Re:securing networks
on
Hardening Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I originally got Hardening Linux out of the library, and liked it enough to buy it after I renewed it twice. I think it's a pretty good desktop reference and is quite informative. It's fairly easy to follow, straightforward, and just plain useful.
I also purchased Hardening Apache, although I haven't had a chance to make use of it.
Valid points except that the rest of the world has a lot to lose by severing access/losing compatibility to/with the United States, whereas the United States has relatively little to lose.
If the rest of the world disconnected, I would imagine all I would notice is the drop in spamassasin processing and logwatch flagging. The fact of the matter is, they don't bring a whole lot to the table (excluding bbc, the register, etc.). I say, good riddance.
I too will wait. I'm holding out for the chips with the new virtualization instructions and Xen 3. Dual core is nice but better virtualization is more important to me at this point.
Doesn't matter where you get it or if you have it as long as you deliver what you say you are going to deliver. Many, many things are sold before they exist, hardly fraud.
I have been served by two cable companies with dual infrastructure for several years (Comcast and Millenium Digital Media) and neither has gone out of business. Verizon just got done installing the FiOS infrastructure. If I change providers I can get digital cable with HBO, Showtime, and Starz, plus cable internet access at ~3mbps for $60/month for twelve months. FiOS isn't available yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to get a better deal when it is available from either cable company or from Verizon.
I'd imagine Verizon didn't decide to lay fiber without some kind of cost-benifit analysis, so they must think that it is profitable. Millenium must have done the same thing before they laid the cable to became a second cable provider in the late 1990's.
It's definitely possible for multiple providers to run dual infrastructure and compete, and in the end the consumer benefits. We used to have regular downtime with Comcast, but since we were able to switch providers, they have greatly improved the service quality, and the rates have come down.
I'm just glad to see that the musuems are finally getting some new stuff. I probably go in every 5-7 years since I'm only a half hour or so outside of the city, and for the most part the content is static and nothing really changes.
I'd say the best trip (most interesting) to DC I ever took was when I went to the House to watch the impeachment proceedings for Clinton. They used to allow anyone into the upper deck seating above the house with a pass from your congressman. I don't think they still do that after 9/11 though.
I ran into a great example of quality assurance the other day.
The gym I go to had the rubber flooring in the weight room replace about a year ago with a newer rubber gym flooring. The old flooring was in place for years and years without a problem. Within 9 months, the new floor was tearing apart in various parts of the weight room.
The president of the flooring company came out to inspect the damage, because he obviously didn't believe it over the phone. He concluded that the damage was caused by people dropping weights on the floor. Solution, don't drop weights on the floor.
Anyone that has been in a gym for a bit of time knows that this solution is unaceptable, the flooring is not of sufficient quality to do the job it was sold for. From where I'm sitting, both my gym and nano owners are paying the price of being an early adopter. The problem will get fixed in later revisions, but they are already SOL.
In 1920, the last time the UK has used mustard gas. Against a military, not a civilian populace. Perhaps that is why there are now treaties in place that prohibit the use of these chemical agents now.
Not to mention that the long term effects of mustard gas were largely unknown at that point (say for instance the DNA altering, birth defect causing, carcinogen variety), and the gas was used to slow down a force and make them unwilling to fight, per your original quote.
Additionally, it was used in a military context, not in a civilian village.
So in response to your question, it is not OK to use chemical weapons by anyone, now that long term effects are known, and treaties are in place to prevent usage.
As far as Saddam: After the Kurds supported Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein retaliated, razing villages and attacking peasants with chemical weapons.
And as for the race card you are oh so elequently trying to play, the Kurds are a Sunni Muslim people with their own religion and culture that routinely are repressed by fellow middle easterner's, including the gassings by Saddam. Perhaps you should be more concerned with stopping crazy dictators from gassing an ethnic group then implying that only whites are allowed to use chemical weapons.
