The DMZ

3:27 AM

0

Q: Advice on selecting programming languages to concentrate on? (2nd year IT security student)

I'm in the process of considering which programming languages I should devote the majority of my coding studies to. I'm a 2nd year CS student, majoring in IT security. What I want to do/work with: Intelligence gathering Relational databases Virus design Snort network IPS Curren...

programming

Off-topic or not?

Stack Exchange

4:07 AM

I dropped a bird and I didn't hear it hit bottom.

Polynomial

7:34 AM

@TerryChia On topic, but TL and NC.

Terry Chia

7:55 AM

@Polynomial Wasn't sure, but i voted to close as well.

I FINALLY got Fedora working on my Macbook Air.

Polynomial

9:20 AM

Ahahahaha

Gilles

10:01 AM

1

Q: SYN Cookies to perform an attack

this is driving me nuts, in my software security class, we have this question, You are the system administrator for a provider that owns a large network (e.g., at least 64,000 IP address). Show how you can use SYN cookies to perform a DOS attack on a web server. I search everywhere, SYN cook...

homework security

sec.se enough for migration here?

Terry Chia

@Gilles Probably yes.

Gilles

I've flagged it for migration

hopefully it'll get a better answer

morning all

@RoryAlsop evening

:-)

11:10 AM

Is the metasploit website down for anyone else right now?

Rory Alsop

@TerryChia can't check from this office, I'm afraid

what does Netcraft say

Terry Chia

11:26 AM

@RoryAlsop oh it's back up. might have been something wrong on my end.

and your office blocks the metasploit website as well?

Rory Alsop

It blocks a lot of things that are generally considered useful to a security professional :-/

Scott Pack

metaploit, exploit-db, cutekittens.tumble.com...

vignesh4303

11:42 AM

@RoryAlsop i m confused where to propose the question for blog ,

Terry Chia

@vignesh4303 check meta.sec.se

@ScottPack tumble.com. is that a new site i should know about?

vignesh4303

@TerryChia thanks mate

Rory Alsop

@vignesh4303 I have added a qotw 38 question

Rory Alsop

12:00 PM

I would guess you are best off submitting it onto the 38 question rather than the 37, as I think the SSL one may get most votes this week

Thomas Pornin

12:35 PM

@Gilles I'm working on it.

Ladadadada

@ThomasPornin You've got something better than "CPU exhaustion"? I had a feeling there would be.

Terry Chia

@ThomasPornin What would it be this time? Two post? Or maybe three?

Thomas Pornin

@Ladadadada I also have the same feeling, so I am working through an answer which should produce a better answer.

Thomas Pornin

1:16 PM

Mmh, my first idea does not work. Searching again.

Scott Pack

2:00 PM

@TerryChia I blame autowreck

Iszi

2:17 PM

@RoryAlsop @JeffFerland @AviD One of you might want to change this, to pull out the URL:

yes exit was changed. when I went to the internet explorer settings. I saw that my homepage was set to thatpornographicsite.com and I had to manually type in my new address like www.google.com — refhat 2 hours ago

Jeff Ferland

2:39 PM

@Iszi I wonder if that's an indirect reference or not. I don't feel like checking to find out.

Iszi

@JeffFerland Neither do I - that's why I suggested just removing it.

Jeff Ferland

It is done.

Rory Alsop

@Iszi i'm not in a position to check either :-)

good call

Jeff Ferland

2:58 PM

48

Computer Security Hacking!

Proposed Q&A site for experts/hobbyists who identify weaknesses in systems/designs, use irregular methods, create undocumented processes, test for weaknesses/methods to subvert IT security, have problems with cited techniques or using inventions specific to this testing.

Currently in commitment.

???

Iszi

@JeffFerland VtC as dupe, I say.

Unfortunately, I don't do enough on A51 to have that kind of rep there.

Just perusing the top 10 or so questions, I don't see a single one that woudn't fit (or not fit, as judged in their definition phase) on our site. However, I see it as more trying to be a hive for black hats - who seem to have issues with the way we handle their sort of questions here.

Rory Alsop

@JeffFerland is this yet another hacking proposal????

Jeff Ferland

@RoryAlsop shrug It'll sort itself out, I guess.

