KLUG Meeting Minutes and Agenda (#25) The 25th meeting of the Kingston Linux User Group was held Mon, Nov. 6, 2000 at 7PM at RMC. The meeting lasted until about 10:30 PM. The attendees were: Brommer, Peter Drummond, Mark Gauthier, Daniel Harker, Steve Healy, Art Hore, Dennis Humphrey, Steve Jezak, Edward Lessalap, Dave Lott, Rodnet Maclachlan, Ross MacIntosh, Bob Mitton, Douglas Postill, Rob Webster, Scott <7sw3@qlink.queensu.ca> Young, Rob Zandbergen, Harry Meeting Schedule: 26 - Mon, Dec. 4 at RMC. System and Network Security Part 2. 27 - Wed, Jan. 3 at RMC. "Intro to Linux" 28 - Mon. Feb. 5 at RMC. "Installation HowTo" Summary Of Activities: - Web page host and domain name - www.klug.on.ca. - Mailing list - klug-subscribe@lists.rmc.ca. Agenda/Minutes: 1) Roll Call and Introductions (if required) - See attendees above. 2) This Meeting: There were 17 attendees to our 14th presentation "System and Network Security Part I" by Mark Drummond. Mark started out by outlining the 4 main security issues; passwords, physical security, software updates and network services. This presentation dealt mainly with "host" security which primarily concerns a single system. Next months presentation deals with networks or groups of connected computers. Poor or weak passwords is one of the easiest methods to break into a computer. Marks definition of a good password is a random 8 character string of upper and lower case, numeric and punctuation. This cannot include any dictionary words. The example provided was an anagram of a nonsensical sentence ... in this case the password "Idw2p2d." is made up from "I don't want to play to day." Physical security is another major issue. If the computer is open to any casual access there are many ways to break into it. These range from using a Linux boot floppy, to removing the hardrive and installing it into another system. Physical security must take into account how valuable the data or facility is. Your home computer is probably secure enough with just locking the house door but a work computer will have to be looked at differently. A bios and normal login password may be adequate for a workstation but a more elaborate restricted access computing facility could be the ticket for a mission critical server. Keeping your system patched and up to date is also important, this will correct known security problems and exploits in your system that make it easier for experts and "script-kiddies" to get in. With a system like Mandrakes RPM upgrade faci;ity this can be accomplished fairly painlessly. Again, the importance of this is based on how critical your systems integrity and contained data is. The last issue discussed was network services. Mark went through a quick review of TCP/IP theory and then demonstrated how running unwanted, un-needed or unknown services can reveal information about your system and give help to those who may want to exploit security holes. Mark also demonstrated some tools to check and diagnose system security such as netstat, nmap, ping, finger and ident, just to name a few. The main point in this first installment was not to run unnecessary network services that you don't need, understand or are not keeping up to date. Next month there will be more detail given on this subject that should be of interest to anyone who operates a system on "permanent" internet connection and in particular if you run any UNIX-like system, especially Linux, even MS Windows users will benefit. Thanks for the presentation Mark and thanks to all who participated. KLUG has also agreed to provide an introduction and install demo for the Queens IEEE students on Thurs, Nov. 8. This will be at Walter-Light Hall, 19 Union Street, room 205. The room is available at 6:30pm and the presentation is to start at 7pm. See you there! 3) Next Meeting: Mon, Dec. 4 - System and Network Security Part 2. 4) Socialize / Adjourn