Linux Security: Reflections on 2002, Eye on 2003

Mirko Zorz writes "Here are the reflections on Linux security in 2002 and predictions for 2003 by Bob Toxen, one of the 162 recognized developers of Berkeley UNIX and author of the acclaimed book "Real World Linux Security" already in its 2nd edition. Read more at Help Net Security."

Comments

Disappointing article

[Gogo Dodo]

That was a rather disappointing article. He only made one Linux-related prediction: that there will be a major Linux virus. Besides that, everything else was generic and not Linux specific.

Re:Disappointing article

[rde]

Think of it as a good sign. It's hard to write extensively on holes that don't exist. Or at least, ones that haven't been found yet. cronned apt jobbies and up2date, etc, mean that even the task up updating for newly-discovered vulnerabilities is easier, so it looks as if for the coming year, the biggest problem will be the users. Plus ca change...

Re:Disappointing article

[Slaven Reitmeier]

The predictions here were consistant with his '7 deadliest sins' which he frequently quotes. In fact, the article is in many ways just a more verbose version of them, with a few specific vulnerabilities thrown in for good measure.

Most of the predictions were "more of the same". I seriously doubt we'll be seeing "a major Cyberterrorism event" though -- I usually expect to hear this from sensationalists, not legitimate security experts. Think Steve Gibson. In fact, the theorized cause of these massive DDoS attacks is supposed to be windows systems, and the Raw Sockets are Evil thread is brought back to mind.

One big unforgivable mistake in the article: there was no bug in DNS -- there was a bug with BIND. Anyone using nameservers or libraries that were not part of BIND were unaffected. The fact that he assumes BIND is the only DNS server in the world is a big mistake, and one of the reasons DJBDNS doesn't get enough airtime.

Overall, I didn't see anything in the article that I didn't already see a hundred other places.

Personally, I'd like to hear what the authors of Hacking Linux Exposed have to say. Their book has a lot more grit and less soft-shoeing over the topics. Real World Linux Security has always been too full of stories and not enough answers for me. (Of course I bought the 2nd edition anyway.)

Near the end, end of honeypots?!

[pr0ntab]

He says that he predicts (and hopes) that the practice of using honeypots, etc. will decrease; that it only serves to illustrate to managers that security will be breached. Thus, we can assume that all sufficiently weak security will be breached eventually, ergo this practice is useless.

He forgets the other valuable feature of honeypots. You can deploy prototype installations and observe the kinds of attacks in the wild, to get a feel for the capabilities of the advisary. These techniques change over time, and that information is invaluable when determining where effort needs to be focused in a security plan for your product.

This short-sightedness casts doubt on some of the other parts of his essay, other than on the obvious points (to us at least, those involving Microsoft, Hollywood, the man keepin us down, blah blah blah)

Re:Damn

[JoeBuck]

Yeah, and I'll bet he gives his credit card to waiters in restaurants all the time. The only time I've ever had someone try to use a credit card number stolen from me, it was a busboy at a local Cambodian restaurant (they caught the guy too).

Security predictions

[ACK!!]

Yeah, people act like only MS can get infected with a virus but there will be a major linux virus soon. It is going to happen. As linux gets more exposure more schmucks will write malicious code designed for busting up linux boxes. It is not like the Unix world is some foolproof world of rock hard servers.

After all, why did linux inherit the Unix concern for security?

Enough old-school unix guys have been bitten by the bad security in telnet and NIS and a half dozen old world Unix services with big nasty security issues.

Sure Bastille linux or RedHat secure server makes decent choice and OpenBSD is locked pretty tight right out of the box. That does not mean that it is impossible to break into those boxes. Just that it is more difficult. All you need is a one-day lag between a security issue posting on Cert and the patch to whatever software you are using coming up for your distro or OS. It can happen to any of us. It will happen to many of us.

The over-confident are always the funniest to watch when their shit hits the fan.

The honeypot thing is interesting. I have always wondered if you really get enough useful information from the attacks to warrant the time put into the systems. Somehow it just smacks of a geeky wanking waste of time. On the other hand, maybe the information from such implementations really make this worth it.

Any comments on this?

Re:Security predictions

[zatz]

I think the executable versions, library versions, and specific configurations of services vary a lot more between Linux boxen than Windows hosts. There is much less of a monoculture problem, so it is more difficult for any single worm to infect a large fraction of hosts.

Still, as Linux slowly gains desktop market space and the level of security awareness of the average user declines, it is conceivable that it will become more hospitable to Nimda/Klez-scale worm epidemics. Also Linux tends to run more services; a Windows 98 box is very difficult to compromise remotely because it has almost no interfaces to subvert. We probably won't be at the same level of susceptibility as Micros~1 platforms for a while, though.

"Worldwide recession"

[Sara Chan]

The article talks about "the worldwide recession". A recession is typically defined as two consecutive quarters (i.e. six months) of negative GDP growth. The Economist gives the most-recent GDP changes data for each of 19 different Western countries (sorry, not free). Only two are negative (Denmark and Norway). The most-recent quarterly GDP change for the the Euro area is +1.3%; for the USA it is +4.0%.

There is a rationalization going on in business IT. This is not a recession at all.