Tag: hack

security.txt files

Similar to robots.txt and humans.txt is a recent addition of a security.txt file. This is currently a draft proposal to provide a standardized way to define security policies for researchers. This is useful for bug bounty and disclosure programs. Government agencies were tasked to add these back in 2019, but COVID-19 likely delayed implementation and rollout.

This is usually applied in the root of a website at /.well-known/security.txt, but can also be immediately in the root at /security.txt. Personally, I put mine in /.well-known/ and put a redirect at the root to simplify maintenance.

For additional security, you can optionally sign the policy with PGP.

Details:

I did some searching around the web and found some examples (linked below):

File in the root path:

File in the preferred /.well-known path:

Some PGP signed examples:

Questionable, though as the files are meant to be read by humans, this would meet the most simple use case:

Ashley Madison data dump

This topic has been in the media ALOT lately, for the less technical individuals here’s a simple way to get at the information.

For (mostly) anonymous access to the ‘dark internet’…. it’s not as ominous and illegal as you might think, you can download a browser here:

https://www.torproject.org/download/download

If you don’t mind being (possibly) tracked by your IP Address, you can just download a Torrent client such as Transmission or µTorrent.

The torrent file can then be accessed here:
https://thepiratebay.mn/torrent/12237184/The_Complete_Ashley_Madison_Dump_from_the_Impact_Team

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Hackintosh – running Apple OS/X inside VirtualBox (on Ubuntu or Windows)

I’ve done a LOT of web and software development in my career, one of the biggest problems I’v e had is doing proper testing on various platforms. VirtualBox can be run on most platforms, and allows for you to virtualize various operating systems. Apple’s OS X can be problematic to install, here’s some functioning instructions and settings that I’ve successfully used for my virtual Hackintosh test environment.

WARNING: As this uses an image of the software, it is advisable to also have a valid licenced copy as to use this without a licence would be “stealing”.

NOTE: this is a version of Snow Leopard, unfortunately you will NOT be able to update or add “fixes” to this test copy as it will usually break. I recommend making a copy of the VM if you wish to try!

My VirtualBox settings:

Mac OS X
Mac OS X Snow Leopard (64-bit)
1024MB
1 core
Disable EFI
6MB+ video

Steps:

  1. English, continue
  2. Utilities… disk Utilities… Select drive, Erase, name, erase… close
  3. continue
  4. Select disk… continue
  5. Customize (see instructions for: updates, kernels & bootloaders)

    6. NOTE: i only did 10.6.1 (an earlier 10.6.2 failed)

  6. Install
  7. Resolution fix – (I could not save file, but here are the instructions…

    Finder > OSX Drive (On desktop) > Extras > com.apple.Boot.plist (open with TextEdit – use the field to find)


<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280×1024x32</string>

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Comcast Business Class gateway forwarding port 22 for SSH

For as long as I’ve had Comcast, and other providers for that matter, I’ve been able to configure my internet gateway/router to allow port 22 (SSH) access to an internal machine. It came as a surprise to me earlier this week that I was blocked when I tried to use their web admin console to change the internal forwarding to a newer machine. As usual, Technical Support was less that helpful and said that it was not possible to do so, and never should have been as Comcast uses that port to administer the gateway. To make matters more disturbing, I was told that I could not have similar SSH access to the gateway, and that replacing their hardware, while permitted, would prevent my use of a static IP.

Back to the solution, as I know that I had only setup this forwarding about a year ago, and it was working only minutes before I tried to change it, I knew that the configuration was possible if I could figure out how it was being blocked. The message in the web console was a javascript alert(); and gave me a starting point. I opened up Firefox and used Firebug to look for the message. Here are a few interesting findings from:

http://HOSTNAME/user/feat-firewall-port-forward-edit.asp

var RemoteManagementPortsCgiBase = “8080,8080,1\|8181,8181,1\|2323,2323,1\|22,22,1\|”;
…
msg += “Public Port Range conflict with Remote Management Ports.\n”;
…
if (msg.length > 1)
{
alert(msg);
return false;
}
return true;
}

If you even a little bit of javascript (or simple computer programming for that matter), the solution is clear…. if the ‘msg’ value is empty you will not see the alert or be prevented from making the change you desire.

Lesson to be learned by the Comcast developers (or most likely = subcontractors), always validate submitted form data in your application code, NEVER rely upon javascript alone to verify user entered data!

I also find it interesting that they are also preventing 8080, 8081 and 2323… perhaps that’s their other back doors in these gateways for their access. The same approach should work for those ports if you need it!

MSIE Conditional Comments

This approach is useful in building standards based websites and allows you to prevent it from being “polluted” by various hacks used to support MSIE. MSIE5 and newer support the use of Conditional Comments and thus allow the developer to include additional files or markup for specific versions of the browser. Other browsers will see the content as an HTML comment and thus ignore it.


<!--[if IE]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE=Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if lt IE 5.5000]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE50Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 5.5000]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE55Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 6]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE60Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE70Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE80Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 9]><style type="text/css">@import "/css/IE90Fixes.css";</style><![endif]-->
<!--[if lt IE 7]><script type="text/javascript" src="/wiki/skins/common/IEFixes.js"></script><![endif]-->

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