Finally, keep in mind that the political climate is very different today than it was in the 20's, as is medicine and technology. Defending Saddam Husein gassing the Kurds is akin to defending Hitler gassing the Jews.
You do know who the Iraq Survey Group, the one that wrote that are right?
From wikipedia: The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the coalition after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs developed by Iraq under the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It consisted of a 1,400-member team organized by The Pentagon and CIA to hunt for Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD.
The ISG was made up of 1,200 members of Australian, British and American experts. David Kay, a prominent U.S. scientist who searched for WMD after the first Gulf War, was chosen to head the group.
I am more inclined to believe the final report, written by the group that was sent in to investigate, than the NY Times. For the record, the NY Times is frequently refuted as the single most liberally biased paper in the country.
Winston Churchill is still alive and running the war in Iraq. Hold the presses.
A quick reading of that quote would seem to indicate that Churchill was referring to using agents that would make people uncomforatable without long term effects. If I recall correctly, a good bit of mustard gas will attack you're lungs, and in you're dying breaths, you'll be coughing up chunks of said lungs. Mustard gas is also a carcinogen and can damage the DNA of exposed cells. I don't think that describes Churchill's intentions, based on the quote you have provided.
However:
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used mustard gas on Kurds in northern Iraq during a 1987-88 campaign known as the Anfal. The worst attack occurred in March 1988 in the Kurdish village of Halabja; a combination of chemical agents including mustard gas, sarin, and possibly VX killed 5,000 people and left 65,000 others facing severe skin and respiratory diseases, abnormal rates of cancer and birth defects, and a devastated environment. Experts say Saddam also launched about 280 smaller-scale chemical attacks against the Kurds. - Not written or researched by me.
Or by a Rio player. I've been carrying mine in my pocket for a couple of years with car keys, headphones, and coins, and the thing still looks brand new, without a single scratch on the display or the body.
Nano owners have every reason to be pissed, my cell phone goes through the same thing, and it looks just fine.
"Two weeks ago, U.S. military units discovered mustard gas that was used as part of an IED. Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) -- a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction -- and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."
They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. Iraq also failed to then account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas. That, combined with the shells, totaled about 80 tons of unaccounted for mustard gas."
"It was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.
The round was an old "binary-type" shell in which two chemicals held in separate sections are mixed after firing to produce sarin, Kimmitt said.
Iraqi Scientist: You Will Find More
Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam's regime,... he believes many similar weapons stockpiled by the former regime were either buried underground or transported to Syria. He noted that the airport where the device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad from the Syrian border.
George said the finding likely will be the first in a series of discoveries of such weapons.
"Saddam is the type who will not store those materials in a military warehouse. He's gonna store them either underground, or, as I said, lots of them have gone west to Syria and are being brought back with the insurgencies," George [said]. "It is difficult to look in areas that are not obvious to the military's eyes.
"I'm sure they're going to find more once time passes," he continued, saying one year is not enough for the survey group or the military to find the weapons.
Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin.
"I think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a nerve gas, it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did... it's not as dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister" agents with other gases and substances, George said.
Because when everything is delivered over IP you can pick whatever provider you want. Your cable monopoly is in place because the only provider that can service the lines is the one that owns them.
Except that the way it generally works is that private companies run everything including the network, but they don't own it so if they are doing a bad job, they can be easily replaced.
a) Infrastructure is traditionally a public expense (see the road system) or a few people build a ton of it, lock the rest out, and charge every few miles.
b) We are rapidly going to an IP based market for all services. My phones now run over IP, in the next couple of years I'm sure we'll see a good IPTV offering when the Internet speeds get high enough. Intrusion would be allowing one company to own the line to your house, and only provide their TV, Phone, and Voice services without competition (i.e. Only providing QoS on their products).
