Aug 10, 2010
Sudo and Su Bruteforce 0.1 [sig]
Two years ago I noticed that su and sudo both contain a fatal flaw: administrator passwords. Administrator passwords have found themselves at the core of our security. OpenSSH does not allow root to login by default because on rare occasion administrator passwords can be bruteforced. Nearly all Linux and BSD systems recognize this. Some system administrators still don't recognize this due to business constraints. Users that have insecure passwords can be bruteforced if an attacker knows their name. The common system of first letter and last name or handle as the username gives an attacker a good list of users to bruteforce. How many administrators use the username jsmith? How many administrators use the username admin? Su and sudo may be considered harmful if we consider that usernames can be learned and that passwords can be bruteforced.
Removing the password component, we can compare sudo and su to the Windows Vista and Windows 7 administrator access security model: give a user administrator access when they ask for it. This person must be designated as an administrator by the original owner of the system. This seems obvious and tautological but we have yet to introduce an attacker with two different methods of attack.
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Sept 25, 2008
Japanese spam is a good indicator of text in Japanese language. It is also very good tool for understanding common Japanese speech. Most spam is designed to trick the recipient into e-mail or visiting a site. Unlike English spam, most Japanese spam is extremely well-written, targeted at the net savvy and quite well-educated Japanese audience. Also, since spam filters in Japan can pick out words much quicker (since Japan uses Kanji), spammers are using higher quality spam generators.
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Written Oct 8 - 26, 2008
Research Done Apr 27 - May 25, 2008
Reverse Engineering 1 version 0.1
[sig]
Linux Kernel drivers are very important this year and will continue to be in the coming years. Multiple kernel driver projects are underway and multiple methods are being used to develop them. As a software developer and hacker, I find that reverse engineering is one of the most important methods in writing kernel drivers for devices that currently lack open source drivers. Whether the method is snooping in on communication, brute forcing data, or analysis of driver state, reverse engineering tactics are employed. In this essay I will be reverse engineering a binary kernel driver, which is protected under copyright law as a fair use of copyrighted material. If you feel that I am violating your copyright during the production of this, please feel free to contact me and I will be glad to discuss this. Note however on the other hand that currently several Linux copyright holders consider binary blobs to be violations of their GPL copyright. These issues are connected and yet immaterial at this point. Let's just write the code.
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by Joel R. Voss aka. Javantea
jvoss@altsci.com
June 2, 2008
Can I do base N math without zero? Of course. We just pretend that zero doesn't exist. Let's do base 10 without zero.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11The first thing I notice is that there are only 9 in the first set and no ten. So we end up skipping 10. it becomes a base-9 setup, right? 11 is the 10th number. But 11 means 10 * 1 + 1. If it's base 9 it's 9 * 1 + 1 = 10. Does this make sense?
Thesis: It is possible to create a valid mathematical representation of numbers without the use of zero.
The roman numeral is base 10 without a zero, right?
i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xxThe above does make sense. Each row has 10 and each row makes sense. Read more »
