4 Easy Ways to Practice Your Linux Skills
Feb 15,
2017
A few times now, a student taking Learning Tree’s Linux server administration course has told me that their Linux experience is rather limited. Specifically, that they took the introductory user course about a year ago and they “haven’t done much since.” Me: “Uh-oh. So, how much have you used the command line since that course?” […]
GnuTLS Bug Part 3: You Always Need to Patch New Cloud Servers
Mar 24,
2014
Or at least you have no way of really knowing that you don’t need a patch until you check this particular server very carefully. Last week and the week before I warned you about the GnuTLS bug. By now you must have all your in-house systems patched, right? Right? Amazon Web Service’s EC2 provides you […]
Fear and Loathing in the Cloud
Dec 11,
2013
We were somewhere around Baltimore on Amtrak’s northbound Acela Express when the drugs began to take hold. Mind you, it was only ibuprofin, so the sky was not full of what looked like huge bats, but still… (See here if you don’t get the allusion) I had broken my shoulder badly and undergone surgery. That […]
Malicious Insiders Could Steal Entire Cloud Systems
Oct 4,
2013
For the most part, cloud security is exactly the same as your existing concerns for the security of your servers. One major, difference, however, is the ultra-powerful provisioner of your cloud services. That’s the person in your organization who can deploy new cloud resources. But they can do more, and therein lies the risk. Let’s […]
Patching the Cloud
Jun 5,
2012
Vulnerability CVE-2012-0056 is a nasty one if you’re running a Linux kernel release 2.6.39 through 3.2.1. The exploit is a privilege escalation attack, meaning that the attacker has to get a foothold on your system. But once the attack has an unprivileged process on your system, its privileges can be elevated to root. Game over. […]