Administering Servers with Webmin

I've been trying Webmin on FreeBSD, Solaris 8, and HP-UX 11i today. Once I repatriate my AIX box from my employer, I intend to install Webmin on it as well. For FreeBSD, I installed the package provided by the FreeBSD project. For Solaris, I used the package provided by Webmin. For HP-UX, I downloaded the tarball and installed from source. I tried the version packaged by HP with their port of Apache and Tomcat, but couldn't get it to install on its own. Webmin uses its own "miniserv.pl" so Apache is not needed.

Webmin is a Web-based, cross-platform system administration tool. Although I'm not a huge fan of Web-based interfaces, Webmin is slick. I recommend installing the Swelltech theme, which is cleaner than the default.

Using Webmin I successfully installed the lsof package for FreeBSD and Solaris. I didn't have any luck with the same package for HP-UX. Webmin allows you to run commands through the Web browser, so once lsof was installed on FreeBSD and Solairs I ran it and viewed the output in the browser.

One of my favorite aspects of Webmin is its package browsing features. You can peruse the installed software very easily. Webmin also makes browsing logfiles a snap.

Webmin's OS support is vast, since it's written in Perl. I noticed however that not all actions work as well as I'd like. For example, when trying to edit the FreeBSD bootup scripts, I was only given the option of editing /etc/rc.local. I expected to edit /etc/rc.conf or scripts in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. I may have been looking in the wrong place, though.

The two books written about Webmin are both available on the Web for free. The book written by Webmin's author is part of the Bruce Perens Open Source Series and can be downloaded in zipped .pdf. Swelltech's CEO wrote a book and provides it here.

Besides Webmin, there's also Usermin, designed for end-user work. It's good for reading mail. Virtualmin is a virtual hosting management system developed by the Webmin author under contract with Swelltech.

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Security 101 Book

Today I was asked for my recommendation for a "security 101" book. I hadn't given the subject much thought, although I think Ed Skoudis' Counter-Hack is a great place to start. I looked around my office and found a book Addison-Wesley sent me last year: Internet Site Security by Erik Schetina, Ken Green, Jacob Carlson. After thumbing through the book, I've decided it's excellent. I won't review it on Amazon.com, since my policy is to only review books I've read. Still, a mention here is worthwhile.

This book is so solid I adopted its "assess -> protect -> detect -> respond" security process model to replace the "plan -> prevent -> detect -> respond" version in my own book, just to avoid reinventing the wheel. They also correct state the risk equation as "risk = threat X vulnerability X asset value." If you're looking to get your feet wet in security, or if you're a manager who needs to learn the fundamentals, Internet Site Security is a fine starting point.

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Using Sysmon to Detect Faulty Hardware

No sooner had I posted the entry on Sysmon than it detected a network problem. Two of my systems were unreachable. They both sat of a DMZ leg of my gateway. After troubleshooting at various layers I narrowed the issue down to a faulty NIC in the gateway. How often does that happen? Unfortunately the bad NIC is a Intel PRO/100+ Dual Port Server Adapter (PILA8472). When trying to ping out from the NIC to the DMZ, here's the sort of traffic the NIC generated:

00:39:18.628691 192.168.60.1 > 192.168.60.3: icmp: echo request

00:39:19.638731 0:0:0:0:0:0 > 0:0:0:0:0:0 sap 00 I (s=0,r=0,C) len=80

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

00:39:20.648696 0:0:0:0:0:0 > 0:0:0:0:0:0 sap 00 I (s=0,r=0,C) len=80

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

                         0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

00:39:21.658706 192.168.60.1 > 192.168.60.3: icmp: echo request

00:39:22.668711 192.168.60.1 > 192.168.60.3: icmp: echo request

00:39:23.678706 192.168.60.1 > 192.168.60.3: icmp: echo request

00:39:24.688706 192.168.60.1 > 192.168.60.3: icmp: echo request

00:39:25.698714 0:0:0:0:ff:54 0:0:0:0:0:0 2410 98:

                         8d44 2414 50f7 4054 0000 0200 7503 8e68

                         14b8 5801 0000 50cd 80eb fe90 ff54 2410

                         8d44 2414 50f7 4018 0000 0200 7503 8e68

                         44c7 404c 16d5 0100 b858 0100 0050 cd80

                         ebfe 89f6 2c8f 1128 0100 0000 0cfe bfbf

                         0100 0000

That is truly bizarre. I replaced the NIC with an Adaptec ANA-62044 PCI quad NIC.

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FreeBSD on Laptops

I thought the best I could do for help running FreeBSD on laptops was Linux on Laptops, until I learned of the FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility List. This site even had an entry for my Thinkpad a20p. There's an article at Freebsd.org and another database of information also available.

I've had various versions of FreeBSD running on this laptop since I tried installing FreeBSD 4.1.1. I plan to install FreeBSD 5.2 REL once issues in the todo list are solved.

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Understanding Snort DNS TTL Alerts

While reading a recent Network Computing magazine article, I noticed an interesting discussion of "DNS-based route optimizers." These sounded like the products which confused IDS operators four years ago. I read about it in an earlier NWC article.

This December 2003 article states:

"Handling external Web requests... is accomplished by advertising a low DNS TTL of about 10 seconds. This forces the end user's DNS server to request an updated IP address every 10 seconds... the device will provide the external IP address that will provide the best path through the network."

The whole idea with DNS-based systems is to trick clients into visiting the server that's "closest" to them in Internet space. By "closest" I mean the one offering the lowest latency. It's a performance enhancement for visitors.

NWC's graphic does a nice job explaining the system.

