Sunday, September 20, 2009

Tools of the Trade - NOVA Edition

NOVA is my new home....so I figured I would give you some information about the area.

Northern Virginia (colloquially referred to as "NOVA") consists of several counties and independent cities in the U.S. state of Virginia in a widespread region generally radiating southerly and westward from Washington, D.C. Notable features of the region include the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the many companies which serve them and the federal government. The area's attractions include various monuments and Colonial and Civil War-era sites such as Mount Vernon and Arlington National Cemetery.

Northern Virginia's data centers currently carry more than 50% of the nation's Internet traffic, and by 2012 Dominion Power expects that 10% of all electricity it sends to Northern Virginia will be used by the region's data centers alone.

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On Sept 16th, Adam Laurie, known as Major Malfunction in the hacker community, released RFIDIOt 0.1z. RFIDIOt is a python library for exploring RFID device. It currently drives a couple of RFID readers made by ACG, called the HF Dual ISO and the LFX. Includes sample programs to read/write tags and the beginnings of library routines to handle the data structures of specific tags like MIFARE(r). Check his announcement e-mail for all the change details.

On Sept 16th, Snort 2.8.5 was released. Here are some highlights from the release notes:
  • Ability to specify multiple configurations (snort.conf and everything it includes), bound either by Vlan ID or IP Address. This allows you to run one instance of Snort with multiple snort.conf files, rather than having separate processes.
  • Continued inspection of traffic while reloading a configuration.
    Add --enable-reload option to your configure script prior to building.
  • Rate Based Attack Prevention for Connection Attempts, Concurrent Connections, and improved rule/event filtering.
  • SSH preprocessor is no longer experimental
  • Multiple performance improvements
On Sept 15th, Nessus 4.02 was released. This release includes several fixes and support for the latest operating systems from Microsoft and Apple (i.e. Windows 7 and Snow Leopard). All customers are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version of the Nessus Server and NessusClient.

On Sept 15th, Wireshark 1.2.2 was released. This release fixes the following vulnerabilities:
  • The GSM A RR dissector could crash. (Bug 3893) - Versions affected: 1.2.0 to 1.2.1
  • The OpcUa dissector could use excessive CPU and memory. (Bug 3986) - Versions affected: 0.99.6 to 1.0.8, 1.2.0 to 1.2.1
  • The TLS dissector could crash on some platforms. (Bug 4008) - Versions affected: 1.2.0 to 1.2.1
On Sept 14th, KeePassX 0.4.1 was released. KeePassX is an open-source application for people with extremely high demands on secure personal data management. KeePassX saves many different information e.g. user names, passwords, URLs, attachments and comments in one single database. Basically, it is Keepass Password Safe for Apple OS X. Check the changelog for all the details.

On Sept 11th, Harald Scan 0.31 was released. Harald Scan is a Bluetooth discovery scanner written in Python. It determines Major and Minor device classes according to the Bluetooth SIG specification and attempts to resolve a device's MAC address to the largest known vendor/MAC address list. This Linux-only release adds a -u option to update MACLIST to the most recent version, adds a proper GPLv3 disclaimer and license and fixes other minor bugs (mostly not noticed by users).

On Sept 10th, PDFResurrect 0.8 was released. PDFResurrect is a tool aimed at analyzing PDF documents. This tool attempts to extract all previous versions while also producing a summary of changes between versions. This tool can also "scrub" or write data over the original instances of PDF objects that have been modified or deleted, in an effort to disguise information from previous versions that might not be intended for anyone else to read. This release is mainly just a bug-fix.

On Sept 9th, VirtualBox 3.0.6 was released. VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. Check the changelog for all the details.

On Sept 8th, CDBurnerXP 4.2.5.1541 was released. CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. This version added a verification method for the file count of the disc to detect broken file system structures.

On Sept 8th, Aircrack-ng 1.0 was released. Aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys cracking program that can recover keys once enough data packets have been captured. It implements the standard FMS attack along with some optimizations like KoreK attacks, as well as the all-new PTW attack, thus making the attack much faster compared to other WEP cracking tools. Check out the official Aircrack-ng blog for changelog highlights.

On Sept 4th, GnuPG 2.0.13 & 1.4.10 were released. The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is GNU's tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data, create digital signatures, help authenticating using Secure Shell and to provide a framework for public key cryptography. Check the announce notes for both 2.0.13 & 1.4.10 for all the change details.

On Sept 3rd, CCleaner v2.23.999 was released. CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. This version has improved Opera 10 support. Check the version history for all the change details.

On Sept 3rd, Foxit Reader 3.1.1.0901 was released. Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer, with incredible small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7. This released fixes at least two issues:
  • The reported issue of Foxit Reader 3.1.0.0824 crashing when users are viewing certain PDF files has been updated and is no longer a problem.
  • Fixed an issue where Foxit Reader may not be launched in the system without installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable.
On Sept 2nd, Mobius Forensic Toolkit 0.4.7 was released. Mobius Forensic Toolkit is a forensic framework written in Python/GTK that manages cases and case items, providing an abstract interface for developing extensions. Check the release notes for the change details.

On Sept 1st, OpenOffice 3.1.1 was released. OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. This version is mostly just a bug-fix and did not include a host of new features....but it does address two highly critical Word Document Table Parsing Vulnerabilities. Check the release notes for all the change details.

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