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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 29 declined, 17 accepted (46 total, 36.96% accepted)

+ - The Password? You Changed It, Right?->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Right at this moment, there's a swarm of little password guessing robots trying for your router's admin accounts. Do yourself a favor and do some logs checking right away. Some European ISPs have been forced to do some ad-hoc reconfigs to end user equipment recently, so do check you equipment. And of course, this turned up in my lap while I was on my way back from a most enjoyable passwords conference — traces of what appears to be a distributed password guessing efforts. Read on for data and the beginnings of analysis."
Link to Original Source

+ - Password Gropers Hit Peak Stupid, Take the Spamtrap Bait-> 1

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Peter Hansteen reports that a new distributed and slow-moving password guessing effort is underway, much like the earlier reports, but this time with a twist: The users they are trying to access do not exist. Instead, they're take from the bsdly.net spamtrap address list, where all listed email addresses are guaranteed to be invalid in their listed domains. There is a tiny chance that this is an elaborate prank or joke, but it's more likely that via excessive automation, the password gropers have finally Peak Stupid."
Link to Original Source

+ - Have you changed your password lately? Does it even matter?->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Do frequent password changes actually matter security wise? Or do they just make us pick the minimum complexity password the system will accept? I want your opinion. In his latest piece, Peter Hansteen wants your opinion on common security enforcement practices and even offers a poll about enforced password changes. Let loose the debate rage!"
Link to Original Source

+ - What is it that you want to learn about OpenBSD 5.5?->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "In the upcoming OpenBSD 5.5 release there will be a number of improvements, including a whole new traffic shaping system, automatic installer improvements and the switch to 64-bit time_t.

But OpenBSD has been the source of lots of innovation and improvements in BSD and Unix in general over the years, and in preparation for his two BSDCan tutorials, Peter Hansteen asks, What do you want to learn about OpenBSD 5.5 (and possibly future directions)?"
Link to Original Source

+ - Yes, You Too Can Be An Evil Network Overlord - On The Cheap With OpenBSD, pflow ->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Have you ever wanted to know what's really going on in your network? Some free tools with surprising origins can help you to an almost frightening degree. Peter Hansteen shares some monitoring insights, anecdotes and practical advice in his latest column on how to really know your network. All of it with free software, of course."
Link to Original Source

+ - Effective Spam and Malware Countermeasures Using Free Tools ->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "In the seemingly never-ending fight against spam and malware, are the free tools really better? In a recent article titled Effective Spam and Malware Countermeasures — Network Noise Reduction Using Free Tools, Peter Hansteen offers a strong argument that free tools, with emphasis on the ones supplied by OpenBSD, are indeed better performing and significantly more cost effective than commercial counterparts. The article also has a history of malware and spam with chuckleworthy anecdotes."
Link to Original Source

+ - The UK "Porn" Filter Blocks Kids' Access To Tech, Civil Liberties Websites ->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "It fell to the UK Tories to actually implement the Nanny State. Too bad Nanny Tory does not want kinds to read up on tech web sites such as slashdot.org, or civil liberties ones such as the EFF or Amnesty International. Read on for a small sample of what the filter blocks, from a blocked-by-default tech writer."
Link to Original Source

+ - Modern Microsoft Word Does Not Reliably Read Earlier Formats: A 1989 Print Test->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Prompted by a fabulous rant by Charlie Stross named Why Microsoft Word must Die, Peter Hansteen dug out from his archives the simplest possible 1989-vintage Microsoft Word .DOC document, and has the data to prove that newer versions or Microsoft Word do in fact not reliably read files from earlier versions. Case in point: An ASCII table print test generated and saved as .DOC in 1989."
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+ - The Hail Mary Cloud And The Lessons Learned->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Against ridiculous odds and even after gaining some media focus, the botnet dubbed The Hail Mary Cloud apparently succeeded in staying under the radar and kept compromising Linux machines for several years. This article sums up the known facts about the botnet and suggests some practical measures to keep your servers safe."
Link to Original Source

+ - The Term Hackathon Has Been Trademarked In Germany->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "Trademarking somebody else's idea is behind their back is both a bad idea and highly immoral. If it wasn't your idea, you don't trademark and you don't patent. It really is that simple, people.

The news that the term hackathon had been trademarked in Germany reached me late last week, via this thread on openbsd-misc. The ideas sounded pretty ludicrous ... (see the rest at http://bsdly.blogspot.ca/2013/05/the-term-hackathon-has-been-trademarked.html)"
Link to Original Source

+ - Keep smiling, waste spammers' time with OpenBSD tools->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "When you're in the business of building the networks people need and the services they need to run on them, you may also be running a mail service. If you do, you will sooner or later need to deal with spam. This article is about how to waste spammers' time and have a good time while doing it, using the free tools OpenBSD offers to do your greylisting and greytrapping before any content filtering. It's fun and easy."
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+ - Maintaining A Publicly Available Blacklist - Mechanisms And Principles->

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo (447981) writes "When you publicly assert that somebody sent spam, you need to ensure that your data is accurate. Your process needs to be simple and verifiable, and to compensate for any errors, you want your process to be transparent to the public with clear points of contact and line of responsibility. Here are some pointers from the operator of the bsdly.net greytrap-based blacklist."
Link to Original Source
Security

+ - SSH Password Gropers Are Now Trying High Ports->

Submitted by
badger.foo
badger.foo writes "You thought you had successfully avoided the tiresome password guessing bots groping at your SSH service by moving the service to a non-standard port? It seems security by obscurity has lost the game once more. We're now seeing ssh bruteforce attempts hitting other ports too, Peter Hansteen writes in his latest column."
Link to Original Source
Networking

+ - You're Being DDOSed - What Do You Do? Name And Shame?->

Submitted by
badger.foo
badger.foo writes "When you're hit with a DDOS, what do you do? In his most recent column, Peter Hansteen narrates a recent incident that involved a DNS based DDOS against his infrastructure and that of some old friends of his. He ends up asking, should we actively publish or 'name and shame' DDOS participants (or at least their IP addresses)? How about scans that may or may not be preparations for DDOSes to come?"
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