Notice the mention of "probes." The review mentions ICMP and TCP-based "probes" in its product feature list. NSM analysts might see these probes and consider them suspicious, when they're normal and harmless.

This made me think of recent alerts I'd seen in Sguil, based on this Snort rule:

alert udp $EXTERNAL_NET 53 -> $HOME_NET any
 (msg:"DNS SPOOF query response with TTL of 1 min. and no authority";
 content:"|81 80 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 00|";
 content:"|c0 0c 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 3c 00 04|";
 classtype:bad-unknown; sid:254; rev:3;) 

This rule was written to detect intruders responding to a victim's DNS query before the legitimate DNS server does. Whether this is worthwhile is debatable, especially since the rule uses the DNS TTL of exactly one minute. An intruder who uses 59 or 61 seconds evades this rule.

Here is Ethereal's look for one of the DNS responses which triggered this Snort rule. I queried for www.orbitz.com, and the DNS record it returned had a TTL of 1 minute and no authority records. Because the DNS TTL is so low, www.orbitz.com might be using a DNS optimization scheme like that mentioned in NWC.

Compare that to a response for images.amazon.com, where the TTL for the first record is 0, the second has is 5 hours 32 minutes, and the third is 20 seconds. Amazon.com appears to use Akamai extensively:

Finally, keep those responses in mind when looking at the DNS info for a smaller company like Sourcefire that doesn't need to play DNS tricks:

This mini-case study shows how keeping current on Internet infrastructure products helps NSM analysts understand their alerts.

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Ways to Install FreeBSD

While perusing the newgroups at unix.derkeiler.com, I learned a new way to get FreeBSD. The FreeBSD Project publishes .iso images of its release software, like 4.9 REL or 5.1 REL. Easy enough. Mirrors for these distributions are available at FreeBSD mirrors.

However, I discovered the FreeBSD Snapshots site offers .iso images of the latest version of each tree, e.g., 4-stable and 5-current. You can download the .iso and finish with a system running the newest FreeBSD, assuming they work on your hardware. If you're more conservative, they maintain a "security release" of the 4.8 distribution as well, which right now is 4.8-RELEASE-p13.

You can even finger their server to learn the newest builds available there:

finger @snapshots.jp.freebsd.org

[snapshots.jp.freebsd.org]
FreeBSD/i386:
The latest version of FreeBSD -CURRENT is: 5.2-CURRENT-20031227-JPSNAP
The latest version of FreeBSD 4-STABLE is: 4.9-STABLE-20031202-JPSNAP
FreeBSD/alpha:
The latest version of FreeBSD -CURRENT is: 5.2-CURRENT-20031227-JPSNAP

More information: finger info@snapshots.jp.FreeBSD.org
Service index:    finger help@snapshots.jp.FreeBSD.org

I also learned of two new projects to create CD-ROM based FreeBSD systems, like Knoppix: FreeSBIE and the FreeBSD live-FS project. The original live CD project is LiveCD, which exists in the ports tree.

In miscellaneous news, I tried two new MBLA3300 Intel PRO/100 CardBus II PCMCIA NICs on my Thinkpad a20p running FreeBSD 5.1 REL. I intend to use them for a mobile NSM platform. I found that they were recognizes as fxp0 and fxp1, but only if I booted with one NIC in the top PCMCIA slot or both in the two slots. One NIC in the bottom slot didn't work!

I'm going to put 5.2 REL on the laptop when the new release is published next month. I may followed this thread's guidance on disabling ACPI and enabling APM. I learned how to create a restore partition here. If my XFree86 fonts are ugly, I'll try the guidance in the XFree86 Font De-uglification HOWTO. At some point I may buy a new laptop with no OS installed, like this.

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Adding a New Disk in NetBSD

People complain about FreeBSD's '/stand/sysinstall' program, but I wish I could have used it yesterday when adding an 8 GB HDD to my NetBSD box. I loosely followed the official documentation but laughed when I read "Now we create some disklabel partitions, editing the tempfile as already explained. The result is...", followed by a disklabel output created from scratch! This reminded me of the "intuitively obvious" phrase from my college calculus books.

Here's how I did it. This is what the disk looked in dmesg output:

wd1 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 1: 

wd1: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA addressing

wd1: 8063 MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 16514064 sectors

wd1: 32-bit data port

wd1: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (Ultra/33)

wd1(pciide0:0:1): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (Ultra/33) (using DMA data

transfers)

First I ran fdisk. Notice the BIOS never seems to get the HDD geometry correct. Luckily the OS makes good guesses and I remembered the geometry when I saw it on the HDD label:

bash-2.05b# fdisk -u wd1

Disk: /dev/rwd1d

NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:

cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)



BIOS disk geometry:

cylinders: 1023 heads: 255 sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)



Do you want to change our idea of what BIOS thinks? [n] y

BIOS's idea of #cylinders: [1023] 16383

BIOS's idea of #heads: [255] 16

BIOS's idea of #sectors: [63] 63

Disk: /dev/rwd1d

NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:

cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)



BIOS disk geometry:

cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)



Are you happy with this choice? [n] y

Partition table:

The data for partition 0 is:

sysid 11 (Primary DOS with 32 bit FAT)

    start 63, size 5445972 (2659 MB), flag 0x80

        beg: cylinder    0, head   1, sector  1

        end: cylinder  338, head 254, sector 63

Do you want to change it? [n] y

sysid: [11] 169

start: [63] 

size: [5445972] 8000M

8000M is not a valid decimal number.

