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Security

Need some help securing something?

31 Topics 259 Posts

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  • Get help with malware removal here

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    I’ve created this dedicated tag to offer help with system infections - from minor to major, there is expertise here to assist.

    I heard from a friend recently who’s been hit pretty badly by a malicious actor, and after providing initial guidance over the phone, I thought it made sense to open this up for other members to make use of.

    Feel free to use it for advice, information, and anything else you think you may need.

  • Looking to protect your privacy?

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    @phenomlab 100%.

  • Want to know more about threats?

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    @phenomlab thank you very much, this was helpful. Everything looks ok 🙂

  • Protecting API Access on Apache/Cloudways

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    @Hari Much of this response depends on whether these API’s are internal or external, and who manages/supports them. If they are your own API’s, then you should ideally send a predefined key in the header to ensure that the request is authentic.

    This is the standard way of doing it, but I’ll need a bit more detail to comment further.

  • Crypto Currency and FTX

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    Something of an update here. Good news that some people will get their hard earned investment back, but certainly not everyone

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0qz3dg21vqo

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  • Adjusting HSTS settings for public wifi's

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    @Hari Ok, no issues. Keep me posted…

  • Russian hackers hit with sanctions

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    @mathourthy Good question. They have zero effect from what I can see. It’s not going to stop them from targeting anyone else.

  • Court finds teenagers carried out hacking spree

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  • Bad information security advice

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  • DDoS attacks on our website.

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    No response from OP so marking as closed

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    @DownPW 🙂 most of this really depends on your desired security model. In all cases with firewalls, less is always more, although it’s never as clear cut as that, and there are always bespoke ports you’ll need to open periodically.

    Heztner’s DDoS protection is superior, and I know they have invested a lot of time, effort, and money into making it extremely effective. However, if you consider that the largest ever DDoS attack hit Cloudflare at 71m rps (and they were able to deflect it), and each attack can last anywhere between 8-24 hours which really depends on how determined the attacker(s) is/are, you can never be fully prepared - nor can you trace it’s true origin.

    DDoS attacks by their nature (Distributed Denial of Service) are conducted by large numbers of devices whom have become part of a “bot army” - and in most cases, the owners of these devices are blissfully unaware that they have been attacked and are under command and control from a nefarious resource. Given that the attacks originate from multiple sources, this allows the real attacker to observe from a distance whilst concealing their own identity and origin in the process.

    If you consider the desired effect of DDoS, it is not an attempt to access ports that are typically closed, but to flood (and eventually overwhelm) the target (such as a website) with millions of requests per second in an attempt to force it offline. Victims of DDoS attacks are often financial services for example, with either extortion or financial gain being the primary objective - in other words, pay for the originator to stop the attack.

    It’s even possible to get DDoS as a service these days - with a credit card, a few clicks of a mouse and a target IP, you can have your own proxy campaign running in minutes which typically involves “booters” or “stressers” - see below for more

    https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/ddos-as-a-service-attacks-what-are-they-and-how-do-they-work

    @DownPW said in Setting for high load and prevent DDoS (sysctl, iptables, crowdsec or other):

    in short if you have any advice to give to secure the best.

    It’s not just about DDos or firewalls. There are a number of vulnerabilities on all systems that if not patched, will expose that same system to exploit. One of my favourite online testers which does a lot more than most basic ones is below

    https://www.immuniweb.com/websec/

    I’d start with the findings reported here and use that to branch outwards.

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    @crazycells this perhaps? 🙂

    terminator_endoskeleton_1020.webp

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    @DownPW yeah, I seem to spend a large amount of my time trying to educate people that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to security.

  • Secure SSH connectivty

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    @phenomlab

    yep but I use it since several month and I haven’t see any bugs or crash
    In any case, I only use him anymore 🙂

    Tabby offers tabs and a panel system, but also themes, plugins and color palettes to allow you to push the experience to the limit. It can support different shells in the same window, offers completion, has an encrypted container for your passwords, SSH keys and other secrets, and can handle different connection profiles.

    Each tab is persistent (you can restore them if you close one by mistake) and has a notification system, which will let you know if, for example, a process is finished while you are tapping in another tab.

