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UC Berkeley Cleaning up its Security Act
Bob Brown writes "UC Berkeley recently issued a scathing self-assessment of its IT department, which has been under fire in the wake of a couple of high profile security lapses at the school. NetworkWorld has a review of what the school's top networking guy says is being done to both secure and strengthen UC Berkeley's computer networks."
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improve. END ARTICLE
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Here's the article text, moderators, please mod the parent into the ground!
Securing UC Berkeley's network
School looks to shore up security in wake of breaches.
Linda Leung,Network World,04/24/06
The University of California at Berkeley has made a name for itself in networking, with innovations such as Unix, Berkeley Internet Domain Name, Smart Dust and SETI@home. But the school has made headlines over the past few years for some things of which it is less proud, namely a couple of security breaches (a stolen laptop containing personal information on graduates and a compromised database of California residents).
At the start of this year, the university published a scathing self-study of its Information Systems and Technology department. It acknowledged the school's advanced IT network and talented professionals but recommended radical changes to the IT department's governance and structure (read the report).
Clifford Frost, director of Berkeley's Communications and Network Services (CNS), recently spoke with Network World Senior Online News Editor Linda Leung about what the university is doing to ensure that when people think of the school, they think "innovation," not "infiltration."
How has IT evolved at the university?
It's been haphazard. In the case of the network, it's been pretty organized. Back in the '80s, there were campuswide committees that said networking is going to be important so let's start building it up now. The campus financial and administrative systems are pretty advanced. But campus student systems [such as online registration and course catalogs] are less well-funded and organized because there has not been a single high-level sponsor. This is one of key things the campus is open to addressing in the reorganization.
Also: What makes Harvard's net tick
What is your security plan?
Every networked device has to have its operating system kept up to date with security patches - Windows 95 is not allowed unless you buy a separate firewall device and stick it in front of [Windows 95]. There are microscopes controlled by old operating systems - [the owners] have to put a firewall in front of them. We have software that people can use for free - they don't have to buy their own firewall or anti-virus software.
Having a policy only goes so far. McAfee's Foundstone scanner allows us to scan the network continuously for vulnerabilities. [If something is found] we tell [the device owners] to fix it or we turn off their access. Departments can log in and scan their own nets.
How else do you secure the network?
We do intrusion detection at the border of the campus network and more and more inside the network. We monitor to detect when systems have been broken into or are being broken into or about to launch an attack, and we can turn them off. We use McAfee IntruShield Snort, Nessus and Bro Intrusion Detection System. [Intrusion detection] is a big issue because we've had some pretty big security breaches on campus [see stories hereand here]. There is a big thrust in getting people to encrypt data on their desktop or laptop.
How do you get ahead of the security challenges?
The latest thing we're doing is getting people on campus to audit their systems, and the recommendation is to remove [sensitive i
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Berkeley UNIX (the original BSD) was full of security holes. It shipped with such beauties like being able to get a shell by typing the right command at the SMTP server and multiple buffer overflow bugs in just about every server and command line program. And many people knew about it, both at Berkeley and elsewhere, but nobody cared much until the Morris worm. Apparently, while the world has moved forward, Berkeley still isn't taking security all that seriously.
It sounds like you might be making a joke about this one but at my university (University of Warwick, uk) they had the worlds most lax attitude to security it was insane. There were several huge security leaks and no one seemed to question why they weren't using and changing secure passwords... someone script kiddie broke into the main server (taking all of our private info stored on it) using nothing more than a simple brute force crack... it gave in so easily because they'd used a word from a standard dictionary... I figure it would have taken no more than 60 seconds to get in. The moral of this and the UC Berkeley story is this; don't trust a university IT dept with any of your private information, store nothing on their computers, use a different password for the log on there and for everything else (if you insist on using the same one everywhere)
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
You know, having so many rules might narrow down the crack time as well, if you know what they are. Obviously if you can get a huge dictionary, you won't need to try any combination of characters with a word in it. You won't need anything less than 8 characters, and you'll have to try at least one capital letter and a number, but most people will probably use two. People tend to like symmetry even in their passwords because it makes it easier to remember one half of something and then just spit it out again backwards. The non-alphanumeric character is kinda the stickler though. My best guess is that it will either be in the middle of the password or at the very end... probably by someone getting frustrated on their 10th attempt to set the password and finally figuring out what a non-alphanumeric key is.
But I'm not saying it's not a good idea. I just wanted to point out that the more rules you have to make your passwords secure, the less secure they may become.
You're nothing; like me.
You'd think that since BSD comes from Berkeley, it should be a popular OS on campus... Think again. Everyone's #1 choice is: Windows XP.
You go to a (non-CS) computer lab. You login with your SID and password. A new Administrator account is created for you. Go ahead, do whatever you want - when you logout, all your files will be deleted, and everything will be restored to the original state. Completely secure, until you realize... "Duh. I have an administrator account. Why can't I just prevent the computer from restoring everything on logout?".
I reported this to one of the lab workers, and even demonstrated: she logged into her own account, but the desktop background picture said in big red letters, "Caution: This system has been haxx0red". She was pretty shocked, and said she would inform the system administrators.
This was half a year ago... Nothing has changed.
The CS labs are different, though. They run Solaris 9. Security shouldn't be a problem here. Usability is, though. How many of you guys remember what Gnome 2.0 looks like? How about Acrobat Reader 4? I do, unfortunately. And the Slashdot jokes about "^H" suddenly made so much sense...