size: [5445972] 16384000

Explicitly specify beg/end address? [n] n

sysid 169 (NetBSD)

    start 63, size 16384000 (8000 MB), flag 0x80

        beg: cylinder    0, head   1, sector  1

        end: cylinder  894, head   0, sector 31

Is this entry okay? [n] y

The data for partition 1 is:

sysid 15 (Ext. partition - LBA)

    start 5446035, size 11020590 (5381 MB), flag 0x0

        beg: cylinder  339, head   0, sector  1

        end: cylinder 1022, head 254, sector 63

    Extended partition table:

        0: sysid 11 (Primary DOS with 32 bit FAT)

            start 5446098, size 5510232 (2690 MB), flag 0x0

                beg: cylinder  339, head   1, sector  1

                end: cylinder  681, head 254, sector 63

        1: sysid 5 (Extended partition)

            start 10956330, size 5510295 (2690 MB), flag 0x0

                beg: cylinder  682, head   0, sector  1

                end: cylinder    0, head 254, sector 63

            Extended partition table:

                0: sysid 11 (Primary DOS with 32 bit FAT)

                    start 10956393, size 5510232 (2690 MB), flag 0x0

                        beg: cylinder  682, head   1, sector  1

                        end: cylinder    0, head 254, sector 63

                1: 

                2: 

                3: 

        2: 

        3: 

Do you want to change it? [n] y

sysid: [15] 0

start: [5446035] 0

size: [11020590] 0

Explicitly specify beg/end address? [n] 



Is this entry okay? [n] y

The data for partition 2 is:



Do you want to change it? [n] n

The data for partition 3 is:



Do you want to change it? [n] n



We haven't written the MBR back to disk yet.  This is your last chance.

Disk: /dev/rwd1d

NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:

cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)



BIOS disk geometry:

cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)



Partition table:

0: sysid 169 (NetBSD)

    start 63, size 16384000 (8000 MB), flag 0x80

        beg: cylinder    0, head   1, sector  1

        end: cylinder  894, head   0, sector 31

1: 

2: 

3: 

Should we write new partition table? [n] y

Next I created a disklabel:

bash-2.05b# disklabel -i -I wd1

Basically I messed around with disklabel until something that looked ok was produced. I'm not sure how to get rid of the 'd' and 'e' entries or if it's possible. My understanding is that a is the 'root' partition, 'b' is usually the swap file, 'c' is the entire disk, and 'd' and on are other paritions. This is a second non-booting disk:

8 partitions:

#        size    offset     fstype  [fsize bsize cpg/sgs]

 a:  16514001        63     4.2BSD      0     0     0   # (Cyl.    0*- 16382)

 c:  16514064         0     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 16382)

 d:  16514064         0     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 16382)

 e:  16384000        63     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0*- 16254*)

Then I did 'newfs':

bash-2.05b# newfs /dev/wd1a



Warning: 64 sector(s) in last cylinder unallocated

/dev/wd1a:      16514000 sectors in 16383 cylinders of 16 tracks, 63 sectors

        8063.5MB in 50 cyl groups (328 c/g, 161.44MB/g, 20352 i/g)

super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:

       32,   330720,   661408,   992096,  1322784,  1653472,  1984160,

  2314848,  2645536,  2976224,  3306912,  3637600,  3968288,  4298976,

  4629664,  4960352,  5290016,  5620704,  5951392,  6282080,  6612768,

  6943456,  7274144,  7604832,  7935520,  8266208,  8596896,  8927584,

  9258272,  9588960,  9919648, 10250336, 10580000, 10910688, 11241376,

 11572064, 11902752, 12233440, 12564128, 12894816, 13225504, 13556192,

 13886880, 14217568, 14548256, 14878944, 15209632, 15540320, 15869984,

 16200672,

When done I could mount the new drive on a new directory called '/var/extra':

bash-2.05b# mount /dev/wd1a /var/extra

I added the last entry to /etc/fstab:

/dev/wd0a / ffs rw 1 1

/dev/wd0b none swap sw 0 0

/dev/wd0e /var ffs rw 1 2

/dev/wd0f /home ffs rw 1 2

/dev/wd0g /tmp ffs rw 1 2

/dev/wd1a /var/extra ffs rw 1 2

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Installing Packages on NetBSD and OpenBSD

Last month I wrote about installing packages on FreeBSD. This entry covers my NetBSD and OpenBSD experiences.

First, a few differences between NetBSD and OpenBSD. Root's default shell in NetBSD is /bin/sh, while OpenBSD uses /bin/csh. This means environment variables can be set in .profile for NetBSD and .cshrc for OpenBSD.

FreeBSD gives users the chance to automatically retrieve packages and dependencies remotely, e.g., 'pkg_add -r mtr'. FreeBSD makes its remote retrieval decisions based on the installed OS. NetBSD and OpenBSD allow the same, but you must specify the OS in an environment variable.

For NetBSD, add the following to .profile:

export PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All

For OpenBSD, add this to .cshrc:

setenv PKG_PATH ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.4/packages/i386/

These additions make automatic package retrieval easier. I'll install the GTK version of MTR to demonstrate the process on each OS.

For NetBSD, you can browse or search pkgsrc.netbsd.se to find packages. A visit there shows two versions of MTR: mtr and mtr-gtk (both with version 0.54nb1).

Install the newest package with this syntax:

pkg_add -v mtr-gtk

Watch pkg_add find the newest package and install it:

parsing: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All

path: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All

increasing RLIMIT_NOFILE to max. 1772 open files

trying PKG_PATH ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All

Spawning FTP coprocess

ftp -detv ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All/

Eventually it finds what it needs:

nlist mtr-gtk-*.t[bg]z /var/tmp/pkg.02535d

ftp> cd .

best match: 'ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All/mtr-gtk-0.52.tgz'

'ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All/mtr-gtk-[0-9]*.t[bg]z'

expanded to 'ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All/mtr-gtk-0.5

2.tgz'

Trying to fetch ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/1.6.1/i386/All/mtr-gtk-

0.52.tgz.

