CONTENTS
Introduction
Eighth Layer News
Not in The Fine(?) Manual
ICMP Security
Word Macro's - again
The Coroner's Toolkit
IT Business in the South West
Read your e-mail's
Industry News
Flat rate Internet Access
Recommended Information Sources
KeyNote "Mission Critical"
Subscription Details
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Introduction
The more observant have already commented on the lack of a July
newsletter. Nice to know the readership are paying attention. Hopefully
the usual monthly delivery will now be maintained.
I will include some Oracle tips in future issues - as I'm aware I've
been focusing on security and Unix for the last few months.
Simon
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Eighth Layer News
Busy - is a good word to describe how Eighth Layer has been.
Among taking on another client, time was found, on the weekends when
people were not upgrading servers and databases - to replace the rather
battered fax machine and Office chairs.
The new chairs are very comfortable - although the black vinyl finish
does rather look like a two contestant version of Mastermind is about to
start [Ed:Does this mean anything to our overseas readers?]
More on our new client when they launch their new products.
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Not in the Fine(?) Manual
More from my collection of technical know-how for the seriously nerdy.
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ICMP Security
ICMP is the protocol used by the 'ping' and 'traceroute' commands that
tell you if a remote server is available, or the route your requests
take to reach it.
Try "ping www.wretched.demon.co.uk"
or "traceroute www.wretched.demon.co.uk"
(Windows users note "traceroute" is shorten to "tracert" and only
installed by default on Win98 or higher)
Ofir Arkin has just released an excellent paper on how this can be
abused. Compulsory reading for IT security managers.
http://www.sys-security.com/archive/papers/ICMP_Scanning.pdf
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Word Macro Risk
Lots of Microsoft Security patches have been released over the summer.
One caught my attention - it was the use of Microsoft Word's auto-save
feature to force virus Macro's to run, which would otherwise have been
prevented from running by the various settings.
See Jimmy Kuo's article on Free Macro Antivirus techniques.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kenbechtel/free_en.htm
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The Coroner's Toolkit
Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema have just released their first official
release of "The Coroner's Toolkit".
This is a toolkit for looking at dead Unix servers, not dead people.
Specifically the interest is in establishing if and how security
breaches were achieved and collecting evidence that is suitable to
present to the police or courts.
Unix sysadmins and security types checkout
http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/ before you need it.
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IT Business in the South West of England
Read your e-mail
I was going to bring you details of the new eCommerce team of a local
legal firm, but they never answered the e-mail.
I'm sure they would be heart broken to know they missed their
opportunity to make the mailboxes of my subscribers at iPlanet (Even if
I haven't any evidence the guys at iPlanet have time to read my
ramblings) amongst other eCommerce subscribers.
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Industry News
The big Internet story this side of the pond was looking to be an Eighth
Layer exclusive, until the mainstream media suddenly realised what the
e-mail from Andy Mitchell at Altavista was saying.
Altavista failed in it's promise to deliver free Internet access -
citing BT's failure to deliver a truely flat rate pricing structure.
Whilst I have a great deal of sympathy for Altavista, I was skeptical at
the time as they were relying on changes to the UK telephone pricing
structure that hadn't been agreed in detail.
Of course the bit that makes one mad is BT's vacuous claim that they are
ahead in delivering cheap and flat rate Internet services. Presumably BT
have forgotten that American have generally always had flat rate pricing
for their Internet connections, as well as their local phone calls.
On a brighter note - the planning for UK local loop unbundling has
started with trial plans announced for four UK cities. One can expect BT
to kick and scream all the way.
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Recommended Information Sources
KeyNote measure the performance of websites from a variety of locations
around the world. They are rapidly expanding their European operations
at this time, so web sites can get detailed performance statistics of
the performance of their site across Europe.
KeyNote's newsletter "Mission Critical" is highly recommended for those
wanting to know more about high end web sites, and general Internet
news.
Send an e-mail to: majordomo@keynote.com with one line in the BODY of
your message: subscribe newsletter
http://www.keynote.com
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Subscription Details
Eighth Layer News subscription is still done the old fashion way by
hand.
The newsletter is free, and you are welcome to pass it on to colleagues,
but please do encourage them to subscribe, so I know who I'm writing
for.
To subscribe or unsubscribe e-mail
Simon.Waters@eighth-layer.com
Copyright Eighth Layer Limited 2000
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