Rory Alsop

Oh - no it is the one that has been altered/hacked about/ flagged as dupe/merged yada yada yada

They have odd spin-offs that are interesting (the repurposing proposal - very MIT in it's interpretation of hacking, ie making stuff do things it wasn't designed to do)

but the core is 99% on topic here

especially as we are getting a bit better at not explicitly calling out black hat questions

Polynomial

0

Q: How is this not a duplicate of IT Security?

Proposal: Computer Security Hacking! We already have the IT Security site, and the current definition of this proposal doesn't really seem to differ all that much from it. Furthermore, all of the example questions would be on topic in IT Security. Some would need some minor tweaks, but nothing m...

technology discussion site-definition

Jeff Ferland

3:09 PM

@Polynomial u guyz d0n't talk bout 1337 h4x. derp.

4

Polynomial

lol

Scott Pack

@Polynomial What's funny is the last time that question was asked Everett came over, copy pasted several of the highest voted questions, and most of them got closed.

He used it to try to prove how it wasn't a duplicate. What he never realized is that THEY WERE SHITTY QUESTIONS.

Polynomial

lol

Terry Chia

@JeffFerland let us have a l337 sp3ak day in chat. :O

Rory Alsop

@ScottPack hahahaha - this is absolutely correct

@TerryChia what we need is an easter egg for 1337 5p34k

Scott Pack

3:11 PM

@RoryAlsop The questions themselves didn't fit the SEI model.

Guys. No. Just no.

Terry Chia

@ScottPack you aren't 1337 to appreciate it. :P

Polynomial

just read that Hackin9 nmap guide

epic

Scott Pack

@TerryChia First off, you missed the "enough" that makes your sentence parsable English.

Polynomial

"NMAP requires root access in order to allow B-trees."

Iszi

@TerryChia I think we already have that - it's called Talk Like a Pirate Day, though.

Rory Alsop

3:14 PM

@Polynomial It is wonderfully done

@Iszi and everyone just missed it this yarrr.

3

I mean "year"

Iszi

Here we go. Easter egg proposal: On every Talk Like A Pirate Day, have a toggle-able option in chat (default to ON) that converts everything to l33t.

Terry Chia

@Polynomial What are B-trees?

Polynomial

@TerryChia a data structure used for sorting

Iszi

Whether that should work at the recipient or the sender's end, might be something of a question.

Scott Pack

@TerryChia Colloquialism for "honey tree".

Polynomial

3:17 PM

B-tree

In computer science, a B-tree is a tree data structure that keeps data sorted and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time. The B-tree is a generalization of a binary search tree in that a node can have more than two children. Unlike self-balancing binary search trees, the B-tree is optimized for systems that read and write large blocks of data. It is commonly used in databases and filesystems. Overview In B-trees, internal (non-leaf) nodes can have a variable number of child nodes within some pre-defined range. When data are inserted or remov...

Terry Chia

Ahh.. I see.

Rory Alsop

@Iszi we'd need a multi-toggle to do l337, Pirate or muggle

@RoryM - have you got a useful how-to on Wireless AP triangulation using GPS/Kismet? Could be useful here:

0

Q: Effective wireless scanning to meet PCI DSS 11.1?

PCI-DSS section 11.2 requires the business to "Test for the presence of wireless access points and detect unauthorized wireless access points". However, this is more easily said than done. Simply scanning to detect wireless access points (as many suggested here) pulls up over 120 APs, both on ...

pci-dss wireless

Thomas Pornin

3:35 PM

@Ladadadada Finally got a half-baked DoS, not very convincing.

Polynomial

0

Q: Honeypot on VirtualBox xp sp2 ?

Hello my friends i have installed Virtualbox on a xp sp3 and have in VB an xp sp2, i want to know if it is safe to run a Honeypot on VB in my host machine. And if yes could you give some feedback for what honeypot to use etc. I just started to work with security stuff ( just for hobby ) and i lo...

honeypot

NaRQ, TL or NC?

or all of the above?

Iszi

@Polynomial I'm going with NaRQ. There's probably some other questions on here that could be useful to him, though.

Rory Alsop

:-)

Narq it is

Iszi

3:52 PM

It's funny how "NaRQ" sounds really close to "Narf"!

@Polynomial Do you have some sort of canned responses for your close comments, now?

