Author Archives: Stephen Reese

Block Command and Control requests using ASA 5500

I recently came across a blog post demonstrating how to use the Emerging Threats rule sets in order to block malware calls to command and control (C&C) hosts. Using the script referenced in the blog post may work fine, but … Continue reading

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Amazon S3 Server-Side Encryption using GSUtil

If you would like to enable server-side encryption which is a relatively new feature for your Amazon S3 data using GSUtil then you need specify the header value when pushing files to their cloud. $ gsutil -h “x-amz-server-side-encryption: AES256″ cp … Continue reading

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Block IRC and other communications with McAfee VirusScan

After taking a peak at some McAfee’s logs I decided to try mucking about with some of the Access Protection functionality, specifically IRC communication. I noticed there were a number of useful entries that could be sent to log or … Continue reading

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Variance in rwfilter results from netflow v5 and YaF

Looking over some netflow data I notice some variance between the two sensors. Sensor s0 is v5 netflow data from a Cisco switch, s1 is from a network tap listening between a Router on a Stick and said Cisco switch. … Continue reading

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Configure YAF on Linux for NetFlow collection from a network tap or SPAN

In a previous post SiLK was setup on a Debian host using NetFlow v5 from a Cisco switch. This worked well but I also have a network tap and said Cisco switch is capable of capturing data via SPAN port(s). … Continue reading

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Configure SiLK on Linux for NetFlow collection from a Cisco router

This guide walks through configuring SiLK from a source install on a Debian 6 host in order to collect NetFlow data from a Cisco router. The guides here and here written by CERT NetSA are quite good but lack some … Continue reading

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Setting Google Storage object ACL for authenticated downloads

Google’s gsutil is a great tool for pushing, retrieving and setting permissions on objects uploaded to Google Storage. I was reviewing the documentation on the Sharing and Collaboration page, specifically the Authenticated Browser Download section and realized there were a … Continue reading

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Running NIX Retina and Nessus vulnerability scans with least privileges

When you are running those vulnerability scans of Linux and UNIX hosts I hope that you are following best practices for keeping a host secure during the process. Both Retina and Nessus rely upon SSH in order to connect to … Continue reading

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Use Facebook CDN to host website photo gallerys

I was thinking about how to retrieve photos from Facebook photo gallery’s and came across a number of solutions. Most of the solutions were for blog or CMS and furthermore required caching your credentials in a database along with a … Continue reading

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New blog header image

I would like to take a moment and thank the guys over at Xen for allowing me to use their “light bike” logo for my blog’s header image. Please take a moment to checkout their site for your virtualization needs.

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