c) I do not care about the poor. There, I said it. I don't care if the poor can't buy a laptop. I don't care if the poor don't need wireless internet. I do not care. And here is why. If you base all of your decisions on "will this be good for the poor" then you don't get anywhere. Building and maintaining roads isn't good for the poor, but I'm pretty sure we need those. More importantly, the poor aren't going to be the ones paying for it anyway, they're poor. Government spending doesn't always have to focus on the lowest common denominator. Everybody pays taxes, everyone should benefit equally (welfare does nothing for me, anybody in my family, or anyone I know for instance, but that doesn't mean we should eliminate it totally).
d) The government already monitors the Internet. Ever heard of Carnivore and its replacement project? What about the Patriot Act? What do you think the NSA uses all of those supercomputers for? (this is all idle speculation, but they really can't do anything more with government owned infrastructure than without)
Just because the government pays for and builds the infrastructure does not mean that free enterprise is eliminated. On the contrary, if they mandate certain things (QoS for VoIP, IPTV), they can allow private companies (say a Baby Bell, they do have a lot of experience) to maintain the network (just for Internet) with short term contracts (1-5 years) so that if they are doing a bad job, they can be replaced with a competitor (say through a, I don't know, Democratic vote), because the government owns all the infrastructure. Further, the other services that the Internet provides (TV, Phone) can be sold by ANYONE, ANYWHERE because of the built in QoS. Of course, the Comcast's of the world have a leg up because they are established and have buying power, but because they don't own the line, they're not the only game in town.
In short, the government builds it and pays for it, private enterprise runs it to spec, or is replaced. Any company can provide any IP based service with assured quality.
Slashdot Mirror
I originally got Hardening Linux out of the library, and liked it enough to buy it after I renewed it twice. I think it's a pretty good desktop reference and is quite informative. It's fairly easy to follow, straightforward, and just plain useful.
I also purchased Hardening Apache, although I haven't had a chance to make use of it.
mov ecx, COUNT
;IIRC this is the underlying assembly
;construct for looping
;
;excluding conditional jumps
LOOP_START:
LOOP LOOP_START
Except the cable companies have sunk tons of money into DVR's. I don't think they would like to give up the investment.
Valid points except that the rest of the world has a lot to lose by severing access/losing compatibility to/with the United States, whereas the United States has relatively little to lose.
If the rest of the world disconnected, I would imagine all I would notice is the drop in spamassasin processing and logwatch flagging. The fact of the matter is, they don't bring a whole lot to the table (excluding bbc, the register, etc.). I say, good riddance.
We're not demanding that Germany turn over the original printing press. We've made our own.
I too will wait. I'm holding out for the chips with the new virtualization instructions and Xen 3. Dual core is nice but better virtualization is more important to me at this point.
Doesn't matter where you get it or if you have it as long as you deliver what you say you are going to deliver. Many, many things are sold before they exist, hardly fraud.
Except this has less than nothing to do with ICANN and DNS...
I have been served by two cable companies with dual infrastructure for several years (Comcast and Millenium Digital Media) and neither has gone out of business. Verizon just got done installing the FiOS infrastructure. If I change providers I can get digital cable with HBO, Showtime, and Starz, plus cable internet access at ~3mbps for $60/month for twelve months. FiOS isn't available yet, but I'm sure I'll be able to get a better deal when it is available from either cable company or from Verizon.
I'd imagine Verizon didn't decide to lay fiber without some kind of cost-benifit analysis, so they must think that it is profitable. Millenium must have done the same thing before they laid the cable to became a second cable provider in the late 1990's.
It's definitely possible for multiple providers to run dual infrastructure and compete, and in the end the consumer benefits. We used to have regular downtime with Comcast, but since we were able to switch providers, they have greatly improved the service quality, and the rates have come down.
shh...
don't talk about usenet.
I'm not rich. My taxes went down.
I'm just glad to see that the musuems are finally getting some new stuff. I probably go in every 5-7 years since I'm only a half hour or so outside of the city, and for the most part the content is static and nothing really changes.