Polynomial

@Iszi I write them up each time, but I have a rough style of how I respond

I should probably write a GM script to do it automatically

I just nominated to re-open, now he's improved the question.

actually, no. that was dumb

now it's an exact dupe

dupe of security.stackexchange.com/questions/12546/…

Ladadadada

@ThomasPornin Good point about the CPU numbers. You can't properly evaluate a trade-off until you know how much memory and how much CPU we're talking about. In both cases, small enough that other factors DoS you long before they do.

Rory Alsop

4:20 PM

@Polynomial heh - you want me to reopen and close as dupe? Probably not worth it :-)

Thomas Pornin

@RoryAlsop Is it just me, or did he post it twice ?

The second instance is still open.

Jeff Ferland

Hmm... went homepage -> here. I deleted the question you're talking about.

Thomas Pornin

Indeed. Your hammer is less feeble than @Rory's.

Lucas Kauffman

First time kaspersky dissapoints me, having a freakn "Protection in the cloud" button

Rory Alsop

you saying I have a feeble tool, @Thomas? :-(

in other news...

zdnet.com/…

and now - to commute! later all!

Lucas Kauffman

4:30 PM

@RoryAlsop Bye Rory!

Iszi

6:04 PM

Proposed as QotW? This is a bit dark for us...

23

Q: What are the career paths in the (illegal) computer security field?

As a whitehat pentester I often wonder about the darkside. I see myself working in the office, and imagine that there is someone just like me in China or Romania or in their parent's basement that is pretty much doing the exact same thing, but hurting people for money or just for the "lulz". ...

career people-management black-hat

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Join the Stack Exchange team – we’re hiring!

David Fullerton on October 01, 2012

We’re growing like crazy! Between launching exciting new sites, developing new features and promotions for existing ones, and branching out geographically, Stack Exchange can use all the help it can get – so we’re currently hiring for seven (7!) different positions, from developers to designers to sales to… well, just look at the list yourself:

Product Manager – Q&A Team (telecommute or New York)

Web Developer – Q&A Team (telecommute or New York)

Web Developer – Careers Team (New York) …

Iszi

6:36 PM

Funny: Twitter is recommending @schneierblog, but doesn't note that I know anyone who follows him.

Wonder what that says?

Jeff Ferland

@ThomasPornin Keep this here or send it to crypto?

1

Q: Digital Signature and Verification?

AFAIK , When Alice wants to write a message to Bob -- she uses Bob's public key and encrypt the message - and then Bob - using his private key - use to decrypt it. So public key is used to decrypt and private key is used to encrypt. But then I saw this explanation ( in digital signature conext...

encryption certificates pki digital-signature

Iszi

@JeffFerland I think it's basic enough to stay here.

It's the sort of question you might find on a Sec+ or such.

Jeff Ferland

Yeah, I suppose we need more things counteracting "signing is crypto in reverse"

Thomas Pornin

7:04 PM

@JeffFerland I concur

I have the distinct feeling that readership has increased quite a lot over the last month or so. Do we have stats about that ?

Ninefingers

@Thomas just to check, I'm right in thinking ElGamal (encryption) is not a trapdoor permutation, aren't I?

I am slightly embarrassed to be asking that, but I'm pretty sure that's the case.

Thomas Pornin

@Ninefingers No, indeed it is not.

For a trapdoor permutation, you need a permutation, i.e. same input and output sets.

In the case of ElGamal, you begin with one value in the group, and you end up with two values, so it cannot be a permutation.

Ninefingers

Yep. Was fairly happy that was the case, just wanted to be absolutely sure. And the one person guaranteed to know and be right just so happened to be online...!

@ThomasPornin Of course. I've spent the last few days with Mr Laplace. Changing gears back to algebra et al too fast hurts my head.

How are you anyway? Not so new job keeping you busy?

Thomas Pornin

7:25 PM

@Ninefingers Well, it is, but I have set a workaround so that I can still connect to sec.SE from work.

which I am doing right now.

it is rather inconvenient (RDP on a Linux system which is an Ocean away) but it is compatible with the local security policy (no bypassing the HTTP proxy, no local installation of extra software).

Ninefingers

@ThomasPornin Sounds a bit horrible. I've used xfreerdp to get to our Windows boxes at work - it doesn't play all that nice with gnome, unfortunately.

Also, isn't that technically bypassing the http proxy?

Iszi

That reminds me, I need to troubleshoot my own RDP issues when I get home.

