HACKER EDITION SPECIAL : SEDULITY Operating System

1.     How many of us and those who are live wire updated with the Cyber security have heard of ethical hacker editions of any DVD with all hackers dream collection vide one window.When we speak on such editions foremost comes like Backtrack(ethical), Backbox ,Samurai Web Security Framework, Bugtraq, Nodezero etc. In this post I am introducing you guys to a relatively unheard Operating System by the name of SEDULITY OPERATING SYSTEM. I just got a copy from the originator Dr Anup Girdhar who holds a Ph.d in Cyber Security. I have recently installed it on a Virtual Box and believe you me I am yet to install any third party tool....coz everything I need is already inside.Definetly a good distro for beginners in this field. Here I bring you the basic installation screen shots and few details of this edition of OS.

2.     Sedulity Solutions & Technologies is India’s first organization, who have developed and patented a "Flavored Operating System" in five different flavors including -

• Corporate Edition
• Developers Edition
• Ethical Hackers Edition
• Forensics Edition
• Gaming Edition

3.    Sedulity OS Ethical Hackers Edition is an exclusive creation that helps the Security Professionals to perform Penetration Testing and vulnerability Assessment in a purely dedicated environment. Sedulity OS-Ethical Hackers Edition is meant for all those Researchers, Hackers, and Security Professionals, who wanted to do hands-on, in various platforms of technologies with all the Latest tools Pre-Deployed in it.

 In the next post will bring you screen shots from inside the OS...bringing you interfaces of the tools available in the OS.

DEFT : Digital Evidence & Forensic Toolkit Live DVD

1. DEFT (Digital Evidence & Forensic Toolkit) is a customized distribution of the Ubuntu live Linux CD@12.10. It is an easy-to-use system that includes excellent hardware detection and some of the best open-source applications dedicated to incident response and computer forensics.DEFT comes bundled with DART2 (Digital Advanced Response Toolkit) and the very best open source Windows Computer Forensic tools. Using LXDE as desktop environment and WINE to manage Windows tools under a Linux kernel, and a mount manager as tool for device management, this distro has a loyal following and we encourage you to use it.DEFT seems to be very well supported with a long list of official developers and contributors. The main developers seem to be a mix of professors, forensic (legal) experts, consultants, engineers, network specialists and more. Several law enforcement professionals are also associated with this project making it a forensics tool of choice for Information Security professionals. According to their site the distro is designed to be used by anyone working within a Response, Cyber Intelligence and/ or Computer Forensics capacity.

2.   Further to this very basic intro I give you here the screenshots as I set it up live on my virtual box.

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3.   Details at http://www.deftlinux.net/

Ubuntu: How To Create an ISO Image from a CD or DVD?

1.   For Ubuntu users this small post gives u a single line command on how to create a ISO image from a physical CD/DVD.

2.    First step is to simply load the CD/DVD.

3.    Second step involves opening the terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T

4.    Check where is the CD/DVD mounted by typing "lsblk" without quotes as seen below in a sample shot.

 

5.    Type Execute the following command: cat /dev/sr0 > /home/endhiran/Desktop/kali.iso where /dev/sr0 is the device name for your drive.

                

The disc will begin to spin and the ISO image will start being constructed. Once it has completed, you have an ISO image of your CD. To verify that the image was properly created, mount the ISO file and check the contents.

CLOUDUSB : Another way to secure yourself....

1.     "Cloud" has been easily the most buzzy term in past few years for the computing industry. Case in point is the CloudUSB distribution, a project that promises to provide automatic backups and data along with privacy protection. The cloud name is catchy but the security is far less than promised....it is actually a USB-based Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS(though old but works for general user..now I m on 14.04 LTS though). The idea is that you can carry your own Linux distribution with you for use anywhere, thus allowing anyone to use Linux on any computer and keep their data safe in the event the USB key is lost.

2.    CloudUSB uses the Dropbox service to synchronize data, so users who don't already have a Dropbox account will need to set up an account before being able to use the synchronization service. CloudUSB sets up a data and private-data folder for keeping sensitive files in. The setup.sh script that comes with the distribution uses encfs to set up an encrypted directory. It appears the script isn't properly encrypting the directory, though. When the system is rebooted, it does use encfs to mount the Dropbox/private-data directory as Desktop/.private-data. A step by step screen shot is shown below...i run this on a Virtual Box....and this can be downloaded at http://cloudusb.net/?DOWNLOAD

and there you are ready sett...go!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hardening Linux : BASTILLE-LINUX

1.   Linux is gaining its pace in gaining new user base daily pan globe and with this increase it becomes all the more important to harden it because now Linux will soon be of interest to hackers....and in this post I am giving a brief introduction about Bastille, a software tool that eases the process of hardening a Linux system, giving you the choice of what to lock down and what not to, depending on your security requirements. It bundles many of the tasks routinely done to securely configure a Linux system into one package.It is a set of Perl scripts that run as an interactive program, asking questions for each step of the hardening process. The scripts explain each step well, enabling you to understand what security measures will be introduced by any changes you make and why. Bastille can also optionally save your choice of options to a file for remote deployment to other machines.

2. Bastille currently works with Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Mandriva distributions, as well as HP-UX. A beta version is also available for Mac OS X. Most of the distributions Bastille supports have it available as a package that you can install with the default package manager for the distribution. Once it is installed, just run Bastille as root.After you install it vide the Ubuntu Software centre,the ways to use and configure is shown vide screen-shots below :

Google joins the ENCRYPTION Race : End-to-End Extension

1.    After Snowden leaks,one thing that has been most sought after is privacy and encryption and there have been a horde of tools and extensions that offer u the same vide many companies.Like in the last mail I mentioned about PROTONMAIL,there is another one in the offering from the horses mouth itself...ie Google offering an extension by the name of End-to-End extension...that

means data leaving your browser will be encrypted until the message’s intended recipient decrypts it, and that similarly encrypted messages sent to you will remain that way until you decrypt them in your browser.It’s a Chrome extension intended for users who need additional security.

2.    Though it is not yet available since still in Alpha stage but as per the Google blog at http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.in/2014/06/making-end-to-end-encryption-easier-to.html,it is likely to be available soon for all chrome browser users as an extension.Google wants to make it harder to spy on email by encouraging maximum providers to adopt server-to-server encryption. The new tool is based on OpenPGP and is meant to be a more user-friendly encryption option than programs such as PGP, which can be difficult to configure and use.

3.   So till it releases.....no options other then to wait.....