...and so on...

When done, MTR version 0.52 and dependencies are installed:

# pkg_info

pkg_info: disabling PKG_PATH when operating on all packages.

pth-1.4.1nb7        GNU Portable Thread library

bash-2.05.2.7nb1    The GNU Bourne Again Shell

glib-1.2.10nb3      Some useful routines for C programming

gtk+-1.2.10nb3      Gimp toolkit. Libraries for building X11 user interfaces

mtr-gtk-0.52        Traceroute and ping in a single graphical network diagnostic

For OpenBSD, you can browse or search ports.puffy.nu. A search for MTR finds "mtr 0.49" and "mtr 0.49-no_x11". To know the exact name, I prefer searching for mtr at BSDcoders. It shows "mtr-0.49
" and "mtr-0.49-no_x11". (One could assume the hyphens were needed earlier, but it's good to be sure.)

To install the package, you must specify the version, unlike FreeBSD or NetBSD:

pkg_add -v mtr-0.49

Trying to fetch ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.4/packages/i386//mtr-0.49.tg

z.

>>> ftp -o - ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.4/packages/i386//mtr-0.49.tgz

Extracting from FTP connection into /var/tmp/instmp.Zouhf13798

Unknown command.

+CONTENTS

+COMMENT

+DESC

sbin/mtr

man/man8/mtr.8

tar command returns 0 status

pkg: Handling dependencies for mtr-0.49

  checking gtk+-* (gtk+-1.2.10p1) -> Not found

checking gtk.1.2 not found

pkg: Handling dependencies for gtk+-1.2.10p1

  checking glib-* (glib-1.2.10) -> Not found

checking glib.1.2 not found

  checking libiconv-* (libiconv-1.8) -> Not found

checking iconv.3.0 not found

  checking gettext->=0.10.38 (gettext-0.10.40p1) -> Not found

checking intl.1.1 not found

...and so on...

When done, mtr-0.49 and its dependencies are installed:

lemelin# pkg_info

bash-2.05b-static  GNU Bourne Again Shell

libiconv-1.8       character set conversion library

gettext-0.10.40p1  GNU gettext

glib-1.2.10        useful routines for C programming

gtk+-1.2.10p1      General Toolkit for X11 GUI

mtr-0.49           Matt's traceroute - network diagnostic tool

The best bet for installing newer versions of any software on BSD is to use the ports tree. The absolute newest version can sometimes be only found in source code from the developer, before the ports tree is modified. Still, to quickly install an app, the package system can't be beat -- especially for large apps with numerous dependencies.

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Review of Open Source Network Administration Posted

Amazon.com just posted my four star review of Open Source Network Administration. It's been nearly two months since my last review. I've been extremely busy writing The Tao of Network Security Monitoring, so reading has taken a back seat. From the review:
"Open source is the wave of the future, and James Kretchmar's Open Source Network Administration (OSNA) catches that wave in fine form. Although the book is only 238 pages, it contains several gems. I read the book specifically for its coverage of the Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG), OSU's Flow Tools, and Sysmon. By following Kretchmar's instructions, I easily installed these three applications."

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Simple Network Health Performance Monitoring with Sysmon

Do you need a simple Web-based application to check if your systems and/or applications are alive? I learned about Sysmon when reading Open Source Network Administration.

Once I wrote my own configuration file to watch my systems, I followed the book's instructions to complete the Sysmon installation. The result is the small screen shot at left. Since you don't need to spend a lot of time checking out the details of my network, you can get the idea by reviewing this image. The green systems are all up. The yellow ones just became unreachable. I forgot to return on one of them to service after working on it. Since it's a bridging firewall for the second box, both are listed in yellow. The orange/reddish entry is a missing box. I lent it to my office for a case, and when it returns the record will be green again!

Sysmon is a good alternative to Nagios or the Network Management Information System (NMIS) if you only need to do simple monitoring of 10-100 systems. Sysmon can check availability by reading HTTP replies and connecting to arbitrary TCP ports, as well as pinging remote systems.

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Cisco Icons Online

Do you need networking icons for presentations or papers? Check out the completely free, non-copyrighted Cisco collection. I learned about it after reading a tip in Cisco's Packet magazine.

Besides having the icons for use in OpenOffice, the zipped .pdf of conceptual icons is handy. It helps you decode Cisco diagrams by recognizing what certain symbols mean.

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Learning To Install Open Source Software on Solaris and HP-UX

This summer I bought an Ultra 30 workstation and an HP Visualize B2000 workstation to learn Solaris on SPARC and HP-UX on PA-RISC, respectively. Today I worked on installing open source software on each. Starting with the Sun box running Solaris 8 on SPARC, I visited Sun Freeware, an absolutely incredible site providing free compiled binary packages of key open source software. Here's a sample installation:

1. FTP to the Sunfreeware site to retrieve the package for bash
2. Unzip the package with 'gzip -d'
3. Install the package with 'pkgadd -d'

I later installed wget, which made step one much easier. I was even able to install OpenSSH using the site's instructions, which outlined step-by-step the actions needed to install a necessary Solaris patch, then grab the required packages, create keys, and so forth. I made my own startup script using ideas from the instructions:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Simple OpenSSH start script by Richard Bejtlich

