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- VI. NEWBIES READ THIS
- (Basic Hacking)
-
- WHAT MAKES A SYSTEM SECURE?
- (from alt.security FAQ)
- "The only system which is truly secure is one which is switched off
- and unplugged, locked in a titanium lined safe, buried in a concrete
- bunker, and is surrounded by nerve gas and very highly paid armed
- guards. Even then I wouldn't stake my life on it."
- - originally from Gene Spafford
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- WHAT WOULD BE IDEAL PROTECTION OF A SYSTEM?
- Password Access- Get rid of simple passwords; routinely change all
- passwords; regular review/monitoring of password
- files
-
- Physical Access- Lock up terminals, personal computers, disks when
- not in use; eliminate unnecessary access lines;
- disconnect modems when not in use
-
- Other measures- Know who you are talking to; shred all documents;
- avoid public domain software; report suspicious
- activity (especially non-working hours access)
-
- What this all means is that hackers must now rely on the ineptitude
- and laziness of the users of the system rather than the ignorance
- of SysOps. The SysOps and SecMans (Security Managers) are getting
- smarter and keeping up to date. Not only that, but they are
- monitoring the hack/phreak BBSes and publications. So the bottom
- line is reveal nothing to overinquisitive newbies...they may be
- working for the wrong side.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- WHAT IS A FIREWALL?
- (from the comp.security.misc FAQ)
- A (Internet) firewall is a machine which is attached (usually)
- between your site and a Wide Area Network (WAN). It provides
- controllable filtering of network traffic, allowing restricted
- access to certain Internet port numbers and blocks access to
- pretty well everything else.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW TO HACK WITHOUT GETTING INTO TROUBLE AND DAMAGING COMPUTERS?
- 1. Don't do damage intentionally.
- 2. Don't alter files other than than to hide your presence or to
- remove traces of your intrusion.
- 3. Don't leave any real name, handle, or phone number on any
- system.
- 4. Be careful who you share info with.
- 5. Don't leave your phone number with anyone you don't know.
- 6. Do NOT hack government computers.
- 7. Don't use codes unless you HAVE too.
- 8. Be paranoid!
- 9. Watch what you post on boards, be as general as possible.
- 10. Ask questions...but do it politely and don't expect to have
- everything handed to you.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- WHAT DO I DO IF I AM GETTING NOWHERE?
- 1. Change parity, data length, and stop bits. The system may not
- respond to 8N1 (most common setting) but may respond to 7E1,8E2,
- 7S2, etc.
- 2. Change baud rates.
- 3. Send a series of carriage returns.
- 4. Send a hard break followed by a carriage return.
- 5. Send control characters. Work from ^a to ^z.
- 6. Change terminal emulation.
- 7. Type LOGIN, HELLO, LOG, ATTACH, CONNECT, START, RUN, BEGIN, GO,
- LOGON, JOIN, HELP, or anything else you can think off.
-
- =====================================================================
- VII. Screwing with the most widespread operating system on the net
- (UNIX / AIX Hacking)
-
- WHAT ARE COMMON DEFAULT ACCOUNTS ON UNIX?
- (from Belisarius)
- Common default accounts are root, admin, sysadmin, unix, uucp, rje,
- guest, demo, daemon, sysbin. These accounts may be unpassworded
- or the password may possibly be the same (i.e. username uucp has
- uucp as the passwd).
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW IS THE UNIX PASSWORD FILE SETUP?
- (from Belisarius)
- The password file is usually called /etc/passwd
- Each line of the passwd file of a UNIX system follows the following
- format:
-
-
- userid:password:userid#:groupid#:GECOS field:home dir:shell
-
-
- What each of these fields mean/do---
-
- userid -=> the userid name, entered at login and is what the
- login searches the file for. Can be a name or a
- number.
-
- password -=> the password is written here in encrypted form.
- The encryption is one way only. When a login
- occurs the password entered is run through the
- encryption algorithm (along with a salt) and then
- contrasted to the version in the passwd file that
- exists for the login name entered. If they match,
- then the login is allowed. If not, the password is
- declared invalid.
-
- userid# -=> a unique number assigned to each user, used for
- permissions
-
- groupid# -=> similar to userid#, but controls the group the user
- belongs to. To see the names of various groups
- check /etc/group
-
- GECOS FIELD -=> this field is where information about the user is
- stored. Usually in the format full name, office
- number, phone number, home phone. Also a good
- source of info to try and crack a password.
-
- home dir -=> is the directory where the user goes into
- the system at (and usually should be brought
- to when a cd is done)
-
- shell -=> this is the name of the shell which is
- automatically started for the login
-
- Note that all the fields are separated by colons in the passwd file.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- WHAT DO THOSE *s, !s, AND OTHER SYMBOLS MEAN IN THE PASSWD FILE?
- (from Belisarius)
- Those mean that the password is shadowed in another file. You have
- to find out what file, where it is and so on. Ask somebody on your
- system about the specifics of the Yellow Pages system, but
- discretely!
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- WHAT IS A UNIX TRIPWIRE?