    It’s really a great terminal that will easily replace cmd.exe for Windowsians or your usual terminal. And it can even work in a portable version for those who like to carry their tools on a USB key.

    –> To test it, you can download it, but there is also a web version. Handy for getting an idea.

    https://app.tabby.sh

  • Crowdsec: a replacement for Fail2ban

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    @phenomlab

    No they have a free and pro console instance.
    We can see alert with IP, Source AS, scenario attack etc…

    Installation on the NODEBB server without problems. Very good tools

    cf7e5a89-84f4-435b-82eb-434c0bfc895e-image.png
    cc82a10e-a1f1-4fd8-a433-7c9b2d31f254-image.png

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    We can also do research on IPs via the crowdsec analyzer

    I believe it’s 500 per month in the Free version

    43bc8265-a57c-4439-829c-0bb8602d99b4-image.png

  • Own an Apple device? Patch it now

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    @crazycells that makes sense. Microsoft tried something similar with Windows but called it “optional updates” 🤦

  • Anyone using (or has used) "Tails" ?

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    @DownPW great response - and salent points well made.

  • Is whitelisting all of CF ips on plesk panel a good idea?

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    @Hari that’s a common Plesk issue. I had that all time when using it and eventually you’ll need to poke so many holes like this to get things to work that your security will look like Swiss cheese.

    One of the reasons I stopped using Plesk.

  • Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website

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    @mike-jones Hi Mike,

    There are multiple answers to this, so I’m going to provide some of the most important ones here

    JS is a client side library, so you shouldn’t rely on it solely for validation. Any values collected by JS will need to be passed back to the PHP backend for processing, and will need to be fully sanitised first to ensure that your database is not exposed to SQL injection. In order to pass back those values into PHP, you’ll need to use something like

    <script> var myvalue = $('#id').val(); $(document).ready(function() { $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "https://myserver/myfile.php?id=" + myvalue, success: function() { $("#targetdiv").load('myfile.php?id=myvalue #targetdiv', function() {}); }, //error: ajaxError }); return false; }); </script>

    Then collect that with PHP via a POST / GET request such as

    <?php $myvalue= $_GET['id']; echo "The value is " . $myvalue; ?>

    Of course, the above is a basic example, but is fully functional. Here, the risk level is low in the sense that you are not attempting to manipulate data, but simply request it. However, this in itself would still be vulnerable to SQL injection attack if the request is not sent as OOP (Object Orientated Programming). Here’s an example of how to get the data safely

    <?php function getid($theid) { global $db; $stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT *FROM data where id = ?"); $stmt->execute([$theid]); while ($result= $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){ $name = $result['name']; $address = $result['address']; $zip = $result['zip']; } return array( 'name' => $name, 'address' => $address, 'zip' => $zip ); } ?>

    Essentially, using the OOP method, we send placeholders rather than actual values. The job of the function is to check the request and automatically sanitise it to ensure we only return what is being asked for, and nothing else. This prevents typical injections such as “AND 1=1” which of course would land up returning everything which isn’t what you want at all for security reasons.

    When calling the function, you’d simply use

    <?php echo getid($myvalue); ?>

    @mike-jones said in Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website:

    i am pretty sure the user could just use the path to the php file and just type a web address into the search bar

    This is correct, although with no parameters, no data would be returned. You can actually prevent the PHP script from being called directly using something like

    <?php if(!defined('MyConst')) { die('Direct access not permitted'); } ?>

    then on the pages that you need to include it

    <?php define('MyConst', TRUE); ?>

    Obviously, access requests coming directly are not going via your chosen route, therefore, the connection will die because MyConst does not equal TRUE

    @mike-jones said in Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website:

    Would it be enough to just check if the number are a number 1-100 and if the drop down is one of the 5 specific words and then just not run the rest of the code if it doesn’t fit one of those perameters?

    In my view, no, as this will expose the PHP file to SQL injection attack without any server side checking.

    Hope this is of some use to start with. Happy to elaborate if you’d like.

  • Browsing without a VPN? Think Twice...

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    And if you ever needed another reason to use a VPN, here it is.

    https://news.sky.com/story/google-blinks-first-in-11-month-privacy-showdown-with-uk-regulator-12479198