SSHCONF=/usr/local/etc/openssh/sshd_config

case "$1" in
 start)
  echo "Starting sshd using $SSHCONF."
  /usr/local/sbin/sshd -f $SSHCONF
  echo "Done."
 ;;
 stop)
  echo "Killing sshd."
  kill `ps -elf | grep /usr/local/sbin/sshd | grep -v grep | awk '{print $4}'`
  echo "Done."
 ;;
 restart)
  $0 stop
  $0 start
 ;;
esac

For my HP-UX needs, I visited another awesome site -- the Software Porting And Archive Centre for HP-UX. They offered all the packages I needed, but before installing them I needed to get my HP-UX box to finish its boot process. It was hanging while looking for an NFS server, so I followed the directions here to fix it:

1. Enter single user mode by booting and hit 'ESC' to interrupt the boot process.
2. Enter 'boot pri isl'
3. Say 'y' to interact with ISL
4. At ISL prompt enter 'hpux -is boot'
5. In single user mode, mount the following filesystems: /usr and /var
6. Edit with 'vi' /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf and say 'NFS_CLIENT=0'
7. 'reboot'

At the HP-UX site, I downloaded HP-UX's version of packages, called "depots". For example:

1. FTP to the HP-UX site to retrieve the package.
2. Unzip the package with 'gzip -d' into /usr/local/depot.
3. Run 'swinstall -s /usr/local/depot/<.depot file>'

swinstall when used through a Telnet session is a curses-like package installer. Eventually I installed OpenSSH and used the model for Solaris to get it to work on HP-UX.

Thank goodness for these free repositories of open source software! Would you believe there isn't a "top" command included with Solaris 8? I was able to install it from Sunfreeware, though.

I considered the day a success when I had GCC, wget, bash, and OpenSSH on both boxes, along with all of their dependencies. When I retrieve my AIX box from work I plan to use Bull Freeware to install OpenSSH and other programs. I also found AIX freeware at Darren Tucker's OpenSSH page and the UCLA Public Domain Software Library for AIX. The Encap Archive offers its own package format but lots of software.

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Verisign Acquires Guardent for $140 Million

Big news from the managed security services space. Consolidation continues, as big companies looking for growth opportunities acquire the small fries. Today Verisign announced it bought Guardent (yes, the Guardent URL spells the company's name incorrectly) for $140 million in stock and cash. Guardent currently employees about 150 people.

Update: Here's eWeek's analysis.

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Getting Your FreeBSD Box to Speak 802.1q Trunks with a Cisco Switch

I have the following setup on my home LAN:

cable modem - cisco router - freebsd fw/gw - cisco switch -  clients

< The client boxes are in two separate VLANs with different address spaces. I needed a way for them to be able to talk to the FreeBSD 4.9 REL firewall/gateway without wasting two interfaces on the fw/gw. Here's how I set this up. I'm no Cisco guru so excuse my lack of shortcuts. I got some help from this how-to, this thread, and this Cisco guide. First, on the switch, I created my VLANs:

gruden#conf term
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
gruden(config)#vlan 20
gruden(config-vlan)#name green
gruden(config-vlan)#end

gruden#conf term
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
gruden(config)#vlan 10
gruden(config-vlan)#name yellow
gruden(config-vlan)#end

Next I created my trunk port to speak to the FreeBSD box:

gruden#conf term
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
gruden(config)#int fa0/24
gruden(config-if)#switchport mode trunk
gruden(config-if)#end

gruden#sh int fa0/24 switchport
Name: Fa0/24
Switchport: Enabled
Administrative Mode: trunk
Operational Mode: trunk
Administrative Trunking Encapsulation: dot1q
Operational Trunking Encapsulation: dot1q
Negotiation of Trunking: On
Access Mode VLAN: 1 (default)
Trunking Native Mode VLAN: 1 (default)
Voice VLAN: none
Administrative private-vlan host-association: none
Administrative private-vlan mapping: none
Operational private-vlan: none
Trunking VLANs Enabled: ALL
Pruning VLANs Enabled: 2-1001
Capture Mode Disabled
Capture VLANs Allowed: ALL

Protected: false

Voice VLAN: none (Inactive)
Appliance trust: none

Then I added each switch port to the appropriate VLAN. This is what adding a single port looks like:

gruden#conf term
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
gruden(config)#int fa0/1
gruden(config-if)#switchport mode access
gruden(config-if)#switchport access vlan 10
gruden(config-if)#end

gruden#sh int fa0/1 switchport
Name: Fa0/1
Switchport: Enabled
Administrative Mode: static access
Operational Mode: down
Administrative Trunking Encapsulation: dot1q
Negotiation of Trunking: Off
Access Mode VLAN: 10 (yellow)
Trunking Native Mode VLAN: 1 (default)
Voice VLAN: none
Administrative private-vlan host-association: none
Administrative private-vlan mapping: none
Operational private-vlan: none
Trunking VLANs Enabled: ALL
Pruning VLANs Enabled: 2-1001
Capture Mode Disabled
Capture VLANs Allowed: ALL