I'd say the best trip (most interesting) to DC I ever took was when I went to the House to watch the impeachment proceedings for Clinton. They used to allow anyone into the upper deck seating above the house with a pass from your congressman. I don't think they still do that after 9/11 though.
I ran into a great example of quality assurance the other day.
The gym I go to had the rubber flooring in the weight room replace about a year ago with a newer rubber gym flooring. The old flooring was in place for years and years without a problem. Within 9 months, the new floor was tearing apart in various parts of the weight room.
The president of the flooring company came out to inspect the damage, because he obviously didn't believe it over the phone. He concluded that the damage was caused by people dropping weights on the floor. Solution, don't drop weights on the floor.
Anyone that has been in a gym for a bit of time knows that this solution is unaceptable, the flooring is not of sufficient quality to do the job it was sold for. From where I'm sitting, both my gym and nano owners are paying the price of being an early adopter. The problem will get fixed in later revisions, but they are already SOL.
Check your math. $100 x 500,000 = $50 million
Of course he's bullshitting, he's a politician.
Given that list I would say he is rather staunch...
In 1920, the last time the UK has used mustard gas. Against a military, not a civilian populace. Perhaps that is why there are now treaties in place that prohibit the use of these chemical agents now.
Not to mention that the long term effects of mustard gas were largely unknown at that point (say for instance the DNA altering, birth defect causing, carcinogen variety), and the gas was used to slow down a force and make them unwilling to fight, per your original quote.
Additionally, it was used in a military context, not in a civilian village.
So in response to your question, it is not OK to use chemical weapons by anyone, now that long term effects are known, and treaties are in place to prevent usage.
As far as Saddam: After the Kurds supported Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein retaliated, razing villages and attacking peasants with chemical weapons.
And as for the race card you are oh so elequently trying to play, the Kurds are a Sunni Muslim people with their own religion and culture that routinely are repressed by fellow middle easterner's, including the gassings by Saddam. Perhaps you should be more concerned with stopping crazy dictators from gassing an ethnic group then implying that only whites are allowed to use chemical weapons.
Finally, keep in mind that the political climate is very different today than it was in the 20's, as is medicine and technology. Defending Saddam Husein gassing the Kurds is akin to defending Hitler gassing the Jews.
Does anyone know if this is a monitored action item anywhere yet? If it's not, it should be.
Fair enough, I will read it, I don't have the time at the moment so I will refrain from discussing this any further at this time.
You do know who the Iraq Survey Group, the one that wrote that are right?
From wikipedia: The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the coalition after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs developed by Iraq under the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It consisted of a 1,400-member team organized by The Pentagon and CIA to hunt for Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD.
The ISG was made up of 1,200 members of Australian, British and American experts. David Kay, a prominent U.S. scientist who searched for WMD after the first Gulf War, was chosen to head the group.
I am more inclined to believe the final report, written by the group that was sent in to investigate, than the NY Times. For the record, the NY Times is frequently refuted as the single most liberally biased paper in the country.
Winston Churchill is still alive and running the war in Iraq. Hold the presses.
A quick reading of that quote would seem to indicate that Churchill was referring to using agents that would make people uncomforatable without long term effects. If I recall correctly, a good bit of mustard gas will attack you're lungs, and in you're dying breaths, you'll be coughing up chunks of said lungs. Mustard gas is also a carcinogen and can damage the DNA of exposed cells. I don't think that describes Churchill's intentions, based on the quote you have provided.
However:
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used mustard gas on Kurds in northern Iraq during a 1987-88 campaign known as the Anfal. The worst attack occurred in March 1988 in the Kurdish village of Halabja; a combination of chemical agents including mustard gas, sarin, and possibly VX killed 5,000 people and left 65,000 others facing severe skin and respiratory diseases, abnormal rates of cancer and birth defects, and a devastated environment. Experts say Saddam also launched about 280 smaller-scale chemical attacks against the Kurds. - Not written or researched by me.
No WMDs. No WMDs. Watch a little more CNN.
