L0pht Gives FAQ of @Stake Merger

Duke of URL writes "The gray hat hacker think tank L0pht Heavy Industries has provided a FAQ list on their recent merger with @Stake. It sounds like there will be a few more changes than I personally previously thought, (i.e. Web site changes, etc.) but the good news is that L0pht 'will continue to act as a Consumer Reports style organization in posting our general findings through analysis and evaluation as general customers reviewing software.' Also Hacker News Network will still be run by L0pht/@Stake and will receive more time and resources. "

Comments

Re:OT: "white hat" hacker training material?

[Jonathan White]

Well unfortunately there is no one book to sum up breaking into systems that is along the lines of Applied Cryptography.

Some books to get you on the right direction follow:

1. A good C book if you do not already know C. I personally learned with C Programming, A Modern Approach, it's a good book. Knowledge of C is essential because you will need it to write your test exploits and most of the following books assume knowledge of C.

2. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment and a good OS theory book such as Operating Systems by Stallings or "the dinosaur book". This is necessary so that you understand the both the nature and implementation of modern operating systems.

3. TCP/IP Illustrated Volumes 1 and 2. These are necessary so that you understand TCP/IP at a very low level. Most attacks involve a network and that network usually runs TCP/IP, a lower level network book covering such topics as Ethernet may be necessary as well.

4. The Tao of the Buffer Overflow by Aleph1. This can be found in the Bugtraq archives. Stack based overflows remain the most common method of compromise (besides social engineering). This article does an excellent job of explaining how to exploit and find them. Dildog wrote an NT version for the l0pht which you may also need.

5. w00w00 published an article on heap based overflows which you may need.

6. A general Internet + Systems security book, O'Reilly has one I have heard good things about, I can't recall it's title. Note however that a general security book is not enough.

7. Various academic pubications and thesis papers. These can be an invaluable resource for descriptions of more esoteric attacks not covered in published books. These also have the benefit of assuming a much higher level of knowledge than most papers/websites/books for dummies.

8. OS Specific docs and books. In order to secure or break an OS you need to know everything about that OS.

9. Mailing lists such as Bugtraq and OS specific security lists will provide a history of previous vulnerabilities and solutions.

Security is a very broad and difficult subject requiring its practitioners to be skilled in many different areas. I hope this is a good transition and you enjoy your new post.

Cheers

Re:please post the faq if you get in

[Ranger Rick]

It's up at my site (defiance.darktech.org/merger.html) -- please try not to hammer it, it's a lowly 300k DSL line :)

Consumer Reports?

[Signal 11]

Hmm, that's an interesting image. Let's see, the typical table of contents for such a "consumer report" for security might look something like this...

Cover: More bugs found in W2K. Microsoft denies problem exists and says they're working to fix it as quickly as possible.
MacOS: Most secure? Performance details p. 30
AOL users swindled (again)- passwords leak out by the thousand.
AOL 5.0 Upgrade of Death: Marketing ploy or gross incompetence?
Slashdot source released: Malda's e-mail was out for a few weeks, thus bypassing the mandatory "24 hour wait per request" problem.
L0pht drops SuperMegaCorp's pants with another vulnerability.
The Press: Getting it wrong again. HNN goes inside to reveal why "they didn't get it" again.
Buffer Overflow found in Cup 'O' Noodles. (After 2:30, the thing spills all over the inside of the microwave).

Also inside: A feature on Kevin Mitnick - Martyr or idiot, and an in-depth review of Emacs as an Operating System.