I hope these links help anyone who is also trying to learn SELinux to use MAC in an attempt to better secure their systems.
Getting started with SELinux
Creating SELinux policies simplified
SELinux policies PDF (from the NSA)
The unofficial SELinux FAQ
I am trying to learn SELinux. This link looks useful because it tries to simplify the system.
I will probably write about it some more later, but wanted to put this link up here.
There is additional analysis of the situation that I first mentioned in this post.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is of the opinion that the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice is worse than that of Bush. Here is an excerpt from the EFF’s take on the situation:
Previously, the Bush Administration has argued that the U.S. possesses “sovereign immunity” from suit for conducting electronic surveillance that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, FISA is only one of several laws that restrict the government’s ability to wiretap. The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.
Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ’s radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama’s own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.
Please read this analysis on Salon. I hope that the administration responds and clarifies some of their language if the analysis does not reflect their intent.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html:
Every defining attribute of Bush’s radical secrecy powers — every one — is found here, and in exactly the same tone and with the exact same mindset. Thus: how the U.S. government eavesdrops on its citizens is too secret to allow a court to determine its legality. We must just blindly accept the claims from the President’s DNI that we will all be endangered if we allow courts to determine the legality of the President’s actions. Even confirming or denying already publicly known facts — such as the involvement of the telecoms and the massive data-mining programs — would be too damaging to national security. Why? Because the DNI says so. It is not merely specific documents, but entire lawsuits, that must be dismissed in advance as soon as the privilege is asserted because “its very subject matter would inherently risk or require the disclosure of state secrets.”
Bravo Microsoft! The video embeded below shows how to change the password of the current user account that you are logged in under without entering the previous password. This kind of thing should not work. I will have to test to see if Vista is susceptible to this “hack”.
The operating system should always ask you for the old password before allowing you to change it. Hopefully this only works when logged in to an administrator account. In Unix the superuser can change other user’s passwords without knowledge of the old password. If logged in as any other account you can change only your own password after typing in your old password.
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MiamiHerald.com | 09/18/2006 | Securing sensitive data
Recently, The Miami Herald brought to light the threat of identity theft facing Floridians because of the prevalence and accessibility of personal information online Public records easy targets for ID thieves, Aug. 27.
This follows the announcement by the Transportation Department that two computers containing sensitive data — in one case, the personal information of more than 133,000 Floridians — have been stolen in the last several months.
BusinessWeek recently reported on the growing trend of using fog machines to deter criminals. Stores fill up with fog when the alarm is triggered making it much more difficult for the criminal to steal anything. I read this in the magazine and only found one reference to it online from which I have quoted below.
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Read below for a new technique that may help to eliminate MAC spoofing on wireless networks. It remains to be seen how much processing power this may need once the process is refined.
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Found this from:Hugg / The American Voting System: HACKED
Watch this video, and I think that you too will be convinced that we need to have a paper trail in our elections. Not even just a paper trail that is printed out at the end of the day at each polling station. We need to have each voting machine print our vote in front of our very own eyes. We then need to be able to confirm that the information is indeed correct, and then place it in a locked ballot box.
I remember the first time that I used one of those machines I remarked to one of my friends how I did not trust them. This is coming from someone who has been working in IT all my life. Now my friend knows that I was not just being paranoid!
CNET News.com has written an article about protecting yourself from search engines. The piece is a fluff piece; however, does have some useful tips. I recommend that you read it.
This comes after AOL released the search records of users to the public.
FAQ: Protecting yourself from search engines | CNET News.com:
AOLs publication of the search histories of more than 650,000 of its users should reinforce an important point: What you type in online may not be as private as you think.
Search engines place a multibillion-dollar infrastructure at the hands of any random user who stops by their Web site. The price you pay, however, is that the company may hold on to your search queries–which can provide a glimpse into your life–forever.
To offer some suggestions about preserving your privacy while using search engines, CNET News.com has prepared the following list of frequently asked questions.