Links to security, messaging, or networking sites

Security & Anti-Spam Resources
CERT
What vulnerabilities should be looking at for? Chances are they're listed here.

SANS ISC
SANS Internet Strom Center. Track the current Internet "weather".

SecurityFocus
Lot's of information and popular security mailing lists, including the famous and controversial BugTraq.

2600
The infamous 2600. The website is a little lite on content, but the magazine is an excellent window into the hacker culture. I think any security professional would benefit from reading this publication.

MAPS TSI Anti-Relay
A site dedicated to instructions for disabling the open relay setting on most available MTAs.

Sender Policy Framework
SPF is a syntax for setting up anti-spoofing/anti-phishing protection for your domains. I highly suggest checking it out.

Security Sage :: Postfix Anti-Spam
Some very nice information on configuring the Postfix MTA to block spam.

Fairly-Secure Anti-SPAM Gateway Using OpenBSD...
A very comprehensive walk-through for setting up a secure e-mail scanning gateway with OpenBSD and other Open Source tools.

Declude.com RBL list
Has the somewhat ambitious title of "List of All Known DNS-based Spam Databases". It does look pretty complete, though.

The Spammers' Compendium
The Spammers' Compendium is John Graham-Cumming's catalog of dirty spammer text obfuscation tricks

LinuxQuestions Security References
A virtual bonanza of security references from unSpawn at LinuxQuestions.org. There's an unbelievable wealth of information laid out.

Tools
Insecure.org(nmap)
Home of the ubiquitous nmap, and much more.

Unicornscan
A blindingly fast TCP/IP scanner with too many features to list.

Nessus
The popular Nessus, an open source vulnerability assesment tool.

Wireshark
The Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) family of network sniffer utilities. Note the requirement of libpcap.

Snort
Snort IDS. This tool is so effective it's actually displacing commercial products in the IDS space. Check out Sourcefire in the Vendors section.

Tripwire
An open source Host IDS.

OpenSSH
OpenSSH is a free suite of tools to replace cleartext authentication and file transfer protocols. It's developed by the OpenBSD project.

PuTTY
A most nifty client for the ssh suite of services.

Airsnarf, HotSpotDK, etc
The Airsnarf rogue AP utility, and HotSpotDK N/HIDS. Several other WiFi tools were presented at toorcon and I expect those will be posted to the site shortly.

SynAckLabs
A whole host of interesting tools, including the CUTLASS encrypted transport protocol and Stegtunnel.

IPCop firewall
A mini-distribution of Linux to act as dedicated firewall/proxy/IDS. This is a fork of the GPL Smoothwall code, and in my opinion it's vastly superior.

Knoppix-STD
Knoppix Security Tools Distribution (based on KNOPPIX, see below), a "live CD" security toolkit with popular forensics utilities and a whole lot more.

GNU directory of security tools
A plethora of "free" tools listed by FSF/UNESCO. There are too many to list--navigate by the menus on the left.

Spybot - Search & Destroy
Spybot - S&D is widely regarded as the best privacy software available. It finds and removes hundreds of malware programs. Not surprisingly, their website has come under DDoS attack in retaliation for their effectiveness. Please remember to support the project with donations if you find the software useful. PS their website is hosted by many mirrors, so if the URL you end up at doesn't say "security.kolla.de" do not be alarmed.

Ad-Aware
Ad-Aware is another free (for non-commercial uses) program to protect your privacy and root malware out of your desktop system. Many people run both Spybot - S&D and Ad-Aware for the dual protection.

E-mail Software
Postfix MTA
Postfix is a fast, intuitive, and secure replacement for the root-vuln-riddled and bizarrely complicated Sendmail MTA. It was written by Wietse Venema Any sites still using Sendmail should seriously consider migrating to Postfix in the near future.

Qmail MTA (local mirrors)
Qmail is another powerful and secure replacement for Sendmail. Written by the intensely liked/disliked DJB (who also has his own Qmail site). DJB makes a security guarantee about Qmail that has yet to be broken (according to him).

Exim MTA
Exim is yet another Sendmail replacement. While it's not as popular as the two MTAs listed above, it's still a better choice than Sendmail.

