Upgrade complete !

Hello all

So i have completed the upgrade to my new blog  with a new url

you can follow me @ www.seanmancini.com

Click here to go to the new site !

Again Thanks for all your support !

upgrading my blog

Hello All,

I am currently in the process of upgrading my blog to a wordpress blog which allows me to present information in a much better way and the ability to catagorize my sibjects in a website form

i will still update this blog until ive completed the switch

i will provide the new link to my blog shortly

till then stay secure !

a little continuation of my fail2ban post

Recently i was able to capture some real data from my servers fail2ban logs

this is how fail2ban logs look for banning ips

2012-10-21 12:54:16,032 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 112.4.172.217
2012-10-22 17:05:48,080 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 222.73.24.10
2012-10-22 18:36:55,892 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 202.96.199.150
2012-10-22 23:23:10,053 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 111.74.82.33
2012-10-23 05:06:53,861 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 74.206.235.92
2012-10-23 13:11:05,652 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 112.216.140.51
2012-10-24 19:31:55,504 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 60.161.124.10
2012-10-24 22:52:47,324 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 125.210.190.190
2012-10-25 04:20:06,184 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 109.163.234.238
2012-10-26 11:11:12,332 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 122.139.60.134

very straigt forward and easy to understand which is always a good feature now lets look at the iptables entries

DROP       all  --  122.139.60.134       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  109.163.234.238      0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  125.210.190.190      0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  60.161.124.10        0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  112.216.140.51       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  74.206.235.92        0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  111.74.82.33         0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  202.96.199.150       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  222.73.24.10         0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  112.4.172.217        0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  31.3.214.241         0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  193.104.68.200       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  219.146.225.147      0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  64.185.226.120       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  58.221.252.194       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  212.68.50.132        0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  205.251.141.29       0.0.0.0/0          
DROP       all  --  121.10.140.215       0.0.0.0/0          
RETURN     all  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0  

fail2ban as i say in my post is a must have for ssh based security
with dynamic editing to the iptables firewall and clear logs it really is a
admins must have app

stay secure !

cyber bullying : what parents can do

Hello All,

Latley in the news we have been hearing alot about online bullying or cyber bullying
this is brings a new issue that today parents have to deal with

some parents are asking them selves what can be done to protect thier children again such attacks

here are some tips parents can use

1.) parental controls on mobile devices

now a days kids and teens are carrying what used to be a phone but is now virtually a computer in thier pockets and with the new issue of things likes sexting and camerphones there is a need for parents to step in a control what thier children and teens have the access to certain features on the devices of today  some examples would be software mechnisum to not allow mms messages or textmessages to anyone other than an allowed contact

2.)  use of social media such as facebook

parents should sit down with children and set ground rules on the use of social media it is also a good idea for you to add yourself on your childs friends list so you can see what is being posted and some of thier activites if your child is under a certain age one of which you can decide up until that point you may also want to choose to have your childs password for thier account so you can review the activites

3.) parental controls on a pc/laptop

another approach is to instal parental controls that record conversations that take place on the web from your childs computer and also record activites such as image uploads for you review later


what to do if you discover you childs a victim of cyber bullying

1.) report the imncident to the authorites  if you use parental control software or monitoring software you can show the autorirea the information you have obtained as proof

2.) report the incident to your childs school

3.) talk to your child  and educate them on awareness of network saftey
such as dont give out personal information to strangers such as address or phone number
as the assumption always is that the bully is someone your child know this is not always the case


if you have anymore ideas on what could be done please leave a comment !

thank you all for reading

Protecting your linux ssh server with fail2ban

Protecting your public servers is crucial we have talked before on a previous post on how to mitigate Ssh attacks on a cisco router now let’s talk Ssh on a server

an ssh server is no different you still have the same issues to fend off from DDOS attacks to brute force attacks ssh servers such as openssh are vulnerable here is a good module you can install on any Linux based server to protect again a brute force attack on your ssh tunnel ,