Or by a Rio player. I've been carrying mine in my pocket for a couple of years with car keys, headphones, and coins, and the thing still looks brand new, without a single scratch on the display or the body.
Nano owners have every reason to be pissed, my cell phone goes through the same thing, and it looks just fine.
Just so long as you don't consider sarin or mustard gas to be WMDs. Perhaps you should read through the Iraqi Survey Group's findings, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2 004/isg-final-report/.
... he believes many similar weapons stockpiled by the former regime were either buried underground or transported to Syria. He noted that the airport where the device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad from the Syrian border.
... it's not as dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister" agents with other gases and substances, George said.
Article Exerpts pertaining to chem weapons:
"Two weeks ago, U.S. military units discovered mustard gas that was used as part of an IED. Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) -- a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction -- and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."
They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. Iraq also failed to then account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas. That, combined with the shells, totaled about 80 tons of unaccounted for mustard gas."
"It was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.
The round was an old "binary-type" shell in which two chemicals held in separate sections are mixed after firing to produce sarin, Kimmitt said.
Iraqi Scientist: You Will Find More
Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam's regime,
George said the finding likely will be the first in a series of discoveries of such weapons.
"Saddam is the type who will not store those materials in a military warehouse. He's gonna store them either underground, or, as I said, lots of them have gone west to Syria and are being brought back with the insurgencies," George [said]. "It is difficult to look in areas that are not obvious to the military's eyes.
"I'm sure they're going to find more once time passes," he continued, saying one year is not enough for the survey group or the military to find the weapons.
Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin.
"I think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a nerve gas, it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did
Because when everything is delivered over IP you can pick whatever provider you want. Your cable monopoly is in place because the only provider that can service the lines is the one that owns them.
Except that the way it generally works is that private companies run everything including the network, but they don't own it so if they are doing a bad job, they can be easily replaced.
a) Infrastructure is traditionally a public expense (see the road system) or a few people build a ton of it, lock the rest out, and charge every few miles.
b) We are rapidly going to an IP based market for all services. My phones now run over IP, in the next couple of years I'm sure we'll see a good IPTV offering when the Internet speeds get high enough. Intrusion would be allowing one company to own the line to your house, and only provide their TV, Phone, and Voice services without competition (i.e. Only providing QoS on their products).
c) I do not care about the poor. There, I said it. I don't care if the poor can't buy a laptop. I don't care if the poor don't need wireless internet. I do not care. And here is why. If you base all of your decisions on "will this be good for the poor" then you don't get anywhere. Building and maintaining roads isn't good for the poor, but I'm pretty sure we need those. More importantly, the poor aren't going to be the ones paying for it anyway, they're poor. Government spending doesn't always have to focus on the lowest common denominator. Everybody pays taxes, everyone should benefit equally (welfare does nothing for me, anybody in my family, or anyone I know for instance, but that doesn't mean we should eliminate it totally).
d) The government already monitors the Internet. Ever heard of Carnivore and its replacement project? What about the Patriot Act? What do you think the NSA uses all of those supercomputers for? (this is all idle speculation, but they really can't do anything more with government owned infrastructure than without)
Just because the government pays for and builds the infrastructure does not mean that free enterprise is eliminated. On the contrary, if they mandate certain things (QoS for VoIP, IPTV), they can allow private companies (say a Baby Bell, they do have a lot of experience) to maintain the network (just for Internet) with short term contracts (1-5 years) so that if they are doing a bad job, they can be replaced with a competitor (say through a, I don't know, Democratic vote), because the government owns all the infrastructure. Further, the other services that the Internet provides (TV, Phone) can be sold by ANYONE, ANYWHERE because of the built in QoS. Of course, the Comcast's of the world have a leg up because they are established and have buying power, but because they don't own the line, they're not the only game in town.
In short, the government builds it and pays for it, private enterprise runs it to spec, or is replaced. Any company can provide any IP based service with assured quality.