WindowSecurity.com Articles & Tutorials Archive

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Articles & Tutorials for January, 2006

Malware - future trends: Date - Jan 31, 2006; Author - Dancho Danchev; Section - Network Security Library / Network Security; Malware has truly evolved during the last couple of years. Its potential for financial and network based abuse was quickly realized, and thus, tactics changed, consolidation between different parties occurred, and the malware scene became overly monetized, with its services available on demand.
TCP and IP Options: Date - Jan 26, 2006; Author - Don Parker; Section - Articles / Windows Networking; Going back over the basics is always a good idea. One of the most fundamental pieces of knowledge in regards to computer communications are the four core protocols; IP, TCP, UDP, and ICMP. What we shall do over the course of this article is cover the options for both TCP and IP to see what, if any, security implications they may have.
Windows Server 2003 Security Guide v2.0: Date - Jan 25, 2006; Author - Microsoft; Section - Network Security Library / Network Security; The updated Windows Server 2003 Security Guide provides specific recommendations about how to harden computers that run Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) in three distinct enterprise environments. 1. Where older operating systems such as Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 must be supported. 2. Where Windows 2000 is the earliest version of the Windows operating system in use. 3. Where concern about security is so great that significant loss of client functionality and manageability is considered an acceptable tradeoff to achieve maximum security.
Applying Certificates to a WSUS Server: Date - Jan 24, 2006; Author - Brien Posey; Section - Articles / Authentication, Access Control & Encryption; Many administrators tend to ignore the recommendation that WSUS be configured to use SSL encryption if the WSUS server is only servicing clients within the perimeter network. However, if SSL encryption is not used, a hacker could potentially steal the WSUS server’s identity and use the spoofed server to send malicious versions of patches to your clients. If you don’t like the idea of having a bunch of infected clients on your network, then check out this article on how to encrypt WSUS transactions.
Securing the Network from Within (Part 1): Date - Jan 19, 2006; Author - Don Parker; Section - Articles / Misc Network Security; All too often we hear of how a hacker bypassed a router and the firewall to penetrate a company’s internal network. Reality is that there will always be a way into an internal network. Is it time to start thinking of protecting the network in a different way? Read on to find out.
Windows Enumeration: USER2SID & SID2USER: Date - Jan 18, 2006; Author - Chris Gates; Section - Network Security Library / Windows Security; User2sid and Sid2user are two small utilities for Windows NT, created by Evgenii Rudny, that allow the administrator to query the SAM to find out a SID value for a given account name and vice versa. User2sid.exe can retrieve a SID from the SAM (Security Accounts Manager) from the local or a remote machine and Sid2user.exe can then be used to retrieve the names of all the user accounts and more. These utilities do not exploit a bug but call the functions; LookupAccountName and LookupAccountSid respectively. These tools can be called against a remote machine without providing logon credentials except those needed for a null session connection. These tools rely on the ability to create a null session in order to work.
Understanding the Roles of Server 2003 Security Policies: Date - Jan 17, 2006; Author - Deb Shinder; Section - Articles / Windows 2003 Security; Windows domains rely on policy-based security mechanisms, but Windows security policy deployment can be confusing to the uninitiated. What's the difference between the local security policy, domain security policy and domain controller security policies? When and how do you use each? How do you use site GPOs and OU GPOs for best security, and how do they all interact together? What security policy tools are included with the operating system and how is each used? This article will provide an overview of the roles of Server 2003 security policies and how to use them to secure your systems and network.
Switching Technologies: Date - Jan 12, 2006; Author - Don Parker; Section - Articles / Windows Networking; With the advent of faster computer networks and a far more stable infrastructure has come the need for a quicker way to “switch” this information around. Two of the best known methods for doing so are ATM and Frame Relay. Within the confines of this article we will discuss just what they are and where they fit in.
The Threats and Countermeasures Guide v2.0: Date - Jan 11, 2006; Author - Microsoft; Section - Network Security Library / Windows Security; The updated Threats and Countermeasures guide provides you with a reference to all security settings that provide countermeasures for specific threats against current versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Determining Whether an in House or an External Certificate Authority is More Appropriate for Your Company: Date - Jan 10, 2006; Author - Brien Posey; Section - Articles / Authentication, Access Control & Encryption; With security becoming such a huge priority for companies over the last few years, many administrators who might have never thought twice about digital certificates are suddenly finding themselves in situations that require issuing various types of certificates. In this article, I will explain some of the benefits and some of the drawbacks of internal and external certificate authorities, in an effort to help you to make an intelligent decision as to what is right for your network.
HTTP Tunnels: Date - Jan 05, 2006; Author - Don Parker; Section - Articles / Windows Networking; The computer security world has come a long way over the past decade or so. There are all kinds of programs to mitigate external threats and the ever present spectre of viruses. What about those programs that are initiated from the trusted internal network though? Read on to learn more about the threat of HTTP tunnels.
Virtualization: Date - Jan 04, 2006; Author - Bradley Morgan; Section - Network Security Library / Network Security; This is a research paper about virtualization, a technology which has many impacts--one of which is related to security.
Implementing EFS in a Windows Server 2003 Domain: Date - Jan 03, 2006; Author - Deb Shinder; Section - Articles / Windows 2003 Security; Microsoft’s Encrypting File System (EFS), used to encrypt data on Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 computers, relies on a public key certificate. If you don’t have a public key infrastructure, EFS can use a self-signed certificate. This is the default for using EFS on a standalone or workgroup computer. Implementing EFS within a domain with a PKI presents more complexity. In this article, we'll look at how to manage and use EFS in a Windows 2000 or Server 2003 domain.