There is a free open source product called fail2ban   www.fail2ban.org/ 

this free solution scans logs files of the ssh service and looks for a set of criteria mostly an x amount of failed login attempts on the ssh service   and then creates a rule in the iptables firewall which will drop all future traffic to the ssh port it also supports ftp applications such as pure ftp in the same way

The below steps assume you are using a debian based distribution of Linux in our example we are using Ubuntu server 12.04


To install this application run the following command from your terminal window

sudo apt-get install fail2ban

Once the package is installed we can now start configuring it 
Fail2ban uses a file called jail.conf to set the parameters for things like maximum attempts
Before banning the offending IP

the location of the jail.conf file is  /etc/fail2ban

Once in the proper directory we can edit the config file using a text editor i personally like the VI editor

So you would issue the following command 

sudo vi jail.conf

This will open the fail 2 ban configuration file
In this configuration file you are going to look for a section that looks like this

[ssh]

enabled  = true
port     = ssh
filter   = sshd
logpath  = /var/log/auth.log
maxretry = 3

the above configuration allows for 3 unsuccessful attempts (default is 6 ) before banning the offending IP address   you can change the log file name and path if you like also by default there will be a # symbol before enable you will want to remove that symbol the enable this rule or you can just copy and paste the config above  

Once you have matched the default config to the one above you will then save the file in the vi editor using the :wq combination in command mode within the vi editor 

you have now completed the setup of fail2ban for the ssh service 

View Banned IP addresses 

In order to see what IP's have been banned issue the following command

sudo iptables -L -n

look through the output for the fail2ban chain 
Banned IP addresses will shows up like the one below in bold

Chain fail2ban-ssh (1 references)
target     prot opt source               destination        
RETURN     all  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0   
Drop  all - 10.10.10.10                    0.0.0.0/0


Remove banned ip addresses

in order to remove a IP address from the banned list issues the following command 

sudo iptables -D fail2ban-ssh -s 10.10.10.10 -j DROP

this will allow the IP  on the server 


The following  post shows how to protect again bruteforce attacks on linux based ssh servers 
using the fail2ban application this tool is a simple and free yet powerful application that should be installed to add a layer of protection to you servers ssh service

Till next time

Stay secure !
  
  






 

SSH bruteforce attack on cisco routers and ways to stop it !

Here is what a ssh bruteforce attack looks like from a  cisco router log

uthentication Failed] at 01:13:18 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:18.463: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:18 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:24.967: %SEC_LOGIN-4-LOGIN_FAILED: Login failed [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] at 01:13:24 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:24.967: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:24 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:31.447: %SEC_LOGIN-4-LOGIN_FAILED: Login failed [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] at 01:13:31 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:31.447: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:31 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:37.963: %SEC_LOGIN-4-LOGIN_FAILED: Login failed [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] at 01:13:37 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:37.963: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:37 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:44.307: %SEC_LOGIN-4-LOGIN_FAILED: Login failed [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] at 01:13:44 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:44.307: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:44 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:50.771: %SEC_LOGIN-4-LOGIN_FAILED: Login failed [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] at 01:13:50 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:50.771: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:50 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:57.239: %SEC_LOGIN-4-LOGIN_FAILED: Login failed [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] at 01:13:57 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012
*Sep 30 01:13:57.239: %SEC_LOGIN-1-QUIET_MODE_ON: Still timeleft for watching failures is 0 secs, [user: root] [Source: 211.144.68.163] [localport: 22] [Reason: Login Authentication Failed] [ACL: 100] at 01:13:57 UTC Sun Sep 30 2012

The above shows a perfect example why you should have a radiius server or tacas server for authentication with an ip ban mechanism this prevents scripts such as the above one from constantly trying to bruteforce attack your edge router from the same ip which would force the script to either use a different proxy or change servers not a total solution but an effective layer of security  you can also use things like vpn so an administrator would vpn into your local network and then locally access your equipment

Just a little tid bit of knowledge

Till next time

Stay secure !

Been a while

Hello All ,

sorry it has been a very long time since I posted on this blog


I will be making regular updates to this blog starting this week

we will still follow the same  weekly topics !

if you have any suggestions or a topic you wish to be covered

please contact me !

till then

Have a safe internet experience !