Protected: false

Voice VLAN: none (Inactive)
Appliance trust: none

On to the FreeBSD box! I used the following commands to set it up. Note that fxp2 is the single physical interface connected to interface 0/24 on the Cisco switch:

ifconfig vlan0 create
ifconfig vlan1 create

ifconfig vlan0 vlan 10 vlandev fxp2
ifconfig vlan1 vlan 20 vlandev fxp2

ifconfig vlan0 inet 10.100.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
ifconfig vlan1 inet 172.207.200.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

ifconfig fxp2 up

When done, the interfaces on the FreeBSD box look like this:

moog# ifconfig vlan0
vlan0: flags=8843 mtu 1500
        inet 10.100.100.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.100.100.255
        inet6 fe80::2d0:b7ff:fe61:3234%vlan0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xa
        ether 00:02:b3:0a:cd:5b
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX )
        status: active
        vlan: 10 parent interface: fxp2
moog# ifconfig vlan1
vlan1: flags=8843 mtu 1500
        inet 172.207.200.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.207.200.255
        inet6 fe80::2d0:b7ff:fe61:3234%vlan1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xb
        ether 00:02:b3:0a:cd:5b
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX )
        status: active
        vlan: 20 parent interface: fxp2
fxp2: flags=8843 mtu 1500
        inet6 fe80::202:b3ff:fe0a:cd5b%fxp2 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
        ether 00:02:b3:0a:cd:5b
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX )
        status: active

To make this automatic, add these entries to /etc/rc.conf:

cloned_interfaces="vlan0 vlan1"
ifconfig_vlan0="inet 10.100.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 vlan 10 vlandev fxp2"
ifconfig_vlan1="inet 172.207.200.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 vlan 20 vlandev fxp2"
ifconfig_fxp2="up"

When done, the 10.100.100.0/24 and 172.207.200.0/24 networks will be able to talk to each other through the FreeBSD box.

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MRTG with FreeBSD and a Cisco Router

It doesn't get much easier than this. I wanted to add the Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) to my NSM tool collection. Based on the instructions provided by Open Source Network Administration and Cisco, here's how I did it. bourque is the name of my FreeBSD 4.9 REL NSM sensor and gill.taosecurity.com is my Cisco router.

First I enabled the SNMP server on the router. Replace 'public' and 'private' with other community strings, like I did. (These are examples.)

gill(config)#snmp-server community public RO
gill(config)#snmp-server community private RW

Make sure you set up an access list on interfaces where you don't want people accessing the SNMP service on your router:

access-list 101 deny   udp any any eq snmp log

Next install an Apache Web server on the system which will hold MRTG's output:

bourque# pkg_add -r ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-4-stable/All/apache+mod_ssl-1.3.29+2.8.16.tgz
Fetching ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-4-stable/All/apache+mod_ssl-1.3.29+2.8.16.tgz... Done.
Fetching ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-4-stable/All/mm-1.3.0.tgz... Done.
bourque# apachectl start

Next install MRTG:

bourque# pkg_add -r ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-4.9-release/All/mrtg-2.9.29_3,1.tgz
Fetching ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-4.9-release/All/mrtg-2.9.29_3,1.tgz... Done.
Fetching ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-4.9-release/All/p5-SNMP_Session-0.95.tgz... Done.

Now configure MRTG:

bourque# mkdir /usr/local/www/data/mrtg
bourque# cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir: /usr/local/www/data/mrtg'
 --global 'Options[_]: bits' --global 'IconDir: icons'
 --snmp-options=:::::2 --subdirs=HOSTNAME --ifref=ip
 --ifdesc=alias --output /usr/local/etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg 
 public@gill.taosecurity.com

--base: Get Device Info on public@gill.taosecurity.com:::::2
--base: Vendor Id: cisco
--base: Populating confcache
...edited output...

mkdir /usr/local/www/data/mrtg/icons
cp /usr/local/share/mrtg/* /usr/local/www/data/mrtg/icons/

Now start MRTG:

bourque# mrtg /usr/local/etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg
WARNING: /usr/local/www/data/mrtg/gill.taosecurity.com/
 did not exist I will create it now
...ignore the warnings; these are normal for initial start-up...

Create an index page for the Web server and add an entry in cron to periodically collect MRTG data:

bourque# indexmaker --output /usr/local/www/data/mrtg/index.html
 --columns=1 /usr/local/etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

bourque# crontab -l
*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/mrtg /usr/local/etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg
 --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

You'll want to add the following link for each router name so MRTG can find its icons:

ln -s /usr/local/www/data/mrtg/icons/
 /usr/local/www/data/mrtg/gill.taosecurity.com/icons

When you're done you'll see graphs like this when you visit http://sensor/mrtg/index.html. Notice there's only a little bit of data at the far left side, as the system's only been awake for a few minutes.

That's all you need for a basic install. Notice I'm accessing the sensor using HTTP. I could enable HTTPS and access the sensor using that method. Also, be careful running a Web server on your NSM appliance. Lock down who can access it.

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CAIDA to the Rescue

Kudos to CAIDA for applying real research to the issue of whether the SCO Web site was hit by a DoS attack or not. CAIDA used its Network Telescopes to watch backscatter from SCO servers and confirmed SCO Web and FTP servers were indeed flooded:

"At 3:20 AM PST on Wednesday, December 10, 2003, the UCSD Network Telescope began to receive backscatter traffic indicating a distributed denial-of-service attack against the SCO Group. Early in the attack, unknown perpetrators targeted SCO's web servers with a SYN flood of approximately 34,000 packets per second...

Around 2:50 AM PST Thursday morning, December 11, the attacker(s) began to attack SCO's ftp (file transfer protocol) servers in addition to continuing the web server attack. Together www.sco.com and ftp.sco.com experienced a SYN flood of over 50,000 packet-per-second early Thursday morning. By mid-morning Thursday (9 AM PST), the attack rate had reduced considerably to around 3,700 packets per second. Throughout Thursday morning, the ftp server received the brunt of the attack, although the high-intensity attack on the ftp server lasted for a considerably shorter duration than the web server attack. At 10:40 AM PST, SCO removed their web servers from the Internet and stopped responding to the incoming attack traffic. Their Internet Service Provider (ISP) appears to have filtered all traffic destined for the web and ftp servers until they came back online at 5 PM PST.

