Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron hits beta

With just over a month to go until launch day, Canonical has released the first public beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. To be honest, most of the features in the beta first made their appearance in early alpha releases. But there are a few relatively minor improvements, and a ton of tweaks that set Hardy Heron apart from Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.

• Firefox 3 beta 4 is the default web browser
• PulseAudio is enabled by default
• New PolicyKit manager for advanced permission controls
• Gnome 2.22 is the default desktop environment. You can also install Kubuntu 8.04 which comes with KDE 3.5 or KDE 4, depending on which version you prefer

There’s also a new disc burning application, BitTorrent client, and VNC client. Virtualization software is built into the kernel. And you can install Ubuntu from Windows using Wubi.

Keep in mind, this is still beta software, and it’s not recommended for installation on production machines. The full version of Ubuntu 8.04 is due out on April 24th.

Source: Download Squad

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Microsoft To Release XP SP3 Next Week

Now that Windows Vista service pack 1 has been released, all eyes have shifted to Microsoft’s plans for Windows XP service pack 3, the final package of updates for the trusty OS. And, according to at least one source, Microsoft will roll out XP SP3 next Monday. As of Wednesday afternoon Pacific time, the BitTorrent search engine Mininova listed a 568.73 MB Windows XP Professional SP3 5503 file available for download. The file, which had 112 seeds and 417 leeches, had been downloaded 2083 times since it was posted Tuesday, according to the listing.

According to the file description notes, Microsoft will release the final version of XP SP3 on March 24, but the 5503 test build passes all Windows Genuine Advantage checks and is able to download Windows updates that previous XP SP3 builds weren’t able to, which suggests that it could, in fact, be the final RTM build. When Microsoft released Vista SP1 in February, the final RTM code was identical to the Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) 1 Refresh 2 test build that was released to a group of 15,000 testers two weeks earlier.

A Microsoft spokesperson, perhaps weary from the months-long barrage of Vista SP1 related inquiries, said the final version of XP SP3 is still on target to be released the first half of calendar year 2008, and the XP SP3 5503 build was a minor interim build released to address one specific issue for a subset of private beta testers.

Source:  CRN

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Finished Installing Windows Vista SP1? Now Remove All The Junk Files

When you install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on your computer, the SP1 installer will not remove the older versions of Vista files from the hard drive. This is because the older files may be required in case you decide to uninstall SP1 later from the system.Naturally, these files occupy important disk space. If you are satisfied with the performance of Windows Vista SP1 and unlikely to remove it later, why not reclaim some disk space by removing all the older Vista files.

There are no manual steps involved. Just open your Windows command prompt and type vsp1cln.exe (short for Vista SP1 Cleaner). It takes less than a minute to execute.

*vsp1cln.exe is added to your Windows Vista System folder after you install Vista SP1.

This will make  Windows Vista Service Pack 1 permanent on this computer. All the older files are deleted now and your hard disk has tons of extra space for other important files like videos and photos.

You computer need not be connected to the Internet for running the Vista SP1 cleaner tool. And you won’t be able to remove Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later.

Source: Digital Inspiration

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A Peek at Snort 3.0

The wildly popular open source Snort intrusion prevention technology is getting a major makeover.

Marty Roesch, who wrote the first version of the software nearly 10 years ago, has rewritten the software from top to bottom in the next-generation Snort 3.0 release, due in beta next month and early next year in its final release.

“Snort 3 [makes Snort] not just an IDS/IPS anymore. It’s for building arbitrary network security operations and other technologies atop it,” says Roesch, who is also founder and CTO of Sourcefire. Snort 3.0 will serve as a network traffic analysis platform as well, according to Roesch.

Roesch says the new platform is a more streamlined, scalable, and faster system that’s more adaptable to today’s networks. “Snort 3 is heavily multi-threaded,” he says. “It has IPv6 support, and MPLS support, built in,” for instance.

Snort 3.0 is built to run any type of traffic and to handle any type of network security task, he says. “If you want to implement a firewall in Snort, you can do that,” and it could encompass change and anomaly detection, for instance, as well.

One of the key improvements in the new Snort is that it’s less susceptible to IDS/IPS evasion or bypass attacks, where attackers sneak past the devices. Roesch says Snort 3.0 doesn’t have to be manually fed rules: “You teach Snort what the network looks like so it can defend itself accordingly. It tunes itself. My end goal is to have a self-tuning protection engine.”

The new Snort 3.0 engine also supports more hardware acceleration: “You’ll be running Snort on bigger and faster networks, so in version 3 we made it easier to add hardware acceleration to it,” he says.

And yes, it will be backwards-compatible with Snort V2. Roesch says the open-source beta of Snort 3.0, which will be released next quarter, includes a Snort V2 engine module running atop the Snort 3.0 platform. That will allow Snort V2 users to more easily get accustomed to the new version, he says. “Snort 3 is going to be an upgrade,” Roesch says.

Source: Dark Reading

Posted in Coding, Internet, Networking, Privacy, Security | No Comments

Click A Link, Go To Jail

Whelp, we’ve talked about it, but now it’s finally possible. CSRF can now cause jail time. The FBI has begun arresting people who click on links to supposed child pornography. Now, I understand the noble pursuit, but there’s a fairly huge flaw in the old logic. I can force users to click on links anytime I want. Now here comes some interesting CSRF technology grey area. The authorities might, reasonably say, “The referrer doesn’t match.” Okay, well that’s what our good friend META refresh is for. I can force you to click on things without leaving a referring URL at all.

So now the real question is would a user with no referring URL be worthy of investigation? Is this the newest wave in reasons to turn of referring URLs? I mean, seriously, what if the browser pre-fetches, or if an attacker puts a hovering iframe beneath the mouse, or they are using an older browser/plugin that allows spoofed referring URLs. Eesh. Again, I’m all for the noble pursuit, but seriously – this seems a little dangerous to me. Is clicking a link evidence enough of guilt? If so, can I now take search engines to court for trying SQL injection against me or for spidering and caching illicit content? And now have we given people plausible deniability, “I knew it was fake before I clicked on it” or “I was just seeing if it was an FBI site or not” etc….

<sarcasm> Be the first kid on the block to surprise your friend with an illegal version of a Rick-roll. </sarcasm> The act of clicking a link as evidence of guilt is almost certainly asking for trouble and abuse.

Sample code on how easy it is to not send a referring URL: <META HTTP-EQUIV=”refresh” CONTENT=”0;url=http://child-porn-site”>

Source: ha.ckers.org

Posted in Internet, Privacy, Security | No Comments