doesn't seem to be a big deal. They aren't a world-renown distribution like Ubuntu or Red Hat, so its unlikely that unless its a kernel-based dec...
security, iptables, tcp_wrappers IT Blog A letter from Samba contributor Jeremy Allison confirmed today that the Samba Team has decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licenses for all future releases of Samba. The GPLv3 is the updated version of the GPLv2 license under which Samba is currently distributed. Over the course of the past year ...
IT Blog It's always a fun morning when the Samba team fires off another stable production release of their namesake open source project. Today, Samba's Jerry Carter mailed the Samba mailing list with an update on 3.0.25c -- it's available! This is the latest production release of the Samba 3.0.25 code base ...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog Since we seem to love Samba around here so much, here's their latest update (delivered via the Samba mailing list, I suggest you get yourself to Samba.org and sign up!): Major features included in the 3.0.25 code base include: Significant improvements in the winbind off-line logon support. Suppo...
Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog From the Samba mailing list this morning: Major features included in the 3.0.25 code base include: o Significant improvements in the winbind off-line logon support. o Support for secure DDNS updates as part of the 'net ads join' process. o Rewritten IdMap interface which allows for TTL based cachin...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog Major features included in the 3.0.25 code base include: Significant improvements in the winbind off-line logon support. Support for secure DDNS updates as part of the 'net ads join' process. Rewritten IdMap interface which allows for TTL based caching and per domain backends. New plug-in interf...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog A Samba4 update from Andrew Bartlett hit my Inbox this morning with an overview of all the new features. NEW FEATURES ============ Samba4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join and domain logon operations with...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog A trio of Samba security vulnerabilities dropped into my inbox today. The first: This bug was originally reported against the anonymous calls to the SamrChangePassword() MS-RPC function in combination with the "username map script" smb.conf option (which is not enabled by default). After further in...
IT Blog Fresh from Samba.org are the latest features included in the 3.0.25 code base: Significant improvements in the winbind off-line logon support. Support for secure DDNS updates as part of the 'net ads join' process. Rewritten IdMap interface which allows for TTL based caching and per domain backen...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog Samba release manage Jerry Carter once told me that the majority of "bugs" in Samba that get reported by users are actually misconfigurations of that user's system, or a problem with Microsoft Windows, and are not the fault of Samba. In one of the rare tips I've written for SearchEnterpriseLinux.co...
Samba, Open source applications, Updates and upgrades IT Blog Samba 3.025 draws ever closer with the 2nd release candidate going live late last week. The details are as follows, courtesy of project lead Jerry Carter: Significant improvements in the winbind off-line logon support. Support for secure DDNS updates as part of the 'net ads join' process. Rewrit...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog *NOTE* This is the second preview release of the Samba 3.0.25 code base and is provided for testing only. It is NOT intended for production servers. Major features included in the 3.0.25 code base include: Significant improvements in the winbind off-line logon support. Support for secure DDNS up...
Samba, Administration, interoperability and integration IT Blog Apple users tend to have a false sense of security superiority when it comes to their beloved Mac machines. But you gotta give Apple some credit -- when a security hole is discovered, the company is pretty good about patching it quickly. This time around, Apple has released Security Update 2007-009...
Application Security, Information Security Threats, Security Management 