In spite of rumors that SCO has faked the denial-of-service attack to implicate Linux users and garner sympathy from its critics, UCSD's Network Telescope received more than 2.8 million response packets from SCO servers, indicating that SCO responded to more than 700 million attack packets over 32 hours."

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Creating Fake Interfaces and Bonding Them

In June I posted a way to bond two FreeBSD interfaces to a third unused interface for purposes of combining tap outputs and sniffing the result. This method used ng_one2many and was based on advice from Andrew Fleming. In July I corresponded with John Bradberry who shared his method of using ng_fec, the man-page-less Fast Ether Channel netgraph(4) module.

Two months ago John posted his method, which looks like the email he sent me in July. I finally got a chance to try it, and can report that it works. Here's what's required on a stock FreeBSD 4.9 REL system where sf2 and sf3 see the tap outputs. First, build the ng_fec kernel module:

cd /usr/src/sys/modules/netgraph/fec
make
make install

Next, create the virtual fec0 interface which will see traffic from sf2 and sf3 simultaneously. Note the use of single quote and double quote around the interface names.

ngctl mkpeer fec dummy fec
ngctl msg fec0: add_iface '"sf2"'
ngctl msg fec0: add_iface '"sf3"'
ngctl msg fec0: set_mode_inet
ifconfig sf2 promisc -arp up
ifconfig sf3 promisc -arp up
ifconfig fec0 -arp up

That's it! When sniffing the fec0 interface, you'll see all traffic that sf2 and sf3 see. You can see the results of this process using a few commands. kldstat shows the KLDs that were loaded automatically:

bourque# kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1    4 0xc0100000 43d388   kernel
 2    1 0xc211b000 3000     ng_socket.ko
 3    2 0xc211f000 9000     netgraph.ko
 4    1 0xc212d000 3000     ng_fec.ko

ifconfig shows the new interface:

bourque# ifconfig fec0
fec0: flags=8943 mtu 1500
        inet6 fe80::200:d1ff:feed:34df%fec0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xe
        ether 00:00:d1:ed:34:df
        media: Ethernet none
        status: active

/var/log/messages shows the fec0 interface in action:

Dec 10 18:27:10 bourque /kernel: fec0: port sf2 in bundle is down
Dec 10 18:27:10 bourque /kernel: fec0: port sf3 in bundle is down
Dec 10 18:27:12 bourque /kernel: fec0: port sf2 in bundle is up
Dec 10 18:27:12 bourque /kernel: fec0: port sf3 in bundle is up

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Bruce Schneier on Northeast Blackout

Bruce Schneier wrote about the possible role of MSBlaster in the 14 August 2003 northeast electrical blackout. He reports on the November interim report (.pdf) by a joint US-Canadian taskforce:

"The coincidence is too obvious to ignore. At 2:14 p.m. EDT, the MSBlast worm was dropping systems all across North America. The report doesn't explain why so many computers--both primary and backup systems--at FirstEnergy were failing at around the same time. But MSBlast is certainly a reasonable suspect.

Unfortunately, the report doesn't directly address the MSBlast worm and its effects on FirstEnergy's computers. The closest I could find is this paragraph, on page 99: "Although there were a number of worms and viruses impacting the Internet and Internet connected systems and networks in North America before and during the outage, the SWG's preliminary analysis provides no indication that worm/virus activity had a significant effect on the power generation and delivery systems. Further SWG analysis will test this finding."'

Bruce's article makes valid points. Until the panel explains why the electricity monitoring systems failed, MSBlaster will remain as likely a suspect as any.

I found the report's goals interesting:

"Phase I: Investigate the outage to determine its causes and why it was not contained.

Phase II: Develop recommendations to reduce the possibility of future outages and minimize the scope of any that occur."

This sounds exactly like an incident response plan I use at client sites. In recognizes that determining what happened is important, but that total prevention of future incidents is impossible.

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US Government Security Report Card

Yesterday Congressman Putnam of the US House Committee on Government Reform announced the federal government's computer security report card (.pdf). FCW summarized the results. For the first time two agencies scored above 90%: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earned top honors with an A, and the National Science Foundation received an A-. The grades were based for the first time in the four-year program on the Federal Information Security Management Act (.pdf) reportedly an improvement over the Government Information Security Reform Act (GISRA) (.pdf).

I found it amusing that after the press NASA received for working with SANS to patch systems in 2001 (.pdf), NASA's score has consistently dropped. NASA scored a C- in 2001, a D+ in 2002 and now a D- in 2003. In 2001 NASA was lauded as a "poster child" for their "vulnerability-focused approach to eliminate security problems."

Apparently SANS no longer thinks addressing vulnerabilities is the answer. In their latest NewsBites, SANS reports on a new security survey of "IT professionals." The survey reports "eighty-seven percent [of respondents] said software patches for known vulnerabilities are up to date at their companies." SANS' comment on this statistic is telling: "The saddest part of this study is that it reinforces one of the greatest lies of security - that organizations that keep their systems patched but do not harden operating systems are keeping their systems safe... It's time to stop pretending, and start making sure every system administrator can prove he/she knows how to safely configure a system before being given root or administrator privileges."

My approach has always been simple: prevention fails. Period. Security staff must take steps to ensure they collect the right sorts of information to efficiently scope the extent of compromise and guide recovery. That's why network security monitoring (like implemented by Sguil) is required.

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Creative Commons

After reading why Microsoft Word is not a document exchange format, I found myself at the Creative Common Web site. Their goal is "to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules." I found their license builder interesting.

