Talks - War Games 01

war_games_01_talks.md

War Games 01, Computer Security and Hacking

We are at war

• Blackhat, Whitehat, government, activists hackers constantly trying to get access to computers and data. Sony, Panama Documents, USA, Philippines
• Reasons can be money, political, religious, military, love, whatever...
• Computers are weapons and also targets. Data source, botnet, proxy, spam, DDOS
• Always need to think about security and common sense goes a long way!

Basic server security

SSH

• Secure Shell, a network protocol with encryption. Commonly use to accessing remote hosts.
• Passwords are insecure, compared to a private key, it's short. Turn off passwords login!
• Generate a new SSH keypair
• Never transfer your private key over the wire! Consider it compromised otherwise. Can use multiple keys, ~/.ssh/config
• SSH can be used for many other things. ssh chat.shazow.net

Iptables

• A firewall to block traffic
• Should drop all traffic by default, and only allowing the ports that you need e.g. SSH, HTTP/HTTPS.

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -I INPUT 1 -i lo -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -P INPUT DROP

• Save the rules with iptables-persistent!

sudo apt-get install iptables-persistent

• UFW is a front-end for iptables

Encrypt all things!

• Web with SSL (Let's Encrypt)
• Email with GPG
• Chat with Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp
• Passwords with KeePass, 1Password, Lastpass
• Hard drive with TrueCrypt
• Network traffic with SSH Tunnel, VPN, Tor
• Money with cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin

Antivirus

• ClamAV is open source
• Firewall is more important than antivirus on server
• Use top or pidstat 1 to check for suspicous processes taking up resources on server
• Update your system regularly!

Other security tips

• Update system regularly
• Follow security annoucements and patch 0day exploits!
• Give minimum privileges to all users
• Be paranoid!
• Put tape over your webcam