I am as paranoid as the next guy, but some of these suggestions seem quite extreme and a tad bit overboard. :) If you follow security best practices and use some common sense that will go a long way towards keeping you safe. Here is a short list (certainly not exhaustive) that security minded people should be following anyways that would go a long way: (this is a Windows centric list)
1. Make sure that the system is fully patched (As Adrian mentioned, Secunia PSI is a great free tool to check if all your major programs have the latest patches) 2. Turn on Windows Firewall and allow no exceptions for originating outside connections. (as a corporate side note, I recommend that you enforce this setting through GP for your machine connections outside of your Domain) 3. Disable file and print sharing. 4. Do not run as a local administrator. Unfortunately, Windows users seem to have a tough time wrapping their head around this one. Certainly not a panacea for all Windows security woes, it would go a long way towards blunting many attacks and will stop many of today's common attacks dead in their tracks (i.e. anything that attempts to write to areas of the file system and registry that requires admin or system rights). Though not perfect, Vista and 7 has made it a lot easier to run as a standard user (I know everyone hates Vista -- I personally think it got somewhat of a bum wrap - though it certainly is a resource hog). 5. If accessing sensitive information over the Internet, do it over a secure link such as TLS/SSL or SSH and verify the certificate/key (e.g. do not simply click through those Firefox and IE certificate or SSH key error warnings!). 6. Disable auto-run and don't be sticking strange USB/disks/drives/etc into machine. Though following these simple 6 steps will not ensure absolute security (hey, what will?), it will certainly go a long ways towards it. Well those are my points for what they are worth! (probably not much!) Jody -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Portvliet Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 5:08 PM To: PaulDotCom Security Weekly Mailing List Subject: Re: [Pauldotcom] How not to get pwned at Defcon I guess there's two ways of looking at this... 1.) Play it safe, disable your wireless & use an evdo card, stay off the hotel & wireless networks, which means you're safe accessing your email & whatnot this way, but not much fun (imho). 2.) Wipe machine & re-image (to remove anything personally identifiable) before you go to defcon, patch thoroughly.. then go have fun, make sure you don't access anything personally identifiable from that machine while you are there & wipe it again when you get home. #2 supposes you use phone instead to check email, etc. or have a second notebook configured as in #1.. How does that sound, good yes/no? On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 4:31 PM, Robin Wood<[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/7/14 Nicholas B. <[email protected]>: >> I an entirely read-only approach when on-site heres how I plan on >> approaching it: >> >> On my laptop if: >> Disable hard drives in bios, change bootorder to optical media first >> and only, set bios password, use my choice of live cd, disable >> wireless and tether to my evdo adaptor via usb. >> >> When accessing anything external from the laptop: >> SSH out via public key with key from a thumb-drive that's set to read >> only and has a pass-phrase protected key and tunnel to a trusted box >> only with a pre-accepted and verified host key from the thumb drive. > > So after going to all this trouble, what are you going to actually use > your laptop for? If you are disabling any mass storage then you can't > download stuff so you are limited to browsing and reading mail, both > of which I'd guess you can do on your evdo phone. > > I'd like to know how many people start with these good intentions then > realise there is something they need from the hdd so mount it up then > just leave it on. > > Robin > _______________________________________________ > Pauldotcom mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom > Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com > _______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.387 / Virus Database: 270.13.14/2238 - Release Date: 07/14/09 18:03:00 _______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com