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Spammers Target Cambridgeshire Police Force

I learned of this scam via this Sophos report. Spammers are sending messages which appear to be receipts for £399.99 Apple iPods. The message lists the phone number of the Cambridgeshire Police Force in the UK as the point of contact for complaints. This sounds more like a prank than a structured attack, but the concept is sound. I imagine we'll see more of this in the future. Here's what the email looks like:

Subject: Transaction Receipt (UKCards)

From: "UKCards" 

------------------

Please note: All charges to your statement

will appear in the name "UKCARDS LIMITED".



Order Information

Amount: £399.95

Currency: GBP

Merchant Name: HUNTINGDON MAIL ORDER

Description: iPod Music Player 40GB



Customer Service

Telephone: 01480 456111

Email: N/A 



Delivery Address

47 Silver Street, London, NW1 5TR



If you have any questions on the delivery

of this order or product details please contact

the merchant directly using the above details.

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I commend the Debian project for detailing the exact timetable and methodology associated with their recent compromise. They posted a detailed report on the incident Tuesday. I found several points noteworthy. First, notice how they detected the intrusion. Sharp admins knew something was amiss, and a host-based IDS detected file changes:

"On the evening (GMT) of Thursday, November 20th, the admin team noticed several kernel oopses on master. Since that system was running without problems for a long time, the system was about to be taken into maintenance for deeper investigation of potential hardware problems. However, at the same time, a second machine, murphy, was experiencing exactly the same problems, which made the admins suspicious.

Also, klecker, murphy and gluck have Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment (package aide) installed to monitor filesystem changes and at around the same time it started warning that /sbin/init had been replaced and that the mtime and ctime values for /usr/lib/locale/en_US had changed."

Notice the intruder's actions:

"On Wednesday, November 19th, at approximately 5pm GMT, a sniffed password was used to log into an unprivileged developer account on the host klecker (.debian.org). The attacker then retrieved the source code through HTTP for an (at that time) unknown local kernel exploit and gained root permissions via this exploit. Afterwards, the SucKIT root-kit was installed.

The same account and password data were then used to log into the machine master, to gain root permissions with the same exploit and also to install the SucKIT root-kit...

On the next day the attacker used a password sniffed on master to log into gluck, get root there and also install the SucKIT root-kit."

How was all this password sniffing done? Were clear text protocols involved?

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1500 Helpful Review Votes at Amazon.com

I'd like to thank everyone who's voted my Amazon.com reviews to be "helpful" over the last 3+ years. I started seriously reviewing books with Radia Perlman's Interconnections, 2nd Ed in May 2000. Since then I've written reviews of 116 books on security and computing topics. Some reviews of poor books caused quite a stir. Several were pulled only to have me resubmit "just the facts" in the form of direct quotes. Others caused me to argue with certain members of the community who praised books they should not have. Either they didn't read the book or they were too out of touch to realize printing 250 pages of C code did nothing to teach the reader about "hacking."

Every month I received many books to review. I only read those on my reading list or those that surprise me with their originality. I don't review books I've skimmed, unless the reason I've stopped reading was disappointment with content. As a result, many of my newer reviews are positive. Why waste time reading and reviewing a poor book? I don't get paid for reviews, but I do work on the side evaluating proposals and manuscripts.

I hope you find future reviews helpful!

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Exploiting Cisco Routers Article

SecurityFocus published the sequel to an article on exploiting Cisco routers. This has been happening for a while but this article spells out the details.

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Quirks of NetBSD

Exactly two months ago I reported installing FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Debian on my laptop for test purposes. Yesterday I tried to upgrade a different box from FreeBSD 5.1 RELEASE to FreeBSD 5.1 CURRENT. I've had no luck getting my SMC 2632W or 2602W wireless NICs, or an Orinoco Gold wireless NIC, to work in any modern version of FreeBSD. (I had the 2632W working with FreeBSD 4.5 and earlier using this hack.) I thought trying CURRENT might be a good idea but the install failed. Wireless support is my biggest grievance with FreeBSD. I used a wireless NIC on OpenBSD 3.3 fine yesterday.

So, I decided to replace the failed FreeBSD install with NetBSD 1.6.1. I got the OS installed but found it to be quirky. It works fine, but it's got its own peculiarities that separates it from FreeBSD. For example, I installed "everything," but OpenSSH was not installed by default. In fact, nothing was listening by default. What is this, OpenBSD? Not even OpenBSD is so draconian. The install process also doesn't give an easy way to configure networking. I added the appropriate entries to /etc/rc.conf because it uses the same format I know from FreeBSD.

Thanks to the official documentation, I was able to get going. If it weren't for Google, I wouldn't know I have to use CTRL-ALT-F4 to switch to terminal 4, rather than ALT-4 like most UNIX OS'. I also found the NetBSD package system installs software into places like /usr/pkg/bin/ rather than /usr/local/bin. NetBSD looks to be picky about licenses too. Here's what I saw when trying to install OpenSSH from /usr/pkgsrc/security/openssh:

===> openssl-0.9.6l has unacceptable license: fee-based-commercial-use.

===>     To build this package, add this line to your /etc/mk.conf:

===>     ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES+=fee-based-commercial-use

I made the change and OpenSSH installed fine. I had trouble figuring out why the /usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/sshd script wouldn't work properly, so I ended up enabling sshd via a 'sshd="YES"' line rc.conf. I then removed the unneeded OpenSSH, OpenSSL, and Perl packages. I was sad to see though that my wireless NIC still didn't work. In any case, every BSD is a little different, so that's why I'm trying NetBSD.

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