Monday, December 22, 2008

Undelete Snooping Fun


Alright, I have a confession to make..

One of my guilty pleasures in life, is to take USB drives that coworkers, friends, and family leave laying around and examine their contents. Not the contents that they KNOW are there, I'm more excited by what they have deleted. Using the free windows tool, FreeUndelete, you can very quickly and easily view and restore deleted content from any NTFS or FAT formatted drive. Can usually find some interesting things.

All well and good. But of course my compulsive snooping side can't stop there. I also like to keep a cheap 100 Baht, all-in-one USB memory card reader handy. I will then temporarily swipe the memory cards from digital cameras and mobile phones. As it turns out, most of these devices use a FAT formatted file system as well. It is absolutely AMAZING what you can find on these cards!

Moral of the story,

A.) most people will go out of thier way to protect or remove embarassing content from their PC. Most people don't think twice about these other devices. Makes for an interesting (and entertaining) "attack" vector.

B.) Maybe its time that digital camera manufacturers, mobile phone makers, and the lot, start offering "secure delete" options on their devices?

Blog Personality


I came across this post over on the Bungling Sys Admin Blog (does this mean this is a post about a post about a post about a post about a site??), that points to a tool called Typealyzer. This tool analyzes the writing style of your blog in an attempt to determine your personality type.

I let it analyze Monkey - House, and here is what it had to say about me:

INTJ - The Scientists

The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be pshysically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communcating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use conrete examples. Since they are extremly good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.


So, folks that know me, what do you think? Sound like me?

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Blog Disclaimer

Due to unexpected corporate pressures, I feel compelled to add this disclaimer to my blog. All though it's nothing but a blatant restatement of the obvious, here it goes:

This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, past or present. Additionally, this blog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my own personal opinion.

Feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’m completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever (abusive, profane, rude, or anonymous comments) - so keep it polite, please.

In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time. I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of the various thoughts running around my brain (see banner graphic), and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today.

Additional disclaimer, most of the verbiage in this disclaimer has been borrowed from various other sources. :)

Monday, November 03, 2008

Barracuda RBL - Open to Public

Ran across this announcement from Barracuda on Mike Rothman's blog and a coworker also pointed it out to me. Barracuda has made their DNSRBL publicly available on the Barracuda Central website .

Basically the way it works is that queries are crafted as the inverse IP address following by .b.barracudacentral.org. So, for example, if you had a mail server with the IP address of if you wanted to check if your mail server with the IP address 131.107.1.71, was listed in the Barracuda RBL, you would reverse the IP address (71.1.107.131), append .b.barracudacentral.org (71.1.107.131.b.barracudacentral.org), and do an nslookup of that hostname.

If your server is NOT listed in the BRBL, nslookup would return similiar to:

** server can't find 71.1.107.131.b.barracudacentral.org: NXDOMAIN

If your server IS listed in the BRBL, nslookup would return similiar to:

Name: 71.1.107.131.b.barracudacentral.org Address: 127.0.0.2

All IP's listed in the BRBL will return an A record of 127.0.0.2 for the queried hostname.

So, to use this BRBL to help identify spam, all you need to do is visit the site, register for an account, provide a list of the DNS servers that your mailserver will use, and add it to the RBL configuration of you mailserver. Barracuda Central will send you an verification email with a link you must click

Example SpamAssassin configuration (unverified):

# URL: http://www.barracudacentral.org/rbl/
header __RCVD_IN_BRBL eval:check_rbl('brbl', 'b.barracudacentral.org')
describe __RCVD_IN_BRBL received via a relay in b.barracudacentral.org
header RCVD_IN_BRBL_RELAY eval:check_rbl_sub('brbl', '127.0.0.2')
tflags RCVD_IN_BRBL_RELAY net
describe RCVD_IN_BRBL_RELAY received via a relay rated as poor by Barracuda
score RCVD_IN_BRBL_RELAY 1.00


There are unconfirmed rumors that bb.barracudacentral.org have been reserved for SpamAssassin users and that using "bb" in lieu of "b" does not require registration. I was able to use both without registration, so your mileage may vary.

Although the Barracuda Central site has some pretty decent lookup tools to check the status of IP addresses, they are limited to a single address and require a CAPTCHA challenge for every lookup.