- (from Belisarius)
- Tripwire is a tool for Unix admins to use to detect password cracker
- activity, by checking for changed files, permissions, etc. Good for
- looking for trojan horses like password stealing versions of
- telnet/rlogin/ypcat/uucp/etc, hidden setuid files, and the like.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- USING SUID/GUID PROGS TO FULL ADVANTAGE.
- (from Abort)
- A SUID program is a program that when executed has the privs of the
- owner.
- A GUID has the privs of the group when executed.
- Now imagine a few things (which happen often in reality):
- 1. Someone has a SUID program on their account, it happens to allow
- a shell to, like @ or jump to a shell. If it does that, after you
- execute said file and then spawn a shell off of it, all you do
- in that shell has the privs of that owner.
- 2. If there is no way to get a shell, BUT they leave the file
- writable, just write over it a script that spawns a shell, and you
- got their privs again.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW CAN I HACK INTO AN AIX MACHINE?
- (from Prometheus)
-
- If you can get access to the 'console' AIX machines have a security
- hole where you can kill the X server and get a shell with
- ctrl-alt-bkspce. Also by starting an xterm up from one you are not
- logged in the utmp for that session because the xterms don't do utmp
- logging as a default in AIX. Or try the usual UNIX tricks:
- ftping /etc/passwd, tftping /etc/passwd, doing a finger and then
- trying each of the usernames with that username as a password.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW CAN I INCREASE MY DISK QUOTA ON UNIX?
- (from Prometheus)
-
- A UNIX disk quota may be increased by finding a directory on another
- partition and using that. Find another user who wants more quota and
- create a directory for the other to use, one that is world writable.
- Once they've put their subdirectory in it, change the perms on the
- directory to only read-execute. The reason this works is that
- usually accounts are distributed across a couple of filesystems, and
- admins are usually too lazy to give users the same quotas on each
- filesystem. If the users are all on one filesystem, you may be able
- to snag some space from one of the /usr/spool directories by creating
- a 'hidden' subdirectory like .debug there, and using that.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW CAN I FOOL AROUND ON XTERM / XWINDOWS?
- (from Wildgoose)
- Most x commands have a -display option which allows you to pick a
- terminal to send to. So if you use bitmap to create a bitmap, or
- download one, etc then:
-
- xsetroot -bitmap bitmapname
- [display the bitmap on your screen]
-
- xsetroot -bitmap bitmapname -display xt2500:0
- [display the bitmap on another xterm]
-
- Other uses, try xterm -display xt??:0 will give someone else one of
- your login windows to play with. They are then logged in as you
- though, and can erase your filespace, etc. Beware!
-
- Slightly irritating:
- xclock -geom 1200x1200 -display xt??:0
- [fills the entire screen with a clock]
-
- Slightly more irritating:
- Use a shell script with xsetroot to flash people's screens different
- colors.
-
- On the nastier side:
- Use a shell script with xsetroot to kill a person's window manager.
-
- Downright nasty:
- Consult the man pages on xkill. It is possible to kill windows on
- any display. So to log someone off an xterm you merely have to xkill
- their login window.
-
- Protect yourself:
- If you use xhost - this will disable other people from being able
- to log you out or generally access your terminal.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW CAN I TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE DECODE DAEMON?
- (from Caustic)
- First, you need to make sure that the decode daemon is active.
- Check this by telnetting to the smtp port (usually port 25), and
- expanding user Decode. If it gives you something, you can use it.
- If it tells you that the user doesn't exist, or whatever, you can't.
-
- If the daemon is active, this is how to exploit the decode daemon:
- 1) uuencode an echo to .rhosts
- 2) pipe that into mail, to be sent to the decode daemon
- (What happens: the decode daemon (1st) decodes the process, but
- leaves the bin priveleges resident. (2nd) the echo command is
- executed, because now the decoded message assumes the bin priveleges
- [which are *still* active, even though the daemon didn't issue the
- command]).
- 3) If this is done right, you will be able to rlogin to the sysem.
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW CAN I GET THE PASSWORD FILE IF IT IS SHADOWED?
- (from Belisarius)
- If your system has Yellow Pages file managment:
-
- ypcat /etc/passwd > whatever.filename
-
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
- HOW IS A PASSWORD ENCRYPTED IN UNIX?
- (from UNIX System Security[p.147])
- Password encryption on UNIX is based on a modified version of
- the DES [Data Encryption Standard]. Contrary to popular belief, the
- typed password is not encrypted. Rather the password is used as the
- key to encrypt a block of zero-valued bytes.
- To begin the encryption, the first seven bits of each character
- in the password are extracted to form the 56-bit key. This implies
- that no more than eight characters are significant in a password.
- Next, the E table is modified using the salt, which is the first two
- characters of the encrypted password (stored in the passwd file).
- The purpose of the salt is to makae it difficult to use hardware DES
- chips or a precomputed list of encrypted passwords to attack the
- algorithm. The DES algorithm (with the modified E table) is then
- invoked for 25 iterations on the block of zeros. The output of this
- encryption, which is 64 bits long, is then coerced into a
- 64-character alphabet (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, "." and "/"). Because this
- coersion involves translations in which several different values are
- represented by the same character, password encryption is essentially
- one-way; the result cannot be decrypted.
-
-
-