Bootable Linux
March 2nd, 2004
One of the most enjoyable and potentially useful bits of linux paraphernalia has been the explosion of “bootable linux” distributions. For quite a while, the main ones which were well known were tomsrtbt and Knoppix. Since a couple years ago there has been a truly wonderful proliferation of bootable distributions, with more created all the time.
There are several direct and obvious benefits to bootable linux distributions:
- You can have a special-purpose linux dist for a single task
- You can boot up linux on basically any machine, or at least find one that works, and so work in a familiar linux environment wherever you are
- You can try out several distributions, in the spirit of getting more familiar with them
- The bootable media is (almost always) read-only, so it won’t change or get damaged due to user error or playing with configuration settings — just restart and you’re back to where you began — thus, the bootable linux firewall: in the event of a security intrusion, reboot and you’re back to where you were before the intrusion — bad for forensics but good for uptime and recovery
Anyway, here are a few of the up-and-coming ones, well, at least according to Jeff Honnold’s spindle of CDs:
MandrakeMove: this is the bootable CD from Mandrake, that wacky French company which makes one of the best and most user-friendly distributions currently.
PHLAK, a.k.a. Professional Hackers Linux Attack Kit: yes, if you want to set up a bunker and start your intrusion tests as a White Hat security consultant, this is one of the dists you’ll have in your spindle.
MenuetOS: Joe Lazar just mentioned this to me, currently playing with it.
MEPIS: out of Morgantown WV, of all places. Am thinking of making a pilgrimage down there.
Movix: great for playing your media
UPDATE:
Slashdot discusses a review of 18 live CDs; lots to choose from!
spamku!
January 19th, 2004
Habeas apparently makes their money by giving folks tools to receive email which is ‘wanted’. Hilariously enough, however, one of the main ways they accomplish this is by: inserting a haiku into the headers of an email! A recent spam to my account showed the poetic verve of the company:
X-Habeas-SWE-1: winter into spring
X-Habeas-SWE-2: brightly anticipated
X-Habeas-SWE-3: like Habeas SWE ™
X-Habeas-SWE-4: Copyright 2002 Habeas ™
X-Habeas-SWE-5: Sender Warranted Email (SWE) ™. The sender of this
X-Habeas-SWE-6: email in exchange for a license for this Habeas
X-Habeas-SWE-7: warrant mark warrants that this is a Habeas Compliant
X-Habeas-SWE-8: Message (HCM) and not spam. Please report use of this
X-Habeas-SWE-9: mark in spam to http://www.habeas.com/report/.
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but isn’t it obvious that headers of email can be forged five ways to friday?
So no one should be shocked, SHOCKED, that some spammers have figured out that by including these headers, spam filters can be bypassed. Comic relief, spamku style (thanks Dan Sparvero for the word “spamku”!), is to be found here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/34969.html
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