So, I wrote a quick (and very dirty) perl script to enumerate a netblock and check each IP against the blacklist:

--------CUT---------

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Net::DNS;
use Net::IP;

my $network = $ARGV[0];
if($network !~ /^\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+\/\d+$/)
{
print "Usage: $0 x.x.x.x/x\n";
print "Where x.x.x.x/x is the network to examine\n";
exit;
}

my $res = Net::DNS::Resolver->new;

my $IP= new Net::IP($network) or die("Unable to create network object for $network\n");

do
{
my $target_IP = join('.', reverse split(/\./, $IP->ip())).".b.barracudacentral.org";
my $org_ip = $IP->ip();
my $query = $res->query("$target_IP", "A");

if ($query) {
foreach my $rr ($query->answer) {
next unless $rr->type eq "A";
print "ALERT!!! $org_ip is BLACKLISTED!!! - Returned ($target_IP : ", $rr->rdatastr, ")\n";
}
} else {
print "$org_ip = Not Listed. - ($target_IP : ", $res->errorstring.")\n";
}

} while (++$IP);

--------CUT---------

Because we know that 127.0.0.2 is included in the list, we can run a simple test with the 127.0.0.0/30 netblock. Expected output should look something like this:

$ ./BRBL.pl 127.0.0.0/30
127.0.0.0 = Not Listed. - (0.0.0.127.b.barracudacentral.org : NXDOMAIN)

127.0.0.1 = Not Listed. - (1.0.0.127.b.barracudacentral.org : NXDOMAIN)

ALERT!!! 127.0.0.2 is BLACKLISTED!!! - Returned (2.0.0.127.b.barracudacentral.org : 127.0.0.2)

127.0.0.3 = Not Listed. - (3.0.0.127.b.barracudacentral.org : NXDOMAIN)


Hat's off to Barracuda for giving something back to the community.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

(IN) Secure Magazine Issue 16

Just a quick heads up to let you know that the newest issue of (IN) Secure Magazine has been published.

This issue has an interesting article regarding SCM (software configuration management), security, and how they apply to the Japan market/ workforce. The author touches on some interesting points/ challenges that most American companies never have to deal with.

ShmooCon 2008 Presentations - ONLINE!


I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else, but it looks like at least some of the ShmooCon 2008 presentations are now available on their website.


ShmooCon 2008 Presentations

Hopefully the videos won't be too far behind!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Barracuda Spam "Firewall" Drowns in The Ping River

During the course of an average day's work, I often run across numerous IT and security products that quite frankly, belong in the garbage. When I run across these products, I often joke with my coworkers that the fix for the problem product, is to remove it and throw in the Ping River which flows right through the heart of town here. Therefore, in honor of this running joke, I have decided to start a new section on the Monkey House blog where I can draw special attention to these garbage products. I call it "Bottom of the Ping River", the only real place that these products belong. A sidebar has been added to keep a running list. Think of it as a wall of shame of sorts.

At the top of my list to toss into the river, is the Barracuda Spam "Firewall". The product in and of itself is not actually too bad. Its fairly tolerable, now ever its support team is not. Barracuda support could easily be replaced with a couple of monkeys pressing a random solution generator button. Everytime I have contacted them, it has been one random solution after another, with the most recent being instructions to rebuild the appliance! Normally I could live with a lackluster support team for a product and make every attempt to troubleshoot and resolve the issue myself. However, Barracuda does NOT allow its customers to have the root login or ssh access for the device that they paid for. Let that sink in for a second. As the author mentions in this excellent article, "I wouldn't trust everyone at Microsoft to have the only Administrator account to my Exchange server, so why would I trust Barracuda Networks to have the only root password to my SF Appliance?"

Just for kicks, I decided to open a Barracuda Support Ticket and request SSH access. Here is the response I received from the Barracuda Support Monkey:

Thank you for contacting Barracuda Networks. We can not provide you with SSH credentials. In order to have support access to any Barracuda Device you need to be a Barracuda employee or have gone through certified training to do so. The firmware and information on the Barracuda units are strictly Barracuda property. We do not allow anyone to have access unless they have gone through our Barracuda certified training and pass. If you are interested in this training and would like to know more, please contact your Barracuda Sales person.

So essentially, in order to gain access to the device we have already paid for, we must pay Barracuda FURTHER for training?? I'll pass. And for that Barracuda, you must shall now meet your ultimate demise at the Bottom of The Ping River. ....R.I.P.


***UPDATE***

Disclaimer:

This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, past or present. Additionally, this blog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my own personal opinion.

Feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’m completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever (abusive, profane, rude, or anonymous comments) - so keep it polite, please.

In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time. I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of the various thoughts running around my brain (see banner graphic), and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Sawat Dee Krap! - (I Am Still Alive)

Sawat Deep Krap (Hello) from Thailand! I am alive and well here in Thailand. To the left, is a breathtaking view of my new home from the mountain top.

I have purposely taken a few months hiatus from blogging to settle into my new job and adjust to my new life 10,000 miles away. As of today, I plan to resume regular blogging activities. I've already got a few blogs written out on paper that I have been saving for some time now. :)

Over the next couple months, my blogs will start to examine some of the differences that exist between the security mindsets of the US and that of companies in south east Asia. The Monkey House blogs will also start to containing more view points from the system administrator and developer standpoints, as they relate to security. Think of this as more of a security view from "down in the trenches", which coincides with my new roles and responsibilities here with my new company. Stay tuned...