Which means I need to build a new VM since I nuked my old one.

Drat.

Thomas Pornin

@Ninefingers Well, I am not using the Web browser, so I am nottttt bypassing the Web broooowser proxy configurrration.

III do suffer from high latency which occasionally delays the keyRelease events, hence the duplicated letters.

I am using a package called xrdp

maybe xfreerdp-server would be better (although experimental)

Ninefingers

Aaahhh I tried that one. Doesn't play well with Win 7, which is my work PC host. In fact, just doesn't go because it doesn't understand the newer RDP protocols Microsoft cooked up.

@Thomas ever used VNC? That's not so bad, usually.

It's kind of a pity remote X seems to be about the slowest of them all - as I quite like the idea of transporting a few applications right onto my desktop.

Thomas Pornin

@Ninefingers Yup, but the no-install policy on the client limits my options. The RDP client is already there, but there is no VNC client.

Ninefingers

7:34 PM

@ThomasPornin Ah.

Thomas Pornin

Otherwise, I got good reports about NX (FreeNX)

Ninefingers

@ThomasPornin I've never seen that one before... does look interesting.

Scott Pack

7:58 PM

@Ninefingers I assume you're referring to NLA?

Ninefingers

@ScottPack I think so, yes.

I've got a feeling that's what it doesn't like.

There was something, anyway. Can't quite remember what.

Scott Pack

@Ninefingers Yeah, that's the pre-connection authentication. It is not on by default, which sucks, but the MS rdp clients are the only ones that support it.

Supposedly rdesktop has experimental support for NLA, but I've never gotten it to work.

Ninefingers

@ScottPack I think freerdp does - see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeRDP

Scott Pack

I'll have to try it out. I haven't used linux as a desktop OS in a while, but NLA was one of those things that always pissed me off.

Ninefingers

@ScottPack It's very new - as in, January this year I think. I remember stumbling across it when I needed to get onto our build machine, which is Vista based.

Scott Pack

8:04 PM

Coolness.

Ninefingers

Although I've noticed a slight problem in that my dual monitor setup at work stops working after I've used it, so when I get to work I need to reboot.

So, not so cool :(

Scott Pack

Your windows box is dual monitor and when you RDP into it the second monitor goes wonky?

Ninefingers

@ScottPack Nope, the primary one, the one the log in console is on. Unfortunately, it's not just gui - it stops receiving any input at all. I've tried just typing my password in carefully and it's a no go.

(yes, it is dual monitor)

So I just rdp to vms now so rebooting them isn't a problem

Scott Pack

That sounds busted.

Ninefingers

Well, it works while I use the rdp session. I can cut the session off and reconnect no problem. It just makes using it in the morning a problem.

Scott Pack

8:08 PM

I've been RDPing into my multi monitor desktop without much incident (from a Mac client). The worst thing that happens is that my open windows and icons get shuffled around.

I wonder if it's something weird with the client software or the server. Hmm

Iszi

@ScottPack Same here.

Scott Pack

@Iszi It was really annoying on 3-monitor.

Ninefingers

@ScottPack Doesn't Windows do that anyway, just cause it can? I reckon there must be a RandomlyRearrangeDesktop() thing somewhere in Explorer. Along with ItsNowTimeForThatActiveDesktopMessageThing()

Iszi

@ScottPack Agreed.

Scott Pack

8:45 PM

Who wants a free conference? ohio.edu/oit/news/it-security-seminar-2012.cfm

Ninefingers

8:57 PM

@ScottPack Trash talk, hmmm? Unfortunately I'm on the other side of the atlantic, sorry :)

Scott Pack

It happens.

Iszi

10:17 PM

@RoryAlsop I have a feeling the answer to this is "no", but I'm hoping someone over at Motor Vehicle Maintenance and Repair can point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, it seems nobody's ever in chat to ask.

0

Q: Are questions about usage of entertainment system features on-topic?

My car has an entertainment system which includes the ability to display pictures alongside the media information. I'd like to know what the limitations on file size and/or image dimensions are for these pictures, but I'm having a hard time finding the information online. Given proper specifics...

discussion site-definition

Rory Alsop

10:30 PM

@Iszi tricky. I don't think anywhere else is right, with the possible exception of AVP SE

I reckon you should ask it and see

Iszi

AVP?

Eh. I think it's less on-topic there.

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