Sendmail MTA
Sendmail has served a great many organizations well for decades, but it's age is finally starting to show. With a long past of security problems (including the infamous Morris Worm), and a configuration system that takes years to understand properly, organizations are strongly urged to find a suitable, secure replacement. See also Sendmail, Inc in the vendors section.

Free and "Free" OSs
OpenBSD
"Free, Functional & Secure." OpenBSD is my OS of choice.

FreeBSD
"The Power to Serve." FreeBSD is an excellent enterprise and carrier class OS for server platforms.

NetBSD
"Of Course it Runs on NetBSD." It's legendary for running on just about every architecture¹ under the sun. The TCP stack has also been used widely as a reference.

Linux
This is the Linux Online site for tracking Linux-related information.

Debian GNU/Linux
Debian is probably the most popular grassroots Linux distribution.

Gentoo Linux
Gentoo is an interesting Linux distribution modeled after FreeBSD.

KNOPPIX GNU/Linux
What, you mean you don't have a KNOPPIX rescue CD? Go get the ISO now! The main page currently is a protest of EU patent regulations, look for the hyperlink to KNOPPIX.

Fedora Project
Fedora is the free (but unsupported) continuation of Red Hat Linux. Check the Vendors section for the commercial Red Hat products.

Message boards and websites for the above OSs
BSD Forums
Title says it all. News and message boards for every BSD imaginable.

SFOBUG
San Francisco Open Bsd Users Group (of which I am a member). The newbies mailing list is a nice resource to new OpenBSD user.

OpenBSD Journal
Interesting tidbits about OpenBSD.

SVBUG
Silicon Valley Bsd Users Group. Users group for all things BSD.

Linux Questions
A place to ask questions, and get answers.

Just Linux
Just wanna learn Linux? This site is for you.

Vendors
Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Tumbleweed (my current employer) provide a full suite of messaging security solutions from e-mail infrastructure defense (DoS blocking, DHA prevention, anti-spam, anti-virus, encryption, etc) to secure file transfer management and even PKI augmentation.

AirDefense, Inc
AirDefense does WLAN security and monitoring.

Sourcefire, Inc
From the creators of Snort IDS, Sourcefire is a commercial Intrusion Management System.

Red Hat, Inc
Red Hat is almost synonomous with "Linux". Provider of corporate-grade Linux solutions.

Mandrakesoft
Makers of Mandrake Linux. It's a wonderful workstation OS.

Intel corp.
Intel makes excellent ethernet chipsets. I use Intel exclusively on my network. Someone please tell them to open their crypto accelerator specs so that OpenBSD can support the on-NIC crypto off-loading.

CipherTrust, Inc
CipherTrust is Enterprise E-mail Security. My former employer.

Novell, Inc
Novell's home of Groupwise, a groupware system that's getting some second looks due to the security problems with Outlook/Exchange.

IBM/Lotus
The Lotus Domino family of server/client applications (including E-mail).

Microsoft corp.
Microsoft's home site for MS Exchange, an enterprise messaging and collaboration server.

Sendmail, Inc
The commercial version of the old stand-by. Sendmail is still a fantastic mail-router, although security remains a concern.

Articles
I've been hacked! How OpenBSD saved our project.
A ringing endorsement of OpenBSD as a production platform.

The Rise of the Spammers
Detailed article on the anatomy of a spammer system cracking attack.

E-card Hijack Spam
Disassembling another malware e-card--Microsoft users beware.

New "Purchase Confirmation" trojan variant
The fine folks at Codefish SpamWatch have done an excellent write-up on a devious new Phishing/trojan. This trojan goes beyond any seen to date by actually taking targeted screenshots of the users' browser while they're entering their banking information.

Employers Risk Law Suits Over Smutty Spam
Article about the employer liabilities of spam.

¹I realize some people may have arrived here due to the previous reference to squirrels and NetBSD. Here's the full quote and a link to the source.
"I just threw a squirrel carcass in a cardboard box and installed NetBSD on it."

This site © copyright 2003-2007 Brian Keefer. Unauthorized republication is forbidden.